The Orphic Moment of Stéphane Mallarmé

Mallarmé embodies a precise moment of the Orpheus myth: 1) the accelerated breakdown of the forms of Western culture at the fin-de-siècle. Using Nietzsche's Apollo-Dionysos contrariety as frame, Orpheus/Mallarmé appears when the Apollonian world of Schein disappears back into its ground, "das Ur-Eine," or Dionysos. Orpheus is the figure of the threshold between their two realms. 2. Mallarmé's Orphlc moment is an internal event, reackoned by the prose-poem, "Le Démon de l'Analogie" (1865). This moment is the beginning of a sparagmos, after which he is painstakingly "re-strung." 3) The moment is a particular stage of Orpheus's mythic pattern: when the scattered limbs first begin to stir back into life. 4) Closely related to this third aspect is a subtle but characteristic oscillation expressed by a tensive quality of language that surfaced throughout the poetry. This "volatilization" is like a reflex, registering the shudder as Orpheus passes between the gaping void of the Dionysian Ur-Eine, with its immense gravitational pull, and the rigid frame of an Apolline form that has lost lts suppleness. (RMcG)