Valéry's Agathe, Mallarmé's Igitur

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Toward the Prose Fragment in Mallarm and Valry: Igitur and Agathe Author(s): Ursula Franklin Source: The French Review, Vol. 49, No. 4 (Mar., 1976), pp. 536-548Published by: American Association of Teachers of FrenchStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/388982Accessed: 23-05-2015 20:38 UTC

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THE FRENCH REVIEW, Vol. XLIX, No. 4, March, 1976 Printed in U.S.A.

Toward the Prose Fragment in Mallarme and Valery: Igitur and Agathe'

by Ursula Franklin

CRITICS HAVE BEGUN TO SHOW INTEREST in the emergence of the "fragment" as a twentieth-century literary genre. Germaine Bree, for example, has recently remarked that "at present the major literary forms, in France at least, do seem to be the 'fragment' and the 'book."'2 In fact, the "fragment" had already come into its own near the close of the nineteenth century. To demonstrate this I propose to discuss two extremely important prose fragments of that period-Mallarme's Igitur and Valery's Agathe-and to draw some parallels between the two pieces, as well as between their respective positions in the oeuvre of their creators. I will also explore the influence of Igitur on Mallarme's prose poems, and that of Agathe on Valery's, since I believe that the emergence of the prose poem itself may be viewed as a stage in the evolution (which is paradoxically a dissolution) from poem-or roman-to fragment. Julia Kristeva, in her recent study of Lautreamont and Mallarme, situates and traces the break-up of traditional genres, as well as that of the traditional "langage poetique," in the nineteenth century:

Une nouvelle economie signifiante est en train de se degager, qui commence par contester la normativite phrastique-narrative, en y introduisant le rythme et la polysemie poetique. Mais il ne s'agit plus de l'ancienne poesie, contrepartie de la narration linearisante qui reflchissait la syntaxe liniaire. Cette nouvelle poesie n'est ni poetique ni prosaique: elle amene son rythme dans la ligne syntaxique, et en ce sens elle poetise la prose.... Une genre nouveau nait dans ces mutations, un nouveau type de langage: le texte.3

This break-up of traditional genres is reflected, moreover, from a diachronic point of view, in the marked morphological change and evolution from the Mallarmean anecdotal or narrative form of prose poem, situated in a structured cycle, to the "broken" and fragmented quality of Valery's prose poems-some of them centered on a mere moment in time-which are dispersed throughout his work.

When Mallarme was twenty-seven years old, he wrote his friend Cazalis that A modified version of this article was presented as a paper at the State University of New York

Conversation in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, at Fredonia, New York, on 31 October 1975. 2 Germaine Bree, "The Break-up of Traditional Genres: Bataille, Leiris, Michaux," Bucknell

Review, 21 (Fall-Winter, 1973) Nos. 2-3, 13. 3Julia Kristeva, La Revolution du langage poetique (Paris: Seuil, 1974), p. 289.

536


he was working on "un conte, par lequel je veux terrasser le vieux ronstre de l'impuissance, son sujet, du reste, afin de me cloitrer dans mon grand labour deja reetudie. S'il est fait, je suis gueiri."4 One year later, in 1870, he read his Igitur to Mendes, Judith Gautier and Villiers de l'Isle-Adam who were visiting him at Avignon. Mendes was "stupefied" by the work, and surprised to see Villiers "y prendre interet." Igitur was incomprehensible to Mallarme's friends and fellow poets.5

When Valery was twenty-seven years old, he wrote his friend Gide that he was working on "un conte," which was in fact "un probleme de psychologie transcendante, imaginaire, qui est fort dur a meme envisager ... la variation de la pensee devenue peu a peu vide."6 In the same letter, he suggested that he would never finish his Agathe, "car il est trop difficile a faire."

Neither Igitur nor Agathe is "finished," that is published during its creator's lifetime;7 Igitur appeared in 1925, and Agathe in 1957, when Mallarme and Valery would have been eighty-three and eighty-five years old respectively. I will not here attempt a new reading or interpretation of Igitur,8 but rather try to situate it in the Mallarmean universe, and especially in his prose work. Until its late appearance, Igitur was indeed a kind of missing link in an wuure which it at once enlightens and is enlightened by. It is therefore not surprising that Mallarmists were immediately attracted to it, notably Mallarme's friend and fellow poet, Paul Claudel." Whether one shares Claudel's views of the work or not, one must, nevertheless, agree with him that "tous les themes, toutes les idees, toutes les images, tous les accessoires, que nous retrouvons pousses avec detail et travailles du dehors dans l'Album de prose et de vers, les voici a l'etat d'idees. ... La lampe, la glace, la console, les rideaux, l'horloge, la bibliotheque, les des, sans oublier, dans sa vacuite transparente, 'cette goutte de Neant qui manquait a la mer."'

Igitur, we recall, is not a single fragment, but several, written at different periods of the poet's life, some of which were grouped into a coherent whole by

'Stiphane Mallarme, (Euvres completes, ed. Henri Mondor et C. Jean-Aubry (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), p. 1580. All quotations from Mallarme will refer to this edition, unless otherwise indicated.

5Villiers' Axel appears, nevertheless, to owe a great deal to the figure of Igitur, as Igitur owes much to Villiers de l'Isle-Adam.

