412
PARTISAN REVIEW
smoothness, lest it wrinkle the cloth of Nothingness; but it
Is
not even this that Mallanne means by "Eternity". Let us trans·
late his line into bad prose: "such as he is, disburdened at last
of his wretched self, the poet appears to posterity through his
word alone." For it is posterity, nothing else, that Mallarme
understands by "Eternity". And now, if I put myself in Baude–
laire's place
]e ne vois qui'infini par toutes les fenetres,'
that is to say, the irreparable, the irremediable, the fascination
of nothingness; it is not that the "same" is not to be found, it
is right at the bottom, a figment of dream, both human and
inhuman, for:
]'ai longtemps
habite
sous de vastes portiques
'
In a forgotten corner of Mallanne Eternity there sobs
L'aboli bibelot d'indnite sonors
•
hut Baudelaire takes his whole being thither, his wretched self
and his "taste for the infinite." Even in Eternity he will need
someone to plumb
Le secret douloureux qui me faisait languir
•
This is not the place to explain how Baudelaire sug–
gests, and how he
bungles,
the
tendency
that Mallanne brought
to . its end: the attempt to expel from poetry that "cruel and
humiliating maxim,
spiritus
flat
ubi vult."
Nor do I wish to
compare these two poets, as though two kinds of poetry were
subject to comparison, as though what we grant the one must
be subtracted from the other. I have always loved and still
love Mallanne, and I would not give the impression that I am
ready to sacrifice him, that I would consent to erase his experi–
ence, or that I would want it to have been different. All I wish
to establish here is that Mallanne did not have to overcome
nothingness; he never encountered it, he never knew what it
was, his muse of golden words was never tempted, like the muse
of Gerard de Nerval, to escape while uttering the cries of the
Pythoness. There is not a trace of possession in Mallanne's
poetry; only the muse is there; Mallanne's metaphysical des-
•
ThroUBh
all
the windows
1
1ee only the infinite
'1
have lived
tJ
long time under vast porticoes.
1
The abolished trinket of
sonorozu
inanity
•
The painful secret, C4Uie of
mr
lapse.
