The Bow and the Lyre

(EL ARCO Y LA LIRA)

The Poem. The Poetic Poetry and History.

by OCTAVIO PAZ
translated by Ruth L. C. Simms

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University of 'fexas Press, Austin and London

 6. The Other Shore
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MAN REVEALS HIMSELF in rhythm, the emb!ell).Of his temporality;

rhythm, in turn, declares itself in the image; and the image returns to
man as soon as two lips repeat the poem. By means of rhythm, creative
repetition, the image-a bundle of meanings that rebel at explanation
-is opened to participation. The recitation of poetry is a festival: a
communion. And what is shared and re-created in it is the image. The
poem is realized in participation, which is nothing but the re-creation
of the original instant. Thus, the examination of the poem leads us to
the examination of the poetic experience. Poetic rhythm does not fail
to offer analogies to mythical time; the image, to mystical utterance;
participation, to magical alchemy and religious communion. Every-
thing leads us to insert the poetic act into the realm of the sacred. But
all things, from the primitive mentality to fashion, political fanati-
cism, and even crime, are susceptible to being regarded as a form of
'r the sacred. The fertility of this notion-which has been abused as
much as psychoanalysis and historicism--<an bring us to the utmost

r confusion. And therefore these pages do not propose to explain poetry

in terms of the sacred as much as to trace the limits between the two

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I02 THB POETIC REVELATION 1'HE PTHBR SHORE 103

and to show that poetry constitutes an irreducible act, which can only phenomena, but rather experiences a reciprocal participation of such
be totally understood in and of itself. :objects, so that one of them cannot be moved without affecting the
Modern man has discovered modes of thinking and feeling that are other. That is, one cannot be touched without inlluencing the other
not far from what we call the nocturnal part of our being. All that and without causing a change in man himself." Freud, with limited
reason, morality, or modern customs cause us to hide or despise consti- success, applied his ideas to the study of certain primitive institutions.
tutes the only possible attitude toward reality for the so-called primi- C. G. Jung has also attempted a psychological explanation based on
tive. f:reud ·revealed that merely to ignore the unconscious life was not the collective unconscious and on universal mythical archetypes. Levi-
enough to make it disappear. And anthropology demonstrates that one Strauss seeks the origin of incest, perhaps the first "no:' that man has
can live in a world governed by dreams and the imagination without set against nature. Dumezil reflects on Aryan myths and finds in the
being abnormal or neurotic. The world of the divine never ceases to springtime communion-or as he calls it poetically in one of his books:
fascinate us because, beyond intellectual curiosity, there is in modern The Feast of Immortality-the origin of Indo-European mythology
man a nostalgia. The popularity of studies about myths and magical and and poetry. Cassirer conceives myth, magic, art, and religion as man's
religious institutions has the same roots as other contemporary en- symbolic expressions. Malinowski . . . but the field is vast and it
thusiasms, such as primitive art, the psychology of the unconscious, or changes constantly as new ideas and discoveries appear.
occult tradition. These preferences are not accidental. They are the In the face of this enormous mass of facts and hypotheses, the first
testimony of an absence, the intellectual forms of a nostalgia. And so, question we must ask ourselves is whether there really is such a thing
as I re11ect on this theme, I cannot fail to be aware of its ambiguity. On as a primitive society. Nothing is more debatable. The I.acandons, for
the one hand, I believe that poetry and religion spring from the same example, can be regarded as a group of people who live under really
source and that it is not possible to dissociate the poem from its pre- archaic conditions. But they are the direct descendants of the Maya$,
tension to change man without the risk of turning the poem into an whose civilization was the richest and most complex that flourished in
inoffensive form of literature. On the other hand, I believe that the the Americas. The institutions of the I.acandons do not represent the
Promethean thrust of modern poetry consists in its belligerence toward genesis of a culture, but its last residuum. Their mentality is not pre-
religion, the source of its deliberate will to create a new "sacred," in logical, nor do their magic practices represent a state,
contradistinction to the one that churches offer us today. since I.acandon society does not precede anything except death. And
In studying the institutions of the aborigines of Australia and .thus, those forms seem to show us certain cultures die, rather
Africa, or examining the folklore and mythology of historical peoples, than how they are born. In other cases--as Toynbee indicates-there
anthropologists found patterns of thought and conduct that seemed to are societies whose civilization has been petrified, like the Eskimo.
defy reason. Constrained to find an explanation, some thought that Whether decadent or petrified, it is doubtful that any of the societies
mistaken applications of the principle of causality were 'responsible. studied by the specialists really deserve to be called primitive.
Frazer believed that magic was "man's most ancient attitude toward The idea of a -in the sense of something
reality,'' from which science, religion, and poetry had developed. ·A ancient, anterior, and now surpassed or in the process of being sur-
fallacious science, magic was "an erroneous interpretation of the laws passed-is merely one of many manifestations of a linear conception
that govern nature." Uvy-Bruhl entertained the notion of a prelogical of history. From this standpoint it is an excrescence of the notion of
mentality, grounded on participation: "The primitive does not asso- "progress." Moreover, both proceed from the quantitative conception
ciate logically, causalfy, ·the objects of his experience. He neither sees of time. And that is not all. In the first of his great works, Levy-Bruhl
them as a chain of causes and effects, nor regards them as different affirms that "the need for participation is surely more compelling and
 THE POETIC REVELATION THB OTHER SHORB 105

