Meta-projection in Mallarmé’s Igitur: anti-theatrical faux presence as a poetic device

This article argues for the concept of projection as a structural operation in Stéphane Mallarmé’s (1842–1898) Igitur (published in 1925) where the resulting theatricality interrupts the poetic. It analyzes the trope of projection as a false movement from one absence to another qua the unborn and the dead in the poem. According to the plot of the poem, the ontological task assigned to Igitur by his ancestors is to become absolute, impersonal and freed from chance. What I call projection makes this task into an act of self-sabotaging or a deliberate failure of poetry. The poetic failure is designed by the poetic itself and to that effect, this self-sabotaging poetic device becomes theatrical. Projection stages the drama of Igitur striving toward annihilation/death where it is revealed to be a false staging, as there was no consciousness to begin with, making it into a meta-projection.