Coup de “dé” and 'Laws of Chance' in Ghérasim Luca's Poetic and Plastic Creations

Abstract

This work questions the role of chance in the poetic and plastic creations of Ghérasim Luca. This way of thinking about chance as it manifests itself in the ‘cubomanies’, as well as in the poems, is nourished by the discoveries that shook all of science in the first half of the 20th century, particularly in the field of quantum physics. The poem, just like the ‘cubomanie’, presents itself as a place of fragmentation and rearrangement of matter. As contemplated here in this movement of perpetual rearrangement, chance appears to be simultaneously unpredictable and indeterminate. It is also related to an esoteric conception that seeks to bring out secret interconnections: it therefore functions not only as a generating principle, but also as a revealer. In these diverse manifestations, chance is part of an exploratory process: it does not so much offer a result as it opens up the possibility of constant indefinite rephrasing.