Mallarme-Flomenbaum

            Mallarme’s writing is very different from other nonsense poetry such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or Lear’s limericks. For example, there is nothing inherently nonsensical about it the way there is about those writings. For the most part, the sentences make sense and the theme, or themes, of the poetry are realistic and largely understandable. However, when one uses different interpretation tools, it becomes clear that at least to some, Mallarme’s A Dice Throw can be viewed as nonsense.
            When one looks up the definition of nonsense, two definitions appear. The first is “spoken or written words that have no meaning or make no sense.” In regards to this definition, Mallarme’s poetry would fail to be considered nonsense. As mentioned before, at least for the most part this poem makes sense and has meaning. However, the second definition of nonsense is “foolish or unacceptable behavior.” While this may be a harsh classification for this poem, in many ways it is accurate. The use of white spaces, also known as “espacement,” and the general organization of the words on the page are very uncommon and are just as important to the poem as the words themselves, which is very unique. Throughout the poem, Mallarme is describing what the whitespace is doing using the placement of the words in an almost onomatopoeic manner, meaning that they are used to describe what they are doing and what they mean. In a way, this idea is similar to the polysemy found in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. While in that work, Carroll is using puns as a form of having a variety of meanings and associations; here Mallarme is using the white spaces and descriptive words as a way to create different meanings and associations with each word or space. An example of this can be found on page 172 in A Dice Throw; Mallarme places the phrase “an utterly lost and lonely quill” in a sea of empty space. The reader is able to feel how totally lost and lonely the quill is. This form of poetry and use of whitespace is almost unprecedented and continues to be uncommon and in some regard unacceptable for a typical poem. Hence, Mallarme’s poem can, and should be, considered nonsense.
            Other tools that must be used to interpret this poem include the idea of patterns. For example, with the poem The Jabberwocky by Carroll, while the words do not make sense and are often made up, one can understand the poem to an extent and its meaning simply because of the pattern of the words. In this regard, we can understand Mallarme’s poem as well. The pattern of the words and their flow helps us make sense of what he is writing about and the emotions behind the words. This idea is different than the one in Jabberwocky because while in that poem the pattern refers more to the makeup of each sentence, in A Dice Throw the pattern refers more to the actual pattern of the word makeup on the page. In that regard, Mallarme is taking this idea one step further. In many ways, this poem is nonsense simply because it is groundbreaking and unique, rather than because it does not make sense.