An English translation of Mallarm=E9's "Un coup de d=E9s jamais
n=92abolir=
a
le hasard"
(A throw of the dice will never abolish chance), compressed and
punctuated:
A THROW OF THE DICE NEVER, EVEN WHEN TRULY CAST IN THE ETERNAL
CIR***STANCE OF A ****PWRECK=92S DEPTH, Can be only the Abyss raging,
whitened, stalled beneath the desperately sloping incline of its own
wing, through an advance falling back from ill to take flight, and
veiling the gushers, restraining the surges, gathered far within the
shadow buried deep by that alternative sail, almost matching its
yawning depth to the wingspan, like a hull of a vessel rocked from
side to side
THE MASTER, beyond former calculations, where the lost manoeuvre with
the age rose implying that formerly he grasped the helm of this
conflagration of the concerted horizon at his feet, that readies
itself; moves; and merges with the blow that grips it, as one
threatens fate and the winds, the unique Number, which cannot be
another Spirit, to hurl it into the storm, relinquish the cleaving
there, and pass proudly; hesitates, a corpse pushed back by the arm
from the secret, rather than taking sides, a hoary madman, on behalf
of the waves: one overwhelms the head, flows through the submissive
beard, straight ****pwreck that, of the man without a vessel, empty no
matter where
ancestrally never to open the fist clenched beyond the helpless head,
a legacy, in vani****ng, to someone ambiguous, the immemorial ulterior
demon having, from non-existent regions, led the old man towards this
ultimate meeting with probability, this his childlike shade caressed
and smoothed and rendered supple by the wave, and ****elded from hard
bone lost between the planks born of a frolic, the sea through the old
man or the old man against the sea, making a vain attempt, an
Engagement whose dread the veil of illusion rejected, as the phantom
of a gesture will tremble, collapse, madness, WILL NEVER ABOLISH
AS IF A simple insinuation into silence, entwined with irony, or the
mystery hurled, howled, in some close swirl of mirth and terror,
whirls round the abyss without scattering or dispersing and cradles
the virgin index there AS IF
a solitary plume overwhelmed, untouched, that a cap of midnight
grazes, or encounters, and fixes, in crumpled velvet with a sombre
burst of laughter, that rigid whiteness, derisory, in opposition to
the heavens, too much so not to signal closely any bitter prince of
the reef, heroically adorned with it, indomitable, but contained by
his petty reason, virile in lightning
anxious expiatory and pubescent dumb laughter that IF the lucid and
lordly crest of vertigo on the invisible brow sparkles, then shades, a
slim dark tallness, upright in its siren coiling, at the moment of
striking, through impatient ultimate scales, bifurcated, a rock a
deceptive manor suddenly eva****ating in fog that imposed limits on the
infinite
IT WAS THE NUMBER, stellar outcome, WERE IT TO HAVE EXISTED other
than as a fragmented, agonised hallucination; WERE IT TO HAVE BEGUN
AND ENDED, a surging that denied, and closed, when visible at last, by
some profusion spreading in sparseness; WERE IT TO HAVE AMOUNTED to
the fact of the total, though as little as one; WERE IT TO HAVE
LIGHTED, IT WOULD BE, worse no more nor less indifferently but as
much, CHANCE Falls the plume, rhythmic suspense of the disaster, to
bury itself in the original foam, from which its delirium formerly
leapt to the summit faded by the same neutrality of abyss
NOTHING of the memorable crisis where the event matured, accomplished
in sight of all non-existent human outcomes, WILL HAVE TAKEN PLACE a
commonplace elevation pours out absence BUT THE PLACE some lapping
below, as if to scatter the empty act abruptly, that otherwise by its
falsity would have plumbed perdition, in this region of waves, in
which all reality dissolves
EXCEPT at the altitude PERHAPS, as far as a place fuses with, beyond,
outside the interest signalled regarding it, in general, in accord
with such obliquity, through such declination of fire, towards what
must be the Wain also North A CONSTELLATION cold with neglect and
desuetude, not so much though that it fails to enumerate, on some
vacant and superior surface, the consecutive clash, sidereally, of a
final account in formation, attending, doubting, rolling, ****ning and
meditating before stopping at some last point that crowns it All
Thought expresses a Throw of the Dice
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