Bloch 2017

Bloch, R. Howard. One Toss of the Dice: The Incredible Story of How a Poem Made Us Modern. New York: W. W. Norton, 2017.

"Some of the notes that Mallarme left for The Book indicate that he conceived of writing a work which would hark back to the origins of Western literature and would supplant Homer, in what would be a new source for poetry in the epic mode. So, in a mythic move that reached all the way back to the beginnings of voyage literature and Homer's Odyssey, Mallarme, an avid sailor, took to the sea in this masterwork. 'One Toss of the Dice' is, in fact, a seafarer's tale of a shipwreck, filled with images of water, o fa captain, master and helmsman, of waves, surges, and of the shell, sails, tilting deck, plunging prow, toppled mast of a ship, listing to this side or that. In the distance, the horizon frames the sinking boat, while winds howl. Closer in, the general litter of driftwood crowns the depiction of disaster." (22)