The Ultra-Spartan Salon of 19th-Century Paris: 7 Things You Must 'Absolutely Never Do' at Mallarmé's 'Tuesday Gatherings'

Deciphering the Rules of the Late 19th-Century Salon Through Grooming and Gaze

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The Detour Called Mallarmé The Chronology of a Room on a Tuesday Night The Seven Articles of Etiquette Outside the Sealed Room __________________________________________________________________

Keep your mouth shut.

First, I must ask.

How did you wear your hat when you came out today?

Did you measure the angle of the brim correctly?
Are the tips of your gloves damp with sweat?

How much city mud have your heels picked up?

If you cannot answer, you have no right to read any further. ──Having threatened you this much, I do not actually intend to blame you.

Even in late 19th-century Paris, no one knew the rules of this room from the start.

For everyone stood before the door in the same way.

However, there is one definition I would like to give you first.

In Vermeer's painting, there is a girl with a pearl earring.

The brilliance of that pearl is nothing more than a couple of white brushstrokes.

The painter did not dutifully paint the scenery of the room that should have been reflected in the pearl.

By placing only a single point of light, he made the viewer imagine that there was an endless room behind it.

A question is similar to this.

It is not a tool to demand an answer.

It is a device that, with just a single stroke of light, makes one feel the presence of a much larger room within the other person.

So, if you are expecting just one single answer from this article, I will tell you now: don't.

What you will find here are not answers, but merely points of light.

This article proceeds with the same intent. Let us begin a story of geometry that summons a cathedral from a single speck of cigarette ash.

The Detour Called Mallarmé

Stéphane Mallarmé.

He was a poet born in Paris in 1842 who passed away at the age of 56 in 1898.

If you were to simply list his career, you would have to call it unremarkable.

For a long time, he spent his days teaching English while moving from one provincial high school to another, in places like Tournon, Besançon, and Avignon.

The young Mallarmé, struck by the poetry of Baudelaire after encountering his work, did not choose the path of depicting the evils and ennui of reality as Baudelaire did.

He chose a more circuitous path.

Instead of naming the thing itself, he would bring to the surface only the presence that the object suggests, through allusion.

If you speak the name of a flower, that flower dies.

To put into words only what the flower suggests without naming it—pushing this paradox to its limit is where the vital point of the Symbolist movement lies.

I would like to pause here for a moment.

The act of naming is, unexpectedly, a rather violent act.

The moment you say the word 'cherry blossom,' the specific tree before your eyes is collected into the common label of 'cherry blossom,' losing the unique texture that only that tree possessed.

This was precisely what Mallarmé feared.

That is why he did not depict the cherry blossom itself, but instead set traps of language using only the 'periphery'—the shadows of its falling petals or the way it sways in the wind.

By erasing the physical object before him, he sought to raise up an 'idea of the cherry blossom' within the reader's mind that was even purer than the real thing.

In 1874, he took up residence on Rue de Rome (now number 89), near the Gare Saint-Lazare.

The Afternoon of a Faun, published in 1876, would later transform into Debussy's music and then be reincarnated through Nijinsky's dance.

The language of poetry had begun to seep out beyond the confines of poetry itself.

The movement known as Symbolism was, in truth, not limited to a single school of poetry.

It had siblings in painting and music that shared the same vision.

The stance of refusing to name objects, choosing instead to speak only through their presence, was budding almost simultaneously in various places during this era.

Mallarmé was the figure who, almost unwittingly, came to sit at the center of it all.

From around 1880, Mallarmé began inviting friends and younger followers to a room in his home every Tuesday evening.

This was the 'Tuesday Gathering'.

For this man, who was elected 'Prince of Poets' following the death of Verlaine in 1896, this small room was no longer just a corner of a private residence.

It was a training ground where he demonstrated every week how an aesthetic that refuses to name things actually walks, remains silent, and holds its breath.

In his later years, Mallarmé embarked on an unprecedented experiment with his poem titled A Throw of the Dice, breaking down the size and arrangement of the type itself and forcing the white space of the page to carry meaning.

He sought to imbue not just the meaning of the words, but the very arrangement of the words themselves with suggestion.

If we consider the rules of the Tuesday Gathering room as another manifestation of that same experiment, many things fall into place.

What was the purpose of the Tuesday Gatherings?

First, let us answer a simple question.

What kind of gathering was the Tuesday Gathering, anyway?

