A Dice-Throw (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Stéphane Mallarmé
- First Published: 1897
- Type of Work: Meditation
- Genres: Poetry, Meditation
- Subjects: Gambling, Poetry or poets, Creative process, Shipwrecks, Fate or fatalism, Games
The Poem
The form of A Dice-Throw does not resemble that of other poetry. Instead of arranging words in regular verses and meter, Stéphane Mallarmé seems to have flung them in random patterns and in four different typefaces across a series of ten double (that is, verso joined to the following recto) pages. Close analysis reveals, however, that the positioning of the words is closely linked to their meaning, while the patterns they form have been recognized as schematic representations of themes of the poem.
The subject of the poem, the dice-throw, is the act of...
[The entire page is 1577 words long]
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