The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
the b-side
Thursday, April 9, 2015 — 3B

Cover designer 
talks new edition

Stephane Mallarme 

gets a revamped 

cover for new 
translation

 

By COSMO PAPPAS

Daily Arts Writer

Like the oceans of waste we 

pump out every day, there are 
faraway graveyards of thrown-
away 
books, 
untouched 
or 

unseen 
for 
millennia. 
The 

carcasses of discarded volumes 
form the very ground on which 
we walk and stuff the furniture 
on which we sit. Geologists 
have 
determined 
that 
the 

combustion in the bowels of 
the Earth is powered not by 
the 
decay 
of 
uranium-238 

and potassium-40, but by an 
inferno of trammeled copies of 
GQ and Teen Vogue. Rummage 
sales are the mass execution 
yards where John Grisham dies 
a million deaths in effigy. 

It is easy to forget that text 

and books have not always 
been 
so 
disposable, 
given 

the ubiquity of mass-market 
paperbacks and an amount of 
digitally published text much 
larger than any person could 
ever possibly read. In contrast 
with the decadent, gimmicky 
“deluxe 
editions” 
you 
see 

coming 
out 
of 
publishers 

like Penguin, there are many 
traditions of textual production 
that do much more in terms of 
substantively thinking through 
the relationship between text, 
image and the book as physical 
object. 

This 
sets 
the 
stage 
for 

Stephane Mallarme and the 
retranslation of his major late 
work “Un coup de Des jamais 
n’abolira le hasard” (“A Roll of 
the Dice Will Never Abolish 
Chance”) 
from 
Seattle-based 

Wave Books. A 19th-century 
French poet (1842-1898) in the 
league of Charles Baudelaire and 
Arthur Rimbaud, Mallarme held 
massive influence through his 
poetry, his prose and criticism, 
his editorial work on various 
publications, including a short-
lived fashion magazine, and 
his salons. The regulars of his 
philosophical, literary meetings 
included Paul Verlaine, W.B. 
Yeats and Rainer Maria Rilke. 
Many critics of the 20th and 
21st centuries hold him up as 
an antecedent of some of the 
most 
important 
theoretical 

developments in critical theory 
and literary criticism. 

His poem, “A Roll of the 

Dice,” 
is 
a 
“typographical 

extravaganza,” to use Brian Kim 
Stefans’s phrase from his review 
of French philosopher Quentin 
Meillassoux’s 2012 “The Number 
and the Siren: a Decipherment 
of Mallarme’s Coup de Des.” 
Mallarme’s instructions for the 
1897 edition to his publisher, 
Vollard, 
were 
meticulous 

and exacting, although never 
executed either in his lifetime or 
after except for one undertaking 
in 2004 and, now, the efforts of 
translator Robert Bononno and 
Ypsilanti-based translator and 
designer Jeff Clark (Quemadura 
Studio). They bring Mallarme’s 
radical vision to life in their 
powerful and beautiful edition.

The words are set in different 

sizes, 
italicized 
or 
not, 
in 

descending 
and 
scattered 

movements across the page. 
“The ‘white spaces’ (les blancs), 
in effect, assume importance, 
are the first that strike our 
eyes; versification has always 
required them, usually as an 
encompassing silence, such that 
a poem ... occupies, centered, 
about a third of the page: I don’t 
disregard this method, merely 

disperse it,” Mallarme says in 
the preface to his poem. In some 
literary historical accounts, this 
emphasis on movement and 
speed anticipates the Futurist 
and 
Dadaist 
avant-garde 

movements of the twentieth 
century. 

Taking his cue from the 

Mallarme’s 
instructions 
for 

the 
Vollard 
edition, 
Clark 

substitutes 
the 
“vaguely 

nautical” 
lithographs 
by 

Odilon 
Redon 
with 
his 

own 
illustrations. 
These 

illustrations, he explains, are 
“randomly-lit, 
burst-mode 

photographs 
of 
black-and-

white laserprints” that lend an 
impersonal and austere air to 
Bonanno and Clark’s impressive 
translation. The result, coupled 
with 
the 
“extended 
weight 

of Helvetica” that Clark opts 
for in the English text, is a 
gorgeous work that prompts 
questions of aesthetic unity 
involving the book itself as an 
aesthetic object. All the while, 
these 
questions 
are 
given 

body and made exciting in 
their eminently recognizable 
contemporary English. 

Mallarme 
consciously 

positioned his literary project, 
embodied both in “A Roll 
of the Dice” and his thirty-
year-in-the-making 
“utopian 

enterprise” 
titled 
simply 

“Le Livre” (The Book), as a 
sort of atheist inheritance of 
what David Roberts calls the 
“Catholic tradition of mystery” 
in his book “The Total Work of 
Art in European Modernism.” It 
was through a “numerologically 
structured ceremony of public 
reading” 
that 
Mallarme 

sought 
“to 
found 
a 
new 

poetic religion that would be 
secular modernity’s answer to 
Christianity,” says Adam Kotsko 
in The New Inquiry.

