This collaboration between artist/publisher Ian Tyson and typographer Neil Crawford presents in English Stéphane Mallarmé's innovative poem 'Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard' (1897).
Mallarmé's poem, ostensibly about a shipwreck, philosophises on the hazards of decision and action. Its experimental layout also famously inaugurated an investigation into the expressive possibilities of typography on the printed page, even though it was never produced exactly as the poet wanted, during his lifetime. There are dramatic changes in type size, lines are often spread across double-page openings and the words of the title thread independently throughout the whole poem. This edition is a tour de force by typographer/translator Crawford: following new research into Mallarmé's proofs, he succeeds in rendering the poem both in English and exactly in accordance with the poet’s intentions as to type size and page layout.
The work is accompanied by a series of rich black aquatints by Ian Tyson. These geometric abstracts complement the inconclusive mood of the poem, reversing its proportion of white to black, perhaps further to explore the idea of negative space between significant forms.