6 Paul Valiry, (Euvres II, ed. Jean Hytier (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), p. 1387. All quotations from Valery will refer to this edition, unless otherwise indicated.

7 Neither poet considered any of his work ever "finished" in the traditional sense of that term. Cf. Valery, I, 1497: "un ouvrage n'est jamais achieve,-mot qui ... n'a aucun sens,-mais abandonne."

8 For analyses of Igitur, see Robert Greer Cohn, L'YCuvre de Mallarme: "Un Coup de dis" (Paris: Librairie les Lettres, 1951), pp. 449-59; Gardner Davies, Vers une explication rationnelle du "Coup de des" (Paris: Corti, 1953), pp. 52-67; Wallace Fowlie, Mallarme (Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1953, 1962), pp. 105-18; Kristeva, pp. 197-202; Jean-Pierre Richard, L'Univers imaginaire de Mallarme (Paris: Seuil, 1960), pp. 183-95; Kurt Wais, Mallarme (Miinchen: C. H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1952), pp. 201-17. 9 Paul Claudel, "La Catastrophe d'Igitur," Nouvelle Revue Francaise, 1" novembre 1926, pp. 531-36.

537 MALLARME/VALERY


Mallarme's son-in-law who first published them with an explanatory preface. The last was published only in 1948.10 Some of these show a greater degree of "finish" than others, which are mere notes. And some scholars feel that these fragments were a kind of "poesie brute," to borrow a term from Valery, culminating in Mallarme's most significant poem: "Le Coup de des, nous en sommes convaincu, represente l'aboutissement de toutes les ebauches d'Igitur, repensees et remainiees sans cesse pendant une periode de pres de vingt-cinq annees."1 Yet "Igitur" sets forth one of the dominant myths of Mallarme's world. Paradoxically, then, Igitur on the one hand is merely preparatory notes, a sort of prolegomenon to a future poem (labeled by the poet himself "D'echet") while at the same time it is in fact one of the key works in this poetic universe, delineating one of its heroes. The somber Igitur figures as prominently in this oeuvre as does his sister figure, the white Herodiade.

We shall now examine some of the relationships between Igitur and Mallarme's prose poems, individually and as a complete cycle. Of the thirteen prose poems,l2 six were written before Igitur; in these, therefore, we can find premonition and anticipation-prediction, literally speaking-of the later fragments.

The first prose poem, "Le Phenomene futur," suggests by its very title the terminology of Hegelian philosophy, to which Mallarme had been initiated through his friends, especially Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, whom he had met in 1864. The poet's predilection for such terms as "la notion," "la notion pure," and "l'Idee" seems due, at least in part, to this influence. Hegel almost certainly influenced some of Mallarme's poetry, and especially Igitur, which without a consideration of Hegelian thought would remain hopelessly obscure.

In "Frisson d'hiver," some of the major symbols of the prose poems, and indeed this whole poetic universe, first appear. The room itself, which emerges as a symbol of the poet's mind or consciousness, will be the setting also of some of Mallarme's late sonnets, where we meet again the familiar objects: the mirror, the window, the lace and the clock. In this prose poem, the persona's need to close the mind off from what threatens it reflects two important aspects of this moment in the poet's development, both revealed by the correspondence of these years: the need Mallarme felt for solitude and withdrawal to be able to hear the melody within, and, at the same time, the approaching crisis of 1866, a decisive period whose impact will influence the next prose poem of the cycle even more strongly. The emerging poet is already beginning to experience a truly existential anguish, whose full force will be rendered dramatically in Igitur, by means of those same symbols: the room and its furnishings, and above all, the mirror-into which the hero must now

1O Stephane Mallarme (1842-1898), "Inedits, Hors-texte, Etudes" ("Longtemps oh!"), Etudes, III (1948), 24.

l Davies, p. 53. 12 Cf. my "Poet and People: Mallarme's 'Conflit' and the Thirteen Prose Poems of Divaga-

tions," French Review, 46, No. 5, (Spring 1973), 77-86.

538 FRENCH REVIEW


look-and the clock, the objectification of the obsession with Time, and reminder of the ephemeral in human existence:

J'ai toujours vecu mon ame fixee sur l'horloge. Certes j'ai tout fait pour que le temps qu'elle sonna restdt present dans la chambre ... J'ai epaissi les rideaux, et comme j'etais oblige pour ne pas douter de moi de m'asseoir en face de cette glace, j'ai recueilli precieusement les moindres atomes du temps ....

