Le wagnérisme de Baudelaire et Mallarmé

Abstract

This article analyses the reception of Wagnerian music by Baudelaire and Mallarmé, at two crucial moments in the 19th century in France, in terms of the evolution of musical poetics and its concretiza- tion in literature. Both of them, albeit in different ways, have a well-known admiration for Wagner. Yet, these two great innovators of French poetry also avail themselves of the German composer’s mu- sic to reflect on their own aesthetic ideas. Thus, Wagner is literarised by Baudelaire while Mallarmé, faced with the powerful Wagnerian sound, calls for a silent music emanating from a deconstruction of the syntactic and formal order.