Mallarme's Aesthetics of Nothingness and Absence

Mallarme is undoubtedly one of the most influential poets and thinker of 19th century. However، his significance goes beyond his major contribution in developing the tradition of “pure poetry”. Indeed، his train of thought becomes a vessel for the main routes of philosophy and critical theory for 20th century and beyond. He took a life time effort in establishing the ground work of “pure poetry “by concentrating on language. Using techniques such as conceptualization and dematerialization، Mallarme tried to reach the essence of entities striped away from the appearance of things. Having borrowed from Hegel’s dialectics reflected between the reality and understanding on the one hand and the world of essence and nothingness on the other، he formed a new type of aesthetics. Henceforth، his poetry should be termed the poetry of nothingness and absence. It is absolutely difficult، if not impossible، to find a predecessor who has paid systematic attention to the concept of negation and the element of absence in the process of signification. In this study، the researcher moves towards Mallarme’s aesthetics، labeling it the “aesthetics of negation.” He also attempts to explore Mallarme’s high poetic pedestal for word as a transcendental entity and finally the poet’s impact on the late 20th century critical theory and literary studies will be presented