MALLANWAN

mallanwan, a town in hardoi district, the united provinces, india. pop. (1901), 11,158. under native rule the town possessed considerable political importance, and upon the british annexation of oudh it was selected as the headquarters of the district, but was abandoned in favour of hardoi after the mutiny. saltpetre and brass utensils are manufactured. mallarme, francois rene auguste (1755-1835), french revolutionist, the son of a lawyer, was born at nancy on the 25th of february 1755. he was brought up in his father's profession, and was appointed _procureur-syndic_ of the district of pont-a-mousson. during the revolution he was elected by the department of meurthe deputy to the legislative assembly and the convention, where he attached himself to the mountain and voted for the death of louis xvi. he was elected president of the convention on the 30th of may 1793, and by his weakness during the crisis of the following day contributed much to the success of the insurrection against the girondists. he took an active part in the _levee-en-masse_, and in november 1793 was given the task of establishing the revolutionary government in the departments of meuse and moselle, where he gained an unenviable notoriety by ordering the execution of the sentence of death decreed by the revolutionary tribunal on some young girls at verdun who had offered flowers to the prussians when they entered the town. after the fall of robespierre he joined the group of "thermidorians" and was sent on mission to the south of france, where he closed the jacobin club at toulouse and set free a number of imprisoned "suspects." on the 1st of june 1795 he was denounced and arrested, but was soon set at liberty. in 1796 he was appointed by the directory commissioner for the organization of the departments of dyle and mont-tonnerre. under the empire he was receiver of the _droits reunis_ at nancy, and lost his money in 1814 in raising a levy of volunteers. appointed sub-prefect of avesnes during the hundred days, he was imprisoned by the prussians in revenge for the death of the maidens of verdun, and lived in exile during the restoration. he returned to france after the revolution of 1830, and died at richemont (seine-inferieure) on the 25th of july 1835. mallarme, stephane (1842-1898), french poet and theorist, was born at paris, on the 18th of march 1842. his life was simple and without event. his small income as professor of english in a french college was sufficient for his needs, and, with his wife and daughter, he divided the year between a fourth-floor flat in paris and a cottage on the banks of the seine. his tuesday evening receptions, which did so much to form the thought of the more interesting of the younger french men of letters, were almost as important a part of his career as the few carefully elaborated books which he produced at long intervals. _l'apres-midi d'un faune_ (1876) and other fragments of his verse and prose had been known to a few people long before the publication of the _poesies completes_ of 1887, in a facsimile of his clear and elegant handwriting, and of the pages of 1891 and the _vers et prose_ of 1893. his remarkable translation of poems of poe appeared in 1888, "the raven" having been published as early as 1875, with illustrations by manet. _divagations_, his own final edition of his prose, was published in 1897, and a more or less complete edition of the _poesies_, posthumously, in 1899. he died at valvins, fontainebleau, on the 9th of september 1898. all his life mallarme was in search of a new aesthetics, and his discoveries by the way were often admirable. but he was too critical ever to create freely, and too limited ever to create abundantly. his great achievement remains unfinished, and all that he left towards it is not of equal value. there are a few poems and a few pieces of imaginative prose which have the haunting quality of gustave moreau's pictures, with the same jewelled magnificence, mysterious and yet definite. his later work became more and more obscure, as he seemed to himself to have abolished limit after limit which holds back speech from the expression of the absolute. finally, he abandoned punctuation in verse, and invented a new punctuation, along with a new construction, for prose. patience in the study of so difficult an author has its reward. no one in our time has vindicated with more pride the self-sufficiency of the artist in his struggle with the material world. to those who knew him only by his writings his conversation was startling in its clearness; it was always, like all his work, at the service of a few dignified and misunderstood ideas. see also paul verlaine, _les poetes maudits_ (1884); j. lemaitre, _les contemporains_ (5th series, 1891); albert moekel, _stephane mallarme, un heros_ (1899); e. w. gosse, _french profiles_ (1905) and a. symons, _the symbolist movement in literature_ (1900). a complete bibliography is given in the _poetes d'aujourd'hui_ (1880-1900, 11th ed., 1905) of mm. a. van bever and p. leautaud. (a. sy.)