"Degas the Sonneteer": Transcending Disciplinary Boundaries and Building a New Aesthetic

“Degas the Sonneteer”: Transcending Disciplinary Boundaries

and Building a New Aesthetic

JESSICA LOCHEED

Mallarmé’s famous riposte to Degas that “‘you can’t make a poem with ideas. . . .

You make it with words’” has ensured that Degas’s desire to write poetry has

not been forgotten (Valéry 62). Nevertheless, ever since their first publication,

Degas’s reason for writing these poems has remained enigmatic to scholars. Although

several have been published, both as a collection and separately, to date very little crit-

ical examination of them has been undertaken. Degas’s sonnets were first published

with a commentary by Jean Nepveu Degas in 1946, in the only edition to treat them

as a unique body of work. And yet, Degas took his poetic venture seriously; more

importantly, he adopted as models the sonnets, principles, and critical writings of his

friend, the Symbolist poet, Stéphane Mallarmé. While it is important to understand

that Degas had no ambition to publish these sonnets, it is clear that he considered

them seriously enough to share them in certain cultural circles, supporting the notion

that they should be scrutinized as part of his total oeuvre.

Late in his career, Degas turned to poetry as a new form of artistic expression. This essay analyzes this poetry in

terms of the theoretical and physical process of his contemporary visual works. It also examines the similarities

between the poetic principles and practices of Degas with those of Mallarmé.

Mosaic 40/3 0027-1276-07/103020$02.00©Mosaic

Mosaic 40/3 (September 2007)104

T here is a close parallel between changes in Degas’s artistic style in the 1880s and

1890s and his decision to try his hand at poetry. At this point, his art was devel-

oping into a more abstract, symbolic style more concerned with form and experience

than narrative or subject. For example, he was moving away from his naturalist rep-

resentations of the ballet as seen in L’Etoile (see Illus. 1), opting instead for more

abstract representations with vivid colours and suggested, rather than literal, scenes as

in Les danseuses bleues (see Illus. 2). Simultaneously, he was turning with renewed and

increased interest to another medium: small-scale sculpture. Reading and under-

standing his poetry as an innovative and exciting medium through which he

expressed themes similar to those he explored in his visual art provides the best per-

spective for our understanding of some aspects of his late works.

In this essay, I examine selected facets of Degas’s poetry and its apparent debt to

the principles and practices of Mallarmé’s poetry and critical writings on dance. This

essay is not intended to be an exegetical analysis and critique of the sonnets on their

own merit. Degas’s poetry is best understood in the spirit of interdisciplinarity, an

interest in the inherent qualities of the written word and its relation to painting.

While some recent scholarship has considered the aesthetic link between Mallarmé

and Degas, to date, little work has been done, and none on the triangular relationship

between the sonnets, Mallarmé’s theories, and Degas’s own paintings. The question is,

therefore, not whether the poems are successful in their attempt to implement

Mallarméan principles. The question is rather what influence these principles might

have exerted over the vocabulary of his plastic arts. My analysis will thus focus on the

examination of Degas’s sonnets as an integral element of his overall artistic expres-

sion, a means to a dynamic end.

An extremely important element of Degas’s poetry is the distinct thematic link

to his visual arts. Of the twenty sonnets alluded to by Paul Valéry, only eight have been

published. Four address the theme of the dance, one the horse and jockey; one is a

tribute to Heredia; one centres on Mary Cassatt’s parrot; and the eighth is an ode to

the opera singer Rose Caron, of whom he painted a portrait the following year

(Mallarmé, Documents 157). About the other twelve we can only speculate. Evidence

from a letter written by Berthe Morisot indicates that at least one of them was con-

cerned with the theme of the bather. This indicates the presence of more poems that

thematically parallel another of the most prevalent motifs in his art of this period. I

will be working on the premise that, while there is clearly diversity in the works, the

dominant themes most likely parallel those of his visual works.

Degas’s decision to write about the themes to which he had already dedicated his

visual attention carries greater significance than merely demonstrating a choice by the

Jessica Locheed 107

Sifflent les violons, Fraîche, du bleu de l’eau,

Silvana vient, et là, curieuse s’ébroue.

Le bonheur de revivre et l’amour pur se joue

Sur ses yeux, sur ses seins, sur tout l’être nouveau,

Et ses pieds de satin brodent, comme l’aiguille,

Des dessins de plaisir. La capricante fille

Use mes pauvres yeux, à la suivre peinant.

Mais d’un signe toujours cesse le beau mystère:

Elle retire trop les jambes en sautant:

C’est un saut de grenouille aux mares de Cythère. (Degas, Sonnet IV)

Rue, au 23, Ballu.

