Documents Stéphane Mallarmé, Nouvelle Serie, IV (review)

Devoted to Mallarmé’s uncompleted texts – Notes sur le langage, Igitur, ‘Enfant sorti de nous deux...’, Notes en vue de la représentation et lecture du ‘Livre’, ‘Il ne lui faut pas moins qu’épouser la notion. . .’ –, this is the fourth volume of the Documents Mallarmé, Nouvelle Série, in which Gordon Millan more than matches the meticulous scholarship and sure-footed editorship of Carl Paul Barbier’s first Documents series. The foreword helpfully reminds us of the specific aims of this series: namely, to trace in the minutest detail the elaboration of Mallarmé’s works from the moment of conception right through to their most advanced manuscript or printed version, with due attention being paid both to material presentation and intellectual genesis. So far as this particular volume is concerned, however, this noble enterprise is fraught with two major practical and ethical difficulties: first, the incomplete nature of the texts means that reconstituting them as Mallarméwould have intended is, to a considerable extent, a conjectural exercise; second, because shortly before his death and with the grudging acquiescence of his admirers and loved ones, the poet had specifi-cally requested that all his unfinished works be destroyed. Consequently, we will never know, as Millan openly acknowledges, ‘ce qui précisément a été détruit’ from this ‘pieux holocauste’ (p. 10). Given this uncertainty surrounding the precise identification, ordering and demarcation of the texts, Millan sensibly adopts a two-pronged editorial strategy that ingeniously combines intellectual speculation with calligraphic detective-work: either he reconstitutes the texts along thematic lines, or he does so according to chronological matches of the poet’s handwriting. This approach is both effective and necessary, all the more so when we consider that Mallarmé was notoriously economical in his use of paper. This practice does much to bolster his ecological credentials, but little to facilitate the task of his editor: often co-existing on the front and back of the same page, with all manner of revisions and erasures, we find either discrete works, or far more frequently, different versions of the same work, sometimes written years apart. In such cases, Millan has favoured thematic demarcations signalled by three asterisks, rather than the original page or paragraph divisions. If Millan’s attempts to untangle this textual web by dint of a visual key are largely successful, even more helpful to experts and non-specialists alike are the trenchant, well-informed and accessible explanatory notes he provides on the relevant biographical circumstances that influenced particular works – to give one example: Mendès’ and Villiers’ lukewarm response in 1869 to an early version of Igitur led Mallarméto consider producing this work as a play, rather than the count he had originally envisaged. Nor is Millan afraid, where necessary, to correct or supplement longstanding critical orthodoxies: for instance, contrary to received opinion, the poet’s moving tribute to his son, first published by Jean-Pierre Richard as Pour un tombeau d’Anatole in 1961, was never in fact entitled as such by the poet; hence Millan’s stated preference for ‘Enfant sorti de nous deux. . .’. All in all, this fascinating volume is a very welcome addition to a highly worthwhile series.