SPECTACLE OF SOLITUDE

January 15, 2025 | Blue Gallery

Stella Chen violin

Sergey Antonov cello

Gilles Vonsattel piano

Narrated by Clement Joseph

Program
Ravel - Piano Trio in A minor

Debussy - Images, Book II

Toute âme est un nœud rythmique

"Every soul is a braid of rhythms."
 

Hermit, mystagogue, man made of words — Stephane Mallarmé lived as an enigma.  Presiding spirit of one of the most influential and exclusive salons in 19th century Paris, he was yet an obscure man, a poor English teacher married to a German governess, a poet whose total published output would scarcely fill a single volume. Yet the gatherings at his humble flat on the Rue de Rome attracted the cream of intellectual society from France and beyond: Rilke, Yeats, Gide, Valéry, Degas, Rodin, Whistler, and Manet all gathered to hear his gnomic pronouncements and discuss art in the highest philosophical terms.

Curated by poet and translator Clement V. Joseph, this program of words and music will evoke the sublime ambiguity persisting in the voice of Mallarmé and the artists he inspired.  Afterwards, coffee and cognac will be served with conversation, in the best tradition of the Mallarmé salon.