Mallarmé and Wagner: Music and Poetic Language

This book challenges and replaces the existing view of Mallarmé's mission to 're-possess' music on behalf of poetic language. Professor Heath Lees shows that Mallarmé's early knowledge and experience of music was much greater than commentators have realised, and that the French poet actually began his writing career with the explicit aim of making music's performance-language of 'effect' the ground of his poetic expression. Integral to the argument is Mallarmé's reaction to the work and ideas of Richard Wagner. Using a measure of musically informed commentary, Professor Lees throws new light on many of Mallarmé's best-known texts, hitherto judged 'difficult' by those who have failed to appreciate the extent of the poet's heroic descent through the surface of words in search of 'la Musique'.