In an autobiographical letter to Paul Verlaine, on November 16, 1885, Stéphane Mallarmé wrote: “… I always dreamed of and attempted something else, with the patience of an alchemist, ready to sacrifice for it all vanity, all satisfaction… What? It is hard to say: a Book, nothing else, in many volumes; it would be a real Book, premeditated and architectural, and not a collection of chance inspirations, however marvelous they may be… I would go even further, I would say: the Book, convinced deep down that there is but one, unknowingly attempted by whosoever ever wrote, even Geniuses.” If everything in the world according to Mallarmé was leading to the Book, everything around me was leading to Mallarmé’s Book. Today, it is time for me to reveal to you, ladies and gentlemen readers, these original pages, which, emerging from nothingness will later return to the nothingness of poetic space.
Franck Ancel