L’écriture en suspension ou l’“action restreinte” de Mallarmé

This article contends that Mallarmé’s writing is in suspension, in the sense that both the syntax and the reader’s interpretation are indecisive. Whereas Mallarmé’s writing style has generally been perceived as impeding meaning to be fixed, I argue that suspension is the key element to understanding the poet’s use of dashes at the end of sentences and the necessity for a non-linear reading of his texts. Through a discussion of his poem “L’Action restreinte” and other late works, this article recontextualizes the historical, auctorial, and geographical components that determined much of Mallarmé’s style. The phenomenon of the “interrègne” for instance, where history is on hold at the end of the nineteenth century, explains why suspension is both an obstacle to an absolute understanding and, paradoxically, the only way contemporaneity may read and interpret Mallarmé. (In French)