Mallarmé and Roussel. Reading Melville's translation of "La vue" at the same time as Mallarmé's essays, it struck me how early Roussel, writing in 1903, was the "anti-symbolist": his meter is classical and impeccable--no free verse or prose poem for him--and his discourse is absolutely denotative. No suggestion or suggestiveness, no avoidance of direct statement. And yet ... there is a mysteriousness behind all this flat surface--the mystery of why someone would want to write like this.