The Number and the Siren: A Decipherment of Mallarmé’s Coup de Dés

Description

A philosophical interrogation of the concepts of chance, contingency, and eternity through a concentrated study of Mallarm?’s poem ?Un Coup de D?s.? A meticulous literary study, a detective story ? la Edgar Allan Poe, a treasure-hunt worthy of an adventure novel?such is the register in which can be deciphered the hidden secrets of a poem like no other. Quentin Meillassoux, author of After Finitude, continues his philosophical interrogation of the concepts of chance, contingency, infinity, and eternity through a concentrated study of Mallarm?’s poem ?Un Coup de D?s,? patiently deciphering its enigmatic meaning on the basis of a dazzlingly simple and lucid insight with regard to Mallarm?’s ?unique Number.? The decisive point of the investigation proposed by Meillassoux comes with a discovery, unsettling and yet as simple as a child’s game. The Number that ?can be no other? can only be revealed to us via a secret code, hidden in the ?Coup de d?s? like a key that finally unlocks every one of its poetic devices. Thus is also unveiled the meaning of that siren, emerging for a lightning-flash amongst the debris of the shipwreck: as the living heart of a drama that is still unfolding. With this bold new interpretation of Mallarm?’s work, Meillassoux offers brilliant insights into modernity, poetics, secularism, and religion, and opens a new chapter in his philosophy of radical contingency. The volume contains the entire text of the ?Coup de d?s? and three other poems, with new English translations.