Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Stephane Mallarme's "Lines" invites the reader into an atmosphere imbued with nostalgia, dreams, and the transient nature of time. The poem merges the celestial with the temporal, weaving in emotions and memories to create a rich tapestry of human experience.

The poem opens with an image of the "pale" moon, conjuring an ethereal setting filled with "weeping seraphim" and a mist of "blossom infinite and blue and dim." This celestial backdrop serves as a prelude to the more earthly, intimate event: "This was the holy day when first we kissed." The ethereal introduction amplifies the importance of this past romantic moment, elevating it to something near-divine. The kiss, like the celestial happenings, belongs to a world beyond ordinary perception-forever enshrined in the "mood of memory."

Mallarmé employs the music of the seraphim's viol strings to emphasize the emotional potency of this memory. The seraphim, traditional attendants of the divine, here serve as the background musicians to this earthly yet transcendent love story. Their ceaseless dreaming in the celestial realm parallels the endless reverie of love that the poet seems to inhabit.

The phrase "Sweet pain" evokes the paradoxical nature of poignant memories: they bring joy in recollection but also pain in their unattainability. The poet is "drunken with my part / Of honeyed sorrow," fully immersing himself in the bittersweet memory without regret or "bitter aftertaste."

In the next section, the poet describes a moment of re-encounter, when he sees his beloved "with sunlight in your hair, / Pale evening sunlight." Here, light serves as a metaphor for the beloved's aura, while also signaling the waning day, perhaps metaphorically alluding to the fading memory or the passage of time since their initial meeting.

The final lines evoke the memory of the beloved as a "fairy in a radiant gown," comparing her to a childhood fantasy that once lingered "beside the bed / Of a tired child." This serves to make the experience seem dreamlike and elusive, tying back to the theme of impermanence.

Throughout the poem, Mallarmé successfully employs celestial imagery, musical motifs, and evocative language to create an intricate portrayal of memory and emotion. "Lines" serves as a portal, allowing us a glimpse into the eternal dance between the earthly and the divine, the past and the present, dream and reality-all crystallized in the fragile moment of a kiss. It emphasizes that memories, though distant and often tinged with sorrow, can offer an enduring sweetness that lingers in the "dreaming Heart."

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