Feathery Traces: The (Dis)appearance of the Angel in the Work of Mallarmé

Abstract

Religion & Literature 186 Newman, John Henry. “The Powers of Nature: The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels.” In Parochial and Plain Sermons. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997. —–. “The Dream of Gerontius.” In Verses on Various Occasions, by John Henry Newman. London: Longmans Green & Co., 1903 Nichols, Aidan. All Great Art is Praise: Art and Religion in John Ruskin. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2016. Pater, Walter. Appreciations: with an Essay on Style. London and New York: Macmillan and Co., 1889. Potter, Dylan David. Angelology: Recovering Higher-Order Beings as Emblems of Transcendence, Immanence , and Imagination. Cambridge: James Clarke, 2017. Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Jakob ringt mit dem Engel [Jacob Wrestling with the Angel]. C. 1659, oil on canvas, 4.6 x 3.10 in. Gemäldegalerie der Staatlichen Museen, Berlin. Rossetti, Christina.Christina Rossetti: The Complete Poems. Edited by R. W. Crump. London: Penguin, 2005. Ruskin, John. The Library Edition of the Works of John Ruskin. 39 vols. Edited by Cook and Wedderburn. London: George Allen, 1903-12. —–. Ruskin in Italy: Letters to his Parents. 1845. Edited by Harold J. Shapiro. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972. Stanford, Peter. Angels: A Visible and Invisible History. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2019. Tolkien, J. R. R., On Fairy-Stories. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1947. FEATHERY TRACES: THE (DIS)APPEARANCE OF THE ANGEL IN THE WORK OF MALLARMÉ1 Felix Schmelzer The Nicene Creed refers to God as “maker of heaven and earth, and of all that is, seen and unseen,” words that imply a profound unity of the material and spiritual (invisible) universes.2 Within the Christian vision, neither would be complete without the other.3 Throughout the modern age, this vision is increasingly undermined by a materialist determinism, the key element of a one-sided scientific worldview. Placing themselves in opposition to an absolutist notion of scientific knowledge, many romantic writers have tried to reintegrate the spiritual dimension into European culture, with poetry especially becoming one means of doing so.4 This is, of course, a somewhat simplifying generalization, which nonetheless bears a tendential truth. Important to point out here is that Stéphane Mallarmé, though widely regarded as the most “modern” of all nineteenth-century poets, is still driven by this romantic impulse; in other words, the idea of a profound unity between matter and spirit, and the question of how to FORUM 187 express this unity in words to overcome a merely materialist vision of the world, is essential to his work. As we shall see, the motif of the angel, the spiritual creature per se, is closely related to that idea. In Mallarmé’s early work, the world still seems in order. Omnipresent and irresistible ties, such as a “virgin’s white thread” hanging down from the sky, hold together that which belongs together, celestial purity (always “white” for Mallarmé) and material existence.5 In Mallarmé’s own words: “The rose loves the lily.”6 The most important, or at least most frequent, tie between the two worlds is the angel. Mallarmé’s early poetry almost seems overcrowded by white-winged messengers mediating between Heaven and Earth. Marchal characterizes this period appropriately as an “ancient angelic dream.”7 Oftentimes, the angel is evoked metonymically by “feather” or “wing,” body parts that suggest the idea of an ascension to the invisible sphere—angels are invisible by definition—particularly well. Mallarmé would not be as modern as he is if this Christian and romantic conviction of continuous contact between the visible and the invisible worlds, or at least the possibility thereof, had not been placed severely in doubt. From 1862 onwards, the old Heaven (“Azur”) becomes, in the Baudelairian tradition, more and more unreachable.8 Angels still appear in the poems, but now in the form of featherless beings, incapable of ascending. The connection with heaven has been interrupted, the tie cut. These pitiful creatures can be read as a metaphor of poetic failure. In “Les fenêtres,” the poet, in an act of self-contemplation, recognizes himself as an angel (“je me mire et me vois ange” [I look at myself and see mysef as angel]), only to realize at the same time that he has lost his feathers...