Not everyone is aware of the fact that Mallarmé, the most aristocratic of the Symbolist poets, was also a refined connoisseur of typography, very attentive to all material aspects concerning printing and books. The most emblematic text of this peculiar interest is the poem Coup de dés, but in the formal elaboration of his entire poetic oeuvre, the visual relationship between the printed word and the blank page, the prominence of type and ink on the blank sheet, as well as the incidence of every concrete detail on the aesthetics of the text, is essential.
This book collects for the first time in an Italian edition the reflections, or rather the ‘digressions’ of Mallarmé’s ‘Book form’ (to be written with a capital letter, as the materialisation of the ‘great Work’: of a ‘total’ work), published by the poet under the title The Book, a Spiritual Instrument. Prose of great strength and suggestion, accompanied by three essays dedicated to how this specific interest of Mallarmé’s is expressed in his work and what repercussions it had in the subsequent avant-gardes.
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Published by Ronzani Editore
Edited by Giuseppe Càntele
Translations by Marco Cavalli
176 pages
Paperback
Isbn 978-88-87007-97-8
