Skip to content

The work of pure poetry implies the elocutionary disappearance of the poet, who yields the initiative to words.

— Stéphane Mallarmé

L'oeuvre pure implique la disparition élocutoire du poëte, qui cède l'initiative aux mots.

Original text (French)

Another quote →

Topics

Poetry

More quotes by Stéphane Mallarmé

The flesh is sorrowful, alas! And I've read all the books.

It is in front of the paper that the artist creates himself.

If only I'd chosen an easy work!

The poetic act consists in suddenly seeing that an idea splits into a number of motives of equal value and in grouping them; they rhyme.

We do not write poems with ideas, but with words.

A remark reported in Psychologie de l'art (1927)

All Stéphane Mallarmé quotes →

You may also like

There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Nature (1836)

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.

T. S. Eliot Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)

Poetry, unlike oratory, should not aim at clarity...but be dense with meaning, 'something to be chewed and digested'.

George Chapman Ovid's Banquet of Sense (1595)

I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.

Michael Faraday

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Stéphane Mallarmé (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.