A Throw of the Dice

a Form in the Image of the Starry Sky

Abstract

The aim of this article is to demonstrate that the main innovations of A Throw of the Dice, namely, the prismatic subdivisions of the Idea, the total-word and the double page, fulfill the ambitions of Mallarmé’s two unfinished writing projects, The Book and Igitur, if we understand that the center of the poem’s form lies in the creation of multiple space-time relation. Throughout this article we argue that this continuity is due to the task that the poet set himself from a very early age: to create a form for the infinite by condensing the possibilities of literature into a limited space like a book. We will expose the functions of the formal innovations in the poem mentioned above, based on the “Notes en vue du Livre” published in the Pléiade edition of the Complete Works in 1998, which have not yet been the subject of a systematic analysis. To think the Mallarmé’s concepts of chance and infinity, we’ll focus on Igitur. The relevance and pertinence of this article lies in the attempt to show that the form of the poem and the multiple spatio-temporal relationships stage the infinite possibilities of literature and, by extension, of experience, which, like it, has its conditions of possibility in space and time, at least, since and according to Kant.