"What strikes a master in the poetry of today, is its huge diversity." "The label of a Symbolist is much more vague, than those of a Romantic or a Parnassian once were." "In your opinion, where does this absence of unity come from?" "Yes." "At the moment, we are witnessing a truly extraordinary sight, unique in the whole history of poetry:" "each poet is sitting in his own corner with a flute, playing the tunes which he fancies;" "For the first time in history, poets don't sing behind the music stand any more." "Up to now, of course, they had to be accompanied by the organ of the official master." "But one has been playing for too long, and one has grown tired." "At his deathbed great Hugo, I'm quite sure, must have been convinced that he'd buried poetry for at least a century; however," "Paul Verlaine had already written Sagesse;" "In a society without cohesion, without stability, it's impossible to create stable, definitive art." "This undeveloped social organisation, which also explains the anxiety of minds, gives birth to an inexplicable need for individuality, of which current literary modes of expression are the direct reflection." "This need for individuality thus forces young poets to shake off the yoke of traditional versification, eventually leading to vers libre, which you, however, as far as we know, have never used yourself." "One is tired of the official poetry;" "even its partisans share this tiredness." "What explains the recent innovations, is that one has understood that the former poetic form was not an absolute, unique and unchanging one, but a safe way of making good poetry." "Having said that, this is not the whole truth." "Beyond these time-honoured precepts, is it possible to make poetry?" "One has assumed that it is, and I believe one is right." "Poetry is present in language wherever there is rhythm, everywhere, except in posters and on the fourth page of journals." "In the genre called prose, there are sometimes admirable verses, of all rhythms." "But, in truth, there's no such thing as prose:" "there's alphabet, and then there are verses, more or less orderly or chaotic." "Wherever there's an attempt at style, there is versification." "Moreover, the same transformation takes place in music:" "strictly composed melodies of the past are followed by an infinite number of broken ones which enrich the fabric without one sensing the equally pronounced cadence." "Is this where you are opposed to the Parnassians?" "Yes." "The Parnassians, in love with the verse which is very strict and beautiful by itself, didn't see that it was nothing but an attempt at completion;" "an attempt which at the same time had this advantage of creating a sort of inner reign of exhausted great verse which asked for grace." "Because if, on one hand, the Parnassians indeed were absolute servants to the verse, sacrifying everything up to their personality for its sake," "young people drew their instinct directly from music, as if there had been nothing before;" "They say that these young people claim to be your followers." "Their primary concern is to pay hommage to you." "You are their party leader, their indisputable teacher." "Do you recognize your disciples?" "I despise schools and everything of the sort;" "I resent anything scholarly being applied to poetry which is, on the contrary, totally individual." "To my mind, the case of a poet, in the society which won't let him live," "it's a case of a man who isolates himself to sculpt his own tomb." "What has lent me an image of a leader of a school, it's that, firstly, I've always been interested in young people's ideas;" "secondly, no doubt, my sincere recognition of what new there was in contributions of newcomers." "But, in actual fact, I'm a loner." "I believe that poetry is made for supreme splendour of a constituted society where there is place for glory, the notion of which people seem to have lost." "The attitude of a poet in times like these, where he is opposed to the society, is to put aside all the wrong means which can be offered to him." "For everything that one can offer him is inferior to his ideas and his secret work." "It's rare these days for a poet to be able to live off his art." "You yourself used to be a teacher of English." "Our society imposes all kinds of professions on its poets." "What has always made me sad is to think how much time I've lost trying to make a living, and that all those hours which have passed, should have been devoted to art," "and all the poetic impressions I could have had if I hadn't had to divide all my days between the most undignified and exhausting jobs." "But a poet couldn't live off his art even lowering it a few notches at the time when I was born as well;" "and today," "I think with sadness, that I did the right thing." "And if your profession had been to teach poetry, wouldn't it