This is the first English translation of Ranciere's study of the 19th century French poet and critic Stephane Mallarme. In this concise and illuminating study, Jacques Ranciere, one of the world's most popular and influential living philosophers, examines the life and work of the celebrated nineteenth-century French poet and critic, Stephane Mallarme. Ranciere presents Mallarme as neither an aesthete in need of rare essences and unheard-of words, nor the silent and nocturnal thinker of some poem too pure to be written. Mallarme is the contemporary of a republic that is seeking out forms of civic worship to replace the pomp of religions and kings. If his writing is difficult, it is because it complies with a demanding and delicate poetics that is itself responding to an exceptional awareness of the complexity of an historical moment as well as the role that poetry ought to play in it.

雅克•朗西埃（Jacques Rancière，1940— ）当代法国最重要的哲学家之一，欧洲研究生院哲学教授，巴黎第八大学哲学荣誉教授。其写作内容主要集中于美学、艺术哲学、政治哲学等领域。代表作有《图像的命运》《政治的边缘》《文学的政治》《词语的肉身》《哲学家和他的穷人们》等。

译者简介

曹丹红，1980年出生于浙江宁波，1999年进入南京大学法语专业学习，2008年取得博士学位。现为南京大学外国语学院副教授、硕士生导师，法国巴黎索邦大学访问学者，主要研究方向为翻译学、法国文论。已翻译出版了《批评与临床》《日常生活颂歌》《柏拉图的理想国》《艺术家的责任》等多部法国文学及社科名著。