Student Question
Analyze the poem "The Flowers" by Stéphane Mallarmé.
Quick answer:
In "The Flowers," Stéphane Mallarmé explores the ideal of the newly created earth through the lens of flowers, presenting a picture of innocence with hints that corruption and sorrow will soon enter into the perfect world. The poet uses vivid imagery, metaphor, and allusions as he explores his theme.
Stéphane Mallarmé's poem “The Flowers” is a poem of six stanzas that tries to create (or recreate) an ideal world through descriptions of flowers. The original poem is in French, and it features an abab rhyme scheme that doesn't tend to extend into English translations.
The poet begins by looking back to the days when the earth was young, to the “golden showers” and the “eternal snow of stars” that appear on the earth's first day. He addresses someone directly, noting how “you” have unfastened “giant calyxes” for the young earth. A calyx is the part of the flower that protects its bud and then opens up to allow the flower to bloom. Someone is now allowing the earth to bloom as a flower.
And bloom it does. The poet speaks of many kinds of flowers that grow and gleam in this newly-created world. The seraphim (a class of angels)...
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walk among these beauties. The poet usesmetaphor to help us picture the flowers, saying, for instance, that the young gladioli have “the necks of swans.” He also foreshadows that this perfect world will not last, for the “laurels divine” later provide dreams for “exiled souls” (an allusion to Adam and Eve after they are expelled from the Garden of Eden).
There is also a “cruel rose” in this garden, “Hérodiade blooming in the garden light.” Hérodiade here refers to Salome, the daughter of Herodias who danced for King Herod and then demanded (at her mother's urging) the head of John the Baptist (see Mark 6 and Matthew 14). Hérodiade is a common symbol for Mallarmé, and she expresses a complexity of character. The rose here foreshadows such a woman.
The poet continues with references to the “sobbing whiteness of the lily” and to the “sea of sighs” and the “weeping moon,” suggesting that creation is or will be all too soon plunged into sorrow. But now a “hosanna” rings out as creation celebrates. The poet then speaks to a “lady,” a “mother,” perhaps Mother Earth, who brings forth flowers with love.
The poet, however, finds himself weary, for the world is no longer what it was in its youngest days. He is now “withering on the husk” even as he searches for the ideal that once existed in the gardens of the newly-formed earth.