J’exprime

Sitôt Juin à Monsieur Degas

La Satisfaction qu’il rime

Avec la fleur des syringes. (qtd. in Poet 136)

His specificity in mentioning the composer Karl Maria von Weber and the lead char-

acter Silvana demonstrates well Degas’s interest in marrying the arts of music, dance,

and poetry—capturing the essence of several different experiences in one vivid and

droll poem.

A seminal consideration of the relationship between Degas and Mallarmé has

been written by Rosemary Lloyd in her book Mallarmé: The Poet and his Circle. In it,

she highlights the considerable personal and social interaction between the two men.

She indicates the regular meetings at Berthe Morisot’s Thursday night dinners (131).

Lloyd also stresses the intimate photograph of Mallarmé in which the artist captured,

as she notes, “the essence of their relationship” (Poet 136). Most importantly, she

focuses on a rhyme written by Mallarmé acknowledging the poetry of Degas:

Lloyd also provides an insightful interpretation of Mallarmé’s understanding of, and

appreciation for, Degas’s art. She examines the oft-cited passage from Mallarmé’s

“Ballets” from Crayonné au Théâtre, a highly visible collection of eleven essays pub-

lished in La Revue Indépendante in 1888, each addressing an issue related to some

aspect of the theatre. In one of the essays, he writes: “A savoir que la danseuse n’est pas

une femme qui danse, pour ces motifs juxtaposés qu’elle n’est pas une femme, mais

une métaphore résumant un des aspects élémentaires de notre forme, glaive, coupe,

fleur, etc., et qu’elle ne danse pas, suggérant, par le prodige de raccourcis ou d’élans,

avec une écriture corporelle ce qu’il faudrait des paragraphes en prose dialoguée

autant que descriptive, pour exprimer, dans la rédaction : poème dégagé de tout

appareil du scribe” (Oeuvres 2.171). The statement of the poet as instrument is one in

which Mallarmé firmly establishes the dancer not as a person but as a metaphor, and

imagines traces or suggestions of her “corporal writing.”

This statement is indeed quite profound, shedding light not only upon Degas’s

dance imagery, but also on the complexity of the artistic essence of dance perceived

by Mallarmé and Degas. Lloyd concludes that, in fact, Degas’s painted ballerinas “do

have the qualities of metaphors, indications of femininity rather than depictions of

women, and their movements [. . .] do suggest the body as hieroglyph” (Poet 146).

Mary Lewis Shaw also writes eloquently of the “duality of dance—its combined poet-

ic (or metaphorical) function and its corporeal, unscribed nature” (53). Both Lloyd’s

concept of Degas’s hieroglyphic body and Shaw’s notion of poetic duality will be con-

sidered in greater detail, as they both touch upon elements of the impetus behind the

poetry and art of Degas.

However humble the presence of these sonnets, Degas sought responses and

feedback from his peers and he chose to present them orally in a public forum, as was

the preferred method of Mallarmé, a core element of whose poetics was the notion

that the written word is transformed and given a new power through oral presenta-

tion (Lewis 97). Various letters show that Mallarmé was aware of Degas’s poetry as

well as Degas’s esteem for the poet. In one letter written to Berthe Morisot on Sunday,

17 February 1889, Mallarmé speaks of Degas’s poetic venture in a humorous manner,

telling her about the painter’s latest obsession: “Sa propre poésie le distrait: car, et ce

sera le fait notoire de cet hiver, il en est à son quatrième sonnet. Au fond, il ne vit plus;

ou reste troublé devant cette injonction d’un art nouveau, dont il se tire, ma foi, très

joliment” (Mallarmé, Correspondance III 290). One letter, written by Mary Cassatt to

Mallarmé on Monday, 5 January 1891, even refers to a specific poem:


My dear M. Mallarmé

Will you give me the great pleasure of your company at dinner on Saturday next at 7

o’clock? Monsieur Degas will be here and I think will have a new sonnet to communicate

this time on Madame Caron’s arms.

Yours very sincerely

Mary Cassatt (Mallarmé, Documents 154–55)

Yet another letter from her dated 22 January 1889 refers to a dinner, Degas’s poetry,

and a project of collaboration between the artist and the poet:

Jessica Locheed 109

Monsieur,

Voulez vous nous faire le plaisir de venir dîner avec nous Samedi? Nous aurons M. Degas,

qui ne rêve que poésie en ce moment. Je lui parlé de la danseuse pour le livre, et il dit que

vous l’aurez certainement. (152)

The book alluded to here was a work in progress by Mallarmé begun in 1888 entitled

Le Tiroir de Laque, which would bring together poetry and prose, and for which

Mallarmé had commissioned four illustrations and an etching by the artists John

Lewis Brown, Degas, Renoir, Berthe Morisot, and Monet (Austin 133).

