One of the passages that stuck out to
me the most from Mallarme’s poem “A Dice Throw” appeared on page 176-177.
IT
WAS THE
NUMBER
a product of the stars
MIGHT
HAVE EXISTED
except as the fragmentary hallucination
of some death throe
MIGHT HAVE BEGUN AND ENDED
seeping out though denied and enclosed
when manifest
eventually
outspread with a certain profusion in a
rare state
MIGHT HAVE BEEN RECKONED
Evidence of the total sum however scant
MIGHT HAVE ENLIGHTENED
IT WOULD BE
no
worse
Neither more not less
But as much indifferently as CHANCE
I thought this passage had a very interesting relationship
between form and content. This passage really stuck out to me because of Mallarme’s
use of the many different sizes of font. It almost made it seem like the poet wanted
the reader to really pay attention to the bigger words such as NUMBER and
CHANCE and kind of ignore the lines written in tiny font almost as if they
never existed. I interpreted this verse
to read as if the Poet were talking about the NUMBER as an object that may have
existed or survived if it wasn’t for all of the excuses made in the tiny
font. I think the sizing of the words in
this verse are an example of how the content echoes the form because as I read
this stanza I saw the smaller font as being Mallarme’s form of excuses or justifications
for the survival of the stars and he types the word CHANCE as the biggest on
the page saying that the NUMBER might have been saved from falling deep into
the abyss by pure CHANCE which would be the greatest excuse of all—good luck.
I agree with your take on the relationship between form and content, in terms of describing the varying font size with certain words such as CHANCE and NUMBER and how they echo the content. Likewise, when I was reading the passage I felt like I could just look over the phrases/words in smaller font and just read the text written in a larger font. Another aspect of form and content that I wanted to point out was the downward progression of the text. It starts out with “IT WAS a product of the stars” and as the reading progresses, the texts move onto the next page and end up at the very bottom of the page. I think in that way, it emulates the motions of a dice in which we throw it and it is pulled down to earth by gravity. The “CHANCE” at the very end reminded me of the dice and when I reflected on that, that downward motion parallels with the falling of a dice became very apparent. You also pointed out about the content regarding abyss. This downward motion is a form representing the recurring theme of abyss. In addition, I felt like the continuous to another page from “IT WAS a product of the stars” to “THE NUMBER MIGHT HAVE XISTED” did something that a punctuation such as a period or comma. That is, it naturally causes us, as readers, to pause. I feel like this particular example captures the entire poem’s use of spacing and format to signal pauses in the absence of punctuation—this is something I thought that Mallarme did that was really cool. It seems so natural that I didn’t even realize that there were no punctuations until it was pointed out in class.
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