It is necessary to return, or rather intensify, to the mysterious light, the clarity that despairs. Many different things converge there, homogeneous, abrupt, silent. As in the horizontal of water, different animals converge, of different weight, but united, intensified in an impulse to break with their immobility, the crystal, the net as well. Is not thirst the birth of crystal, the first necessary impulse, which then freezes, becomes the crystal's limiting ring? Thus, thirst remains as the invisible crystal, the crystal as unchanging water. There is a moment in criticism and poetry, originating from Poe, propagated by Baudelaire, exploited by Valéry, in which everything wants to remain ------------------------------------------------------as a method within a night in which the natural stars have been erased from their accompanying light. Poe, in his stories, in his studies of light, in his critiques, spoke of "a method of suggestive reasoning." That phrase is as true as this other one I would propose, to declare the criticism that befits a poet: a power of reminiscent reasoning. I say power because it presupposes a hostile material, a resistance. A resistance that can describe an arc of infinite variations.I say reminiscent reasoning, rather than suggestive reasoning like Poe's, because of the powerful and profound appeal this word held for the Greeks. Both the Greeks of myth and Socrates maintained an identical attitude toward memory. Prometheus, on his unquestionably uncomfortable bed, turns to tell us: "I found for them, for mortals, number, the most ingenious thing that exists, and the arrangement of letters, and the memory, mother of the Muses." In Aeschylus, memory is even more mysterious, a more nourishing breath, like dew or mist. Ultimately, mythology accepts this, but Jupiter enters to diminish the creative force of memory. The nine Muses are daughters of Nemosine and Jupiter, accepts the Greek of the 4th century BC, already very attached to Socrates, within an official mythology. In this way, memory participates and acts in the knowledge of the subject. Remembering for a Greek was an exercise, as healthy as biblical knowledge, something carnal, copulative. That-------------------------------------------------------------reminiscent reasoning favors mutual acquisition, attaches the causal to the original, turns the glove to reveal not only the artificial seams and the dew of perspiration. This reminiscent reasoning drives away the reminiscence of whim or the cloud, communicating to reason a revolving projection from which it emerges mirrored and victorious. I believe that this criticism, whose instrument is reminiscent reasoning, would be fruitless in approaching great systems of expression; if we were to apply this procedure to Dante or Goethe, we would write Alexandrian dictionaries and encyclopedias arranged by a Chinese alphabet. In works of vast proportions, situating the substantial being and the proportions of the work in the circumstances can be entertaining, prudent, and recommendable. But we will have to be content, ultimately, with the grace that resides in that substantial being, a grace that was embodied without appeal or apology. Of course, this grace takes its best form in fullness, or in revealing to us in time, making it a little more audible, the vast murmur nestled in the origins, or the tragic rebound against the wailing wall of those who did not want the spirit to take refuge in the written word, but rather for the murmur to remain unreachable...
It is necessary to return, or rather intensify, to the mysterious light, the clarity that despairs. Many different things converge there, homogeneous, abrupt, silent. As in the horizontal of water, different animals converge, of different weight, but united, intensified in an impulse to break with their immobility, the crystal, the net as well. Is not thirst the birth of crystal, the first necessary impulse, which then freezes, becomes the crystal's limiting ring? Thus, thirst remains as the invisible crystal, the crystal as unchanging water. There is a moment in criticism and poetry, originating from Poe, propagated by Baudelaire, exploited by Valéry, in which everything wants to remain ------------------------------------------------------as a method within a night in which the natural stars have been erased from their accompanying light. Poe, in his stories, in his studies of light, in his critiques, spoke of "a method of suggestive reasoning." That phrase is as true as this other one I would propose, to declare the criticism that befits a poet: a power of reminiscent reasoning. I say power because it presupposes a hostile material, a resistance. A resistance that can describe an arc of infinite variations.I say reminiscent reasoning, rather than suggestive reasoning like Poe's, because of the powerful and profound appeal this word held for the Greeks. Both the Greeks of myth and Socrates maintained an identical attitude toward memory. Prometheus, on his unquestionably uncomfortable bed, turns to tell us: "I found for them, for mortals, number, the most ingenious thing that exists, and the arrangement of letters, and the memory, mother of the Muses." In Aeschylus, memory is even more mysterious, a more nourishing breath, like dew or mist. Ultimately, mythology accepts this, but Jupiter enters to diminish the creative force of memory. The nine Muses are daughters of Nemosine and Jupiter, accepts the Greek of the 4th century BC, already very attached to Socrates, within an official mythology. In this way, memory participates and acts in the knowledge of the subject. Remembering for a Greek was an exercise, as healthy as biblical knowledge, something carnal, copulative. That-------------------------------------------------------------reminiscent reasoning favors mutual acquisition, attaches the causal to the original, turns the glove to reveal not only the artificial seams and the dew of perspiration. This reminiscent reasoning drives away the reminiscence of whim or the cloud, communicating to reason a revolving projection from which it emerges mirrored and victorious. I believe that this criticism, whose instrument is reminiscent reasoning, would be fruitless in approaching great systems of expression; if we were to apply this procedure to Dante or Goethe, we would write Alexandrian dictionaries and encyclopedias arranged by a Chinese alphabet. In works of vast proportions, situating the substantial being and the proportions of the work in the circumstances can be entertaining, prudent, and recommendable. But we will have to be content, ultimately, with the grace that resides in that substantial being, a grace that was embodied without appeal or apology. Of course, this grace takes its best form in fullness, or in revealing to us in time, making it a little more audible, the vast murmur nestled in the origins, or the tragic rebound against the wailing wall of those who did not want the spirit to take refuge in the written word, but rather for the murmur to remain unreachable...