japonisme

20 January 2007

reading recommendations desired

some say that stephane mallarme's poetry was influenced by japonisme -- not in the way mentioned earlier, the simplified form, without rhyme, as seen in haiku.

it's obvious that he was into these new forms from the east; he made these fans, this notebook, with illustrations borrowed directly from hiroshige.

what has been said is that mallarme took the same things that the visual artists took: a certain use of spaces, a certain focus on nature, a certain "color."

i find that fascinating but you couldn't learn it from me because i have never read mallarme. nor have i read zola, or proust, or much of thomas mann, henry james, andre gide, d h lawrence, or anyone else who could really give me a picture of what it was like living exactly when all this was going on.

so i would greatly appreciate recommendations. if it's a translation, whose version is the best? who should i read? where should i start? thanking you in advance.

(Stéphane Mallarmé-fan for Misia Natanson; Stéphane Mallarmé and François Coppée- inscriptions and drawings in Méry Laurent's album, ca. 1891; Signature fan, ca. 1892; Hiroshige.)

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