Mallarmé and Mathematics: On Nothing and the Infinite

Abstract

This thesis examines the poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé in relation to mathematics. I argue that this relationship has been a key feature of Mallarmé’s philosophical reception throughout the twentieth century. I show how Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida, Alain Badiou, Quentin Meillassoux and other figures position Mallarmé’s poetics against a single conception of mathematics: namely, the paradigm-shifting work of the nineteenth-century mathematician Georg Cantor. For these philosophers, I claim, Mallarmé is “Cantor’s unconscious contemporary”. The rest of the thesis explores this relationship by reading Mallarmé’s and Cantor’s projects alongside one another. By looking at two fundamental concepts at work within both the poetry and the mathematics – the nothing and the infinite – I argue that Mallarmé’s poetry cannot solely be understood in terms of Cantor’s work. Instead, it recalls past and future conceptions of mathematics, making it a contemporary of various periods before and after his own time. I conclude by reflecting on the nature of contemporaneity, using this concept as a way of broadly understanding the points of similarity and dissimilarity that exist between poetry and mathematics.