Roberts also describes how 

Mallarme’s 
aim 
stands 
in 

contrast with another aesthetic 
paradigm of 19th century – 
Richard Wagner’s concept of 
the total work of art, or the 
Gesamtkunstwerk. 
Wagner 

sought 
to 
unify 
all 
modes 

of 
aesthetic 
representation 

in the theater through his 
ambitious 
operatic 
works. 

Mallarme, by contrast, aspired 
to the creation of a book that 
incorporated 
everything 

through 
an 
act 
of 
poetic 

“dematerialization, abstraction, 
and generalization,” Roberts 
says. But if their ideas are 
antithetical (and again, this 
is an incredibly complicated 
debate that I can’t delve into 
here), they at least share a 
drive toward unity and totality. 
Everything was made in order 
to end up in a book, Mallarme 
remarked in conversation with 
Jules Huret, which our same 
Orhan Pamuk cited in a 2008 
interview with Carol Becker in 
the Brooklyn Rail.

Although 
Mallarme 

worked “(to invent) a style 
of critical prose as well as 
poetry” 
that 
emphasizes 

“ellipses, 
discontinuities, 

and 
obscurities,” 
Barbara 

Johnson explains in her review 
of a biography of Mallarme 
in 
the 
London 
Review 
of 

Books, “(this) is not to say 
that 
Mallarme’s 
late, 
most 

stylistically radical books have 
nothing to do with the desire 
for coherence.” “(Along) with 
his fragmentation of all the 

usual modes of meaning, he also 
imagined that ‘The Book’ would 
put everything back together 
in a higher synthesis. This 
impersonal, prismatic, grand 
oeuvre would also be a key to 
all mythologies, the ‘Orphic 
explanation of the earth.’”

This is what’s at stake when 

Clark approaches this book 
as a designer. His task is to 
animate Mallarme’s ambitions 
through the interplay between 
translation, 
typography, 

illustration 
and 
how 
these 

are all packaged in the book’s 
overall design. And it is crucial 
to note that Mallarme’s hopes 
play out in real-life, material 
books.

“The reason ‘A Roll of the 

Dice’ 
and 
its 
presentation 

are 
different 
from 
highly 

collectible, lavishly produced 
book-of-the-month 
club 

limited edition type stuff is 
that Mallarme was fussing over 
trim size and paper stock and 
typography because he placed 
a lot of hope in this particular 
poem. And so not only every 
word of this poem was hyper 
sought-out by him and agonized 
over, but he carried that sort of 
intensive work into the actual 
material embodiment of the 
book,” Clark said. 

The final product of Clark and 

Bonnono’s labors is a vindication 
of books whose physicality and 
materiality have something to 
say, books that are more than 
chic “fetish objects” (Clark’s 
words). But this is not done in the 
service of a large profit margin, 
as partly illustrated by how 
Mallarme’s “fussing” over the 
paper and typeface of his book no 
doubt exasperated his publisher. 
Mallarme’s poem, and Clark and 
Bonnono’s amazing rendering 
of it, confronts questions of the 
possibility of totality in art and 
how this process plays out on an 
object made out of ink-spattered 
paper glued to cardboard that 
circulates in a market. 

“Hopefully she (the reader) 

will come away with a sense 
that every part of the book is 
yet another extrapolation of 
the ideas that are at stake in the 
poem itself,” Clark said.

MUSIC COLUMN

Tidal and the future 

of free music

I 

was in Indianapolis this 
past weekend, and while 
I thought the city was 

fantastic, I was frustrated by 
one thing: I didn’t see a single 
drinking 
fountain 
over the 
course of 
my entire 
visit.

I hated 

having to 
do it, but 
multiple 
times I was 
forced to 
pay $3 for a bottle of water 
from one of the many food 
vendors set up throughout the 
city. I wished I could get the 
plain old hydration I needed 
from a free source, but instead, 
I had to shell out for purified 
Aquafina.

What does this have to 

do with music? I’ll let Jay 
Z explain. Last week, when 
he and the rest of the music 
Illuminati rolled out Tidal, a 
new streaming service that 
promises high-quality audio 
and will only be available with 
a paid subscription, he showed 
a desire to make the music 
industry more like the bottled 
water industry.

“If a person can pay $6 for a 

bottle of water, something that 
used to be free, if someone can 
do that? I can definitely show 
you why you should pay for 
Lauryn Hill’s album. There 
are 14 reasons, it’s incredible. 
Someone’s changed our 
mindset to believe that that 
bottle of water is worth $6,” 
he said.