intense, even among ourselves, than the need for knowing or for in the woods or drove a car. Man is never identical to himself. His
adapting oneself to logical exigencies. It is more profound and its mode of being, the thing that distingnishes him from other living
origin is more remote." Psychiatrists have found certain analogies be- beings, is change. Or as Ortega y Gasset says: man is an insubstantial
tween the genesis of neurosis and that of myths; schizophrenia reveals being: he Jacks substance. And precisely what characterizes the reli·
a similarity to magic thought. For children, the psychologist Piaget gious experience is the abrupt leap, the fulminating change of nature.
says, true reality is constituted of what we call fantasy: given two ex- Therefore it is not true that our feelings are the same before the real
planations of a phenomenon, one rational and the other miraculous, tiger and the tiger·god, before an erotic print and the Tantric images
they inevitably choose the latter because they find it more convincing. of Tibet.
Frazer has pointed out the persistence of magical beliefs in modern Social institutions are not the sacred, but the "primitive mentality"
man. But it is not necessary to resort to more testimonies. We all know or neurosis is not, either. Both methods reveal the same insufficiency.
that not only poets, madmen, savages, and children apprehend the Both change the sacred into an object. Consequently, one must flee
world in an act of participation that cannot be reduced to logical rea- from these extremes and embrace the phenomenon as a totality of
soning; but each time they dream, fall in love, or take part in their which we ourselves form part. Neither the institutions separated from
professional, civic, or political ceremonies, other human beings "par- their protagonist, nor the protagonist isolated from the institutions. A
ticipate,"' return, form part of that vast "society of life" that Cassirer description of the experience of the divine as something outside us
regards as the source of magical beliefs. And I do not exclude teachers, would also be inadequate. That experience includes us, and its descrip·
psychiatrists, and politicians. The "primitive mentality" is everywhere, tion will be our own description.'
covered by a layer of rationality or out in the open. But it does not
seem legitimate to classify all these attitudes as "primitive," because The starting point of some sociologists is the division of society into
they do not constitute ancient, infantile, or regressive forms of the .two opposite worlds: the sacred and the profane. The taboo could be
psyche, but a present possibility that is common to all men. the dividing line between the two. Certain things may be done in one
If for many the protagonist of rites and ceremonies is a man radi- area that are forbidden in the other. Notions like purity and pollution
cally different from us--a primitive or a neurotic-for others not man would stem from this division. But, as I stated before, a mere descrip-
but institutions are the essence of the sacred. An aggregation of social tion in which we ourselves were not included would give us ouly a
forms, the sacred is an object. Rites, myths, festivals, legends-what series of external data. Moreover, every society is divided into differ-
are revealingly called the "material"-are there, before us: they are ent spheres, and each sphere is governed by a system of rules and pro-
objects, things. Hubert and Mauss maintain that the believer's feelings hibitions that are not applicable to the others. Legislation on inheri-
and emotions vis·a·vis the sacred do not constitute specific experiences • tance has no function in penal Jaw (although it did have, in remote
or special categories. Man does not change and human nature is always epochs); acts like the giving of;ifts, required by the laws of etiquette,
the same: love, hate, dread, fear, hunger, thirst. Social institutions would be scandalous if performed by the public administration; norms
change. But I do not agree with this opinion. Man is inseparable from governing the political relations between nations are not applicable to
his creations and his objects; if all the institutions that form the uni-' the family, nor are those of the family to international trade. In each
verse of the sacred really constitute something closed and unique, a
real universe, the one who participates in a festival or a ceremony is I: 1 All this was written ten years before La penree .1aut1age came out in 1962. In this
also a different being from the one who, a few hours before, hunted r: capital work, Uvi-Strauss shows that the "primitive mentality" is no less rational
than our own.

