Baudelaire and Mallarme in Rosa Chacel's Poetry, or on Extravagance

Baudelaire and Mallarme had an impact on Rosa Chacel, who was an attentive reader and translator of classic and modern French literature. Both writers strengthen Chacel's preference for traditional genres such as the sonnet, her favourite poetic form. While Baudelaire serves her explicitly as a thematic model for an open examination of subject matters that are transcendent but also close to ordinary life, the traces of Mallarme in her work are also a central element, though discreet and almost furtive. Beyond the borrowing of several passages, metaphors or themes, Mallarme's influence becomes evident in Chacel's playful use of poetry about everyday life, where the opacity so peculiar to the master of symbolist writers plays a leading role.