"How, save through obscure Terrors, imagine more implacable still And as a suppliant the god who some day will Receive the gift of your grace! and for whom, Devoured by anguish, do you keep the unknown Splendor and mystery of your being?"
Étienne Mallarmé, known professionally as Stéphane Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French Symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of the early 20th century, such as Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism, and Surrealism.
"Ah well, towards happiness others will lead me With their tresses knotted to the horns of my brow: You know, my passion, that purple and just ripe, The pomegranates burst and murmur with bees; And our blood, aflame for her who will take it, Flows for all the eternal swarm of desire."
"Degas was discussing poetry with Mallarmé; "It isnt ideas Im short of... Ive got too many" [Ce ne sont pas les idées qui me manquent... Jen ai trop], said Degas. "But Degas," replied Mallarmé, "you cant make a poem with ideas. … You make it with words." [Mais, Degas, ce nest point avec des idées que lon fait des vers. . . . Cest avec des mots.]"
"Jinvente une langue qui doit nécessairement jaillir dune poétique très nouvelle, que je pourrais définir en ces deux mots: Peindre, non la chose, mais leffet quelle produit."
"La chair est triste, hélas! et jai lu tous les livres."
"It is in front of the paper that the artist creates himself."
"Yes, I know, we are merely empty forms of matter, but we are indeed sublime in having invented God and our soul. So sublime, my friend, that I want to gaze upon matter, fully conscious that it exists, and yet launching itself madly into Dream, despite its knowl edge that Dream has no existence, extolling the Soul and all the divine impressions of that kind which have collected within us from the beginning of time and proclaiming, in the face of the Void which is truth, these glorious lies!"