Epilogue Scève, Mallarmé, and the art of transcendence

Summary

Throughout the chapters of this book, I have been suggesting that there exists a very real aesthetic connection between Scève and Mallarmé. A more precise analysis of this literary affinity shall serve as a fitting conclusion to this book. What Valéry saw in Mallarmé's magical power of poetic incantation can be seen in Scève. We now know the formula by which Valéry defined it. His definition of Art and its supreme principle of spiritually transfigured objects applies to Scève and his love words. Délie as the beloved, sensuous object (Valéry's “forme sensible” providing a “séduction immédiate”) becomes the paradisally portrayed image (Valéry's “idée” or “substance précieuse de pensée”) through which the sacred is apprehended, just like Délie as love text is the poetic medium through which the poet communicates to us the same ineffable experience of combining emotive form with higher meaning. What is intriguing in Scève, and can be very revealing and helpful in reading him, is the degree to which he anticipates our more modern symbolist concern with sacralizing the secular. The constant use to which he puts poetry is not simply as a means of recording and relating experience, as other Renaissance poets seem to use it, but as a continuous series of creative acts intent on revelation, as the epistemological means of truly discovering and creating experience.