Mallarmé and the Symbolist Drama by Haskell M. Block (review)

BOOK REVIEWS MALLARME AND THE SYMBOLIST DRAMA, .by Haskell M. Block, Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 1!)63, 171 pp. Price $5.00. In his carefully documented synthesis of earlier scholarship Professor Block juxtaposes Mallarme and symbolist drama for the. academic reader. First he takes up Mallarme texts. (His commentary is designed to be read with Mallarme's Oeuvres completes, edited by Henri Mondor and G. Jean-Aubry, 1956~ Then he appraises Mallarme's influence on symbolist drama. He unaccountably asserts both that "symbolist drama, like symbolist poetry, is to a considerable extent the creation of the author of Herodiade" (p. 5) and that "Mallarme . . . is only one of several forces shaping the emergence of a symbolist drama." (p. 102) He shows that Mallarme was a dramatist by temperament and talent. When beginning Herodiade, he formulated: "Peindre, non la chose, rnais I'elfet qu'elle produit." But he came to the French theater twenty-five years too soon. Discouraged , he put Htirodiade aside (although he worked on it until his death), changed "Intermede" into "L'Apres-midi d'un Faune," and left Igitur, a tale-SOliloquy, for his son-in-Iaw's compilation. So, according to Professor Block, Mallarme made his "most far-reaching contribution to the theater" as a drama critic. (p. 83) In La Revue independante and La Revue Wagntirienne and at his own mardis he evoked an externalized theater of the mind, a theater itself evoking the mystery of the universe. Professor Block in a fine elucidation of texts shows that Mallarme despite his admiration of Wagner distrusted his emphasis upon music as the coordinating art. Mallarme's poetics, as deduced by Professor Block, would restore drama to occult liturgy by poetic language, detheatricalized staging, and harmonizing of performing arts within poetic structure. Pointing out that Maeterlinck, Van Lerberghe, Viele-Griffin, Claude!, and Regnier brought similar poetics to the stage, Professor Block assumes that each reader has a definition of symbolist drama based on wide reading in it. Still, his discussion would be more convincing with more illustration. Professor Block, who suggests that "any drama in which language is organically part of the total configuration or structure of the work is perforce poetic drama, whether or not the lines rhyme," (p. 130) detects Mallarme's larger "legacy" wherever there is "the effort to overcome the mediocrity of purely representa· tional drama through musicality and suggestiveness in both lariguage and dramatic design, through a fluid interweaving of the planes of the everyday and the occult, through a reduction of the role of narrative, and through an interiorization of dramatic action." (p. 131) He therewith lists legatees HofmannsthaI, Yeats, Strindberg, Lorca, Ghelderode, and Beckett and begins his final two-and-a-haIfpage recapitulation. Although this 'book lacks the focus, coherence, and fresh approach to be expected from a scholar of Professor Block's stature, it is a valuable catalyst. To teachers new to French symbolism and to graduate students in search of a seminar topic it introduces a determinative phase of MaIlarme. More important, it sendt! him· readers. (228) MARILYN GADDIS ROSE Stephens College ...