290
PARTISAN REVIEW
shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep
them from the evil" was what the apostle said.
HE.- -St.
Paul was not thinking of poets.
I.- No
matter; for what he said applies to them equally. It is
not a good thing, for example; it may compromise both his work and
the development of his ideas, if the poet depends on that work to
earn him a living. In order to think and write freely, Mallarme, who
was wholly possessed by his strange poetic apostleship, spent thirty
years as a professor of English in secondary schools. Often the poet
must have a double trade, a fact that recently prompted Duhamel
to make some very wise observations. Those of us who lived
in
Mallam£s circle were ashamed of the very idea that literature could
be made to "pay." I remember the scandal that was caused in those
days by Jean de Tinan, the author of "Do You Hope to Succeed?"
Speaking to his colleagues on the editorial committee of the
Centaure,
he told us not to be suckers,
des poires;
he was through with
all
that
foolishness and in the future he would not deliver his copy unless he
was paid for
it.
The rest of us felt that writing for money was "selling
ourselves" in the worst sense of the term. We were not to be pur–
chased; and our thoughts turned to Mallarme. In those days it seemed
to us that Barres, by entering politics, had forsworn himself and fallen
from his glory.
HE.-In
those days, too, Zola's novels were selling by the mil–
lions of copies.
/.-Mallarme never had the slightest tone of contempt when
he mentioned them; it was simply that he was seeking for something
else, something that seemed to us of infinitely greater value.
HE.-After
what you began by saying, this would give me to
understand that you regarded Mallarme as a saint.
/.-We most certainly felt admiration for his poetry; for him–
self, for the man, it was veneration. He was a believer, a zealot.
HE.-A
dreamer with his head in the clouds; one who played at
give-away and loser-take-all, in the manner of the mystics. It might
have been said that he was dazzled by shadows.
/.-And that he preferred the shadow to the living prey. Hence
these verses:
M a faim qui d'aucuns fruits ici ne se regale
Trouve en leur docte manque une saveur egale.
1
1.
In prose: "My hunger, though regaled here by no fruits, finds equal
savor in their learned absence."-Tr.