Et quand je rouvrais les yeux au fond du miroir, je voyais le personnage d'horreur, le fant6me de l'horreur absorber peu a peu ce qui restait de sentiment et de douleur dans la glace, nourrir son horreur des supremes frissons des chimeres et de l'in- stabilite des tentures, et se former en rarefiant la glace jusqu'a une purete innouie,-jusqu'a ce qu'il se detache, permanent, de la glace absolument pure, comme pris dans son froid,-jusqu'a ce qu'enfin les meubles, leurs monstres ayant succombe avec leurs anneaux convulsifs, fussent morts... et que les rideaux cessant d'etre inquiets tombassent, avec une attitude qu'ils devaient conserver a jamais. [OC pp. 439-41] "Le Demon de l'analogie" celebrates the persona's death and resurrection,

his descent and return, the paradoxical "fortunate fall" from faith to atheism, without which the poet could not have been born. To be born a poet, a self had to die, and we know how cruelly Mallarme suffered the death agonies which set him free. This dying in order to be reborn, a voluntary death for the sake of gaining a new existence, is well described by Poulet in his essay on Mallarme,'3 which enlightens the experience of the poet-persona of "Le Demon de l'analogie," and also points to his relationship with his dramatic counterpart, Igitur:

La mort est un acte, une operation volontaire par laquelle on se donne une nouvelle existence et par laquelle on donne l'existence meme au neant. La mort est le seul acte possible. Presses que nous sommes entre un monde materiel vrai dont les combinai- sons fortuites se produisent en nous sans nous, et un monde ideal faux dont le mensonge nous paralyse et nous ensorcelle, nous n'avons qu'un moyen de ne plus etre livres ni au neant ni au hasard. Ce moyen unique, cet acte unique, c'est la mort. La mort volontaire. Par lui nous nous abolissons, mais par lui aussi nous nous fondons.

"Pauvre Enfant pale," whose anecdote concerns a street singer in a big city and the narrator's reflections about him, introduces the decapitation theme later elaborated in the "Cantique de Saint Jean." The poet-singer-martyr is threatened by the disintegration of his mind, figured in the beheading. And this threat of annihilation and disintegration links this prose poem also to Igitur, whose hero does, in fact, cross over into the absolute, the utter purity of thought, that Hegelian Absolute Notion which swallows up individual consciousness:

Je n'aime pas ce bruit, cette perfection de ma certitude me gene: tout est trop clair, la clarte montre le diesir d'une evasion; tout est trop luisant, j'aimerais rentrer en mon Ombre increee et ant6rieure, et depouiller par la pensee le travestissement que

13 Georges Poulet, La Distance interieure (Paris: Plon, 1952), p. 325.

539 MALLARME/VALERY


m'a impose la necessite, d'habiter le coeur de cette race (que j'entends battre ici) seul reste d'ambiguit. . .. un personnage dont la pensee n'a pas conscience de lui-meme, de ma derniere figure, separe de son personnage par une fraise arachneenne et qui ne se connalt pas. [OC pp. 438-39]

The separation of head from body, by the "fraise arachneenne," relates Igitur to the beheaded street singer of "Pauvre Enfant pale," while suggesting also Hamlet, who had been evoked already in the prose poem by the "As-tu jamais eu un pere?"

Thus already in some of the early prose poems, that movement of the young poet's spirit toward the metaphysical crisis-the "crise de Tournon"-whose purgation is later effected in Igitur, is beginning to make itself felt. These poems move us as it were toward the Igitur fragments, for they reflect Mallarme's stance of ontological questioning and anguish. The Angst which is directly revealed in Igitur, is seen indirectly through the veil of anecdote in the prose poems. Moreover, many of the key images and symbols of Igitur, such as the room, the mirror, the clock, and most of all the solitary, anguished hero, hesitating before life and his mission and tempted by suicide and madness, are identical to those of some of the early prose poems.

The seventh of the "Anecdotes ou poemes" of Divagations, published in 1875, is chronologically intermediate between the six early prose poems, all of 1864, and the six later, all of 1885 or after. We do not know when "Un Spectacle interrompu" was written, but its language is markedly different from that of the preceding pieces, the result, we believe, of the "crise de Tournon." Mallarme critics agree that a decisive stylistic change took place in both his prose and his verse shortly after 1870-a change which reflects an increasingly complex system of analogies, and one which produces in all his mature prose a most unusual syntax.

We have seen that Mallarme's friends, Villiers and Catulle Mendes, were unable to understand the Igitur fragments into which the poet had distilled the spiritual struggles of his crisis of Tournon.14 Norman Paxton sees this "failure" as strictly connected with the drastic changes in Mallarme's prose style very shortly thereafter:

That Mallarme recognized Igitur as a failure to be discarded is surely indicated by the fact that he never attempted to publish it . . . It is my belief that the realisation that the message which he wished to communicate could not be rendered by a conventional use of language came to Mallarm6 as a result of Igitur and began the search for a new language which continued all his life.15

Igitur, then, influenced all the rest of the prose poems-as well as all of the poet's mature prose work-in their very essence; that is, their language.

The eighth prose poem, "Reminiscence," with its very first sentence, which 14This disastrous reading of Igitur is related in Henri Mondor, Vie de Mallarme (Paris:

Gallimard, 1941), pp. 229-302. '5 Norman Paxton, The Development of Mallarmi's Prose Style (Geneve: Droz, 1968), p. 50.