From around 1880 until Mallarmé's passing in 1898.

For eighteen years, every Tuesday night, this gathering was held in a room at his home on Rue de Rome (now number 89) in Paris.

In the Paris of that time, the custom of the 'salon'—where prominent writers and artists would open their drawing rooms to entertain invited guests—was deeply rooted everywhere.

It was an era when many hosts maintained grand residences and held lavish evening parties.

If you were to imagine it in modern terms, it might be easier to grasp if you thought of it as a weekly, free-to-attend reading group held at the home of a writer you respect.

However, Mallarmé's room was far removed from such extravagance.

It was neither particularly large nor elaborately decorated.

A single armchair reserved for Mallarmé was placed by the fireplace, and guests would find their own spots to sit around it.

It is said that some even spent the entire night standing against the wall because they could not find a place to sit. So, who passed through this modest room?

Counting only the painters, the list begins with Impressionists like Degas, and continues with names like Gauguin, Denis, and Whistler.

Among the poets and writers, Verlaine, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Verhaeren, de Régnier, a young Valéry and Gide, Claudel, and even Oscar Wilde, who crossed the sea, all made appearances in this room.

We must not forget the name of the composer Debussy, either.

There were not a few who traveled from across the sea specifically aiming for this room.

It is said that some travelers even claimed that half the purpose of their visit to Paris was to sit around this chair on a Tuesday night.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that almost everyone who built the foundation of what we call art from the end of the 19th century into the 20th century passed through this room.

An anecdote remains about a young listener who visited the room for the first time.

It is said that, out of nervousness, he was unable to speak a word and simply sat in the corner of the room the entire time.

He later reflected that that very silence was the best teacher he ever had—or so the story goes.

They came intending to speak, but returned having learned not to.

In this room, that sort of thing happened often.

However, there is one thing you must not misunderstand.

This was not a place for debate.

Someone presenting their own theory, someone else refuting it, sparks flying—such scenes almost never occurred.

The guests simply listened to Mallarmé’s solitary, improvised discourse, spun in a low voice.

Perhaps it should be said that it was closer to a gathering for sharing silence than a conversation.

The fewer walls there are, the more a small room allows a voice to resonate.

Could it be that Mallarmé defined his kingdom only by the range that his voice could reach?

In 1896, following the death of Verlaine, Mallarmé was elected the 'Prince of Poets'.

Worthy of that title, this single room would later be described as the 'fountainhead of 20th-century arts'.

It was neither a luxurious mansion nor a renowned school. A single poet's private room quietly determined the future of the younger generation—it is in this disparity that the fascination of the Tuesday Gatherings resides.

A timeline of one room on a Tuesday evening

Before eight o'clock at night.

Just as the streetlights of Paris begin to dimly illuminate the cobblestones of Rue de Rome.

Before leaving the house, the guest completes a final check in front of the mirror.

Is the brim of the hat level?

Are the seams of the gloves resting properly at the joints of the fingers?

Are the shoelaces loose?

Even before crossing the threshold, your footsteps have already begun to follow the rules of this room.

And this, without anyone ever having taught you.

The shadows of the street trees make the gaslight flicker.

Your steps as you walk along Rue de Rome are somewhat more cautious than usual.

What will you be asked tonight?

What might you let slip?

Carrying such small anxieties, the guest stands before the door at number 89.

A slight tension runs through the fingertips pressing the doorbell.

The door opens.

The guest first removes their hat, then their gloves.

There is almost no one who would reverse this order.

Gloves are removed slowly, one finger at a time from the right hand—hurriedly pulling them off is never permitted.

You do not touch the other glove until you have finished removing the first.

In truth, quite detailed rules are at work in this method of removal.

When you step into the room, the carpet lies in wait for the guest.

Here, too, there is almost no guest who lands on their heel first.

Everyone shifts their weight quietly from their toes.

As if asking the floor itself for permission.

Some stand by the wall, while others are lucky enough to find a chair.

However, no one ever sits in the armchair placed by the fireplace.

That is the master's designated seat.

Even if it is empty, an invisible sign stands there, visible to everyone's eyes.

The fire in the hearth casts a pale orange glow against the wall.

Perhaps the flickering of this fire is the only thing in the room permitted to move freely.

Looking around the room, there are no surprising decorations anywhere.

Books lined up on shelves, one or two small paintings hanging on the wall.

