Mallarme's A Throw of the Dice, the Text as a Blackhole, and the Attainment of Nothingness and Everything

by James Albert Barr

Stephane Mallarme's awe-inspiring and very radical masterpiece of modern, or even proto-postmodern, poetry from 1897, "Un Coup De Des", or, in english, "A Throw of the Dice", begins its primary motif in english, as translated by Henry Weinfield, on the first of a total of what Weinfield refers to as 11 folios, combining both the verso and recto pages as one page, and placing Mallarme's original french text on the opposite page directly over the gap or border or gorge or fold (a Mallarmean obsession, in fact), or perhaps, aptly enough, abyss, where all the book's near 300 pages converge like two crests of a wave colliding head-on, and then taking on the characteristics of quicksand in a white-sanded desert, or even a blackhole swallowing up all matter[s] as it, paradoxically, houses/contains all anti-matter, that is, all that doesn't actually exist, diegetically, in our immediate world. 

Is it not the case, actually, that all books, in general, act as "blackholes", swallowing all content in a book unto totally silent darkness when it is closed/shut? But then, like the light from a dead star, the book's content is once again illuminated for us when we open it - possibilities, contingency, and chance can then engender, incite, generate, kindle, and give rise to themselves among the readers.

Mallarme's primary motif for "A Throw of the Dice" features the typographical proportions of 30-point, bold capital letters spelling out this line over the course of 9 folios: "A THROW OF THE DICE/ WILL NEVER/ ABOLISH/ CHANCE," The first part, again, appears in folio one, surrounded by stark white space. The second part of the motif appears in the second folio where it is preceded by more blank white space, and followed then by the poem's second, or parenthetical, motif which begins with 12-point capitals: "EVEN WHEN LAUNCHED IN ETERNAL/ CIRCUMSTANCES."

The third part of the primary motif pauses through the third and fourth folios, and then reappears again at the bottom right of the fifth folio. And, finally, the fourth and final part of the poem's primary motif appears in the ninth folio, just over halfway down the page. This particular folio is undoubtedly the poem's busiest, loudest, or rather cacophonous and multifarious page. It simultaneously features six disparate motifs interacting/corresponding, or even crashing together, like the aforementioned waves, suggesting a crescendo that culminates with the finale of the poem's primary motif (or expressed, singular line), while the last two folios act as an outro and coda of sorts, bringing the entire masterful poem (or rather, "symphonic piece") to an overwhelming close with this conclusive line: "All Thought emits a Throw of the Dice."

To my utter astonishment, and belated embarrassment, after a thorough re-reading of "Un Coup De Des" back in 2009, particularly after I read Weinfield's 12-page commentary on the magnum opus, I, at last, realized that I had been misreading Mallarme's masterpiece for over a decade! And, not to mention, right under my oblivious nose, I failed to notice that Mallarme basically came up with the idea for what I whimsically called, in 1999, "Echo verse", but I never followed through with it, where Mallarme actually did, with a far more practical and do-able technique. My approach was, in the end, too damned difficult, or even really possible for that matter.

What I had hitherto been taking as mere sequential emphasis throughout "A Throw of the Dice" was/is in fact (thanks to Weinfield's explication, point by point, literally) a typographical divergence and textual division of specific and separate motifs within the same poem! Vaguely similar to what I had envisioned as ends of words forming other words with a converging of the following words, or letters, to form simultaneous, separate sentences within the same sentence, Mallarme simply bypassed such fanciful syntactical ambition by altering the typographical proportions to form his sentences within a sentence to "echo" or accentuate specific counterpoints of expression, like musical movements in a symphony, conjoining all its separate pieces within the same space and time, and most spectacularly, on the ninth folio that creates a textual crescendo climaxing on the word "chance".

Ostensibly, or on the surface, "A Throw of the Dice" appears to have been composed using "free-verse",  but that's not actually the case, despite what some in the literary community, past and present, believe, when closely observing the formal text of the poem in all its multiple facets, while absorbing its divisional content, and its themes and symbols. 

For instance, the eleventh and final folio displays a textual formation that suggests the constellation, Ursa Major, or "The Big Dipper", giving it an ideogrammatic character, and a crucial point of navigation. This concretized, poetic constellation in folio eleven is reinforced by the direct usage of the very word "constellation" in 12-point capital letters that concludes one of the poem's most important and central motifs, which began nearly halfway down the previous, tenth folio beginning, appropriately enough, with the negative word: "Nothing". It's appropriate for a number of apposite reasons. For instance, the word "Nothing" is preceded by a third of a page of exactly that: nothing, just blank white space.

Secondly, the entire line reads: "Nothing/ will have taken place/ but the place/ except/ perhaps/ a constellation." Actually, the entire line, theme, motif begins in the second folio with "Even when cast [Weinfield actually chooses the word 'launches', but I definitely prefer 'cast' as used by Daisy Alden in her translation of the poem back in the late 50s, because it more fittingly associates itself with 'the dice' being thrown, hence 'cast', where Weinfield seems to be correlating 'launches', ironically and paradoxically, with the 'shipwreck'] in eternal circumstances", and continues thusly, ".../ From the depths of a shipwreck/ Though it be/ The Master/ Were it to exist/ Were it to begin and were it to cease/ Were it to be numbered [or better, 'summed up', in the Alden translation]/ Were it to illumine/ Nothing/ Will have taken place/ But the place/ Except/ Perhaps/ A constellation." 

In one of the lower-case counterpoints in the poem, between "Perhaps" and "A constellation", is the line: "the Septentrion as well as North", which further indicates the seven stars forming The Big Dipper, and point to the North Star. The, admittedly, premature point made regarding the word "Nothing" still applies, effectively enough, despite being preceded by its related accents starting in the second folio. This ideogram (or even hieroglyphic) of the Big Dipper constellation recalls Mallarme's famous and sublime "Sonnet en-yx" line: "For the Master has gone to draw tears from the Styx/ With this sole object that nothingness attains", and its last line, "The scintillations of the one-and-six." Both suggest Ursa Major/The Big Dipper, and most importantly, illuminate the beautifully poetic, and thoroughly ironic, meaning of the "sole object that nothingness attains"...

Everything and nothing emanates from what Jacques Lacan, who was deeply influenced by Mallarme, called, The Symbolic Order; the linguistic realm from which all die are cast unto the eternal chance, or arbitrariness, of signifiers and signifieds, which can create a fantastic voyage, a timid docking, or a disastrous shipwreck. The point is to play, to set sail.