Amanda Codling- Mallarme

Mallarme’s can be interpreted in many different ways, including by the angles of words and visual representation, a word as an object or thing and common language practices and language etiquette. In his work, Mallarme delves into a world of convention breaking, while still maintaining conventions that would add to his piece in a very nonconventional way.

He really plays with the original purpose of words. People tend to use words specifically for their meaning. For example, if I were to tell a friend of mine, “hello”, I would want her to understand that I am greeting her since that is the purpose and the meaning behind hello. Mallerme, on the other hand uses words for exactly what they are in many cases, ink on a page. In daily conversation and in works of literature, the words have their own meaning and are given even more by the contextual clues. We were always told as a child first learning to pick up on the context clues if we want to understand what the ‘it’ the passage is referring to was. Mallarme took context clues to a different level with his style of espacement. Much of the words meaning was greater understood do to its placement on the page and its proximity to other words. This gives his texts a sort of visual manifestation of meaning without having used any words. When we were analyzing Lear’s limericks, we noted that his limericks almost don’t have the same effect and meaning had the drawings not been there. In the same sense, Mallarme’s poems would not have the same meaning and would be very confusing had the spacing not been present. To even further his point of words just being there, he changed the style of the writing part of the way through his poem. At one section where this happened, he was talking about a quill. The combination of talking about a quill and changing the writing style to handwriting helped give the passage more meaning. He used a combination of the definition of words, the spacing on the page, the size of the word and various formatting techniques to convey the actual meaning of his words.

In this poem, we see that proper language etiquette, such as punctuation and plot development is lacking. He sets up themes and rhythms that allow the poem to flow on, but does not utilize transitions, commas, or periods. This is something so heavily emphasized in all basic writing. We learn that sentences stop at periods, but if you must pause in the middle of it, include a comma. Mallarme, on the other hand, stops you with his spacing. He never ends his sentences. He ends this thoughts, drives them forward, and stops them with sound. Instead of using exclamation points, he capitalizes, bold faces and enlarges words and phrases. Unlike Carroll, Mallarme does not try to explain himself for disrupting etiquette at the end. He flowed because he wanted to and even if you tried not to, you felt something in reading his poem.

I believe Mallarme is the language of nonsense, because while I did see some themes in this reading, I did not actually understand what was going on. He described different situations and ideas, but there was no formal transition from one to another. His poem was too open. He gave the nautical theme, but he also emphasized the theme of chance. It’s up to the reader to try to understand how everything fits together and understand the true underlying meaning of the poem. If three different people were given that task, the responses would be different. For example, when I read this poem, I thought of a reflection on life. Life is full of chance events and sometimes it feels like the result of many of your decisions is a dice throw. We can’t predict the future, so we just make our choices and hope that “MAYBE” something amazing will happen.