"Cette blanche agonie": Baudelaire, Mallarme and the ice of sound

In my paper, I examine the negative trajectory delineated by two famous swa n poems: Charles Baudelaire's "Le Cygne" and Stephane Mallarme's poem on "L e vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd'hui". Turning to the swan as a figure for poetic language itself (Cygne/Signe), Baudelaire propels his speaker t hrough an endless chain of images and reflections. Mallarme's "aujourd'hui" , however, situates itself at Baudelaire's on unchanging point of reference : his statice "melancholie". Culminating in the "blanche agonie" of Mallarm e's impotent "fantome", the swan pendant appears to record the loss of the representational function of figurative language and the retreat of the poe tic word into a mute self-reflexivity. However, I argue that negativity ult imately serves as a vehicle through which the modern poet recuperates the v ery origin whose loss he mourns.