ABSTRACT
In the introduction to his influential and often quoted work L'Univers imaginaire de Mallarmé (1961), the critic Jean-Pierre Richard posits Mallarmé's dream of the dancer's entrechats as an entry into the process of reading the Mallarmean universe. This chapter discusses that the danseuse was often represented as a complex figure of ideal femininity and dangerous sexuality. In contrast to Symons and Levinson, Frank Kermode's seminal work on the figure of the dancer in Symbolism addresses the extent to which Symbolism is a response to its historical and cultural context. To examine the Symbolist fascination with the female dancer, we must first consider the ways in which Mallarme and Valery reconfigure the position of the artist vis-à-vis the work of art through a rethinking of the established binary oppositions of body and soul, material and ideal, or stasis and mobility.
