The Number and the Siren

The Number and the Siren: A Decipherment of Mallarmé's Coup de dés Quentin MeillassouxMay 2012Urbanomic/SequenceTranslated by Robin MackayPaperback 115x175mm, 306pp.ISBN 978-0-9832169-2-6“Thus, modernity triumphed and we did not know it.”Quentin Meillassoux A meticulous literary study, a detective story à la Edgar Allan Poe, a treasure hunt worthy of an adventure novel – such are the registers in which will be deciphered the hidden secrets of a poem like no other. Quentin Meillassoux continues his innovative philosophical interrogation of the concepts of chance, contingency, infinity and eternity through a concentrated study of Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem Un Coup de Dés jamais n’abolira le Hasard, patiently deciphering its enigmatic meaning on the basis of a dazzlingly simple and lucid insight with regard to ‘the unique Number that cannot be another’. The Coup de dés constitutes perhaps the most radical break in the history of modern poetry: the fractured lines spanning the double page;