For a room that would later be called a 'fountainhead' in the coming century, it is surprisingly empty.

However, perhaps that emptiness was the very mechanism of this room.

Before long, Mallarmé lights a small cigarette.

The fleeting scent of the burning match, followed by the rising purple smoke, serves as the signal for the conversation to begin.

The ash grows little by little at the tip of his finger, and someone follows it with their eyes.

Just those few seconds before it falls.

In truth, something that could be called a philosophy lurks even in the hang time of that ash—but I shall leave that for a later chapter.

Once the conversation begins, the guests become listeners.

Sometimes someone interjects with a question, but the question is brief and the voice is low.

Questions intended to prove one's own theory are, first and foremost, not welcome in this room.

Likewise, no one speaks words like 'beautiful' or 'death' directly.

It is said that one young poet started to say, 'It is beautiful, isn't it,' only to swallow his words halfway through.

Avoiding direct naming and speaking only through peripheral phenomena—I will delve into this prohibition in detail later.

Instead, only roundabout ways of speaking are used.

Even when someone wants to ask about a 'new Impressionist work,' they do not mention the name directly, but instead blur the edges by asking something like, 'What about that recent experiment with light?'

Everyone in the room instantly understands the proper noun hidden behind that paraphrase.

Perhaps the ability to understand one another was, in itself, like a membership card for this room.

Conversely, if a first-time guest accidentally blurts out the name of an author or the title of a painting, the air in the room turns cold and stiff for just a fleeting moment.

It is said that some were not invited back the following Tuesday.

In the intervals, tea is brought in.

The footsteps of the server are surprisingly quiet.

Even the sound of tea sets touching is kept to an absolute minimum.

When returning a cup to its saucer, one must focus all attention on the fingertips, placing it down carefully to avoid making the hard sound of porcelain striking porcelain.

However, the tension residing in the collars and tie knots of the guests is far more taut than that of the server.

There is, in fact, a reason for this difference in tension.

As the conversation approaches its climax, the very air in the room begins to change.

No one moves a muscle.

Even the surface of the tea stops rippling.

The angle of a nod is shallow, and its speed is slower than the hands of a clock.

Even the sound of breathing becomes hesitant.

This stillness, naturally, has its own meaning.

The guests leave the room wrapped in the same silence they wore when they arrived.

Not a single person makes a sound with their footsteps until they are outside the door.

Only after turning the corner and entering the darkness beyond the reach of the streetlights do the guests finally relax their shoulders.

From somewhere, the sound of a sigh can be heard.

In that breath, one can feel the weight of the body, which had been left behind in the room until just moments ago, slowly returning.

The above is the basic flow that was repeated every week in the room known as the Tuesday Gathering.

Having read this far, the perceptive reader has likely already realized.

In this room, there are at least seven unwritten rules at work.

Let us carefully unravel each one of them.

The Seven Articles of Etiquette

I will now recover, one by one, the foreshadowing planted in the previous chapter. Four articles concerning the body, and three concerning words and silence. Let us look at these seven rules in order.

I. Shoes and Walking—The Rules of Footwork

Now, step on the carpet.

Try stepping on it if you can.

What are your shoe soles thinking right now?

Have you ever felt guilty about their clunky construction, as if they were from the reign of Napoleon III?

The guests who gathered at the Tuesday Gathering killed their center of gravity the moment they passed through the door.

Not from the heel, but from the toe.

Shift your weight quietly, as if asking for forgiveness from every single fiber of the carpet.

It is said that even that anarchist poet would walk in Mallarmé's room with his ankles slightly turned inward, so as not to step on the embroidery at the edge of the rug.

Have you ever heard the sound of your own footsteps?

Truly, have you ever heard them?

Listen, walking without making a sound is not about etiquette.

It is a ritualistic behavior intended to remove the very weight of existence from the room and transform that space into a place of pure ideas.

Think of a Vermeer painting.

That painter who depicted rooms filled with light.

On the floor, black and white squares are lined up, growing smaller as they recede into the distance.

That grid is not merely flooring material.

It is a ruler used to measure and display depth—something that should be invisible—onto a flat board.

Perhaps the guests at the Tuesday Gatherings were engaged in the same endeavor when they silenced their footsteps.

Subtracting the weight of reality with every step, they transformed the room itself into a sanctuary of pure spirit, detached from the physical laws of this world.

