[It is not] by absence of mind and dreaming that one can impose on speech such precious and rare arrangements. The true condition of a true poet is as distinct as possible from the state of dreaming. I see in it only willed inquiry, suppleness of thought, the soul's assent to exquisite constraints, and the perpetual triumph of sacrifice.
It is the very one who wants to write down his dream who is obliged to be extremely wide awake. . .
Whoever says exactness and style invokes the opposite of a dream; whoever meets these in a work must presuppose in its author all the labor and time he needed to resist the permanent dissipation of his thoughts. . . And the more restless and fugitive the prey one covets, the more presence of mind and power of will one needs to make it eternally present in its eternally fleeting aspect. - Paul Valéry
The chasing of shadows. Lovely post.
ReplyDeleteQuite the piece of "brain candy"; loved the sentence:
ReplyDeleteI see in it only willed inquiry, suppleness of thought, the soul's assent to exquisite constraints, and the perpetual triumph of sacrifice.
In my opinion, in order to write passionate poetry, the author is required to do lots of "soul searching with reckless abandon"; although one writes with a filtered, personalized perspective, (which is a reflection of accumulated experience), one must not fear what will bubble up from the depths of one's inner vision. Truth, as most people recognize, can be ugly at times – and as such, it must be stared down, edited and validated by its author. Despite one’s yearnings to be limitless in thought, one is still constrained by the written word and one’s vocabulary.
-Joe Breunig
Reaching Towards His Unbounded Glory