Stéphane Mallarmé: pure experience and poetry

Abstract

The conception of pure poetry acquires a fundamental role in the discourse of French poets towards the end of the 19^th century, as an expression of the Rousseauian return to language within the framework of a tension between utility and abstraction characteristic of modernity. This study focuses on the position of Stéphane Mallarmé as a key piece of these discussions that are the center of the modern theory of poetry and clarify some of the disputes of the avant-garde of the 20^th century. For this, in the context of French Symbolism and Wagnerism, the Mallarmean concept of “pure notion” is analyzed in the light of the search for an authenticity of language able to recover a naked experience, linking its attempt not only to idealism, but to an experience like the one that will claim the vitalist philosophies almost at the same time.