Mallarme Blog Post Michael Belles

Mallarme’s work, “A Dice Throw,” is extremely confusing.  In my opinion, this piece seems to be the most nonsensical of all the texts we have studied thus far.  This opinion is supposing, granted, that nonsense can be quantified or compared to other works of the like.  I am not sure that this is actually the case, but I will choose to make my argument under the presumption that my initial reaction to the poem was accurate—that the piece presents a style of nonsense that may actually be further from the realm of sense than any others we have examined.   Several facets of the poem baffle me, first and most notably, the visible structure of the words on the page. Upon reading the poem for the first time, I was so preoccupied with the how of the poem that I could hardly focus on the what.   Before reading the text, I assumed that Mallarme’s work might resemble the writing in Carroll’s novel, or the limericks and poems that we have studied.  Instead, I found what appeared to be an unintelligible string of thoughts, arranged in no particular order on the page.  (The fact that I read one page at a time instead of reading straight-across probably did not help my predicament.)  As I worked to understand the words and set aside the task of deciphering the meaning of their placement, I found the poem’s content just as convoluted and confusing as its structure.  Much like when I wrote my nonsense piece, the poem reads as if it has been translated (which it had.)  Where I could discern a general theme and idea throughout, I was unable to make out any concise points or really any concrete information.  Sure, I could say that the poem is probably about a man’s life, about the sea, about decisions and their implications. These guesses, however, are just that-- little more than conjecture about the poem’s intended meaning, unable to fully describe the poem’s significance.  Mallarme’s language is indeed the language of nonsense.  In saying this, I do not mean to suggest that his poem is devoid of meaning, but that his use of language and spacing are carefully designed, so it seems to me, to disorient the reader.  The material is made intentionally convoluted in both its use of language and use of spacing.  I do believe, however, that the material is made convoluted unintentionally as well, thanks to its translation.  To maintain the poem’s vocabulary, visual structure, and overall tone while translating it to a different language, seems to me a task that could not go without error.  These factors, coupled with the non-traditional writing style and subject of the work, create a poem entirely difficult and confusing to understand.