Mallarme, word-painter of comets.

Mallarme, word-painter of comets. Question: What is more fascinating than a giant comet? Answer: the image of such a comet, when extracted from amatrix-puzzle wherein it was not known to exist. Background: In the November 2001 issue of Word Ways, the authorpublished a matrix-puzzle entitled "Transformations of a Text"which was based on an 1894 poem by Mallarme, the noted French symbolist sym��bol��ist?n.1. One who uses symbols or symbolism.2. a. One who interprets or represents conditions or truths by the use of symbols or symbolism.b. writer and intellectual. This matrix consists of 14 double-lines of text in which all theletters have been run together, by removing the spaces that separatedthem. (Since Mallarme occupied a very small apartment, it is rumoredthat he found good use for the extra space(s) he thereby acquired.) Uponinspection, this "run-on" matrix turns out to be basically thesame as Mallarme's sonnet sonnet,poem of 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter, restricted to a definite rhyme scheme. There are two prominent types: the Italian, or Petrarchan, sonnet, composed of an octave and a sestet (rhyming abbaabba cdecde , Petit PETIT, sometimes corrupted into petty. A French word signifying little, small. It is frequently used, as petit larceny, petit jury, petit treason.PETIT, TREASON, English law. The killing of a master by his servant; a husband by his wife; a superior by a secular or religious man. Air I (Little Tune I), except thatthe text has been doubled back upon itself--i.e., a backward version ofthe poem was overlaid o��ver��laid?v.Past tense and past participle of overlay1. atop its forward version (on a line-by-linebasis), after the inter-word spaces were removed. The resultingmatrix-puzzle is depicted at the end of this article. Sketching With Words: It now appears as though Mallarme used thismatrix as a background or canvas on which to create pictorial andschematic designs, most of which depict spectacular comets of thenineteenth century. In this way, he revised the traditional concept of apoetic image, previously understood as a subjective mental picture, andconverted it into a physically visible drawing (i.e., a logogram log��o��gram?n.A written symbol representing an entire spoken word without expressing its pronunciation; for example, for 4 read "four" in English, "quattro" in Italian. Also called ideogram, logograph. ) basedon word-fragments in the matrix. The most recent such portrait to emerge depicts a spectacular cometof March 1843, whose image appears in a contemporary engraving engraving,in its broadest sense, the art of cutting lines in metal, wood, or other material either for decoration or for reproduction through printing. In its narrowest sense, it is an intaglio printing process in which the lines are cut in a metal plate with a , whichMallarme apparently used as his source. This comet (a sun-grazer)displayed the longest and straightest tail of any comet in recentmemory, which stretched across an enormous expanse of sky like agigantic billiard bil��liard?adj.Of, relating to, or used in billiards.n.See carom.Adj. 1. billiard - of or relating to billiards; "a billiard ball"; "a billiard cue"; "a billiard table" cue, or a blackboard pointer. It is estimated that theactual length of the tail exceeded the Earth-Sun distance (93 millionmiles). In those days, of course, Paris had not yet become the City ofLights, and so the comet was highly observable after sunset. The viewshown in the engraving faces southwest from the Paris Observatory Coordinates: The Paris Observatory (in French, Observatoire de Paris or Observatoire de Paris-Meudon , andincludes a highly accurate representation of the comet's stellarbackground, consisting mainly of the constellation Orion; for example,one can readily see Orion's Belt with Rigel directly beneath, justabove the comet's "rod." At the comet's far end (theend furthest from the Sun), Sirius appears to be caught in its"beam", like a deer in a car's headlights. Enter the Matrix: Now we are ready to find the comet hidden inMallarme's matrix, which will involve mining the matrix on itsright side for proper viewing. We begin by connecting, via a ruler orstraightedge, three key digrams (pairs of letters) shown in boldface See boldface font. : oc(Upper Line 14), em (Upper Line 5), and et (Upper Line 2). When theseare conjoined conjoined/con��joined/ (kon-joind��) joined together; united. conjoinedjoined