The undemocratic total work of art, from Wagner to Mallarme, RLC LXXXVIII

This text aims at reassessing the attitude of the poet Mallarme in front of the Wagnerian total work of art. Meeting the challenge of the total art, Mallarme subscribes to an undemocratic project, in spite of his critique. In this regard, it appears that his conception of the Book as a cathedral is combined with another vision of completed art in the nineteenth century: the glass architecture of the Crystal Palace in London. Yet his dream of a new symbolic center of the city, where ideally the poet would exercise a ministry, happens to have been as well a totalitarian fantasy in the twentieth century.