have been a job worthy of you?" "No." "Like everything which is beautiful, poetry arouses admiration, but this admiration would be distant, vague, stupid if it came from the crowd." "Because of this general accesibility, a foolish and preposterous idea would be born in people's minds, that it is indispensable for poetry to be taught at school." "And inevitably, like everything which is taught to the many, poetry would be reduced to the level of science." "It would be explained to everyone, equally and without exception." "One would believe oneself to be a fulfilled person without having read a single verse of Hugo." "So you renounce the idea to initiate the public to poetry?" "I prefer it to be profane rather than profonateur." "When a philosopher seeks popularity, I respect that." "But when a poet, a lover of beauty inaccessible to the ordinary, is not satisfied by the approval of the sanhedrin of art," "it irritates me, I don't understand it." "The man can be a democrate, but the artist splits himself in two and has to remain an aristocrat." "So, all in all, you cultivate everything which removes you from the crowd." "Obscurity, for example." "The most abstruse Greek, Latin, Medieval or Renaissance poets are limpid in comparison with you." "Stilled beneath the oppressive cloud that basalt and lava base likewise the echoes that have bowed before a trumpet lacking grace" "O what sepulchral wreck (the spray knows, but it simply drivels there) ultimate jetsam cast away abolishes the mast stripped bare" "or else concealed that, furious failing some great catastrophe all the vain chasm gaping wide in the so white and trailing tress would have drowned avariciously a siren's childlike side." "You know, contrary to the monkey which forgot to light its lantern, the mistake is that in the literary act of today one omits to put it out in the first place." "It wouldn't have been worth it to spend 15 years of my life composing a sonnet for someone to be able to grasp its meaning in 15 minutes." "Surely, you're not like Molière, a writer for his maid." "What do you mean?" "If I wrote for my cook, I wouldn't write differently." "But after all, obscurity is not without danger." "It's equally dangerous whether it stems from the insufficiency of a reader or that of a poet." "But evading this work is trickery." "If a person of average intelligence and of insufficient literary preparation accidentally opens a book written in this manner and pretends to enjoy it, they are misunderstood." "Everything should have its place." "There should always be a mystery in poetry, it's a goal of litterature, – and there's no other, – to evoke things." "All the soul that we evoke when we shed it lingering into various rings of smoke each effaced by a new ring" "testifies to some cigar burning with much artifice as the ash falls away far from its lucid fiery kiss" "should the choir of lyric art fly toward your own lips thus exclude from it if you start the real which is villainous sense too definite cancels your indistinct literature." "The Parnassians also treat their subject in the manner similar to that of old philosophers and rhetoricians, namely presenting the objects directly." "I believe that, on the contrary, there should be nothing but allusion." "The Parnassians take the thing entirely and show it;" "in this case, it lacks mystery;" "they deprive the mind of the joy of believing what they create." "To name an object is to eliminate three quarters of joy from a poem, which consists in the pleasure of guessing little by little." "In this case, it's perfect." "It is the impeccable usage of this mystery that constitues the symbol:" "evoke an object little by little to demonstrate the state of the soul;" "or conversely, to chose an object and extract from it the state of the soul by series of dechiphering." "With nothing of language but A beating in the sky" "From so precious a place yet Future verse will rise." "A low wing the messenger This fan if it is the one" "The same by which behind you there Some mirror has shone" "Limpidly (where will fall pursued grain by grain a little invisible dust, all that can give me pain)" "So may it always bless Your hands free of idleness." "The childishness of litterature up to now has been to believe, for example, that to choose a certain number of precious stones and to put their names on the paper, is the same as to create precious stones." "But it isn't!" "Since poetry consists in creating, one should take from the human soul the states, the rays of light of absolute purity, so that well-recited and well-emphasized, they constitute the jewels of man:" "in this case, there's the symbol, there's creation, and the word poetry finds it meaning." "After all, it's the only human creation possible." "Yes, but someone who makes use of language cannot escape naming." "You name precious