540 FRENCH REVIEW


is a striking example of the "new" style, introduces the Hamlet-Igitur theme: "Orphelin, j'errais en noir et l'ocil vacant de famille: au quinconce se deplierent des tentes de fete, eprouvais-je le futur et que je serais ainsi, j'aimais le parfum des vagabonds, vers eux a oublier mes camarades" (OC p. 278). This sentence, by its extreme compression-and, conversely, its infinite suggestiveness-not only creates the key image of the poem, but contains in germ, as it were, the whole poem. On the narrative level the piece retells an event in the persona's youth, which becomes an image of that moment when Man confronts his destiny alone, those threatening worlds both within and without, a moment which for Mallarme was embodied in the modern myth of Hamlet. This figure is the incarnation of that moment suspended between the alternatives of action or refusal, acceptance or suicide, alternatives symbol- ized in Mallarme's universe by the twin figures of Herodiade and Igitur. The Hamlet-figure is encountered in almost all the early prose poems; here, in "Reminiscence," it is recalled for the last time.

In "La Declaration foraine," we encounter an Igitur echo in a persona who "un instant ecarte, plutot qu'il ne s'y fond, aupres de son Idee, reste a vif devant la hantise de l'existence" (OC p. 279). Here a mature poet-persona, in full possession of his art, is haunted by existence like Igitur who did, in fact, almost fully "melt into" the realm of pure essence, as one after another "les choses" disappeared about him, including his own existential manifestation, namely his mirror image.

The theme of voluntary death, dramatized in Igitur, reappears in the last prose poem, "Conflit," in the narrator's reflections about the drunken rail- road workers who have invaded Valvins. As he beholds them lying senseless on the ground, he feels that these men have by their choice of drunkenness, which is a "momentary suicide," counterfeited that only "free" act possible, and have in their own way negated chance.

The influence, then, of Igitur on Mallarme's prose poems is threefold: imagistic, thematic, but most important of all, stylistic. We found Igitur's key images foreshadowed in some of the early prose poems, as well as its principal theme of the disintegration/sublimation of the self. In Igitur this theme becomes a Hegelian progression, as the hero moves through the Triad, by first divorcing his consciousness from phenomena, in order to reach a pure consciousness of the self, and finally almost achieves the dissolution of that individual consciousness in the Absolute Spirit. We found echoes of this sublimation of the existential and contingent into the Absolute in some of the late prose poems, to which we might add "Le Nenuphar blanc." But I believe that the most important mark Igitur left on the Mallarmean prose poem-and on the wuvre as a whole-is the stylistic one. For the metaphysical problem of Igitur becomes a linguistic one in the mature Mallarme: the sublimation of the contingent into the Absolute is the transposition of "parole" into "ecriture." Even the "Nenuphar blanc," Mallarme's "whitest"-purest-prose poem, involves the poet-as does any poem for that matter-in contingency, that of

541 MALLARME/VALERY


language itself. In creating the intricate structures of his style, Mallarme continues to combat "le hasard." But its total abolishment, true purity, would-as the "Nenuphar" suggests with the image of the white searose enclosing nothing, or the bubble, "un de ces magiques nenuphars clos... enveloppant de leur creuse blancheur un rien," "la bulle visible d'ecume"-not be any poem, but the empty page of the poet's silence: "le hasard vaincu mot par mot, indefectiblement le blanc revient, tout a l'heure gratuit, pour conclure que rien au-dela et authentiquer le silence" (OC p. 387).

In discussing Agathe, we are again not concerned to make a detailed analysis or reading, but rather, as with Igitur, to situate this fragment in the euvre of which it is an essential part. We mentioned that Valery first had a

"conte" in mind, about which he wrote Gide. Originally, this story was to be about "une de ces femmes qui dorment deux, trois, ou dix ans de suite; on suppose (fort gratuitement) qu'elle a reve tout le temps, et qu'elle peut raconter au reveil ce reve." As Agathe continues to be discussed in the letters, various titles appear: "Agathe ou le Sommeil," "Sommeil d'Agathe"; and in the notes to the correspondence with Fourmont,16 we find yet another: "Manuscrit trouve dans une cervelle." In his review article of "Agathe,"'7 Maurice Tosca mentions among the unpublished drafts an "Agathe Sainte du Sommeil." Valery soon abandoned the idea of the "conte" and envisaged Agathe as a fragment of Monsieur Teste, and finally as a chapter, that is a fragment, of the never-written "roman d'un cerveau"'8-to which he alludes frequently.'9

Agathe, then, is the title of the "conte" Valery had planned to write, and the name of its protagonist. But as the "story"- or what Mallarme would call "le recit"-is gradually abandoned, so is its heroine. Agathe becomes a mere title, the name of this fragment, whose persona is "je," a self both subjective and universal, a self whose identity Valery explored all his life. Our poem's "Qui interroge? Le meme repond. Le Meme ecrit, efface une meme ligne" is echoed by

Qui pleure la, sinon le vent simple, a cette heure Seule, avec diamants extremes?... Mais qui pleure,

the opening lines of "La Jeune Parque," that young Fate who had no name, human destiny deified.

16 Correspondance Valery-Fourmont, ed. Octave Nadal (Paris: Gallimard, 1957), p. 246, n. 4. 17 Maurice Tosca, "Paul Valery: Agathe," Nouvelle Revue Franqaise, May 1957. 18Ibid., pp. 910-11. ' Cf. "L'Homme et la coquille": "S'il y eit une poesie des merveilles et des emotions de

l'intellect (a quoi j'ai songe toute ma vie) ..." (OC, I, 866); "Descartes": "la vie de l'intelligence constitue un univers lyrique incomparable, un drame complet, ou ne manquent ni l'aventure, ni les passions, ni la douleur ... ni le comique, ni rien d'humain.. . . Ce monde de la pensee, oiu l'on entrevoit la pensee de la pensee et qui s'etend depuis le mystere central de la conscience jusqu'a l'etendue lumineuse . .. est aussi varie, aussi emouvant, aussi surprenant par les coups de theatre et l'intervention du hasard, aussi admirable par soi-meme, que le monde de la vie affective" (OC, I, 796-97).

