From shipwreck to constellation: Rethinking Meillassoux on Mallarmé from a semiotic perspective
-
John Arnold Falcon Hopkins
Abstract
This essay assesses Quentin Meillassoux’s numerological approach to Mallarmé’s problematic but formally innovative poem “Un Coup de dés,” using a semiotic methodology to reveal the deficiencies of that approach from the viewpoint of literary theory. Section 1 describes my expanded version of Michael Riffaterre’s semiotic theory of the structure of modern poetry. Poems are generated by two underlying propositions, each of which governs the structure of a set of symbolic images on the textual surface. These “matricial” propositions are linked by a syntagmatic relation. The primary text functions as subject-sign of the Peircean semiotic triad; its object-sign is an intertextual model. The interpretant of these two textual signs is assembled by the reader and has a sociolectic counterpart – or context – which has similar lexical content but contrasting internal structure. This contrast may produce a change in the preconceptions of the reader. Section 2 examines Meillassoux’s approach to Mallarmé’s poem, which is preoccupied with a “number” supposedly encrypted in the text. This is not convincingly related to the propositional structure of the poem. In Section 3, the text is interpreted using a semiotics-based methodology. The poem is generated by two matrices: one concerning the “Master” versus the storm, and the second concerning the power of Chance. The relation linking the matrices is clarified. This analysis is compared with that of Meillassoux throughout. Section 4 resumes the differences between Meillassoux’s concentration on the “number” and the “siren,” and my analysis which centres on the relation between the Master (symbolising traditional poets and their preferred metre) and the Constellation (symbolising the wide range of new future poetic metres and formats). Meillassoux’s approach turns out to be unconvincing.
References
Baudelaire, Charles. 1975 [1857]. Les fleurs du mal. In Claude Pichois (ed.), Œuvres complètes, vol. 1. Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade.Search in Google Scholar
Culler, Jonathan. 1975. Structuralist poetics: Structuralism, linguistics, and the study of literature. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge & Kegan Paul.10.4324/9780203449769Search in Google Scholar
Culler, Jonathan. 1981. The pursuit of signs: Semiotics, literature, deconstruction. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge & Kegan Paul.10.2307/3684090Search in Google Scholar
Eco, Umberto. 1962. Opera aperta. Milano: Bompiani.Search in Google Scholar
Eco, Umberto. 1976. A theory of semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.10.1007/978-1-349-15849-2Search in Google Scholar
Eco, Umberto. 1979. The role of the reader: Explorations in the semiotics of texts. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Eco. 1992. Interpretation and overinterpretation - with R. Rorty, J. Culler, C. Brooke-Rose; S. Collini (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511627408Search in Google Scholar
Ford, Thomas H. 2013. By the numbers: Meillassoux as a reader of Mallarmé. Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy Symposium 17(1). 300–307.10.5840/symposium201317115Search in Google Scholar
Frampton, Kenneth. 1992 [1980]. A crticial history of modern architecture. London: Thames and Hudson.Search in Google Scholar
Hopkins, John A. F. 1994. Présentation et critique de la théorie sémiotique littéraire de Michael Riffaterre, (Sophia Linguistica 36). Tokyo: Sophia University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Hugo, Victor. 1840. Les rayons et les ombres, P. Albouy (ed.). Paris: Pléiade.Search in Google Scholar
Jakobson, Roman. 1981. Linguistics and poetics. In Selected writings, 18–51. The Hague: Mouton.10.1515/9783110802122.18Search in Google Scholar
Kline, A. S. 2007. Condensed and punctuated translation of Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard. http://www.poetryintranslation.com (accessed 10 September 2019).Search in Google Scholar