……I suspect that ruler has not yet been drawn on the soles of your shoes.

II Hats and Gloves—The Act of Shedding Boundaries

Your fingertips touch the brim of your top hat.

Rather than touch, it would be more accurate to say you are verifying it.

Then, the gloves.

You remove the black leather gloves, one finger at a time, starting from the right hand.

The movement is agonizingly slow.

As if you are reluctant to take them off at all.

The moment you passed through the door, at which knuckle of your fingers did the seams of your gloves stop?

Do you remember?

It is said that one count always held his arm, with his hat tucked under it, at the exact same angle.

Have you ever measured that angle even once?

The time it takes to finish removing your gloves is, on average, seven or eight seconds.

Any faster, and you are considered impatient; any slower, and you are laughed at for being theatrical.

Do you remember this exquisite timing with your body?

However.

Hats and gloves are neither mere protection against the cold nor simple accessories.

They are like two membranes that separate the outside world of the city from the inside of this room.

It is only natural that the act of removing them would be slow.

There is no reason why the way you peel back those membranes should be rough.

There is a muralist named Puvis de Chavannes.

When you look at his paintings, the first thing that surprises you is that almost no shadows or luster are depicted.

Usually, painters create depth by layering paint.

However, Chavannes did the opposite, creating his compositions by scraping paint away.

It is a painting of subtraction, not addition.

Perhaps the way guests at the Tuesday Gatherings removed their gloves was part of the same design.

The scent of the city, the sounds of the city, the roles worn in the city—they were stripping away these external layers one by one.

What remains at the end is the bare skin, a minimal canvas that cannot be scraped any further.

With those naked fingertips, the guest finally earns the right to step into this room.

The word 'boundary' has a double meaning.

The physical boundary of the glove, and the invisible boundary between inside and outside.

The rules of this room were intended to make one shed both at the same time.

Once the gloves were off, the guest would immediately tuck them into a pocket. They would not roll or fold them, but simply, quietly, banish them from sight.

III. Collars and Ties—Tension at the Neck

The knot of the black tie is tilted to the right by just two millimeters.

Did you notice that the tie of that young painter was like that?

Or that the upright collar of his wing-tip shirt drew a sharp boundary of black and white against his jawline?

The moment Mallarmé spun his words, only that white collar at his neck caught the firelight and shone quietly.

Do you know why? It must be so.

In this room, the part of the body that moves most freely—everything from the neck up—is bound most tightly.

This is to preemptively block the exits through which emotions might leak out into voice or expression.

The painter Gustave Moreau has works titled 'The Apparition' and 'Salome'.

Viewers are first overwhelmed by the density of the canvas.

Jewels, ornaments, patterns—every bit of negative space is filled without a gap.

Usually, a canvas filled to this extent would feel suffocating.

However, the more Moreau's paintings are filled, the stronger the tension they maintain.

The lack of an escape route becomes the very source of the canvas's taut power.

Perhaps the perfectly tightened collar functioned on the same principle.

You preemptively block the places where emotions might erupt with a levee.

The more you block them, the higher the water level rises inside.

That very height of the water level might have been the true nature of the uniquely tense atmosphere drifting through that room.

If you tighten it too much, you choke; if you loosen it too much, the tension dissipates.

To find the perfect way to fasten it, the guests must have spent many nights practicing in front of their mirrors.

The collar of the servant carrying the tea is not tightened as much as those of the guests.

That is precisely why the servant can continue to move quietly.

For water without a levee flows quietly.

If any guest were to carelessly put a finger to their collar to loosen it, the gazes of those around would gather all at once.

That alone could be enough to steal the spotlight for the night.

IV. Tobacco and Ash: The Philosophy of Hang Time

A white cigarette held between Mallarmé's fingers.

Hand-rolled, this was still a novel indulgence in Paris at the time, and from its tip, purple smoke rose, slowly losing its shape near the ceiling.

The ash grew little by little, eventually falling onto the carpet.

Did you follow with your eyes that mere half-second it took for the ash to fall to the carpet?

Does the curve traced by that ash not overlap somewhere with the undulations of the hair of a woman painted by Rossetti?

Why, you ask?

Because in this room, even time was given the same weight as words.

The few seconds it takes for the ash to fall are not merely a physical event.

They were invisible wooden clappers marking the intervals between speech.

There is a printmaker named Odilon Redon.

When looking at his monochromatic black lithographs, one is struck by a strange sensation.

