Zur Differenz von ‚Lyrik‘ und ‚Gelegenheitsdichtung‘: Das Beispiel Mallarmé

Recent Mallarme criticism followed two perfectly opposite trends – one that reads the whole of Mallarme’s poetic production as “poetry of circumstance” (‘Gelegenheitsdichtung’) and another that detects a “profondeur symbolique” everywhere. The present article argues that neither of the two positions can account for the fundamental differences that exist between the collection of the Poesies of 1899, compiled by Mallarme himself, and the Vers de circonstance , published in 1920 by his daughter. In order to make this evident the notion of ‘poetry of circumstance’ that became too vague needs redefinition, and it will be shown that among the Poesies even the Tombeaux poems are something entirely different from the Vers de circonstance , which Mallarme himself had planned to publish separately.