Beyond the personal correspondence revealing how aware his friends were of his

poems, the most significant and important documentation of his poetry comes from

critic Paul Valéry’s Degas, Manet, Morisot, in which considerable space is allotted to

the relationship between the two men and which includes a brief commentary on

“Degas the Sonneteer.” It is of foremost importance to note that Valéry used the adjec-

tive “remarkable” to refer to Degas’s twenty poems (62). Valéry begins with a general

musing on the essence of the sonnet, which he describes as compelling the mind to

“accept form and content as being of equal importance” (61). This notion is present in

modern scholarly arguments like that of David Scott, who explores Mallarmé’s utiliza-

tion of the sonnet form to communicate a sensory experience (59). This perception of

form and sensation will prove to be crucial to understanding Degas’s fascination with

the sonnet.

In terms of influence, Valéry notes that Degas consulted both Mallarmé and

Heredia, to whom he dedicated a poem. Given Heredia’s mentorship of Mallarmé, we

can assume that in choosing to consult him, Degas was revealing a particular interest

in the symbolist aesthetic (Lloyd, Poet 80). Valéry claims that if he had invested the

same effort into the medium of poetry as he did in his visual arts, Degas might very

well have been successful as a poet. He ends his commentary, however, with the resig-

nation that it would be hard to convince people to give his poetry a chance as “some-

thing worth understanding” (Valéry 63).

One is led to wonder what Degas sought in his poetry that he believed could not

be achieved in painting or sculpture. In the context of his artistic experimentation,

poetry seems to have provided a means to explore form, abstract language, and syn-

thetic articulation of the arts. Thus, the poems are intrinsically linked to the substance

of the works of art themselves rather than merely possessing the same themes. In sim-

ilar ways, Mallarmé reveals a tendency to borrow from the language of painting to

elucidate his poetry. In a letter to Henri Cazalis in 1864, Mallarmé elaborates on his

poetic approach as he works with Hérodiade: “Avec terreur, car j’invente une langue


qui doit nécessairement jaillir d’une poétique très nouvelle, que je pourrais définir en

ces deux mots : Peindre, non la chose, mais l’effet qu’elle produit” (Correspondance

Complète 137). This statement is particularly interesting because Mallarmé uses the

language of painting as a metaphor for poetic language, crossing once more the

boundaries between the arts and emphasizing his synaesthetic tendencies. For

Mallarmé, the notion of the relationship between the visual and the aural, the tangi-

bility and physicality of the text, and the reception of the words were of paramount

importance (Lloyd, Poésies 58–59). Similarly, as Degas was expanding his vocabulary

in the visual arts, poetry provided him with yet another vehicle for expression, for

transforming visual experience into poetic representation.

As mentor, Mallarmé provided Degas with the instruction that poems are not

made of ideas but words (Valéry 62). This directive seems to epitomize the complex

nature of Mallarmé’s sonnet form, which is carefully crafted around syntax and space,

sound and rhyme (Lloyd, Poésies 57–68). For Degas, this was advice that corresponded

perfectly to the new directions he was taking in plastic arts. In his art of the time, what

dominated more and more was the vocabulary of art, elements of form, and colour.

Degas, like Mallarmé, was obsessed with the “crafting” of his works, both poetic and

visual.

At the heart of the artistic beliefs of both Mallarmé and Degas was the concept

of exploring the interrelationship of the arts. Degas’s experimentation with symbolist

poetry can be seen as a modified use of the principle of ut pictura poesis, the parallel

relationship between poetry and painting, the sister arts. It has been argued by

Rensaeler Lee in Ut Pictura Poesis: The Humanistic Theory of Painting that, in essence,

the concept of ut pictura poesis was the common goal of painting and poetry to sur-

pass nature in representing it. Valéry quotes Degas speaking of his understanding of

the relationship between the arts: “Les muses jamais ne discutent entre elles; elles tra-

vaillent tout le jour bien séparées; le soir venu et la tâche accomplie, s’étant retrouvées,

elles dansent; elles ne parlent jamais” (Degas 2). Degas acknowledges that art forms

are inextricably linked in spirit and meaning but individual in their production. He

describes a universal realm of inspiration in which the Muses of poetry, painting, and

sculpture reconvene when their respective works are done.