It is not that forms are brought out by light. Rather, from within the darkness itself, creatures consisting only of eyeballs or unidentifiable faces slowly emerge.

It is not light, but darkness that gives birth to form.

That kind of reversal exists there.

Did the flickering of the purple smoke not show the same reversal?

Something with vague outlines, not yet turned into words.

Borrowing the shape of smoke, it floats in the air of the room for just a single moment.

The time it took for the ash to fall might have been the very extension of that fleeting moment just before words are born.

The ashtray is right there.

Yet, no one is in a hurry to drop their ash.

For it is in that interval, letting it fall as it will, that meaning resides.

It is said that Mallarmé himself preferred to let the ash fall directly onto the carpet rather than use an ashtray.

If that is true, then many nights' worth of ash must have been quietly piling up on that carpet.

—Now, so far, we have looked at the four rules concerning the body.

How to walk, how to remove gloves, how to fasten a collar, and cigarette ash.

From here on, we move to the three rules concerning words and silence themselves.

Binding the body with etiquette and binding words with etiquette.

These two are by no means separate matters.

Rather, they are merely the same tension manifesting in different directions.

V. The Etiquette of Questioning—The Voice That Vanishes of Its Own Accord

You aren't thinking of posing a question to Mallarmé just to support your own trivial theories, are you?

Why do you think that young poet held his breath for three seconds deep in his throat before asking his question that night?

The tone of your voice must be low, and the ends of your sentences must dissolve and vanish into the air of the room.

It is absolutely forbidden for the questioner to use their question as a means to show off their own theories.

However—here, a question is not a tool for extracting an answer.

Look at the paintings of the artist Paul Gauguin.

Many of his works depicting Tahiti feature large, intentionally left-blank spaces.

He deliberately leaves areas around the figures and fruits unpainted.

These blank spaces, conversely, give the entire canvas a profound sense of depth.

There are moments when not painting becomes more eloquent than painting itself.

Perhaps the questions at the Tuesday Gatherings served the same function.

A question is like a scale used to measure the density of the silence filling the room.

Questions are posed not to demand an answer, but to gently verify how much stillness has accumulated in the room.

That is precisely why the voice of the questioner must be low and soft.

If the voice is too loud, the scale itself will break.

Silence is like a delicate liquid that easily changes its form with a single breath from the one measuring it.

That is why, in this room, even the act of questioning was refined into a form of etiquette.

A single clumsy question is enough to irreversibly dilute the density of the silence for that night.

That is why it is said that the guests would choose their words three times over before opening their mouths.

VI. Linguistic Prohibitions: The Ban on Naming

"How beautiful"—you should be ashamed of your tongue for even thinking of saying that.

Why did that poet not say "beautiful," but instead rephrase it as "the distortion of glasswork remaining on the windowsill at twilight"?

Not "death," but "a swaying shadow"; not "poetry," but "something that could not become words."

In this room, speaking the words "beauty," "death," or "poetry" directly was strictly forbidden.

That is how it was.

The moment you name something, its living presence is lost.

One of the regulars at the Tuesday Gatherings was the painter Whistler.

Recall the titles he gave to his own works.

That famous portrait he painted of his mother.

Whistler did not call it "Portrait of the Artist's Mother."

"Arrangement in Grey and Black"—he calmly identified only the colors and the composition.

If you name the mother, the painting is reduced to a mere substitute for a photograph.

By speaking only of colors and composition, the painting can finally escape being named.

The prohibition of words is exactly the same endeavor.

The moment you say "beautiful," beauty is trapped within that single word and dies there.

That is why the guests in this room tried to put into words not beauty itself, but only the shadows that graze around it.

There are indeed things that can only be touched by not naming them.

Ironically, that very effort to avoid naming speaks of the subject most eloquently.

Because the outline of a forbidden word stands out all the more clearly precisely because it is forbidden. That is why, in this room, phrases not found in the dictionary were far more eloquent than the words that were.

VII. Stillness of the Body—The Speed of Acknowledgment

That moment when Mallarmé recited a line of poetry.

Did you not find yourself shaking your knee, causing the surface of your tea to ripple?

Do you realize how much that single ripple disturbed the microcosm he had spun?

While Mallarmé is speaking, the listener must not move a muscle.

The angle of your nod must not exceed fifteen degrees, and its speed must be slower than the hands of a clock.