stones yourself, for example, in the sonnet en -yx." "Her pure nails on high dedicating their onyx." "This sonnet is taken from a study on the Word." "It's inverse." "Its meaning, if there is one, (I'll console myself by thinking the contrary due to the dose of poetry which it contains) is evoked by an internal mirage of the words themselves." "By reading it under one's breath several times, one gets a sort of cabbalistic feeling." "In order to understand my poetry, one has to read it simply." "Her pure nails on high dedicating their onyx," "Anguish, at midnight, supports, a lamp-holder," "Many a twilight dream burnt by the Phoenix" "That won't be gathered in some ashes' amphora" "On a table, in the empty room:" "here is no ptyx," "Abolished bauble of sonorous uselessness," "(Since the Master's gone to draw tears from the Styx" "With that sole object, vanity of Nothingness)." "But near the casement wide to the north," "A gold is dying, in accord with the décor" "Perhaps, those unicorns dashing fire at a nixie," "She who, naked and dead in the mirror, yet" "In the oblivion enclosed by the frame, is fixed" "As soon by scintillations as the septet." "It's not exactly plastic, I admit, but at least it is as "black-and-white" as possible," "and it seems to me to be ready for an eau-forte of Dream and Emptiness." "For example, an opened window at night, two shatters attached;" "a room with no one inside, despite the stable atmosphere which is presented by the attached shatters," "and in the night made of of absence and question, with no furniture;" "or else, the plausible sketch of vague consoles, an aggressive and agonising frame of a mirror hanging inside," "with its starry incomprehensible reflexion of Ursa Major, connects with the sky alone its dwelling abandoned by the world." "You have even forged a word, that of ptyx in the fifth verse." "Should one give it the meaning of a shell?" "As regards the real sense of the word ptyx..." "I'd much prefer to be sure that it doesn't exist in any language, in order to give myself the pleasure of creating it by the pure magic of rhyme." "Thus, what matters for you in a word is its sound quality, rather than its meaning." "Poetry is music above all else." "Of course." "The act of reproduction, which is up to us, is to set everything to music." "And not just to return the favour, musicians draw inspiration from your works." "After the engravings of Manet, it is the turn of Debussy's music to illustrate The Afternoon of the Faun." "As regards Manet, he was one of your closest friends, and you vigorously defended him when in 1874 the jury of The Salon rejected two of his canvases" " The Swallows and The Masked Ball at the Opera." "The aesthetic qualities are impeccable, and as for the realization of this piece of art, which the demands of contemporary reglamentations made so utterly difficult," "I don't think there was anything to do but to marvel at the magnificent blacks:" "morning coats and dominoes, hats and masks, velvet, cloth, satin and silk." "Thus, there is nothing disorderly or scandalous as regards painting, but, on the contrary, a noble attempt to reflect by pure means inherent to this art, the vision of the modern world." "As for The Swallows," "I'd add to the most superficial criticism only one objection - that the painting is "not thorough enough"." "But who cares if a painting is "not thorough enough", if among all its elements there is harmony and charm which can be easily broken by an additional touch?" "To the name of Manet we can add that of Monet," "Degas," "Renoir," "Whistler," "Odilon Redon." "There are curious analogies between the motifs of Redon and yours." "The theme of windows, for example, can be often found in your work." "As well as the theme of the cut head of John the Baptist." "I seem to feel shadowy wings unfurl in my vertebrae which are shuddering one and all in unison and my head now full-blown a watchman on its own in the victory flights made by the scythe's blade as a clean severance may suppress or cut away" "the immemorial war so long fought against the torso." "I've been looking at these six extraordinary lithographies for two days now and still haven't got over my impression of them, so vivid are your visions." "The Head of the Dream, this "marsh flower"" "illuminates with the light known only to itself and which cannot be named, all the tragic insignificance of ordinary life." "My other favourite is this strange juggler, devastated by the miracle, profound meaning of which he's fathomed, and suffering in the triumph of his wise discovery." "Truly magical works." "My dear, you have reflected here the whole mystery of our lives." "I'm still stunned by The Death, a skeleton at the top, at the bottom a powerful whirl, which seems never to stop;" "I don't think that an artist could have created or a poet imagined, such