Australian Divagations

Book excerpt: Two revolutionary texts by Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898) lie at the heart of this book, the poem Un Coup de dés and the prose collection Divagations. An international team of scholars from Paris to New York explores the multiple connections between Mallarmé and Australia, especially as they are embodied in the works of Sydney poet Chris Brennan (1869-1932), whose writing, according to Mallarmé, offered a «parenté de songe» («a kinship of dream») with his own. With its focus on divagation - or wandering, reverie, and exploration - this book summons forth a Mallarmé seen through a specifically Australian lens, through the focus of a century of critical and creative responses to his work, a Mallarmé whose poetics enfold a particular femininity as well as a particular response to the feminine, and a Mallarmé who possessed the extraordinary gift of seeing inspiring contemporary art.