Knipsel uit archief Philip Zilcken 1867 - 1930

This is a page removed from the archive of Philip Zilcken. It is a printed homage to Stéphane Mallarmé, the French symbolist poet who died in 1898. The visual codes here are quite simple, a text framed in black, emphasizing the somber tone of the text. The cultural reference is located in the high society of Paris. Mallarmé held an artistic salon at his home every Tuesday for twenty years. His visitors included W. B. Yeats, Rainer Maria Rilke, Paul Valéry, Stefan George, and many others. The text reflects the sense of loss felt by Mallarmé’s devotees. As a historian, I am interested in the way artistic communities are made, how they are held together, and how their members respond to the death of a leader. Documents such as this, kept in personal archives, give us an insight into that cultural and institutional history.