together.conjoined monsterstwo deformed fetuses fused together. , via two parallel lines, the comet's image begins toemerge (see diagram). These three sequentially-phased digrams werechosen since they combine to spell comete, and since Mallarme used thesame device to represent other comet images hidden in his text. Souvenirs d'horizons: The next step is to draw thecomet's horizon line, which is done by comparing Mallarme'scomet against the famous engraving, and placing it in the same attitude;this amounts to rotating the matrix onto its right side. Now, we mustlocate the Sun, which in the engraving has sunk below the horizon, buttoward which the comet directly points. Similarly, in Mallarme'smatrix, the parallel structure we have drawn points to word-fragment solon Lower Line 1, which is just about to set below the horizon; this isbecause the direction of data flow for the lower line in each line-pairis toward the right, while for each upper line it is toward the left.Since the comet is composed entirely of upper-line elements, it alsomeans that the comet is receding from the sun. Half a Head Is Better Than None: Comet 1843 I, a sun-grazer,displayed certain characteristics typical of this group, including anextremely long tail combined with a relatively small head; Mallarmesummed up this contrast in his line N'etait, tres grand tresor ettete si petite (was not, very great treasure and head so small), whichcontains nine occurrences of the letter "t". In the matrix,the head is represented by the digram et which, it will be noted, isexactly one-half of tete; it is this painstaking attention to detailwhich provides us with valuable clues that can prove crucial infathoming Mallarme's intent. The Stellar Background ("Are You Sirius?"): We begin bylocating the three stars in Orion's Belt, represented by threecolinear co��lin��e��ar?adj.1. Containing elements that correspond to one another and that are arranged in the same linear sequence.2. Collinear.co��lin i-dots toward the left of Upper Line 3, Upper Line 4, and LowerLine 5. Directly below (and between) them is Rigel, represented by thesecond i-dot on Upper Line 4; this originally formed part of the wordoiseau (bird) on Lower Line 11. Next, we locate Bellatrix, representedby the period that closes the poem's backward version, which can beseen at the upper left corner of the unrotated matrix, or at its upperright corner when turned clockwise clock��wise?adv. & adj. Abbr. cw.In the same direction as the rotating hands of a clock.clockwiseAdverb, adjin the direction in which the hands of a clock rotate . Finally, we are able to locateSirius, an i-dot in the matrix's lowermost line, which lies at thefar left end of the comet's "beam", exactly as in thefamous engraving. The arrangement of these six stellar landmarks, aswell as that of the comet and the horizon, demonstrates that Mallarmeconsciously imitated the famous engraving when he devised hismatrix's representational rep��re��sen��ta��tion��al?adj.Of or relating to representation, especially to realistic graphic representation.rep scheme. Summary and Conclusions: 1. Mallarme's representational method combines pictorial,schematic and analogic elements with a good measure of wordplay, andoften relies on a correspondence with external artifacts artifactssee specimen artifacts. . Thiscorrespondence is never perfect, owing to owing toprep.Because of; on account of: I couldn't attend, owing to illness.owing toprep → debido a, por causa dethe inherent limitations ofsketching with words, but it is sufficient to uniquely identify theentities represented, as well as the historical artifacts associatedwith them. 2. In addition to Comet 1843 I, the Petit Air I matrix containslatent images An invisible image typically of electrical charges. For example, in a copy machine, a latent image of the page to be copied is created on a plate or drum as an electrical charge. for several other comets, including Donati's (1858VI), Tebbutt's (1861 II), and the Great September Comet of 1882which is portrayed at four stages in its life-cycle. 3. Unknown to his contemporaries, Mallarme was an expert on cometsand was able to view them in both an astronomic and a metaphysicalperspective. We do not know how Mallarme was able to incorporate all theabove-cited images into a single matrix, or how he managed to cram thematrix into a 14-line poem. It wasn't an easy job! [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]PAUL MAXIMNew York, New York