Mallarmé's Igitur and the infinite at last fixed

• Grant number: 06/04576-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: February 01, 2007
• End date: October 31, 2010
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Modern Foreign Literatures
• Principal Investigator: Philippe Leon Marie Ghislain Willemart
• Grantee: Rosie Mehoudar
• Host Institution: Reitoria (RUSP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 11/08942-0 - Brépols French-Brazilian and other manuscripts, AP.TEM

Abstract

The focus of this work will be a textual and genetic analysis of the final version and early drafts of Mallarmé’s Igitur, ou la folie d’Elbehnon, with an appreciation of the intrinsic logic of each initial outline and of the laws that seem to have guided their evolvement into the definite rendering. Such a method will elicit a better interpretation of this unfinished and, until now, practically undecipherable story.The starting point will be my doctoral dissertation, From the youthful texts to Igitur: the generation of discontinuity in Mallarmé. The thesis does not include analyses of the various drafts and manuscripts, a task that will now be undertaken. Well into the study, however, the story became rather more intelligible with the novel identification of many keywords belonging to Hermetic traditions – such as alchemy and heraldry - and to the cabala. These newly-discovered references, as well as signs of a coded intertextuality between Mallarmé’s text and major philosophical works, will be further studied in the postdoctorate.Igitur resembles a “subject founding” short-story-as-a-play. I will attempt to follow its acts and outline the ensuing vision of a dynamic thought structure (the link between word and idea, images and the void) that underlies the creation process.Concomitantly with Igitur, Mallarmé took down notes for the project of a thesis, De divinitate, that provide a theoretical articulation of subject and language. Together with the other research operations, the reading of these notes will contribute to reexamine and develop the interpretative hypotheses of Igitur that arose in the doctorate.