Week 2: Beyond Realism

THE NUMBER

WERE IT TO EXIST

other than as a scattered hallucination of the dying

WERE IT TO BEGIN AND END           
rising only to be denied and closed off when revealed
at last                                       
by some thinly spread profusion            
               WERE IT TO BE COUNTED 

evidence of the sum however small                      
        WERE IT TO ILLUMINATE

CHANCE             

 "A Throw of the Dice Never Will Abolish Chance"

By: Stéphane Mallarmé

This poem is about a ship captain who is sinking on his boat in the middle of a horrendous storm, while attempting to find some mystic number that would save him from his inevitable death.  The number is unattainable, so Mallarmé seems to questioning why this sailor (or people in general) is looking for something to save them when it is determined by a higher power.  CHANCE is the main idea of this poem.  If by chance the sailor figures out the number, what saves him from the storm or his half-sank boat? 

Mallarmé’s poem is written in a form that can cause the reader some confusion about where to go next, but it is beautifully written so that however it is read some meaning will be gathered. The poem’s structure was an innovative way to write poetry because it defied the set forms of prose or lyrical poetry by utilizing the white space as a way to deepen the meaning of the poem.  In my selected passage, the captain and his boat are sinking, but it isn’t simply straight down, he is tossed back and forth by the waves and white space suggests a lull in the waves.  The typography evokes kind of STRONGER and softer waves crashing against the boat, while dragging it under.

“The Throw of a Dice” is an appropriate poem considering the social and political climate in and around France in the late 1800s.  The Dada movement sought to refine the “rational” thinking of the world.  This passage shows that Mallarmé disagreed with the rationalists around him because it defies the mentality that there may be something to save a person by saying that it is left all to chance.  Everything is not pre-decided and people cannot possibly calculate all outcomes of their decisions, so there much of life is left to destiny or fate.  The government made poor decisions which led to artists in that time period to explore various outlooks on life.