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In the Teste cycle, Agathe was to be a fragment of the hero's night, a hero who is himself a fragment, for "l'existence d'un type de cette espece ne pourrait se prolonger dans le reel pendant plus de quelques quarts d'heure" (OC, II, 13). "Teste . .. est un personnage obtenu par le fractionnement d'un etre reel" (OC, II, 1381, my italics). But in contrast with some of the other Teste fragments, Agathe no longer mirrors Teste by others, like the acquaint- ance of the cafe or his wife Emilie, but makes him his own witness, and the mirror of his changing states of mind and being. For during his night, Teste is alone; his friend leaves him as he appears to be going to sleep, saying: "je suis etant, et me voyant, me voyant me voir, et ainsi de suite . .. " (OC, II, 25). Agathe is the poetic mono/dialogue of a mind beholding itself think, and therefore speak, during a fragment of a night-Agathe is a fragment of a poem in prose.

The task of delineating the influence of Agathe on Valery's prose poems is infinitely more complex than was the case with Igitur's on Mallarme's for Valery's prose poems were never neatly grouped together by their author as were Mallarme's, but are dispersed throughout the cuure. They appear under such headings as "Melange," "Poesie brute," "Instants," "Histoires brisees," and "Tel Quel," along with free verse, sketches, observations and epigrams, or dreams. An exhaustive study and definition of Valery's prose poems remains yet to be written. Moreover, the form of the Valeryan prose poem is much more varied than Mallarme's "anecdote ou poeme," where in almost every case a short narrative, or "recit," constitutes the vehicle for the symbolic meaning. Though some of Valery's prose poems are narrative in this sense, as for example the well-known "Enfance aux cygnes," many of them have a momentary "broken" quality about them, born out by such titles as "Instants," and "Histoires brisees." These prose poems are sparkling fragments of an interior mono/dialogue, brilliant verbal reflections of the poet's states of mind, or of his vision of the phenomena surrounding him.

If we should very roughly group the more than sixty prose poems into narrative pieces, descriptive poems and those celebrating a state of mind- and another type of grouping, as for example a thematic one like "water prose poems" and "morning pieces" would be equally possible-we find echoes of Agathe predominating in the last group, that is in the prose poems objectifying an "etat d'esprit."

In Agathe a "mind-persona" involves us in its world, its thinking-"plus je pense, plus je pense"-which is a dynamic process. But this mind is anchored to a specific body, which it beholds; as she is going to sleep, Agathe reflects on the relationship of her mind to her body, their duality and yet their inextricable interdependence which make up her moi: "Mon corps connait a peine que les masses tranquilles et vagues de ma couche le levent: la-dessus, ma chair regnant regarde et melange l'obscurite." And the mind's attesting the duality of connaitre and etre is echoed in "Reversibilite" and some of the prose poems celebrating awakening at dawn, such as "Au Commencement sera le soleil," or its other version, "A": "tiede et tranquille masse myste-

543 MALLARME/VALERY


rieusement isolee; arche close de vie qui transportes vers le jour mon histoire et mes chances, tu m'ignores, tu me conserves, tu es ma permanence inexprim- able... Je me penche sur toi qui es moi."20 Agathe's mind, "ce clos unique," "ma sphere singuliere," is imaged as an enclosed sphere, suggesting on the physical level le cerveau evoked in the alternate title "Manuscrit trouve dans une cervelle," and on the metaphysical one the universe epitomized in its microcosm of human consciousness. The solitary moment of the mind beholding itself, and withdrawn into its "sphere singuliere" is echoed in the prose poem "Laure," where the persona and his Ideal are alone "dans une sphere unique au monde, . . j'appelle Solitude cette forme fermee ou toutes choses sont vivants" (OC, II, 857). Agathe's observing herself think, Monsieur Teste's "je suis etant, et me voyant, me voyant me voir," the mind's self- or intro-reflection, this mirroring is, moreover, objectified in the prose poem "Sur la place publique," whose protagonist says:

Je m'observe qui observe... Et ceci fait un second spectacle, qui se fait un second spectateur. II m'engendre un temoin du second degre; et celui-ci est le supreme. Il n'y a pas de troisieme degre, et je ne suis capable de former quelque Quelqu'un qui voie en deqa, qui voie ce que fait et ce que voit celui qui voit celui qui voit les pigeons. [OC, II, 688-89]

Agathe beholds her mind and its phenomena: the apparition of its images whose origin is hidden and whose changes she appears to undergo rather than control: "Une idee devenue sans commencement, se fait ciaire, mais fausse, mais pure, puis vide ou immense ou vieille; elle devient meme nulle, pour s'elever a l'inattendu et elle amine tout mon esprit." And we recall how the fortuitous nature of thought, its lack of order or style, is deplored by "L'Amateur de poemes":

Si je regarde tout a coup ma veritable pensee, je ne me console pas de devoir subir cette parole interieure sans personne et sans origine; ces figures ephemeres; et cette infinite d'entreprises interrompues par leur propre facilite, qui se trans- forment l'une dans l'autre, sans que rien ne change avec elles. Incoherente sans le paraitre, nulle instantanement comme elle est spontanee, la pensee, par sa nature, manque de style. [OC, I, 94]

This spontaneous rise and succession of ideas is further elaborated in the prose poems "Reveil III" and "Meditation avant pensee II."

