WHAT IS WRITING?
prefigures in space the
thing
which will become a buffoon or a
harlequin.
To flee, to flee there, I feel that birds are drunk
But, oh, my heart, hear the song of the sailors.
(Fuir, la-bas fuir, je sens que des oiseau.x sont ivres
Mais
6
mon coeur entends le chaJnt des matelots.)
This "but" which nses like a monolith at the border of the sen–
tence does not tie the second verse to the preceding one. It colors it
with a certain reserved nuance, with "private associations" which
penetrate
it
completely. In the same way, certain poems begin with
"and." This conjunction no longer indicates to the mind an operation
which is to be carried out; it extends throughout the paragraph to
give it the absolute quality of a
sequel.
For the poet, the sentence has
a tonality, a taste; by means of it he tastes for their own sake the
irritating flavors of objection, of reserve, of disjunction. He carries
them to the absolute. He makes them real properties of the sentence,
which becomes .an utter objection without being an objection
to
any–
thing precise. He finds here those relations of reciprocal implication
which we pointed out a short 'time ago between the poetic word and
its meaning; the ensemble of the words chosen functions as an
image
of the interrogative or restrictive nuance, and, inversely, the interro–
gation is an image of the verbal ensemble which it delimits.
As
in the following admirable verses:
Oh seasons! Oh castles!
What soul is faultless?
(
0 saisons! 0 chateaux!
QueUe ame est sans defaut?)
Nobody is questioned; nobody is questioning; the poet is .absent.
And the question involves no answer, or rather it is its own answer.
Is it therefore a false question? But it would be absurd to believe
that Rimbaud
~'meant"
that everybody has his faults. As Breton
said of Saint-Pol Raux,
"If
he had meant it, he would have said
it." Nor did he
mean
to say something else. He asked an absolute
question. He conferred upon the beautiful word "soul" an inter–
rogative existence. The interrogation has become a thing as the
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