This book examines afresh the web of similarities and differences between music and poetry using works by Mallarmé and Debussy as case studies. It challenges the easy metaphorical impressionism that has characterized much of the scholarly literature to date. Analysing Mallarmé's vision of a shared musico-poetic aesthetic, Elizabeth McCombie derives a set of performative structural motifs, analytical tools that express our experience of the two arts and their middle ground.

Stephane Mallarme was the most radically innovative of nineteenth-century poets, and a key figure in Modernism. His writings, with their richly sensuous texture and air of slyly intangible mystery, perplexed or outraged many early readers; yet no writer has more profoundly influenced the course of modern poetry - in English as well as in French. This is the fullest collection of Mallarme's poetry ever published in English, and the only edition in any language that presents his Poesies in the last arrangement known to have been approved by the author. Prose poems, uncollected verse, and the unique, unclassifiable Un Coup de des... (A Dice Throw...) are also present, including over 20 items that have never previously been translated. Original spelling, punctuation, and lineation have been preserved throughout.
The lucid, wide-ranging introduction provides a clear survey of Mallarme's work and deals fully with the difficulties that may face readers approaching it for the first time. Collected Poems offers both Mallarme lovers and first-time readers a full understanding of this astonishing poet's work.
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