Stephane Mallarme

is a sacred spider, the inventor of a marvelous lacework.

Mallarmé described himself as a “sacred spider,” the inventor of a “marvelous lacework,” The appearance of “On Toss of the Dice” thus colluded, in its lacy lack of transitions, with the Lumière brother’s cinématagraphe, which had burst upon the world late December 1895 and was barely up and running before Mallarmé began his optical oeuvre. Bravely conceived and fiercely written against the long tradition of verbal poetry, “One Toss of the Dice” marked a great shift in the direction of the visuality of our own era, with still and moving projections, hand-held personal data devices, monitors, and screens.

is a writer whose entire poetics consists in suppressing the author in the interests of writing in order to restore the place of the reader.

Stephane Mallarme, n.All

Stephane Mallarme