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 I06 THE POETIC REVELATION I07
THE OTHER SHORB

sphere things happen in a "certain way," which is always privative. presents itself again and again in the great religious texts of all cui:
Thus, we must penetrate the world of the sacred to see concretely how tures: man is uprooted like a tree and thrown beyond, to the
"things happen" and, above all, what happens to us. shore to the encounter of himself. And here another extraordmary
If the sacred is a world apart, how can we penetrate it? By means of note ;resents itself: the will intervenes little or participates in a para-
what Kierkegaard calls the ''leap" and we, in the Spanish way, call the doxical way. If he has been chosen by the great wind, it is useless for
"mortal leap." Hui-neng, the seventh-century Chinese patriarch, ex- man to try to resist it. And vice versa: whatever the value of the works
plains the central experience of Buddhism as follows: "Mahaprajna- or the fervor of the supplication, the act is not produced if the strange
paramita is a Sanskrit term of the western country; in the T'ang lan- power does not intervene. The will is inextricably mingled with other
guage it means: great-wisdom-other-shore-reached.... What is Maha? forces, exactly as at the moment of poetic creation. Freedom an? fa-
Maha is great.•.. What is Prajna? Prajna is wisdom .... What is Para· tality rendezvous in man·. The Spanish theater offers a number of tilus-
mita? The other shore reached.... To be attached to the objective trations of this conilict.
' world is to be attached to the cycle of living and dying, which is like In El condenado por desconfiado, Tirso de Molina--ar the
the waves that rise in the sea; this is called: this shore.... When we author of this work may be-introduces us to Paulo, a hermtt who has
detach ourselves from the objective world, there is neither death nor spent ten years in the austerity of a cave seeking salvation. One day he
life and one is like water ilowing incessantly; this is called: the other dreams that he is dead; he appears before God and learns the truth: he
shore.''2 will go to hell. On awakening, he doubts. The devil appears to him in
At the end of many sutras, Prajnaparamita, the idea of the journey the form of an angel and tells him that God orders him to
or leap, is expressed imperiously: "Oh, gone, gone, gone to the other ples: there he will find the answer to the doubt that torments hun, tn
shore, fallen on the other shore.'' Few attain the experience of the the figure of Enrico. In him he will find his destiny "because the end
leap, in spite of the fact that baptism, communion, the sacraments, that Enrico will have will also be your end." Enrico is "the most evil
and other rites of initiation or passage are intended to prepare us for man in the world," although he has two virtues: filial love and _faith.
that experience. They all aim to change us, to make us ..others." Thus Before the mirror of Enrico, Paulo recoils in horror; then, not wtthout
we are given a new name, to indicate that now we are others: we have a certain logic, he decides to imitate him. But Paulo sees only one part
just been born or reborn. The rite reproduces the mystical experience of his model, the part that is most external, and does not know that
of the "other shore" as well as the c:p}tal event human life: our this criminal is also a man of faith who surrenders himself to God at
birth, which requires the previous·death of the fetus. And perhaps our decisive moments. At the end of the work, Enrico repents and yields
deepest and most meaningful acts are merely the repetition of this uncompromisingly to the divine will: he takes the mortal leap and is
death of the fetus that is reborn as an infant. In short, the "mortal saved. The stubborn Paulo takes another leap: to the infernal void. In
leap," the experience of the "other shore," implies a change of nature: some manner he sinks into himself, because doubt has drained him
it is a dying and a being born. But the "other shore" is within our- inwardly. What is Paulo's crime? To Tirso, the theologian, it dis-
scl"Yes. Motionless, still, we feel ourselves being drawn, stirred. by a trust, doubt. And more deeply, pride. Paulo never abandons
great wind that casts us out of ourselves. It casts us out and, at the to God. His lack of confidence in the divinity is transformed mto an
same time, pushes us into ourselves. The metaphor of the gust of wind excess of confidence in himself: in the devil. Paulo is guilty of not
being able to hear. But God expresses Hims_elf as the _devil, _as