an sublime image." "And the poor sad cheek asleep on the block, all your distant inventions!" "Everything in this album fascinates me, you arouse in our silences the plumage of the Dream and Night," "and you know it, Redon, I envy your stories." "Will you one day ask Redon to illustrate your poems?" "Maybe, I'm thinking about it." "But," "I'm in favour of no illustration." "Everything evoked by a book has to take place in the mind of the reader." "But if one eliminates imagery, one might come directly to the cinema, whose sequence will replace, to a great advantage many a volume of images and text." "Allow me to ask you this question." "How a poet as intransigent as you, so permeated with the depth of his art, how could he write and edit by himself The Latest Fashion?" "Should one see here no more than a concession to necessities of the moment, simply a job to earn one's living, or do you recognize, nevertheless, that as the author of these menus, these recipes," "these remedies you found pleasure in signing them with various pseudonyms?" "Let's say, that I recognzie myself here more than in those English translations which you have quoted or in Greek gods." "And the eight or ten issues published, when I remove dust from them, still make me dream." "The tradition, which all the ball dresses obey," "I would define as follows:" "to render light, diaphanous, ethereal for that superior form of walking called dancing, the deity appearing on their cloud." "Besides, your poetry doesn't shun the frivolous subjects." "O dreamer, that I may dive In pure pathless joy, understand," "How by subtle deceits connive To keep my wing in your hand." "A coolness of twilight takes Its way to you at each beat" "Whose imprisoned flutter makes The horizon gently retreat." "Vertigo!" "How space quivers" "Like an enormous kiss" "That, wild to be born for no one, can neither" "Burst out or be soothed like this." "Do you feel the fierce paradise Like stifled laughter that slips" "To the unanimous crease's depths From the corner of your lips?" "The sceptre of shores of rose" "Stagnant on golden nights," "Is this white closed flight that shows Against your bracelet's fiery light." "You attach great importance to presentation, to the layout of the page." "You've often expressed the idea that poetry shouldn't be printed using the same characters as prose." "You have even gone so far as to criticize the traditional concept of the book." "All sacred which desires to remain sacred enveloppes itself in mystery." "Music provides us with an example." "If we open Mozart, Beethoven or Wagner, we are struck by religious amazement at the sight of macabre processions of signs, severe, chaste, unknown." "I've often asked myself why this necessary character was denied to the greatest art of all." "I mean poetry." "The Flowers of Evil, for example, are printed with the сharacters similar to those in the prose of Viscount du Terrail or the poetry of Legouvé." "O golden clasps of old missals!" "O untouched hieroglyphs of rolls of papyrus!" "I have an idea of a poem." "The chance plays a part in pursuits appreciated in our times - vers libre and poetry in prose." "The "whites" assume importance, strike at first;" "a big character demands a white page for itself alone." "The paper interferes everytime an image ceases or comes back, accepting a succession of others, and, as there are no orderly sound features or verses, but rather prismatic subdivisions of the idea, it's in various places," "close to or far from the latent main thread that the text imposes itself." "The vessel here lists, from the top of one page to the bottom of another." "The advantage of this repeated distance is that it separates groups of words or the words among themselves, and seems to accelerate or slow down the movement, chanting it, even ordering it according to the view of the page:" "this one is taken as a single unit, like it is the case elsewhere with the verse or a perfect line." "This exposed use of the thought with withdrawals, extensions and escapes, or even its very pattern, results, for the one who reads it aloud, in the music score." "ONE TOSS OF THE DICE." "NEVER." "NOT EVEN WHEN CAST IN ETERNAL CIRCUMSTANCES" "FROM THE DEPTHS OF A SHIPWRECK" "WHETHER the Abyss whitened, becalmed, furious under an inclination glides desperately with wing, its own in advance refallen with a difficulty in setting up flight and covering the outpourings cutting utterly the leaps very interiorly resumes the shade buried in the deep by that alternative sail" "as to adapt to its wingspan its gaping depth as the hull of a vessel tilted to one or the other side." "THE MASTER, outside old calculations where the maneuver with age forgotten arisen." "Don't you think it's a manifestation of insanity?" "In fact, you see, the world was conceived to be made in a good book."