UN COUP DE DES JAMAIS N'ABOLIRA LE HASARD POEME
Mallarmé Stéphane , UN COUP DE DES JAMAIS N'ABOLIRA LE HASARD POEME (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2011).
Mallarmé Stéphane , UN COUP DE DES JAMAIS N'ABOLIRA LE HASARD POEME (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2011).
Stéphane Mallarmé
UN COUP DE DES JAMAIS N'ABOLIRA LE HASARD POEME
Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2011
330 x 255 mm, 32
Offset, perfect binding

Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard (A Throw of the Dice will Never Abolish Chance) is a poem by the French Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé. Its intimate combination of free verse and unusual typographic layout anticipated the 20th-century interest in graphic design and concrete poetry. The poem is spread over 20 pages, in various typefaces, amidst liberal amounts of blank space. Each pair of consecutive facing pages is to be read as a single panel; the text flows back and forth across the two pages, along irregular lines.

The sentence that names the poem is split into three parts, printed in large capital letters on panels 1, 6, and 8. A second textual thread in smaller capitals apparently begins on the right side of panel 1, QUAND MÊME LANCÉ DANS DES CIRCONSTANCES ÉTERNELLES DU FOND D'UN NAUFRAGE ("Even when thrown into eternal circumstances from the bottom of a shipwreck"). Other interlocking threads in various typefaces start throughout the book. At the bottom right of the last panel is the sentence Toute Pensée émet un Coup de Dés ("Every Thought issues a Throw of Dice")