F or Degas, the arts are inspired by the same singular “task,” but each voice is differ-

ent, taking on tones unique to its respective media. In writing poems thematically

parallel to his paintings and sculptures, Degas was revealing that joined dance between

the “sister arts.” But, rather than adhere to the notion of in painting as in poetry, he

privileges painting, revealing that his poems are rooted in his painting conceptually

Jessica Locheed 111

and thematically. In his poetry, Degas gives precedence and priority to the themes,

emotions, and ideas stemming from the corpus of his painting and pastels.

Concurrent with Degas’s venture into poetry on the ballet in the 1880s, Mallarmé

was exploring similar issues of the dance in his aforementioned prose text, Crayonné

au théâtre. These prose pieces give insight into Mallarmé’s notion of the synthesis of

the arts, specifically the relationship between poetry, music, and dance. In his writings

on the dance, Mallarmé seeks to reveal the essence of an object or moment without

ever truly defining its tangible nature. Degas would do the same in his poetry. Degas

shared with Mallarmé the notion of the dancer as an abstraction. Mallarmé’s

metaphoric dancer suggests through her movements meanings that must be deci-

phered by the spectator. Her steps represent ideas contingent upon the spectator’s

active participation and acumen for cogency if they are to receive expression in words

(Shaw 16). Mary Shaw asserts that this indicates Mallarmé’s sense of the duality of the

dance with its “poetic” and “corporeal” nature (53). Given Mallarmé’s notion of the

inherent link between poetry and dance, one can easily make the leap to see such a

parallel connection between art and ballet in the works of Degas. In his poetry, Degas

presents a sort of verbal illustration of his visual translations of the ballet. Years after

he began visually interpreting the world of the dance, Degas takes it to a new level of

interpretation, a new art form. Ingrained in his visual translations, he found a new

voice of expression, translating what was inevitably an inseparable blend of the per-

formance and the visual interpretation.

Much of Mallarmé’s criticism, as well as comments in the correspondence, indi-

cate his appreciation of the possibilities and limitations of the various arts. Lloyd

Austin argues that Mallarmé envied the mystery of Music but resolved that Poetry

maintains superiority in its syntax and intelligibility (51). In an 1865 letter to Cazalis,

the young Mallarmé expresses the totality of the poetic experience, as it unifies all of

the artistic voices: “Mais si tu savais que de nuits désespérées et de jours de rêverie il

faut sacrifier pour arriver à faire des vers originaux, (ce que je n’avais jamais fait

jusqu’ici) et dignes, dans leurs suprêmes mystères, de réjouir l’âme d’un poète ! Quelle

étude du son et de la couleur des mots, musique et peinture par lesquelles devra passer

ta pensée, tant belle soit-elle, pour être poétique !” (Correspondance Complète 168).

This letter was written at a time when Mallarmé had returned to his Après-midi d’un

faune and was struggling to find the words to form verses that were both lyrical and

dramatic, providing sensation for the ear within the form of the poem (68). For

Mallarmé, the poet who provided inspiration for Debussy, a poem was an amalgama-

tion of all of the arts. Mallarmé also expressed a need for artistic unification in order

to truly create the “ideal” art form. As Paula Lewis suggests, Mallarmé believed that:


“If an ideal art form were to be unique, in some way it would have to encompass all

of the arts, either as a synthesis of the whole, or by borrowing from all art forms. In

order to be successful in his task, a poet would first have to understand these com-

plementary or rival forms of art. Mallarmé spent most of his life in this attempt”

(Lewis 90). Mallarmé also believed that the individual arts were inextricably linked—

bound by their unique strengths and weaknesses. His desire to draw out the mutual

strengths of the works led him to the development of his synaesthetic devices.

Degas explores this artistic synthesis in his poetry in a way he could never do in

his visual art. He grounds his poetic words in the vivid imagery of his paintings, pro-

viding the verbal with an enhanced sense of the visual. As aforementioned, Rosemary

Lloyd eloquently describes Degas’s painted works as being glyphic (Poet 148). In his

poetry, Degas seeks to transcend such visual hieroglyphs by interjecting elements that

cannot be achieved in painting, those of sound and movement. In painting, he can

imply movement. He can show the horses in suspended motion as they cut through

the rain, as in Jockeys sous la pluie (see Illus. 3). In poetry, he can add sound and the

rhythm of the voice as it reads the poem, providing the dimension of time to the visu-

alization. His poem Pur Sang clearly demonstrates both Degas’s understanding and

application of Mallarméan theory, as well as a desire to blur the lines between poetry

and pastel/painting:

On l’entend approcher par saccade brisée,

Le souffle fort et sain. Dès l’aurore venu,

Dans le sévère train par son lad maintenu,

Le bon poulain galope et coupe la rosée.

