A Throw of the Dice: The Life of Stephane Mallarme

Beset by financial worries and insomnia, Symbolist poet Mallarme (1842-1898), while teaching in the French provinces, came to define his artistic quest as a constantly changing continuum between being and non-being. Returning to his birthplace, Paris, in 1871, he sought to make art a spiritual vehicle and as such a substitute for religion. This notably perceptive biography replaces the popular image of the obscure aesthete with a portrait of a committed artist torn between the conflicting claims of his poetry and his family. A professor of French studies in Scotland, Millan views Mallarme's life as a series of gambles, from his decision to marry his uneducated German mistress, Marie Gerhard, to his rejection of the Catholic faith and his experimental prose and verse. Millan's literal translations of Mallarme's poems, interspersed throughout the narrative, have surprising power. Photos. (Aug.)