"They clipped your wings? Well now you're doing time/ For every verse, for every bloody rhyme."

In a blurb on the back cover of this 1999 collection, noted poet-translator Allen Mandelbaum calls Weinfield's verses "companions to be treasured." To read this book is to put yourself in the company of Hamlet and all others imprisoned by love, brutal worldly intrigue -- and their own mortality. You could choose worse companions.

If you are moved by Yeats and Auden more than the Beats or Lifshin, or simply seek, with Weinfield's Eros,

...sources of the ancient spring,/ the luminous and liquid solacings/ that language proffers us against the void

you might love to undertake "The Sorrows of Eros" - though the poems are anything but simple. Weinfield's Muse is one of lyrical beauty; his mode encompasses classical techniques and the clarity of philosophical argument; yet he carries the burdens of History and contemporary irony. About which, in his own wry way, he will even laugh:

"And some, more pessimistic, said/ That all the poets now were dead./

Blizzards of prose and epidemics/ Of deconstructionist polemics/ Had turned them all to academics."

Much more is here, and there is much more to be said about about a poet who reads his Bible, his Dante, his Shakespeare with both love and barbed wire in mind. (Try the unsparing "An Essay on Violence"). About a poetic vision that has appropriated self-mockery and compassion to a lifetime's searching of our mortal wounds. Weinfield's verse praises, protests, and would fly us out of our mortal prison.

When I read reviews of poetry, however, I usually find myself wanting to hear more from the poet than from the reviewer. After we love the poems, we might crave more biography, insight, criticism. So I want to leave you with the whole of Sonnet Ten, from the first section of the book:

"For years I journeyed in the Land of Prose;/ With other sojourners I sojourned there./ It was a land of Plenty, I suppose,/ But in the end I was a sojourner./ I was a person then, a character,/ And so I happened to encounter you./ It seemed that I had known you once somewhere,/ Though both of us were merely passing through./ How long ago it was I cannot say/ That I departed for the Land of Rhyme;/ But it was long ago and far away,/ And I am finished now with space and time./ When I arrived I learned that I was dead -- / And I am nothing now but what you read."

Now you know the kind of companionship these poems provide.

This a beautiful edition of the COMPLETE poems of one of the most important French symbolist poets. If only all French poetry books could be printed in handsome, large-format bilingual editions like this! The translation is not even half-bad, with Weinfeld doing his best to maintain the actual flavor of Mallarmé's words. Best of all, the poems are translated in a faithful stylistic way-- prose poems STAY in prose, and the early-surrealist poem "Un Coup de Des" keeps its complex typesetting. The commentary is substantial and the poems are arranged in order of the books they appeared in, which makes it easier to follow the progression. Sometimes it seems that Mallarmé is left out of his rightful place in poetry, and this edition should help to alleviate that problem.

This volume of COLLECTED POEMS by Stephane Mallarme
and translated with commentary by Henry Weinfield
is a joy and a treasure. For it contains Mallarme
poems from various of his collections: First Poems,
Satirical Parnassus, The Contemporary Parnassus,
Other Poems, Album Leaves, Street Songs, Several
Sonnets, Homages and Tombs, Other Poems and
Sonnets, Poems in Prose, and A Throw of the Dice.
The best appreciation of Mallarme is cited by
Henry Weinfield in his "Introduction" to this
volume. The comments were by Paul Valery (and
were about Mallarme): "This poet was the least
-primitive- of all poets, yet it came about that
by bringing words together in an unfamiliar, strangely
melodious, and as it were stupefying chant -- by the
musical splendor of his verse as well as by its
amazing richness -- he restored the most powerful
impression to be derived from primitive poetry: that
of the -magical formula-. An exquisite analysis of
his art must have led him toward a doctrine, and
something like a synthesis, of incantation."
This volume contains the texts of the poems in
French on the right-hand side of each page -- and
the translation in English on the left-hand side.
Mallarme is an extremely interesting poet, artist,
and human thinker/creator, for he has a spiritual
crisis in which he came away perceiving: "Yes, I
-know-, we are merely empty forms of matter, but
we are indeed sublime in having invented God and
our soul. So sublime, my friend, that I want to
gaze upon matter, fully conscious that it exists,
and yet launching itself madly into Dream, despite
its knowledge that Dream has no existence, extolling
the Soul and all the divine impresssion of that kind
which have collected within us from the beginning of
time and proclaiming, in the face of the Void, which
is truth, these glorious lies." Yet, even this, is
not precisely what Mallarme finally winds up doing...
for his is a "quest for Beauty and for a transcendent
Ideal and the tragic vision on which that quest is
based."
And all of this is enveloped in the most beautiful
sounds and images...charming and mystifying...for he
is also hermetic in his approach, "Everything that is
sacred and that wishes to remain so, must envelop
itself in mystery."
Here is a portion from "The Afternoon of a Faun" in
English -- then in French:
"...through the motionless and weary swoon/ Of
stifling heat that suffocates the morning,/ Save
from my flute, no waters murmuring/ In harmony flow
out into the groves;" -- "par l'immodible et lasse
pamoison/ Suffoquant de chaleurs le matin frais sil
lutte/ Ne murmure point d'eau que ne verse ma flute/
Au bosquet arrose d'accords;".
"...the ancient technique of verse -- for which I
retain a religious veneration and to which I atribute
the empire of passion and of dreams..."

Mallarme is a classic poet. His poetry made great impact on almost every important modern poet. He follow a road of Baudelaire and Rimbaud, the hard road. Paul Valery's work, for example, can not be even imagined without Mallarme's poems. This book contains all Mallarme's poetry. It is an essential collection for every poetry fan whose taste is not satisfied with mere cliched rhymes. Mallarme is also a paradigmatical figure of modern literature. He is the author of that famous statement: "The world exists in order to become a book."