Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

SUMMER SADNESS, by STEPHANE MALLARME Poet's Biography

Stephane Mallarme's "Summer Sadness" resonates with the tension between the temporal and the eternal, grappling with themes of love, transience, and the quest for a timeless state. The imagery and emotional atmosphere are fraught with a sense of paradox: while the season is summer, associated with liveliness and warmth, the mood is one of "sadness," perhaps an existential form of melancholy.

The opening line sets a scene of intense languor, "The sun, on the sand, O sleeping wrestler." The "sleeping wrestler" metaphor for the sun suggests a paradoxical kind of power-a giant in repose. The sun's rays penetrate the golden hair of the subject, perhaps a woman or even an abstraction of beauty or muse, melting the incense on her "hostile features." The term "hostile" suggests an element of inaccessibility or distance, as if even in this moment of intimacy, there is a chasm between the two entities.

Mallarm� employs religious undertones in "melting the incense," hinting at the act of worship or adoration. These emotions are complex, blending "an amorous liquid with the tears," a mingling of passion and sorrow. Here, tears could signify both the ecstasy and the agony of love-a beauty so overwhelming that it evokes sadness for its unattainability or its ephemeral nature.

The wish for eternal union is then expressed: "Will we ever be one mummified winding, / Under the ancient sands and palms so happy?" The desire for everlasting oneness is tinged with irony; it is a yearning for mummification, a form of existence that is lifeless and static. This is the paradox at the heart of the poem-the yearning for eternal love in an ever-changing world. The imagery of "ancient sands and palms" implies a far-off, almost mythical, place where such unity could be possible.

Despite this, the subject's "tresses" are a "tepid river," embodying a flow that cannot be contained, suggesting the inevitable passage of time and the impossibility of arresting a moment. Furthermore, in this "river," the soul that seeks to understand or capture this elusive beauty drowns "without a shiver / And finds the Nothingness you cannot know!" Here, "Nothingness" is existential, representing the ultimate unknown, maybe even the end of desire and the futility of human aspirations.

In the concluding lines, the speaker longs to taste the "unguent of your eyelids' shore," a metaphor that evokes both the physical closeness and the boundary that exists between them. The final question is whether this closeness can lead to the "insensibility of stones and the azure"-an emotional state as unchanging and eternal as the sky and stones.

Thus, "Summer Sadness" captures the ineffable qualities of human desire, love, and the quest for permanence. It reflects on the paradoxes that define our emotional lives: the warmth that brings chill, the closeness that highlights distance, and the beauty that induces sadness. It captures the seasonal but unseasonal mood of summer sadness, a kind of existential lament for the ever-fleeting nature of human experience.

POEM TEXT:

The sun, on the sand, O sleeping wrestler,

Warms a languid bath in the gold of your hair,

Melting the incense on your hostile features,

Mixing an amorous liquid with the tears.

The immutable calm of this white burning,

O my fearful kisses, makes you say, sadly,

'Will we ever be one mummified winding,

Under the ancient sands and palms so happy?'

But your tresses are a tepid river,

Where the soul that haunts us drowns, without a shiver

And finds the Nothingness you cannot know!