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A Study on Images of Windows in Mallarmé’s Poetry
Cross-Cultural Studies
2020,
60(), pp.83-126
DOI : 10.21049/ccs.2020.60..83
Publisher : Center for Cross Culture Studies
Research Area : Literature
DOI : 10.21049/ccs.2020.60..83
Publisher : Center for Cross Culture Studies
Research Area : Literature
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The purpose of this paper was to verify and rediscover Mallarmé's poetic world by analyzing various images of windows in Mallarmé's poetry. The images of windows in Mallarmé’s poetry can be extracted from multiple pieces, but among them, "Le pitre châtié", "Don du poème", "Sainte", "Une dentelle s'abolit ...", "Ses purs ongles...", "Les Fenêtres", were analyzed. The window in the poetry of Mallarmé was an escape from the confined space, a projection screen that illuminates the light and shape of indoors and outdoors, as well as the base of the painting, and an open space that reveals the empty space open to another world. It was also a passage to communicate with the outside world. Additionally, it was a magical space that provided the lyric subject standing in front of the window a moment to transform. It was an obstacle that bounds this world (“Ici-bas”) and the ideal world (“Au-delà”), but it was also the art itself which was the means of escape and a shelter from this life. Mallarmé’s windows were diverse and in some cases they were opposite each other, which gives Mallarmé’s poetry dynamism. The confirmed and newly discovered points by this analysis are as follow. First, in the poetic situation surrounding the windows of Mallarmé's early poetry, influenced by Baudelaire, the difference with Baudelaire was clear. Second, the world of Mallarmé's poetry focuses on the act of writing and the salvation by it, and comprises the meta-poetry, embodying the act of creation and the work created itself in an allegory. Third, the drama of aspiring to the ideal world with a window motif and devotion to art is mainly focused on evening, night, and dawn. Finally, the window motif and the form of poetry are deeply connected.
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