Passing from waking to sleep, or dream, and again to awakening, Agathe as she witnesses her changing states of consciousness becomes more and more lucid. At the privileged moment of midnight, that still-point and non-hour of the night, "cette heure qui ne compte pas," her mind aspires to the universal, to free itself from the particular existence to which it is bound: "c'est ici l'occasion pure; defaire du souvenir l'ordre mortel, annuler mon experience-

20Paul Valery, "Poemes A, B, et C," Commerce, Cahiers Trimestriels No. 5 (1925), pp. 7-8.

544 FRENCH REVIEW


et par un simple songe nocturne, me deprendre tout a fait." Agathe no longer wants to know her own form; in this she reflects Valery's contempt for one's biography which is impure "comme un livre." This disdain is often expressed in the oeuvre:

Tard, ce soir, brille plus simplement ce reflet de ma nature: horreur instinctive, desinteressement de cette vie humaine particuliere... Je fremis avec degofit et la plus grande inquietude se peut meler en moi a la certitude de sa vanite, de sa sottise, a la connaissance d'etre la dupe et le prisonnier de mon reste, enchain'e a ce qui souffre, espere implore, se flagelle, a c6te de mon fragment pur.

. . Mon idee la plus intime est de ne pouvoir etre celui que je suis. Je ne puis pas me reconnaitre dans une figure finie. Et MOI s'enfuit toujours de ma personne, que cependant il dessine ou imprime en la fuyant. [OC, II, 572, my italics.]

Valery celebrates the same aspiration toward the absolute or pure, the mind's desire to break the chains binding it to a finite self, in many prose poems on the awakening at dawn, like "Reveil III," "Meditation avant pensee," "Reveil," and in "Coeur de la Nuit" and "L'Ange." In "Matin" he says:

Pourquoi, ce matin, me choisirais-je? Qu'est-ce qui m'oblige a reprendre mes biens et mes maux? Si je laissais mon nom, mes verites, mes coutumes et mes chaines comme reves de la nuit, comme celui qui veut disparaltre et faire peau neuve, abandonne soigneusement au bord de la mer, ses vetements et ses papiers?

N'est-ce point a present la lecon des reves et l'exhortation du reveil? Et le matin d'ete, le matin, n'est-il le moment et le conseil imperieux de ne point ressembler a soi-meme? Le sommeil a brouillie le jeu, battu les cartes; et les songes ont tout mele, tout remis en question...

Au reveil il y a un temps de naissance, une naissance de toutes choses avant que quelqu'une n'ait lieu. I1 y a une nudite avant que l'on se re-vetisse. [OC, II, 658-59] As our poem moves toward its culmination point and Agathe approaches the

goal of her quest, she becomes all expectation; at the height of her lucidity, her mind becomes a well-tuned instrument, a virtuality "pour que le reste musical de mon esprit m'envahisse." This "attente" and imminence, this pure moment of expectation is also rendered in the prose poems "Matin," "Laure," "L'Unique," and "Meditation avant pensee." In "Avant toute chose," the persona says:

Est-il espoir plus pur, plus delie du monde, affranchi de moi-meme-et toutefois possession plus entiere-que je ne trouve avant le jour, dans un moment premier de proposition et d'unite de mes forces, quand le seul desir de l'esprit, qui en precede toutes les pensees particulieres, semble preferer de les suspendre et d'etre amour de ce qui aime?21

In the solitary stillness of her midnight, "la noire et delicate unite," Agathe, deserted by her senses, like Igitur is all thinking. And her mind, "une limpidite identique," has become a transparent mirror in which she sees the functioning

21 Paul Valery, "Petits Poemes abstraits," La Revue de France, janvier 1932, p. 47.

MALLARME/VALERY 545


of "les plus profondes deductions, les visites les plus internes," as our poem is itself a fragment of a mirror reflecting a moment of a mind. If this crystal were completely clear, "si toujours cette purete se pouvait," the intellect would be so lucid as to be a transparent and necessary system, "permettant la separation de ses aspects, et la division de la duree spirituelle en intervalles clairs," luminous against contingency and the dark: "bient6t, je ferais toutes mes idees irreductibles ou confondues." This ideal recalls the last poem Valery wrote, the prose poem "L'Ange":

Une maniere d'ange etait assis sur le bord d'une fontaine. II s'y mirait, et se voyait Homme...... Et il s'interrogeait dans l'univers de sa substance spirituelle merveilleusement pure, ou toutes les idees vivaient egalement distantes entre elles et de lui-meme, et dans une telle perfection de leur harmonie et promptitude de leurs correspondances, qu'on eit dit qu'il euit pu s'evanouir, et le systeme, itincelant comme un diademe, de leur necessite simultanee subsister par soi seul dans sa sublime plenitude. [OC, I, 205-6]

