Mallarmé traduttore di Poe

Abstract

This research put a series of questions about Stéphane Mallarmé's activity of translation. As the critics have already shown, Edgar Allan Poe was one of the most important poets to affect Mallarmé's writing and poetical theory. This influence could be found and studied along the very important work of translation who commits the French poet from his early youth. The poetry of Poe was, in fact, the first approach to the English language by Mallarmé; but also his first essay of translation (like some manuscripts of Glanes, Mallarmé's early papers of poetry, prove us); and, surely, one of the longest editorial project who Mallarmé pursues, for about thirty years. In this pleading, Mallarmé takes the place of his master Baudelaire, who translated in French quite all Poe's tales. Mallarmé's translation of poetry is made in different periods, like a work in progress who goes along with the poet. It involves a poetic of translation that, as we try to demonstrate, is not so far from the language speculations of Les Mots anglais. Finally, it cannot be considered (and read) without a mention to the important Poe's essays on poetry making, like the Philosophy of composition. If Poe's poetry, like Baudelaire's too, took the first attention of the young Mallarmé, no doubt there was those writings who built a durable worship for the American poet in the soul of the French. Appendixes 1 and 2 contain a transcription of some manuscripts from Mallarmé's Glanes