In UN COUP DE DÉS JAMAIS N’ABOLIRA LE HASARD ((( SUN - O ))) the author Sam Sampson collages together a French edition of the Mallarmé text, measurements taken out in the NRF edition, and an English interview by Roger Horrocks from 1962, discussing the text. The superimposed text is further fragmented by cutting out circular pieces, which get rotated and superimposed on the plane of the page.

“My response takes the form (scaffolding) of measuring each Mallarmé line on the page and approximating the font size. Each of my bullet pointed lines is an approximation of his line and the spatial dimension of the page represents the flow of his work. As Mallarmé’s poem is a form of metaphysical gambling, his sentences reproduce the sensation of being both in and outside time, a type of prismatic subdivision, and I wanted to respond to this rhythm and arrangement of the poem by using the original text such that each of my pages reproduces collaged text from the exact same page of Mallarmé’s poem. The Gallimard manuscript is the source, but it also brings into context a voice, a conversation from 1962 onwards where Roger’s inscription (his name) leaves a mark in time. As with Mallarmé, I wanted the fungibility of time – the timeliness of a toss of the dice and the timelessness of chance. I wanted the poem to somehow capture, as Mallarmé had described it, ‘the invitation of the great white space’, and the successive, incessant, back-and-forth motions of our eyes travelling from one line to the next, and beginning all over again.”

Sam Sampson