​Thomas A. Williams, from Mallarmé and the Language of Mysticism

​Thomas A. Williams, from Mallarmé and the Language of Mysticism:

From the very beginning of the act of writing, the poet is struggling to redeem, by some magic, the natural opacity of and impurity of language. The first black mark on the white page is a movement away from that vision which constitutes the poet's essential 'letter to the world'.

From that initial admission of failure - failure insofar as he has not been able to utter the perfect Verbe - the poet must go on to spin out of himself some pattern of sound, image and rhythm, some analogy which will serve as the objective emblem of his subjective conviction. He must embody the truth that he cannot rationally 'explain'. But how?

Any technique that will serve this transcendent end of art is admissible. Mallarmé's concern is not, simply, communication, but a certain kind of communication, the communication of an ineffable, uniquely, and supremely meaningful quality of a subjective experience. If he turns to what others consider inexcusable obscurity of expression, it is because that is exactly what is required by the nature of his vision.