2 D. T. Suzuki, Manual of Bnddhitm: From the Chinese Zen Masters (Lon- voice. Surrender frees Enrico from the wetght of sm and gtves htm
don, 1950). eternal freedom; the affirmation of himself causes Paulo to be lost.
I08 THE POETIC REVELATION
THE OTHER SHORB 109
Freedom is a mystery, because it is a divine grace and God';will is in-
scrutable. and the chain of cause and effect breaks. And the first consequence of
Over and beyond the theological problems raised by EJ condenado this catastrophe is the abolition of the laws of gravity, both natural
por desconfiado, the instantaneous transition, the fulminating change and moral. Man loses weight, he is a feather. The heroes of Tirso and
of nature in the protagonists is noteworthy. Enrico is a monster; sud- Mira de Mescua do not meet any resistance: they sink or rise vertically,
denly he becomes "another" and dies repentant. Paulo, also in an in- and nothing can stop them. At the same time, the shape of the world
stant, turns from an ascetic into a libertine. In another work, EJ esclavo is transposed: what was above is below; what was below is above. The .
del demonio by Mira de Mescua; the psychic revolution is equally ver- leap is to the void or to absolute being. Good and evil are notions that
tiginous and total. One of the first scenes of the drama shows Don Gil, acquire another meaning as soon as we enter the realm of the sacred.
a pious priest, as he surprises a gallitnt in the act of climbing up to the Criminals are saved, the just are lost. Human acts are ambiguous. We
balcony of Lisarda, his beloved. The religious manages to dissuade him do evil, we listen to the devil when we think we are acting with right-
ar_>d the youth leaves. When the priest is alone, the surge of pride for eousness, and vice versa. Morality is alien to the sacred. We are in a
hts good deed up the doors to sin. In a scintillating monologue, world that is, actually, another world.
Don Gil takes the mortal' leap: from joy he proceeds to pride and The same ambignity distinguishes our feelings and sensations vis-
thence to lust. In the twinkling of an eye he becomes "another": he a-vis the divine. Before the gods and their images we feel simultane-
climbs the ladder the young man has ·left and, under cover of night ously loathing and longing, terror and love, repulsion and fascination.
and desire, sleeps with the maiden. The next morning Lisarda learns We flee from that which we seek, as do the mystics; our <)elight is in
tlie priest's identity. For her too one world clbses and another opens. suffering, say the martyrs. In one of Quevedo's sonnets, which bears
From love she proceeds to the affirmation of herself, a negative affir- a quotation by San Juan Cris6logo (Plus ordebaJ, quam urebaJ) as its
mation, as it were: since love is denied her, she has no choice but to epigraph, the poet describes the joys of martyrdom:
embrace evil. Vertigo takes possession of them both. From this point Arde Lorenzo y goza en las parrillas;
on the action, literally, plunges downward. The two stop at nothing: el tirano en Lorenzo arde y padece,
robbery, murder, parricide; But their acts, like those of Paulo and viendo que su valor constante crece
Enrico, do not tolerate a psychological explanation. It is useless to seek cuanto crecen las llamas amarillas.
reasons for this somber fervor. Free, but also driven, drawn by an abyss Las brasas multiplica en maravillas
that beckons, in one instant that is every instant, they throw themselves y Sol entre carbones amanece
over the precipice. Although their acts -are the f mit of a decision at y en alimento a su verdugo ofrece
once instantaneous and irrevocable, the poet shows them to us in- guisadas del martirio sus costillas.
habited by other forces, violent, excessive. They are possessed: they A Cristo imita en darse en alimento
are "others." And this being others consists in throwing themselves a su enemigo, esfuerzo soberano
downward into themselves. Like Enrico and Paulo, they have taken a y ardiente imitaci6n del Sacramento.
leap. Leaps: acts that wrench us from this world and cause us to pene- Mlrale el cielo etemizar lo humano,
trate the other shore without knowing for certain if it is we ourselves y viendo victorioso el vencimiento
or the supernatural that casts us there. menos abrasa que arde el vi! tirana.
The "world of here and now" is made of relative opposites. It is
the realm of explanations, reasons, and motives. The great wind blows As he burns, Lawrence delights in his !l!Utyrdom; the tyrant suffers
and is burned in his enemy. In order to perceive the distance that sepa-

