47 Quotes by Stéphane Mallarme

A soul trembling to sit by a hearth so bright,To exist again, it’s enough if I borrow from Your lips the breath of my name you murmur all night.

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

Was it a dream I loved?

I kiss your knees that self-communing prayers chastize,I kiss your feet that would appease the open sea;I wish to plunge my head between your vital thighsand in your hair-shirt weep for my iniquity;there, my dear saint, in that oblivion of the dimChasm and the Boundless, rapt with scents vibrant and fresh,when I have finished softly chanting my long hymn,I shall assuage my torment on your wholesome flesh.

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

I should point out, creating one's 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 one's 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.

Your very natural and clear childlike laughter that charms the air,

Verse is everywhere in language where there is rhythm, everywhere, except in notices and on page four of the papers. In the genre called prose, there are verses [...] of all rhythms. But in truth there is no prose: there is the alphabet, and then verses more or less tight, more or less diffuse.

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.