[Feuilleton] Mallarmé's Cat
Jun. 8th, 2004 12:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
project2501From "Anecdotal Evidence," by Eliot Weinberger, in the Fall 2003 issue of Conjunctions. (As reprinted in the June issue of Harper's.)
On a cold, rainy February night in New York, I remembered the story André Malraux used to tell -- and which, at some remove, was told to me -- about Mallarmé's cat, whose name, almost needless to say, was Blanche.
On a cold, rainy February night in Paris, a thin and bedraggled alley cat, wandering the streets, looks in the window of Mallarmé's house and sees a white, fat, and fluffy cat dozing in an overstuffed chair by a blazing fire. He taps on the window.
"Comrade cat, how can you live in luxury and sleep so peacefully when your brothers are out here in the streets starving?"
"Have no fear, comrade," Blanche replies. "I'm only pretending to be Mallarmé's cat."
On a cold, rainy February night in New York, I remembered the story André Malraux used to tell -- and which, at some remove, was told to me -- about Mallarmé's cat, whose name, almost needless to say, was Blanche.
On a cold, rainy February night in Paris, a thin and bedraggled alley cat, wandering the streets, looks in the window of Mallarmé's house and sees a white, fat, and fluffy cat dozing in an overstuffed chair by a blazing fire. He taps on the window.
"Comrade cat, how can you live in luxury and sleep so peacefully when your brothers are out here in the streets starving?"
"Have no fear, comrade," Blanche replies. "I'm only pretending to be Mallarmé's cat."
