Quotes by Stéphane Mallarmé

There is only beauty / and it has only one perfect expression / poetry. All the rest is a lie /except for those who live by the body, love, and, that love of the mind, friendship. For me, Poetry takes the place of love, because it is enamored of itself, and because its sensual delight falls back deliciously in my soul.

Everything in the world exists in order to end up as a book.

The flesh is sad, alas, and I have read all the books.

The world exists to end up in a book.

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.

The world was made in order to result in a beautiful book.

I should point out, creating ones own style, as much as is required to illustrate one of the aspects, the golden seam of language, involves beginning again at once, in a different manner, adopting the guise of a pupil when one risked becoming pedantic - thus by a shrugging of ones shoulders, disconcerting some with their genuflecting stance, and immortalizing oneself in multiple, impersonal, or even anonymous forms in response to the gesture of arms raised in stupefaction.

The poet Mallarmé listened to the painter Degas complaining about his inability to write poems even though “he was full of ideas.” “My dear Degas,” Mallarmé responded, “poems are not made out of ideas. They’re made out of words.

From golden showers of the ancient skies,On the first day, and the eternal snow of stars,You once unfastened giant calyxesFor the young earth still innocent of scars:Young gladioli with the necks of swans,Laurels divine, of exiled souls the dream,Vermilion as the modesty of dawnsTrod by the footsteps of the seraphim;The hyacinth, the myrtle gleaming bright,And, like the flesh of woman, the cruel rose,Hérodiade blooming in the garden light,She that from wild and radiant blood arose!And made the sobbing whiteness of the lilyThat skims a sea of sighs, and as it wendsThrough the blue incense of horizons, palelyToward the weeping moon in dreams ascends!Hosanna on the lute and in the censers,Lady, and of our purgatorial groves!Through heavenly evenings let the echoes answer,Sparkling haloes, glances of rapturous love!Mother, who in your strong and righteous bosom,Formed calyxes balancing the future flask,Capacious flowers with the deadly balsamFor the weary poet withering on the husk.