Free Writing - Bianco

Mallarme uses space to demonstrate nonsense. This is because the objects within it or those surrounding it define space itself. Mallarme uses this definition of space to his advantage in that he leaves it blank. The words sometimes sway back and forth upon the page but never seem to stay within one defining place on the space itself.  For instance, “

WHETHER

                        The

                                    Chasm

                                                Whitish

                                                            Fulltide….” (Mallarme, 164).

Therefore, the space itself speaks to the reader of those unsaid and said in that the space is defined entirely separately from the words. Space is the silence heard in a ‘Dice Throw’, it’s the silence that we hear in the pauses of the poem. It is these silences that become important to essential nonsense that Mallarme invokes. The silences work with Mallarme’s random capitalization as well. The capitalization that Mallarme invokes interrupts the sensical pattern of the poem itself. For example, “THE NUMBER/MIGHT HAVE EXISTED/except as the fragmentary hallucination of some death throe…”(Mallarme, 177).  It allows for the silences to speak as well, as it shows how loud those silences can be even when the smallest of whispers are heard.