Baudelaire and Mallarmé in Rosa Chacel’s Poetry, or on Extravagance

Abstract

An attentive reader and translator of classic and modern French literature, the impact of Baudelaire’s and Mallarmé`s works on Rosa Chacel essentially involves her poetry. Both writers strengthen Chacel’s preference for traditional genres such as the sonnet, her favourite poetic form. While as 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 Mallarmé`s poetry, despite their depth, remain unacknowledged and almost furtive. Beyond the borrowing of several passages, metaphors or themes, Mallarme’s influence becomes evident as a playful use of poetry connected to everyday’s life circumstances, where the hermetism so peculiar to the master of simbolist writers plays a leading role.