And now, at the height of her power, Agathe-and the poem-reaches her climax: "voluptueusement, la palpitation de l'espace multiple ne revive plus qu'a peine ma chair"; her mind is a pure system, a spiritual "diademe," independent of its content as well as of her, or any, particular existence. Agathe has attained the Absolute: "L'ensemble de connaissances diverses, egalement imminents, qui me constitue,... forme maintenant un systeme nul ou indifferent a ce qu'il vient de produire ou approfondir, quand l'ombre imaginaire doucement cede a toute naissance, et c'est l'esprit." This is the moment of the "naissance de l'esprit," the emergence of cosmos (system) against choas, the constellation of a "coup de des" against the night and chance.

The influence of Agathe on Valery's prose poems is not only thematic, but also stylistic. For this fragment announces the predominant form of the Valeryan prose poem, which I have called "broken." And it is particularly that group of prose poems thematically related to Agathe, the prose poems objectifying an "etat d'esprit," which is characterized by this fragmentary form: these poems are fragments of a dialogue of je with moi, each reflecting a moment of a mind.

We have traced some striking parallels between the respective positions of Igitur and Agathe in the oeuvre of their creators, while showing the relationship of these fragments to Mallarme's and Valery's prose poems. At the same time we have distinguished between the Mallarmean anecdotal or narrative form of prose poem in that poet's structured prose poem cycle, and the fragmentary quality of Valery's prose poems, dispersed throughout his work. Certain correspondences between Igitur and Agathe should now be discussed, parallels between these two pieces other than their relative positions in their authors' works.

The most significant parallel between the two is, of course, the formal one, the fact that both are fragments. They are "unfinished," posthumously

546 FRENCH REVIEW


published pieces, which are important links in the ouvre of which they are essential parts. Both Igitur and Agathe are poetic prose pieces, hence related to the prose poems in their respective poetic galaxies.

Both fragments are named after their protagonists, and these names bear a strange phonetic resemblance--"Igitur" and "Agathe."2 In both fragments the persona is "je," a self both subjective and universal. But while the Igitur fragments shift from first to a third-person, reflecting Mallarme's metaphysical attitude of ontological questioning, in Agathe we have a first-person narrator throughout, which points to Valery's psychological stance and his life-long exploration of the self. And while in both pieces the "action" is purely mental, and the personae of these abstract pieces are disembodied, symbolic figures, Igitur is the hero of a philosophical-"en effet, le personnage de cette scene est la logique meme" (Kristeva)-Agathe the hero(ine) of a psychological-logos, Agathe writes-fragment.

Both figures retreat alone into the night, that hour out of time, "le minuit"; and the quest of both is a descent into the self-Igitur descends to his ancestors' tombs, and Agathe to "mon fond que je touche"-and at the same time an ascent beyond it to attain the Absolute, their goal.23 But while in Igitur this Absolute is the Hegelian negation of individual consciousness and its subsequent synthesis into the Absolute Spirit, the Weltgeist, in Agathe the Absolute is the Pure consciousness of Thought dissociated from any particular content, the Pure System, the spiritual "diademe" of "L'Ange."

Both heroes progress cyclically toward a culmination, Agathe by the "phases" of her mind, Igitur through the spiral staircase leading up from the ancestors. And in both fragments this cyclical progression is stylistically rendered by internal echoes in the text. Both mental heroes, then, strive to lose their individual existence to attain the universal, and in both pieces, after the cyclical rising action of these dramas of the mind, leading up to the final ascent and hubris of their climaxes-Igitur is the incarnation and symbol of the hubris of his race, that is humanity, while Agathe aspires to the pure spirituality of the Angel-there comes the "falling off," the sinking of the ship

22 In "Wherefore Igitur," (Romanic Review, 60, No. 3, [October 1969], 174-77), Robert Greer Cohn, discussing the fragment's full title, "Igitur ou la Folie d'Elbehnon," refutes the notion that the protagonist's name, "Igitur," represents an echo of the Vulgate's igitur perfecti sunt coeli. Here, as always, he would have us look closely at the sounds and shapes of Mallarme's letters: "Igitur evokes a brilliant flash of vision, like the lightning stroke of the Hamlet hero on page seven of the Coup de des." He further suggests the "Igit-Ci-gtt" echo, thus evoking the final image of Igitur, as a gisant on his sarcophagus. Cf. Jacques Derrida, La Dissemination (Paris: Seuil, 1972), p. 308, note 61, for further suggestions regarding "Igitur," and especially its final syllable "ur." Basing himself on Robert Greer Cohn's study on Mallarme's sound symbolism, summarized in Toward the Poems of Mallarme (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1965), pp. 265-75, Derrida here develops "le calcul anagrammatique des formes en URE," and others, such as Igitur's "fiole-folie."

23 The only critic who has, to my knowledge, seen the parallel between Igitur and Agathe in their quest for the absolute is James R. Lawler, The Poet as Analyst (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1974), p. 164.

