There is a polarity of critical opinion concerning the status of Un coup de dés and the Grand OEuvre. On the one hand, critics such as Cohn claim that the poem is at least an initial attempt in earnest to write the Work, if not the Work itself, after so many previous abortions and miscarriages (Cohn, 23-4). On the other hand, critics like Gardner Davies claim that Un coup de dés announced the abandonment of the grand project of writing (Davies,157). As we will argue in the appropriate chapter, the possibility of this contestation between the equivalence or non-equivalence of Un coup de dés and the Livre is precisely the issue of the poem.