Comme le jour qui naît, à l’Orient puisée,

La force du sang donne au coureur ingénu,

Si précoce et si dur au travail continu,

Le droit de commander à la race croisée.

Nonchalant et caché, d’un pas qui semble lent,

Il entre en sa maison où l’avoine l’attend.

Il est prêt. Aussitôt l’empoigne le joueur;

Et pour les coups divers où la cote l’emploie,

On le fait sur le pré débuter en voleur,

Tout nerveusement nu dans sa robe de soie. (Degas, Sonnet I)

Drawing on a range of different sense impressions in his poem—such as the breath-

ing of the horse and the sound of its approach—mixed with elements that could be


Cependant que la cloche éveille sa voix claire

A l’air pur et limpide et profond du matin

Et passe sur l’enfant qui jette pour lui plaire

Un angélus parmi la lavande et le thym,

Le sonneur effleuré par l’oiseau qu’il éclaire,

Chevauchant tristement en geignant du latin

Sur la pierre qui tend la corde séculaire,

N’entend descendre à lui qu’un tintement lointain.

Je suis cet homme. Hélas! De la nuit désireuse,

J’ai beau tirer le câble à sonner l’Idéal,

De froids péchés s’ébat un plumage féal,

Et la voix ne me vient que par bribes et creuse!

Mais, un jour, fatigué d’avoir en vain tiré,

Ô Satan, j’ôterai la pierre et me pendrai. (Mallarmé, Collected 17)

the absolute of the words: “et je crois que, les lignes si parfaitement délimitées, ce à

quoi nous devons viser surtout est que, dans le poème, les mots—qui déjà sont assez

eux pour ne plus recevoir d’impression du dehors—se reflètent les uns sur les autres

jusqu’à paraître ne plus avoir leur couleur propre, mais n’être que les transitions d’une

gamme” (Mallarmé, Correspondance Complète 234). Here again, Mallarmé links poetry

to music and colour, defining the arts in terms of one another. The abstraction and

general “tone” thus defined demand active participation on the part of the reader,

who discerns and assimilates the complex sensory experience.

Suggestion implies the active participation of the reader. This suggestive sensory

experience is reminiscent of Mallarmé’s early sonnets such as Le Sonneur, published

in Parnasse Contemporaine in 1866.

This work is reliant upon vivid imagery, as in the Degas poem, to convey the bell

ringer/poet rather than merely providing a detailed description of the act. There are

several elements in this poem in keeping with Mallarmé’s quest for the unification of

arts. The motif of the ringing of the bell integrates both the aural sensation of music

as well as the presence of spatial and temporal progression. Mallarmé also discussed

the essence of the spatial/temporal arts, noting that the success of the plastic and per-

forming arts was dependent upon the communication of time (Lewis 95–96). His

integration of the distinct musical tone of the bell, as well as the active role of the

internal poet, demonstrates an attempt to integrate this concept into his poem.

Drawing from the themes of his visual arts, Degas is already conveying a

Jessica Locheed 115

connection with the plastic arts to his informed audience. Anyone hearing his poetry

in the oral presentation—as was essential to Mallarmé—would be prepared to link

this written and then aural poem to the already extant visual imagery. His aforemen-

tioned poem “Danseuse” is paradigmatic both of the emulation of Mallarmé’s style

and the symbolic quality present in Degas’s poetry. This brings to life in an implied

illustrative manner the imagery of the dance. One feels a dancer leaping though the

air in a solo performance as in the work L’Étoile (Illus. 1). In this image, the viewer

follows the movement and anticipates the subsequent progression, reassembling the

dance from personal experience. Her overextended leap in stanza four is not unlike

that described in the poem as she appears prepared to tumble with her next move in

less a state of grace than awkward loss of balance. The presence of the spectator in

stanza three emphasizes the role of vision. This visual imagery was already an active

viewer interpretation and translation of a real performance, one out of the many

experienced by Degas in his years at the theatre. The rendered, and subsequently writ-

ten, performances were originally constructed of the other arts: sets—with their

mimesis of reality; music—with the temporal score; dance—with its choreography.

Degas offers a complex scenario with his poetry. Are the poems in fact reflections and

“verbal drawings” of his visual works, bringing them to life? Or, are they yet again part

of a kaleidoscopic vision where numerous possibilities exist to intensify the initial

experience?

