STEPHANE MALLARME
(1842-1898)

"Art as Aristocratic Mystery" [1862]

Whatever is sacred, whatever is to remain sacred, must be clothed in mystery. All religions take shelter behind arcana which they unveil only to the predestined. Art has its own mysteries.

We can find an example of this in music. If we open any work of Mozart, Beethoven, or Wagner and glance quickly at the first page, we will be overcome with religious astonishment at the sight of those macabre processions of rigid, chaste, and undeciphered signs. Then we will shut the missal, and it will still remain untouched by any profane thought.

I have often wondered why one art in particular, the greatest of arts, has been refused this necessary characteristic; an art which faces hypocritical curiosity without mystery, blasphemy without terror, and suffers the smiles and grimaces of the ignorant and the hostile.

That art is poetry. Flowers of Evil, for example, is printed with the sort of type which burgeons forth every morning in the flowerbeds of some utilitarian tirade, and it is sold in black and white books which are exactly the same as those filled with the viscount of Terrail's prose or Mr. Legouvé's poetry.

Thus those who are first in line go right into a masterpiece; and ever since the beginning of poetry, no one has kept these intruders away by inventing an immaculate language, a series of sacred formulae which would blind the common eye with dull study, but arouse the patience of the predestined. And to think that the admission ticket of these intruders consists of a page of the alphabet which they have learned to read!

Oh, golden clasps of ancient missals! Oh, immaculate hieroglyphs of papyrus rolls!

What is the result of this absence of mystery?

Poetry, like all things of perfect beauty, is perforce admired. But the admiration is distant, vague - a stupid admiration since it is the mob's. Then, because of this general reaction, a fantastic, preposterous idea occurs to these minds: namely, that poetry must be taught in school; and so, like anything else that is taught to the many, poetry is inevitably reduced to the level of a science. It is explained to all alike, democratically. For it is difficult to tell in advance which tousled head contains the white sibylline star.

Therefore, since nobody can be fairly called a complete person if he does not know history (i.e., a science), if he misunderstands physics (i.e., a science), so nobody has received a solid education if he cannot judge Homer and read Hugo (i.e., men of science).

A man (I mean one of those men, who has received the empty title of "citizen" from modern vanity, since the latter is hard up for flattering names), a citizen, (and this has sometimes made me think, and proudly confess, that music, which is an aroma breathed out by the censer of dreams, is yet different from more palpable aromas in the sense that it brings with it no ecstatic delight), this man, as I was saying, or rather this citizen, strides through our museums with a careless freedom and an absent-minded frigidity which he would not dare exhibit even in a church. For there he would know that he must at least pretend to be interested in some way. From time to time he turns to Rubens and Delacroix with a glance reeking of vulgarity. If we whisper the names of Shakespeare or Goethe as quietly as we can, this character lifts his head as if to say: "That's for me."

The fact is that, since music is an art, since painting is an art, since sculpture is an art in everybody's mind; and since poetry is no longer an art in anybody's mind (and notice that people would be ashamed if they were not acquainted with poetry; yet I don't know anyone who has to be ashamed of not being an expert in art), music, painting, and sculpture are therefore left to "those who are in the business," whereas people learn poetry because they want to appear educated.

It should be said here that certain awkwardly heroic writers are wrong to call the mob to account for its inept taste and nonexistent imagination. "To insult the mob is to degrade oneself," as Charles Baudelaire rightly observed; and in any case, the artist should scorn to attack the Philistines. However glorious and saintly the exception may be, he still proves the rule. And who will deny that the rule is the absence of ideal? Then again, it is not only the serenity of scorn that impels us to avoid these recriminations; reason teaches us that they can only be useless or harmful: useless if the Philistine pays no attention to them; harmful if he becomes irritated with the widespread stupidity of the mob, clings to the poets, and thus swells the army of false admirers. I prefer the profane to the profaner. Let us remember that the poet (whether he rhymes, sings, paints or sculptures) is not on a level beneath which other men crawl; the mob is a level and the poet flies above it. Seriously, has the Bible ever told us that angels mock man because he has no wings?

Men must be made to believe that they can be complete even if they have not read Hugo's poetry, just as they believe that they are complete even if they have not read Verdi's music at sight. The educational bases of the multitude need not include art; that is, a mystery accessible only to the very few. The multitude would profit in that they would no longer waste time dozing over Virgil and could devote that time to action and to a practical purpose. Poetry, on its side, would profit because it would no longer be irritated (only a slight irritation, it must be admitted, for something which is immortal) by the barking sounds of a pursuing pack of creatures who, simply because they are educated and intelligent, think they have the right to judge it or, even worse, dictate to it.

But, after all, poets, and even the greatest poets, are perfectly acquainted with that difficulty.

In other words, I congratulate any philosopher who seeks popularity. He is not supposed to close his hand irrevocably upon the fistful of radiant truths that it holds; he scatters them, and it is proper that each of his fingers should leave them in its luminous wake. But when a poet, a worshipper of beauty which is inaccessible to the mob, is not content with the Sanhedrin of art, then I am bothered and I simply don't understand.

Let man be democratic; the artist must separate and remain an aristocrat.

And yet this is precisely what does not happen. Cheap editions of the poets' work are increased with the consent and even the blessing of the poets themselves. Oh, dreamers, oh, singers, do you suppose that this is the way to win glory? When the artist alone possessed your work you had a true admirer, even hough he had to spend his last cent for the most recent of your gems. But does this mob understand you now that it has bought you because you were cheap? One last barrier - the seven francs it would have to spend - still separated you from the mob's desires (desires already cheapened by teaching), and now you foolishly knock that barrier down! Oh, enemies to yourself! Why do you encourage (even more through your doctrines than through the price of your books, which is not entirely in your own hands), why do you preach that blasphemy which is the popularization of art? So then, are you going to walk in the company of those who blot out music's mysterious notes (this is not a laughing matter, for the idea has spread everywhere), who unveil its mysteries to the crowd? Or in the company of those who spread it to the countryside, at any price; who care not whether the playing is out of tune, so long as there is playing? What will come of this on some future day, on the day of judgment? You too will be taught, like those great martyrs Homer, Lucretius, and Juvenal!

You may say: "What of Corneille, Molière, and Racine? They are popular and glorious:" No, they are not popular. Their names are popular, perhaps; but their poetry is not. The mob has read them once, that is true; and without understanding them. But who rereads them? Only artists.

You have already had to pay the penalty: for in the midst of your exquisite and dazzling works you have occasionally scattered verses which lack that high aroma of supreme distinction which usually hovers about them. And these are the verses which the mob will admire. You will stand by helplessly and see that your true masterpieces are accessible only to exceptional spirits and neglected by this mob which never should have seen them at all. If this were not already true, if the masses had not already withered his poems, it is certain that the truly radiant works of Hugo would not be Moses or Pray, my child, as the masses think they are, but Faun or Tears in the night.

The present hour is a grave one. The people are being educated and great doctrines are going to be spread. If there is a popularization, let us make sure that it is a popularization of the good, not of the beautiful; that your efforts do not tend - and I trust that they have not tended in that direction - to make you a workers' poet, which would be grotesque, if it were not pitiful, for the truly superior artist.

Let the masses read works on moral conduct; but -please don't let them ruin our poetry.

Oh, poets, you have always been proud; now be more than proud, be scornful!