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PARTISAN REVIEW
centuries; but rest assured that Mallarrne, in his esotericism, was re–
viving an ancient tradition of which John Donne in England and
Maurice Sceve in France were illustrious representatives. They too
had made it their resolve and regarded it as a point of honor to remain
secret.
"If
the words used by a writer bear within them ... a hidden
subtlety"
-acutezza reconditaJ
in Ficino's own expression-"the)'l
give as it were more authority to his style; they cause the reader to
advance more slowly, to rise above himself, to consider more atten–
tively what is said to him and ... by tiring him a little, they offer
him the pleasure attached to the pursuit of difficult things."
3
HE.- Yes,
that is well said. But doubtless the esotericism of the
Renaissance poets consisted largely in teasing the reader's mind with
hidden meanings; the poems offered enigmas to which, in many
cases, erudition furnished the only key; so that we should be wrong
to confuse
this
sort of obscurity with that of Mallarme, who aims to
be incantatory, in the proper sense of the word you applied to him.
/.-Obviously when Sceve begins one of his Dizains with the
lines:
Le Cerf volant aux abois de AustrucheJ
H ors de son giste esperdu sJenvola
-"The flying Stag, tracked down and flushed from his covert by
the Ostrich, takes desperate flight," the only allusions concealed in
his verse are historical (as they are elsewhere mythological) ; and
this is also the case in Dizain LV, where he again refers to Charles V
of Spain and Austria under the guise of the
Austruche.
But, by effort
and as if incidentally, he nevertheless achieves the same incantatory
power that Mallarrne seeks and achieves directly. In Sceve's case, as
too often with Gerard de Nerval, the effort is intellectual and, by
that very fact, remains foreign to what constitutes the essence of
poetry.
Amor che nella mente mi ragiona
was, if I remember correctly, what Dante said in one of the
Canzone
of his "Convito." To address oneself to the intellect is to invite argu–
ments. Hence, all I should like to retain from Marsilio Ficino's re–
marks is this: that the poet should seek in the art of verse an obstruc-
3. These remarkable phrases were brought to the attention of French
readers by M. Eugene Parturier, who quoted them in his excellent introduction
to Maurice Sceve's "Delie." No longer having the book with me, I am unable
to verify the quotation, but hope that I copied
it
correctly.-A.G.
'
