Throughout the poem “A Throw of the Dice will Never Abolish
Chance,” Mallarme utilizes white blank spaces to create more meaning behind the
word itself. Among some passages that form and content echo one another, I
thought verses from pages 174 to 175, and 179 were very interesting. These verses
well depict Mallarme’s intention of correlating spacing with the content (or
meaning). On page 174, the word
“mute” is located between two long white spaces. Two blank gaps next to the
word “mute” evoke the feeling of silence and quietness, since there are no
words or sounds that are present in the white spaces, accentuating the
silence. Another interesting
passage that the form and content match together is on page 178. The first
verse on this page starts with the word “NOTHING” and a huge gap is present
between the word “NOTHING” and its next sentence. The white space around the
word “NOTHING” allows the readers to figure out that there is literally nothing
around the word, which shows that the meaning of the word and structure
corresponds each other. I really enjoyed finding more meaning behind the word,
which can be found by correlating the structure and form with the meaning of
word.
I totally agree with you on the fact that Mallarme uses the white spaces to add meaning to the poem but when I first read the poem I thought that he used the white space more as a visualization tool to simulate the throw of a dice rather than add meaning to specific words. When I first read this piece I thought that the spacing was deliberately done in a random manner but now that I read your interpretation I can see how the spacing is used to emphasize certain words. I also think that in these passages that you mention in addition to the spacing the use of capitalization really sets his form apart. It almost seems as if only the CAPITAL words are important and the other words can be overlooked. To surround nothing with white space does add emphasis to how form echoes content but I also think that because he wrote the word “nothing” in all capital letters the reader tends to pay more attention to the word its self. On page 176 the phrases “no” “worse” “neither more nor less” and “but as much indifferently as” have almost the same amount of space around them as well but we noticed the space around “nothing” more because Mallarme emphasized it by strategically using capitalization.
ReplyDeleteAnother interpretation of the spacing could also point to how the poet intended us to read the poem. We talked in class how there is no punctuation used in the entire poem but still when I read it I pause at the line breaks and say the capitalized words a little louder and the smaller lowercase words in a quieter voice. If we look at the poem with this interpretation we can almost say that Mallarme uses spacing and capitalization as a substitute for punctuation. It is very interesting how every person can interpret the white space and format in very different ways but it seems like all of the interpretations are correct.