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Counter to the cliché of a Mallarmé thinker of the Book and the printed Page, this article shows that the acts of reading aloud and recitation are at the very heart of Mallarmé's conception of poetry. According to Mallarmé, lyric poetry, in its highest form that is the Ode, is intimately linked to the chant, that is to say the voice. The Ode is not only meant to be recited or sung, but the “poetic principle” itself is based on the articulatory properties of words, properties by which they acquire a color, a quality and a particular sense: from the beginning, the “poetic principle” implies their vocal realization. By playing against each other the facets of words being actualized by voice, verse acquires an unprecedented evocative strength and fully deploys Meaning. Voice is central to the Ode in order that it recover, by public recitation, its ancient function: ensuring the communion of men within the city. Ode “dramatized or cut expertly,” which Banville's Le Forgeron and Florise (annotated by Mallarmé) exemplify, lends itself particularly well to this function. The cuts materialize conflicts between “prosodic attitudes” and the human passions they express. But these conflicts may be related, on a deeper level, to the underlying drama of the human condition, that is to say the eternal struggle between light and shadow, nothingness and being, anxiety and joy. In inscribing drama within prosody so that it manifests through voice, Ode allows empathy through the consciousness of men's condition, the preferred celebration at the core of human expression.