Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

"The Chastened Clown" by Stephane Mallarme presents the psychological and emotional landscape of an actor or performer, generally referred to as "the clown," grappling with self-awareness, artistic responsibility, and existential sorrow. This text embodies Mallarmé's characteristic obscurity and layering of symbols, making the poem itself an intricate act of performance. The opening line, "Eyes, lakes withal my simple drunkenness to be reborn," sets the stage for a narrative of rebirth or transformation, albeit one burdened by an overwhelming sense of disillusionment and betrayal.

The poem manifests the tension between reality and performance, authenticity and artificiality. The "actor evoking with gesture," trying to transcend the "shameful soot of the lamps," emphasizes the struggle between the facade of performance and the individual's quest for genuine expression. Here, the soot of the lamps could symbolize the corrupting influence of the public eye, or perhaps even the degradation that comes with the very act of performance.

The "window through the curtain wall" serves as a symbolic aperture through which the persona attempts to escape or at least peer into another realm. But what confronts him is not liberation but betrayal-his "hand and foot" becoming a "sheer traitor." The image is eerily evocative of a Shakespearean tragedy, specifically, Hamlet, a character deeply divided and famously paralyzed by indecision and introspection. Like Hamlet, the clown in this poem seems to be drowning in his own existential quandaries, improvising "a thousand tombs in which to vanish virginal."

The "jubilant gold of cymbal irked to fists" and the "sun" that "smites the nudity" portray a violent contrast between the public spectacle and the individual's raw vulnerability. Here, the sun is not a giver of life but an aggressor, confronting the "nacreous freshness" of the persona. This moment symbolizes the unavoidable scrutiny that comes with visibility, emphasizing the brutality that can accompany exposure.

However, what's most striking is the concluding stanza, a profound lament that embodies the persona's conflict. Despite his immersion in the "foul night of the skin," the persona acknowledges that the greasepaint, a symbol of his artifice and performance, was his "sole anointment." It's a startling admission, implying that the art-however deceiving and superficial-is also a kind of saving grace, a sacred salve for existential wounds. But this anointment is "drowned in the glacial water of perfidy," suggesting that the very art that sustains him also betrays him.

"The Chastened Clown" operates as a meta-commentary on the role of the artist and the complexities of human emotion, thought, and expression. It draws upon the universal themes of identity and existentialism while also grappling with the particular sorrows and betrayals that accompany a life devoted to performance. In doing so, Mallarmé captures the poignant dilemma of a person forever caught between the stage and the self, the mask and the man.

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