547 MALLARME/VALERY


FRENCH REVIEW

with its "maitre" in his gesture of defiance, and "RIEN de la memorable crise . .. N'AURA EU LIEU ... QUE LE LIEU!" "C'est l'esprit; si ce n'est que, bien etranges, bien seuls a la limite de cet univers, un doute, un trait, un souffle uniques, parfois s'echangent."

Finally Valery himself suggested the parallel between Igitur and Agathe, and their particular importance, when he said:

... Igitur. C'est un brouillon, notes et morceaux, pour une ceuvre en prose.... Ce qui m'a tres fix--c'est un fragment plus acheve, le Minuit. Ce Minuit a bien de points de contact avec Agathe, avec ce qui est fait d'Agathe. De meme qu'elle, il est en plusieurs etats, avec des reprises, des surcharges, des re-reprises... C'est aussi le noir et le cerveau... Ce qu'il faut comprendre dans ce genre d'amusement ou de torture-c'est qu'il n'est plus question la de talent ou de ginie ordinaires... Ce sont des travaux plus pour l'auteur que pour le lecteur. Ce sont des monuments de discipline . .. de purete et de finesse pure-et, comme dans la geometrie, la forme et le fond doivent etre identiques. [OC, I, pp. 29-30]

The "form" of the poem objectifying a moment of a mind is that of the poetic prose fragment.

GRAND VALLEY STATE COLLEGES

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Article Contentsp. 536p. 537p. 538p. 539p. 540p. 541p. 542p. 543p. 544p. 545p. 546p. 547p. 548

Issue Table of ContentsFrench Review, Vol. 49, No. 4 (Mar., 1976), pp. 469-652Front Matter [pp. 601-602]The Myths and Potentialities of Conversation Classes [pp. 469-475]Bridging the Great Gap: L'Etranger and the High School Class [pp. 476-482]Additional French Language Experiences and the AP Candidate [pp. 483-495]Violence et obstacle dans La Place Royale [pp. 496-504]Structure et signification du Misanthrope [pp. 505-513]Father and Sons in Mithridate [pp. 514-521]Fortune in Manon Lescaut [pp. 522-527]Les Solitaires as a Test for Emile and Sophie [pp. 528-535]Toward the Prose Fragment in Mallarm and Valry: Igitur and Agathe [pp. 536-548]Lacombe Lucien: Laughter as Collaboration [pp. 549-558]DepartmentsLe Coin du Pdagogue [pp. 559-561]Pedagogical News and Notes [pp. 562-563]From Our Readers [pp. 563-567]Professional Notes [pp. 567-574]Announcements [p. 575]Dissertations in Progress [pp. 575-594]

Association NewsMinutes of the Forty-Eighth Annual Meeting of the AATF [pp. 595-600]Chapter News [pp. 603-604]

ReviewsLiterary History and CriticismReview: untitled [p. 605]Review: untitled [pp. 605-606]Review: untitled [pp. 606-607]Review: untitled [pp. 607-608]Review: untitled [pp. 608-609]Review: untitled [pp. 609-610]Review: untitled [p. 610]Review: untitled [pp. 610-611]Review: untitled [p. 611]Review: untitled [pp. 611-612]Review: untitled [pp. 612-613]Review: untitled [pp. 613-614]Review: untitled [pp. 614-615]Review: untitled [pp. 615-616]Review: untitled [pp. 616-617]Review: untitled [pp. 617-618]Review: untitled [p. 618]Review: untitled [p. 619]Review: untitled [pp. 619-620]Review: untitled [pp. 620-621]Review: untitled [p. 621]Review: untitled [pp. 621-622]Review: untitled [pp. 622-623]Review: untitled [p. 623]Review: untitled [pp. 623-624]Review: untitled [pp. 624-625]Review: untitled [pp. 625-626]Review: untitled [pp. 626-627]Review: untitled [pp. 627-628]

Textbooks and MethodologyReview: untitled [p. 628]Review: untitled [p. 629]Review: untitled [pp. 629-631]Review: untitled [p. 631]Review: untitled [p. 632]Review: untitled [pp. 632-633]Review: untitled [pp. 633-634]

LinguisticsReview: untitled [pp. 634-635]Review: untitled [p. 635]Review: untitled [p. 636]Review: untitled [pp. 636-637]

Creative WorksReview: untitled [pp. 637-638]Review: untitled [pp. 638-639]Review: untitled [pp. 639-640]Review: untitled [p. 640]Review: untitled [p. 641]Review: untitled [pp. 641-642]

CivilizationReview: untitled [p. 642]Review: untitled [p. 643]Review: untitled [pp. 643-644]Review: untitled [p. 644]Review: untitled [p. 644]Review: untitled [p. 645]Review: untitled [p. 646]Review: untitled [p. 646]Review: untitled [pp. 646-647]Review: untitled [pp. 647-648]Review: untitled [p. 648]Review: untitled [pp. 648-649]Review: untitled [pp. 649-650]Review: untitled [p. 650]Review: untitled [pp. 650-651]

Back Matter [pp. 652-652]

Valéry's Agathe, Mallarmé's Igitur

Documents

mallarmes prose poems

narrative form of prose

valerys agathe

important prose fragments

jstor terms

jstor archive

utcyour use

conditionsthe french