The New Yorker. A Critic at Large. "Encrypted" Translators confront the supreme enigma of Stephane Mallarme's poetry
This is a lovely article giving new perspectives on Mallarme's relationship to Modernism as well as on translation from french, a very nuanced language, to English, the language noted for multiple valences. Alex Ross is a clever writer, starting out by likening the Modernists to explorers, in this instance, "Amundsen"! Immediately, he has my attention. The illustration is by Hugo Guinness. Another italicized sub heading is: " After only a few lines of Mallarme, you are engulfed in fine mist, and terror sets in. " The Scottish poet Peter Manson publishes a collection of translations in 2012(Miami University Press) . The one cited enploys a swan caught in the ice. " The subsequent sentences are impacted and fractured, the ;jamming together of disconnected images presaging Dadiasim. " Mallarme also affected the visual artists of his time, having helped to define Impressionism in an 1876 essay; Manet, Whistler, Gauguin, and Renoir made portrait...