Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Francis Viele-Griffin's "In Memoriam: Stephane Mallarme" serves as a threnody-a lamentation for the deceased-honoring Mallarmé's poetic brilliance and enigmatic character. Written in the wake of Mallarmé's death, the poem explores the emotional impact of the loss while contemplating the eternal questions that the departed poet leaves behind. Viele-Griffin presents Mallarmé as an elusive figure, always attuned more to the realm of dreams and abstraction than to the palpable world.

Francis Viele-Griffin (1864-1937) was an American-born French poet closely associated with the Symbolist movement. His tribute to Mallarmé after the poet's death captures the existential and metaphysical preoccupations that both poets shared. The poem serves not only as a eulogy but also as a continuation of the Symbolist dialogue about the nature of reality, the limitations of language, and the ever-elusive qualities of human experience.

The poem initiates with an imagined scenario, pondering what Mallarmé would have said if told that "The day is breaking." The projection that he would reply with "I am dreaming" encapsulates Mallarmé's own fascination with dreams, illusions, and the complex relationship between the tangible and intangible. Even the breaking dawn-a symbol of renewal and life's unending cycle-would be interpreted by Mallarmé as a facet of his perpetual dream-state.

The second imagined scenario concerns a group of individuals who come to Mallarmé's door, "Vital and strong," only to find out that "the master is dead." In both cases, Viele-Griffin subtly captures the contradictions that defined Mallarmé's life. The first scenario acknowledges the poet's inability to fully engage with the "real" world, while the second highlights the abrupt, finite nature of death as it clashes with the continuous stream of life and potential visitors "at your door as at evensong."

The poem then turns its focus to the grieving speaker's own garden, where flowers are "like the leaves of a book," an imagery resonating with mallarme's emphasis on the symbiotic relationship between life and art. Viele-Griffin seems to acknowledge that words (or poems), like flowers, are both ephemeral and enduring. They are subject to decay, yet their essence lingers, especially when bound in the "leaves of a book."

Towards the end, Viele-Griffin contemplates the futility and "wrath of life," mentioning how words themselves struggle "against the tomb." This line echoes the existential predicament that underlined much of Mallarmé's work-a constant struggle to articulate the ineffable, to capture in language what is essentially beyond words.

The poem, therefore, is not just a tribute but an extension of Mallarmé's own poetic preoccupations. Viele-Griffin engages deeply with the themes that fascinated Mallarmé-illusion vs. reality, the limitations of language, the impermanence of life-and thereby ensures that the "master" lives on, at least in the realm of ideas and poetic discourse.

In summary, "In Memoriam: Stephane Mallarme" serves as an evocative eulogy, a poetic contemplation that both mourns the loss and celebrates the enduring enigma that was Mallarmé. It doesn't merely lament; it philosophizes, it questions, it dreams-just as Mallarmé would have done.

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