A Throw of the Dice: The Life of Stephane Mallarme

Stephane Mallarme is one of the most influential French poets of the last hundred years. Father of Symbolism, friend of Manet and defender of the Impressionists, supporter of Zola and Rodin, he was at the very center of French creative life at the high point of late-nineteenth-century culture. His emphasis on the limitations of human consciousness and the reflexive nature of expression mark him as a seminal figure in Modernism. As George Steiner has said, Mallarme, along with Joyce, Kafka, Beckett, and Borges, is one of “the master-builders of modern literature.”
Gordon Millan’s excellent biography, the first of Mallarme in fifty years, draws on unpublished correspondence and on new documentation, humanizing this elusive figure and bringing to life an intellectual adventure of rare intensity. In the process, Mallarme’s poetry is brought into a new and sharper focus.