Mallarmé on the Poet and His Language

Portrait of Stéphane Mallarmé by Édouard Manet

I am creating a language which must necessarily spring from a quite new conception of poetry, and I define it in these words: To paint, not the thing, but the effect which it produces.

–Stéphane Mallarmé, in a letter to Henri Cazalis, Oct. 30, 1864 in Oeuvres complètes p. 307 (Pléiade ed. 1945)(S.H. transl.)