Lotman, Juri. 1973 [1970]. La structure du texte artistique, Henri Meschonnic (ed.), Anne Fournier, Bernard Kreise, Ève Mallaret, Henri Meschonnic & Joëlle Young (trans.). Paris: Gallimard.Search in Google Scholar
Lundy, Derek. 2003. The way of a ship. Toronto: Vintage.Search in Google Scholar
Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Meillassoux, Quentin. 2011. Le nombre et la sirène: Un déchiffrage du Coup de dés de Mallarmé. Paris: Fayard.Search in Google Scholar
Meillassoux, Quentin. 2012. The number and the siren, Robin MacKay (trans.). New York: Sequence.Search in Google Scholar
Pevsner, Nikolaus. 1970 [1943]. An outline of European architecture. Middlesex: Penguin.Search in Google Scholar
Rames, Antonin. 2011. Réalité et fiction de la piraterie. Mémoire de Dip. Univ. Technologique., Session de mai 2011 (Institut Universitaire de Technologie, Paris Descartes).Search in Google Scholar
Riffaterre, Michael. 1966. Describing poetic structures: Two approaches to Baudelaire’s les Chats. Yale French Studies 36–37. 200–242.10.2307/2930407Search in Google Scholar
Riffaterre, Michael. 1970. Le poème comme représentation: Une lecture de Hugo [“Fenêtres flamandes”]. Poétique 4. 401–418.Search in Google Scholar
Riffaterre, Michael. 1978. Semiotics of poetry, J. J. Thomas (trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Riffaterre, Michael. 1984. Intertextual representation: On mimesis as interpretive discourse. Critical Inquiry 11(1). 141–163.10.1086/448279Search in Google Scholar
Ronat, Mistou. 1980. Le “Coup de dés”: forme fixe? Cahiers de l’AIEF 32. 141–137.10.3406/caief.1980.1213Search in Google Scholar
Wall-Romana, Christophe. 2014. The decomposition of philosophy: Quentin Meillassoux’s speculative messianism in. The Number and the siren. Diacritics 42(4). 6–23.10.1353/dia.2014.0022Search in Google Scholar
© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Ejecting protestors, interpellating supporters: The interactional pragmatics of expulsion at Trump’s campaign rallies
- What is political semiotics and why does it matter? A reply to Janar Mihkelsaar
- Iconic processes and intermediality in the photobooks Silent Book and Sí por Cuba
- From shipwreck to constellation: Rethinking Meillassoux on Mallarmé from a semiotic perspective
- Umberto Eco’s semiotics of the text: Theoretical observations and an analysis of the parable of the banquet
- The search for the imperfect language
- Semiospheric translation types reconsidered from the translation semiotics perspective
- Voicing control: A child resource for “growing a head taller”
- Kenneth Waltz talks through Mark Rothko: Visual metaphors in the discipline of International Relations Theory
- The cultural transformation of the proprioceptive senses
- On the embodied meaning of emotional responses to music: A semiotic perspective
- Asemic typography in kinetic design
- Topological and networked visibility: Politics of seeing in the digital age
- A semiosic translation of Paul Celan’s Schwarze Flocken and Weggebeizt
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Ejecting protestors, interpellating supporters: The interactional pragmatics of expulsion at Trump’s campaign rallies
- What is political semiotics and why does it matter? A reply to Janar Mihkelsaar
- Iconic processes and intermediality in the photobooks Silent Book and Sí por Cuba
- From shipwreck to constellation: Rethinking Meillassoux on Mallarmé from a semiotic perspective
- Umberto Eco’s semiotics of the text: Theoretical observations and an analysis of the parable of the banquet
- The search for the imperfect language
- Semiospheric translation types reconsidered from the translation semiotics perspective
- Voicing control: A child resource for “growing a head taller”
- Kenneth Waltz talks through Mark Rothko: Visual metaphors in the discipline of International Relations Theory
- The cultural transformation of the proprioceptive senses
- On the embodied meaning of emotional responses to music: A semiotic perspective
- Asemic typography in kinetic design
- Topological and networked visibility: Politics of seeing in the digital age
- A semiosic translation of Paul Celan’s Schwarze Flocken and Weggebeizt
