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Page 56
opening of this essay. From the Baroque to modern Symbolist poetics there has been an ever-sharpening awareness of the concept of the work susceptible to many different interpretations. However, the examples considered in the preceding section propose an 'openness' based on the theoretical, mental collaboration of the consumer, who must freely interpret an artistic datum, a product which has already been organized in its structural entirety (even if this structure allows for an indefinite plurality of interpretations). On the other hand, a composition like Scambi, by Pousseur, represents a fresh advance. Somebody listening to a work by Webern freely reorganizes and enjoys a series of interrelations inside the context of the sound system offered to him in that particular (already fully produced) composition. But in listening to Scambi the auditor is required to do some of this organizing and structuring of the musical discourse. He collaborates with the composer in making the composition.
None of this argument should be conceived as passing an aesthetic judgment on the relative validity of the various types of works under consideration. However, it is clear that a composition such as Scambi poses a completely new problem. It invites us to identify inside the category of 'open' works a further, more restricted classification of works which can be defined as 'works in movement', because they characteristically consist of unplanned or physically incomplete structural units.
In the present cultural context, the phenomenon of the "work in movement" is certainly not limited to music. There are, for example, artistic products which display an intrinsic mobility, a kaleidoscopic capacity to suggest themselves in constantly renewed aspects to the consumer. A simple example is provided by Calder's "Mobiles" or by mobile compositions by other artists: elementary structures which possess the quality of moving in the air and assuming different spatial dispositions. They continuously create their own space and dimensions to fill it with.
If we turn to literary production to try to isolate an example of a "work in movement," we are immediately obliged to take into consideration Mallarmé's Livre, a colossal and far-reaching work, the quintessence of the poet's production. He conceived it as the work which would constitute not only the goal of his activities but also the end goal of the world: "Le monde existe pour aboutir à un livre." Mallarmé never finished the book, although he worked on it at different periods throughout his life. But there are sketches for the ending which have recently been brought to light by the acute philological research of Jacques Schérer. 7
The metaphysical premises for Mallarmé's Livre are enormous and possibly questionable. I would prefer to leave them aside in order to concentrate on the dynamic structure of this artistic object which deliberately set out to validate a specific poetic principle: "Un livre ni commence ni ne finit; tout au plus fait-il semblant." The Livre was conceived as a mobile apparatus, not just in the mobile and 'open' sense of a composi-

 
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