Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.
Stéphane Mallarmé
Paul Valéry
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
In the hushed apartment at 89 rue de Rome in Paris, amid the blue cigarette smoke of Tuesday evenings, a soft-spoken schoolteacher held court over the most revolutionary minds in French literature. Stéphane Mallarmé, a man who published fewer than seventy poems in his lifetime, would become one of the most influential figures in modern poetry, transforming language itself into a cathedral of suggestion and silence. H…
“Everything in the world exists to culminate in a book.”
In the autumn of 1871, as France was still reeling from the trauma of the Franco-Prussian War and the violent suppression of the Paris Commune, a child was born in the Mediterranean port town of Sète who would become one of the twentieth century's most formidable literary intellects. Ambroise Paul Toussaint Jules Valéry entered the world on October 30th, in a region where the brilliant southern light seemed to sharpe…
“A serious man has few ideas; a man of ideas is never serious.”
About 616 km separate Paris, Île-de-France, France from Sète, Occitanie, France. Both have ground in Paris and Île-de-France.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Stéphane Mallarmé: paris, symbolists, surrealists, l'azur, hérodiade, l'après-midi d'un faune, claude debussy, mardis. Paul Valéry: sète, franco-prussian war, paris commune, symbolist movement, stéphane mallarmé, la jeune parque, le cimetière marin, charmes.
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
Stéphane Mallarmé: Sorrow, Spirituality, Longing. Paul Valéry: Longing, Sensuality, Tenderness.
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