Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

The poem "At Gautier's Grave" by Stephane Mallarme is a complex meditation on the themes of absence, art, and mortality. It is an elegy to Theophile Gautier, a fellow poet and critic, but it also serves as a contemplation of the nature of art and the artistic legacy one leaves behind. The poem opens with a direct address to the deceased, to whom "gone is the emblem of our happiness." This line immediately establishes the profound sense of loss and absence that pervades the poem.

The speaker of the poem offers an "empty cup," which serves as a complex symbol throughout the poem. It's empty, signifying absence and loss, but it's also a vessel that holds a "monster of gold" that "suffers." The gold here can be interpreted as the precious but burdensome weight of artistic legacy, something beautiful but also capable of inflicting emotional pain. The cup is not offered with hope but is presented as it is-empty and filled with suffering.

As the poem unfolds, the speaker grapples with the permanence of artistic legacy in contrast to the ephemerality of human life. The "monument encloses him entire," symbolizing how art can immortalize a person, encapsulating their essence. Even when the "dark communal moment" of death turns everything "all of ash," the art's glory returns "as proud evening's glow lights the glass," indicating the everlasting nature of artistic achievement. The poem suggests that while the corporeal existence may fade, the artistic self transcends mortality, almost like a never-dying flame.

However, the poem is not just an uncritical praise of artistic immortality. Mallarmé reflects on the vanity and "false pride" of humanity. The crowd claims, "We are our future ghosts," acknowledging the inevitable decay and disappearance. In this temporal realm, everyone is haunted by "their sad opacity," their opaque and unclear future. Here, Mallarmé offers a sobering reminder of mortality, an existential depth that questions even the enduring power of art.

But Mallarmé doesn't allow us to remain in this state of existential melancholy. He leads us back to the transformative power of art. "Glorious, eternal genius has no shade," he declares, affirming that true artistic brilliance will always shine through the dark veils of human limitations and mortality. In the end, he calls for a tribute to Gautier, not in tears or mournful silence but in the enduring beauty of art, in the "drunken red, calyx, clear" that stays as a "solemn agitation in the air," immortalizing Gautier in the eternal garden of art.

Thus, "At Gautier's Grave" is a multi-layered exploration of the complicated interplay between mortality and art. It acknowledges the inherent tragedies and limitations of human existence while also exalting the potential for transcendence through artistic creation. It serves both as a memorial to a lost friend and a testament to the enduring power of art to immortalize and elevate, encapsulating in its complex weave of symbols and images the dual nature of human existence-ephemeral yet enduring, sorrowful yet sublime.

POEM TEXT:
To you, gone is the emblem of our happiness!

Greetings, in pale libation and madness,

Don't think to some hope of magic corridors I offer

My empty cup, where a monster of gold suffers!

Your apparition cannot satisfy me:

Since I myself entombed you in porphyry.

The rite decrees our hands must quench the torch

Against the iron mass of your tomb's porch:

None at this simple ceremony should forget,

Those chosen to sing the absence of the poet,

That this monument encloses him entire.

Were it not that his art's glory, full of fire

Till the dark communal moment all of ash,

Returns as proud evening's glow lights the glass,

To the fires of the pure mortal sun!

Marvellous, total, solitary, so that one

Trembles to breathe with man's false pride.

This haggard crowd! 'We are', it cries,

'Our future ghosts, their sad opacity.'

But with walls blazoned, mourning, empty,

I've scorned the lucid horror of a tear,

When, deaf to the sacred verse he does not fear,

One of those passers-by, mute, blind, proud,

Transmutes himself, a guest in his vague shroud,

Into the virgin hero of posthumous waiting.

A vast void carried through the fog's drifting,

By the angry wind of words he did not say,

Nothing, to this Man abolished yesterday:

'What is Earth, O you, memories of horizons?'

Shrieks the dream: and, a voice whose clarity lessens,

Space, has for its toy this cry: 'I do not know!'

The Master, with eye profound, as he goes,

Pacified the restless miracle of Eden,

Who alone woke, in his voice's final frisson,

The mystery of a name for the Lily and the Rose.

Is there anything of this destiny left, or no?

O, all of you, forget your darkened faith.

Glorious, eternal genius has no shade.

I, moved by your desire, wish to see

for Him who vanished yesterday, in the Ideal

Work that for us the garden of this star creates,

As a solemn agitation in the air, that stays

Honouring this quiet disaster, a stir

Of words, a drunken red, calyx, clear,

That, rain and diamonds, the crystal gaze

Fixed on these flowers of which none fade,

Isolates in the hour and the light of day!

That's all that's left already of our true play,

Where the pure poet's gesture, humble, vast

Must deny the dream, the enemy of his trust:

So that on the morning of his exalted stay,

When ancient death is for him as for Gautier,

The un-opening of sacred eyes, the being-still,

The solid tomb may rise, ornament this hill,

The sepulchre where lies the power to blight,

And miserly silence and the massive night.

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