As in Degas’s paintings, in the poem “Danseuse,” the dancer is not an individual

but simply a dancer. She is, perhaps, a “Star,” but she remains an abstract concept with

no defining identity. In his poem, he most often refers to her solely in pronoun form,

focusing on movement or costume. What is perhaps most interesting in this poem is

its specificity and the descriptions he uses, giving the nameless form a sense of place,

an environment. He ends the poem with an identification of locale, the isle of Cythera,

the birthplace and sacred island of Venus. In this location of eroticism and mythic

importance, he places a dancer in a moment devoid of the grace fitting the moment.

The poem itself deviates from his art with its descriptive imagery. The dancer lacks the

grace and beauty that characterize his paintings. He constructs movement, which he

likens to the over-extended leap of a frog: “Mais d’un signe toujours cesse le beau mys-

tère: / Elle retire trop les jambes en sautant: / C’est un saut de grenouille aux mares de

Cythère” (Sonnet IV, stanza 4). His use of animal imagery to construct this world and

moment is not possible in his art. He also relies on the reader’s knowledge of mythol-

ogy to contextualize the dancer, alluding to the homeland of Venus plagued with a bog.

These verbal cues manipulate the strength of the medium of poetry. Here, he can pro-

vide whimsical subtext impossible to convey in his paintings.


In the poem, he still presents the role rather than the individual, the named per-

former. She is anonymous, like any of the other dancers in the troupe. In many ways,

this is the very same abstraction of dancer presented by Mallarmé in his statement

defining the dancer as a metaphor for the essences she presents (Oeuvres 2.171). Her

movement replaces the pen of the poet. As both visual and poetic representations are

abstract rather than specific, the boundary between two art forms is blurred, as when

Degas likens the step of the dancer to embroidery, the act of physically creating a tan-

gible object (Sonnet IV, stanza 3). It is crucial that Degas is present as an active specta-

tor—like Mallarmé’s bell ringer—struggling but failing to participate as he follows the

dancer’s patterns of creations. Her feet have now become a surrogate for his brush.

Cohn notes that, for Mallarmé, “poetry is a sort of pure ballet, which human dancers

could represent theoretically (even if the leaps of poetry are vaster)” (164). Degas

describes her dancing as a tapestry, much as the result of Mallarmé’s dance is a poem:

“Et ses pieds de satin brodent, comme l’aiguille, / Des dessins de plaisir. La capricante

fille / Use mes pauvres yeux, à la suivre peinant” (Sonnet IV, stanza 3). He captures a

single moment in three distinct, yet inseparable, art forms—dance, embroidery, and

poetry. The intangible is now made tangible. The ephemeral and fleeting movement of

the dance can be traced with a thread, or ultimately with a pastel crayon. His eyes, more

accustomed to the mark, instinctively translate her moves into a more familiar medi-

um, maintaining the essence of movement in a visual and permanent voice.

Allusion to the visual elements in his verbal imagery reaffirms his dedication to

the integration of different art forms in his poetry. Degas’s familiarity with his themes

of the horse and jockey and the dancer as a painter inspired him to try them again in

poetry. In his art, he captures the brilliance of costume, set, theme, and gesture. All of

these are elements defined by Mallarmé as “spatial” (Mossop 45–46). What Degas

struggled with was the communication of the temporal: the music and movement

convincingly depicted by Mallarmé in Sonneur. During this time, Degas was begin-

ning to turn his attention to the latter with explorations of the progressive movement

of the dance. In works such as Blue Dancers, the figures fight for space, overlapping in

a spatially unbelievable manner (Illus. 2). Rather than seeing these images as “groups

of dancers” in a synchronized moment, we could look on them as the progression of

the dancers’ movement through space.

This interest in the added dimension of temporal progression would have

increased the appeal of poetry, which lent itself more easily to communicating this

element of time. Finally, he would also have had the ability to communicate in a more

tangible manner that one sensory element that would always elude his visual works:

sound. While he could easily communicate gesture, he was eternally reliant upon the

Jessica Locheed 117

viewer to provide the implied sound. Poetry provided a more flexible means of con-

veying this sensation. He accomplishes this with his references to Weber and a vivid

description of the melodic line of the violins. These concrete allusions are far more

powerful than his well-known early visual attempts, where he includes foreground

representations of musicians in an orchestra pit, thus creating a visual presence of the

vehicles for music necessarily devoid of the sound. The allusion to a specific musician

provides the reader with an added dimension of style and tenor for interpretation.

In addition to these somewhat esoteric qualities of the dance, both artists address

the physical accoutrements of the dance as integral elements to the symbolism of the

poetry and visual arts. Specifically, both Degas and Mallarmé focus on the role of cos-

tume in defining the nature of the identity of dancer. In so doing, each gives these

inanimate elements a dynamic role in the identification process of the dance and in

its spatial creation. When the costume becomes part of the identity of the dance, the

moment is transformed from the abstractions of motion, sound, and sight to a more

physical abstraction constructed of the costumed dancer. While providing the physi-

cal tangibility of dancer and dance, Degas and Mallarmé maintain a sense of abstrac-

tion in their portrayals because of the nature of the costume.

