Log24

Ennui of the First Idea

The ennui of apartments described by Stevens in "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction" (see previous entry) did not, of course, refer to the "apartments" of incidence geometry.  A more likely connection is with the apartments — the "ever fancier apartments and furnishings" — of Stéphane Mallarmé, described by John Simon as the setting for what might plausibly be called, in Stevens's words, "an ennui of the first idea":

"Language was no more than a collection of meaningless conventional signs, and life could absurdly end at any moment. He [Mallarmé] became aware, in Millan’s* words, 'of the extremely fine line

separating absence and presence, being and nothingness, life and death, which later … he could place at the very centre of his work and make the cornerstone of his personal philosophy and his mature poetics.' "

— John Simon, Squaring the Circle

* A Throw of the Dice: The Life of Stéphane Mallarmé, by Gordon Millan

The illustration of the "fine line" is not by Mallarmé but by myself.  (See Songs for Shakespeare, March 5, where the line separates being from nothingness, and Ridgepole, March 7, where the line represents the "great primal beginning" of Chinese philosophy (or, equivalently, Stevens's "first idea" or Mallarmé's line "separating absence and presence, being and nothingness, life and death.")