Mallarmé and Apollinaire: The Unpunctured Text

Abstract

It is common for modern French verse to be printed without punctuation. This raises the question of whether the rhythms of speech, as denoted by the line endings of verse, correspond redundantly to the syntactic and semantic patterns of the ideas expressed, as normally denoted by other punctuation. It is argued that in the verse writings of Stéphane Mallarmé, the suppression of normal punctuation, resulting in irresoluble ambiguities or in obscurities resolved only later in the text, obliges the reader to be especially conscious of his usual expectation of syntactic and semantic guidance and so requires him to concentrate to an exceptional degree on the tension between the physical activity of speech and the related ideational activity. In the work of Guillaume Apollinaire, on the contrary, the effect of omitting punctuation is to ensure that the reader can recognize simultaneously the varied sense perceptions related by the poet and to emphasize the immediately perceptible energetic rhythm of speech.