In Mallarmé’s second essay on the veil dance of Loïe Fuller, for example, he is

captivated by the abstract shapes and colours created by her veil dance, and he tries to

transform this essence into his prose. His imagery offers parallels with Degas’s visual

representation of costume from this period in his career. Mallarmé writes: “Au bain

terrible des étoffes se pâme, radieuse, froide la figurante qui illustre maint thème gira-

toire où tend une trame loin épanouie, pétale et papillon géants, déferlement, tout

d’ordre net et élémentaire” (Oeuvres 174–75). In this statement, Miss Fuller’s costume

becomes the dance, as Mallarmé conveys the transformation of the dancer into the

movement of the cloth. From here, he continues to liken her movement into the poet-

ry of the theatre: “Don avec ingénuité et certitude faire par l’étranger fantôme au

Ballet ou la forme théâtrale de poésie par excellence” (175). Likewise, in Degas’s poem,

the verb itself “broden”’ suggests the movement of embroidery rather than that of the

dancer, reinforcing the notion of definition through costume rather than personal

identity. He translates her feet into the material of her slippers, the satin cloth.

This is extremely similar to works by Degas such as Danceuses derrière la scène

(1890-95), where the images are constructed around the vibrant costume and the

progression of movement (Illus. 4) The costume defines the movement as the satin

slippers define the movement in the poem. The dancers are at rest, engulfed in bright-

coloured tutus, their legs and torsos overwhelmed by the encircling cloth, their faces

obscured or concealed by masses of hair. The many images such as this one are not

Jessica Locheed 119

Though often quite simple, and even perhaps awkward and lacking in choreo-

graphed balletic grace as in Blue Dancers, the dancers’ visual gestures are readily acces-

sible (see Illus. 2). The moment Degas represents is not one expressing a greater

theme—no pirouette or grand jeté. This gesture rests somewhere between mime and

ballet. The pastel depicts the mundane act of the dancer adjusting her costume. But

the articulation is natural, unassumingly graceful and silent, almost interpretive.

Though far from a traditional choreographed movement as taught in the Academy, in

its gentle nature, the gesture seems to mimic a line from his Sonnet VIII: “Ton bras

mince placé dans la ligne choisie, / Equilibre, balance et ton vol et ton poids” (stanza

1, lines 3–4). She is frozen in this moment of natural grace. The viewer is not aware

of her flight, her next movement, merely her immediate gesture. This moment is part

of a greater performance. The viewer is given the role of interpreter who must imag-

ine the continuation of this moment beyond a simple gesture. It seems the intended

duty of the viewer is to place this (or these) dancer(s) into the eloquent language of

the ballet. Degas has provided a stage set, costume, and gesture. The music, however,

must be imagined. The temporal context of past and future must be supplied by the

viewer. In so doing, the viewer provides the grace and eloquence to render a dancer

engaged in the balletic rather than simply mimetic moment. This aspect of gesture as

communication is demonstrated well in both his portrait of and his poem to the

singer Rose Caron (see Illus. 5):

Ces bras nobles et longs, lentement en fureur,

Lentement en humaine et cruelle tendresse,

Flèches que décochait une âme de déesse

Et qui s’allaient fausser à la terre d’erreur;

Diadème dorant cette rose pâleur

De la reine muette, à son peuple en liesse;

Terrasse où descendait une femme en détresse,

Amoureuse, volée, honteuse de douleur;

Après avoir jeté sa menace parée,

Cette voix qui venait, divine de durée,

Prendre Sigurd ainsi que son destin voulait;

Tout ce beau va me suivre encore un bout de vie...

Si mes yeux se perdaient, que me durât l’ouïe,

Au son, je pourrais voir le geste qu’elle fait. (Sonnet VI)

Jessica Locheed 121

what they shared runs deeper than tangible qualities of the dance. Each of them held

a belief in the transcendental qualities of both language and dance. For both artists,

ephemeral and gestural language—symbolic intangibles—are in fact the most solid

moorings accessible. Both Mallarmé and Degas present the language of suggestion as

the most tangible of realities. Mallarmé finds the line to be thin between poetry on

dance and the physical act of dance. Cohn notes that for Mallarmé, poetry becomes

dance and vice versa; that each are an aspect of the other. He writes that the pure

essence of ballet can be seen as a theoretic and poetic, rather than its literal and phys-

ical reality (164).

