Au seuil d’une éthique de la jouissance mentale : Mallarmé, Un Coup de dés

Mallarmé’s Un Coup de dés dismissed the nineteenth century and opened up the twentieth. His poem was the result of a critique of positive rationality and romantic ideality, concluding with a crucial “upending.” The sole principle of certainty in modernity is contingency. How can we produce from this a poetry which can conceive of a “human result”? To do so, Mallarmé establishes a stellar poetry, envisioning an open work of art which “anoints” the reader.