—Why?

Let us return to Vermeer once more.

This time, it is not the floor tiles.

It is the stillness of the figure depicted in 'Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window'.

She seems as though she might move at any moment, yet she never does.

That stillness, as if frozen in time.

The unique tension that drifts through Vermeer's paintings is born not only from his technique of light, but from this way of depicting stillness.

To stop the body is to temporarily put one's self as an object to sleep.

Leaving only your breath, you erase the presence of your limbs.

Then, you transform into a creature made only of ears.

Mallarmé's voice becomes the only thing moving in the room.

Perhaps this was exactly the state that the guests of the Tuesday Gatherings were aiming for.

An audience of ears alone, having shed the weight of being physical objects.

Nodding slower than the hands of a clock is not as easy as it sounds.

Try it now: move your head more slowly than a second hand.

You will likely start to tremble in less than a few seconds.

Looking at it this way, this article, which began with the rules at our feet, has come full circle and returned once again to Vermeer.

From the floor tiles to the motionless figure. This circle is no coincidence.

Outside the Closed Room

Now that we have finished looking at the seven rules, let us step outside the room for a moment.

It is time to pull the camera back and take another look from a distance.

Why could these seemingly trivial manners hold such great significance?

The answer is surprisingly simple.

The rules of the room known as the Tuesday Gatherings were a microcosm of the Symbolist movement itself.

If you name a flower, the flower dies.

Refusing to name things, relying only on suggestion, and attempting to reach what lies beyond the object—that is the path chosen by the poets and painters of this era.

Muffling one's footsteps, removing gloves as if they were precious, and describing the glasswork of twilight without saying the word 'beautiful'—all of these were merely physical demonstrations of the same singular stance.

Mallarmé demonstrated this every week, not just through words, but through the room itself.

The more trivial a manner seems, the more it actually reveals.

Grand claims often lie.

However, small habits that even the person themselves is unaware of—like how one carries their shoes or takes off their gloves—rarely lie.

That is precisely why this article has chosen to begin not with the history of grand ideas, but from small places like shoe soles and collars.

In other words, the Tuesday Gatherings were another poem, placed outside of poetry.

It was a poem of the body, written not on paper, but with shoe soles, gloves, and collars.

To be honest, even now that I have finished writing these seven rules, hesitation remains.

Should we call those who willingly submit themselves to such restrictive rules elegant, or should we call them ridiculous?

However, there is likely no need to rush that judgment.

Elegance and the ridiculous are, in many cases, merely the front and back of the same gesture.

The sight of a guest walking while muffling their footsteps might appear ridiculously exaggerated to an outsider.

Yet, there was a stillness that could only grow within those exaggerated gestures.

Much of the pursuit of art is born from the accumulation of ritual-like behaviors that may seem ridiculous to onlookers.

The Tuesday Gatherings were merely one typical example of this.

The rules of this closed room would soon be repeated in other places, albeit in different forms.

For instance, in the studios of painters.

The next time the reader leaves this room, they will surely find traces of the same rules from this room in the tiny movements of the painters and writers passing through the city streets.

You will no longer be able to remain indifferent to even the way someone carries their shoes.

Now, at the beginning of this article, I provided you with a definition.

Vermeer's Pearl—that single point of light does not faithfully depict the room that should be reflected in the pearl.

With just a single stroke, it conveys to the viewer only the presence of the vast room beyond.

The rules of the Tuesday Gatherings were built on the exact same mechanism.

Footsteps, gloves, collars, ash, questions, words, stillness.

None of these are the answer itself.

They are merely a single stroke of light.

That is why this article, too, did not attempt to explain all seven rules in full.

Because the moment they are fully explained, they cease to be rules and degenerate into mere regulations.

However, everyone who gathered at the Tuesday Gatherings knew that beyond that single stroke, a tremendously vast room called Symbolism stretched out.

And now, you, having finished reading this article, have also taken one step into the entrance of that room.

—Now, you might want to check your shoelaces once more.

References [ ☽ ]

"Stéphane Mallarmé" Wikipedia Japanese Version, Bibliothèque nationale de France "Stéphane Mallarmé, « prince des poètes »"

Musée Mallarmé (Vulaines-sur-Seine) Official Website

Gordon Millan, "Mallarmé's Tuesday Gatherings: Myth and Reality," translated by Yasuo Kashikura, Kōrosha, 2012

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