Mallarmé alludes to the dancer as a codified emblem, a loose association of relat-

ed ideas contingent upon a spectator for assimilation and construction of identity.

She is a metaphor for poetry. Through her movement, she expresses more than a page

of words could express; her dance is a “poème dégagé de tout appareil du scribe”

(Oeuvres 2.171). The dancer, “freed from the apparatus of the scribe,” transcends the

dance. She speaks in a language beyond the words of the poet, thus proffering the poet

a new language, one which he cannot contain or control. By writing about the dancer

who has become a language unto herself, freed from him, Mallarmé is unleashing an

untamed voice to speak freely through her cryptic gestures.

Degas frees a similar muse through his poetry; however, his poetry has complex

facets absent from that of Mallarmé. Close analysis of Degas’s themes and use of form

and symbolic language reveals not only his awareness of, but also his active dialogue

with, Mallarmé’s theories of poetic structure, dance, and—as understood in the con-

text of Symbolism—a symbiotic sympathy between the arts. Degas’s poetic dancer, as

Mallarmé recognized, is “pas une femme qui danse” (Oeuvre 2.171). Unlike that of

Mallarmé, I assert that Degas’s poetry of the dance does not derive directly from the

performances of the dance. Instead, it originates in his visual representation of the

dance. The dancer in his poetry is not a woman who dances; she is a verbal interpre-

tation of a visual representation of a woman who dances. When we read Mallarmé’s

poetry, we are a step removed from the original act of performance, but when we read

Degas’s sonnets, it is feasible that we are two steps removed. Valéry ends his consider-

ation of Degas’s sonnets with this fragment: “But there are people who cannot even

see them” (63). In the end, however, perhaps we do see them. Perhaps in order to “see”

his poetry, we need to look to his art. Likewise, perhaps in order to “see” his art we

need to understand his poetry.

WORKS CITED

Austin, Lloyd. Poetic Principles and Practice: Occasional Papers on Baudelaire, Mallarmé and Valéry.

Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987.

Cohn, Robert Greer. Mallarmé’s Divigations: A Guide and Commentary. New York: Peter Lang, 1990.

Degas, Edgar. Huit Sonnets d’Edgar Degas. Preface and intro. Jean Nepveu Degas. New York: Wittenborn,

1946.

Lee, Rensaeler. Ut Pictura Poesis: The Humanistic Theory of Painting. New York: Norton & Co., 1967.

Lewis, Paula Gilbert. The Aesthetics of Stéphane Mallarmé in Relation to his Public. London: Associated

University Presses, 1976.

Lloyd, Rosemary. Mallarmé: Poésies. London: Grant and Cutler, 1984.

______ . Mallarmé: The Poet and his Circle. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1999.

Mallarmé, Stéphane. Collected Poems. Trans. and commentary Henry Weinfield. Berkeley: U of California

P, 1994.

______ . Correspondance III, 1886–1889. Eds. Henri Mondor and Lloyd James Austin. France: l’Imprimerie

Floch, 1969.

______ . Correspondance Complète, 1862-1872 suivi de “Lettres sur la poésie, 1872–1898” avec des letters

inédites. Preface Yves Bonnefoy. Ed. and annotated Bertrand Marchal. Paris: Gallimard, 1959.

______ . Documents Stéphane Mallarmé III. Ed. Carl Paul Barbier. Paris: Librairie Nizet, 1971.

______ . Oeuvres Complètes. Eds. and annotated Henri Mondor and G. Jean-Aubry. Paris: Gallimard, 1945.

Mossop, D.J. Pure Poetry: Studies in French Poetic Theory and Practice 1746 to 1945. Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 1971.

Scott, David H.T. Sonnet Theory and Practice in Nineteenth-century France: Sonnets of the Sonnet. Hull: U of

Hull P, 1977.

Shaw, Mary Lewis. Performance in the Texts of Mallarmé: The Passage from Art to Ritual. University Park:

Pennsylvannia State UP, 1993.

Valéry, Paul. Degas, Manet, Morisot. Trans. David Paul. Intro. Douglas Cooper. Collected Works of Paul

Valéry. Vol 12. New York: Pantheon Books, 1960.

JESSICA LOCHEED is an Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Louisiana at

Lafayette. She specializes in nineteenth-century junctures between art and literature in France. This

article is part of a greater project examining the relationship between Degas and Mallarmé in order

to better understand the nature of Degas’s later oeuvre. She is currently writing on the sculptural

method of Degas in relation to the poetic methods of Mallarmé.


Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.