Hov is right. While Big 

Bottled Water has changed 
the game so now we don’t 
even blink when we pay a few 
bucks for their product, the 
music industry has completely 
lost control of the idea that 
music should cost money. CD 
sales have been falling for 
years with no end in sight, but 
now even digital downloads 
are dropping. And as iTunes 
loses its business to Spotify, 
a mostly free service that 
typically pays artists pennies 
— even for thousands of plays. 
According to Jay Z in his Tidal 
press conference, Aloe Blacc 
was only paid $4,000 for a song 
(“The Man”) that was streamed 
168 million times.

As the market for music gets 

bleaker, it makes perfect sense 
that musicians would rebel. 
Taylor Swift — potentially 

the biggest star music has 
right now — pulled her entire 
catalogue off Spotify last year, 
citing a lack of significant 
payment, and in the wake 
of Tidal, Jay Z has pulled 
Reasonable Doubt, his first 
and arguably finest album, 
from Spotify. These moves 
ostensibly make the artists’ 
work inaccessible to those who 
don’t want to pay for it.

The problem, though, is 

that in the Internet age it’s 
impossible for any artist to 
close all channels of access. 
Here, Reasonable Doubt is 
available for listening in 
its entirety on YouTube. A 
commenter was even nice 
enough to provide links to the 
beginning of each song within 
the whole video. And though 
Taylor Swift and her lawyers 
are much more proactive 
about keeping her music away 
from cheap fans (nothing on 
YouTube except official music 
videos and interviews), Swift 
is so popular that the efforts 
are futile. Search 1989 on the 
world’s most famous torrent 
site and you’ll find dozens 
of copies of her most recent 
album, just waiting to be 
downloaded for free.

The only way it seems that 

artists can force their fans to 
pay for music is if the artist 
is too obscure for anyone to 

bother posting free copies. 
Take Lifter Puller, a late-
’90s cult punk outfit from 
Minneapolis that eventually 
became The Hold Steady. 
When I first got into the 
band, I scanned the Internet 
for download links to Lifter 
Puller’s discography and found 
nothing. A few hours later, I 
was downloading Half Dead 
and Dynamite and Fiestas and 
Fiascos from the Amazon Store.

I certainly don’t regret my 

purchase, but I understand 
how, for those to whom music 
is almost as essential as water, 
the cost can really start to add 
up. I don’t blame musicians in 
the least for wanting their work 

to be sold, not stolen, but given 
the choice between a bottled 
water vendor and a drinking 
fountain around the corner, 
where are you going to drink?

Music will always find a 

way to get to those who want 
to listen to it. Back in the 
Soviet Union, way before the 
Internet, Beatles’ records were 
illicitly distributed on old x-ray 
films and played on modified 
record players. Kevin Bacon 
brought dancing to a rural 
town that outlawed rock music. 
And practically anyone with 
a computer and an Internet 
connection can download 
whatever music they want and 
circumvent any advertisements 
or paywalls they don’t wish to 
be stuck behind. Nobody wants 
to steal from their favorite 
musicians, but when you’re on 
a budget and it’s just so damn 
easy, it’s tough to resist the 
temptation.

We’re past the point where 

artists can sell millions of 
records in their first week of 
release, but we still have no 
idea where music is going to 
go from here. Maybe for her 
next project, Taylor Swift will 
bypass her record company 
and release an album straight 
to Bandcamp. Or maybe Jay 
Z and Beyoncé’s collaborative 
record will be a Tidal exclusive 
and everyone with an aversion 
to torrenting will have to pony 
up for a subscription. Perhaps 
the follow-up to Yeezus will 
be a cassette tape delivered 
by Amazon’s drones. This 
is a very exciting time for 
experimentation, not just in 
music itself, but in the medium 
through which it’s delivered.

Tidal could be a huge 

flop, but if it’s good enough, 
maybe it could be embraced 
as a legitimate alternative to 
Spotify. If artists keep trying to 
rethink how music is delivered 
and disseminated, it’s possible 
that fans will embrace one of 
these methods that force them 
to pay a few extra dollars out of 
a love of music and musicians. 
In short, maybe Tidal will 
get over the pretentiousness 
of its initial rollout and Jay Z 
will become the next Kevin 
Bacon, ushering in a new era 
of music consumption. And if 
that doesn’t happen, maybe our 
next businessman/artist with a 
vision will.

Theisen is teaching a small rural 

town how to dance. To boogie with 

him, email ajtheis@umich.edu. 

ADAM 

THEISEN

Music will 
always find a 
way to get to 

listeners.

DO YOU LOVE “GAME OF THRONES”?

DOES RICHARD LINKLATER FLOAT YOUR BOAT?

CONSIDER YOURSELF A SARTORIALIST?
APPLY TO DAILY ARTS.

To request an application, email

CHLOELIZ@UMICH.EDU & ADEPOLLO@UMICH.EDU.

His task is 
to animate 
Mallarme’s 
ambitions.

ÉDOUARD MANET

A portrait of Mallarme.