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 IIO THE POBTIC REVELATION
THE OTHER SHORE III
rates this sacred martyrdom from profane tortures, we have only to
The supernatural manifests itself, first of all, as a radi-
think of the Marquis de Sade's world. There the relation between vic-
cal strangeness. And that strangeness interdicts reality and ex1stence
tims and executioner is nonexistent; nothing destroys the libertine's
itself, at the very moment when it affirms them in their most common-
loneliness because his victims turn into objects. The pleasure of his
place and palpable expressions. Lawrence becomes a sun, but .also an
executioners is pure and solitary. It is not really pleasure, but cold fury.
atrocious piece of burned flesh. Everything is real and unreal. R1tes and
The desire of Sade's characters is infinite because it can never be satis-
religious ceremonies emphasize this ambiguity. I that one eve-
fied. His world is the world of incommunication: each person is alone
ning in Mathura, sacred city of Hinduism, I had. to. attend a
in his hell. In Quevedo's sonnet, the ambiguity of communion is
little ceremony on the banks of the Jumna. The nte 1s very sl!Dple: at
brought to its ultimate consequences. The gridiron is an instrument
the twilight hour a Braltman lights the sacred fire in a little and
of torture and a cooking utensil, and Lawrence's transfiguration is two-
feeds the turtles that live along the river's edge; then he mtones a
sided: he becomes a roast and a sun. '!pe duality is repeated on the
hymn as the devout ring bells, sing, and burn incense. That
moral plane: the tyrant's triumph is defeat; Lawrence's defeat is vic-
twenty-five or thirty followers of Krishna, whose great shrme IS lo-
tory. And not only do their feelings intermingle to such a degree that
cated a few miles away, were present at the ceremony. When the Brah-
it is impossible to know. where suffering ends and pleasure begins, but
man lighted the fire (and how faint was that light in comparison with
Lawrence, by the action of communion, is also his executioner and the
latter is his victim. the vast night that began to rise before us!), the pious shouted, sang,
and jumped about. Their shouts and contortions. caused me to con-
The divine affects the notions of space and time, the foundations
tempt and sorrow. Nothing less solemn, nothmg more sordid, than
and limits of our thinking, perhaps even more decisively. The experi-
that decadent fervor. While the wretched shouting grew louder, a few
ence of the sacred affirms: here is there; bodies are ubiquitous; space is
naked children laughed and played; others fished or swam. Standing
not an extension, but a quality; yesterday is today; .the past returns; the
motionless, a peasant urinated in the opaque water. Some
future has already happened. If one examines closely the way time
washed clothes. The river flowed on. Everything went on w1th 1ts
passes and things happen, one perceives the presence of a center that
usual life and only the turtles, craning their necks to capture· their
attracts or separates, elevates or plunges, moves or immobilizes. Sacred
food, seemed exalted. Finally, all was still. The beggars returned to
dates return according to a certain rhythm, which is not different from
the market, the pilgrims to their inns, the turtles to the water. Was the
the one that joins or separates bodies, reverses feelings, turns joy into
cult of Krishna nothing more than this? .
pain, suffering into ple,sure, good into evil. The universe is magne-
tized. A kind of rhythm weaves together time and space, thoughts and Every rite is a performance. The one who in a
is like an· actor who plays a part: at the same time he IS and IS not m
feelings, acts and judgments and makes a single fabric of yesterday
his character. The stage also plays a part: that mountain is a serpent's
and tomorrow, here and there, disgust and delight. All is today. All is
present. All is, all exists here. But also all is in another place and an- palace, that river flowing carelessly is a divinity. And yet mountai?
river do not cease to be what they are on that account. Everythmg 1s
other time. Outside of itself and filled with itself. And the feeling that
and is not. Those followers of Krishna were acting a part, but by this
all is arbitrary and capricious is transformed into the intimation that
I do not mean to say that they were the actors in a farce; I simply wish
things are guverned by something radically strange and different from
to emphasize the ambiguous nature of their act. Everything happens .in
us. The mortal leap puts us face to face with the supernatural. The
a common, ordinary way, frequently in a way that wounds us by 1ts
sensation of being in the presence of the supernatural is the starting
point of every religious experience. ·· aggressive vulgarity; and at the same time, is an?inted. The
believer is and is not in this world. This ·world 1s and IS not real ..
 II2 THE POETIC REVELATION THE OTHER SHORE II3

Sometimes the ambiguity is manifested as humor. The adept of Zen, than to constitute its original nucleus. Therefore, we can exclude them
by means of exercises that do not exclude the grotesque and a kind of and still retain the essential mark: "a mystery that causes one to trem-
circular nihilism, which ends by refuting itself, attains to sudden en• ble.'' But as soon as we consider this terrible mystery, we perceive that
lightenment. A disciple asks, "Could you play any music on a harp what we feel toward the unknown is not always terror or dread. We
without strings?" The master does not answer for a time and then may well experience just the opposite: joy, fascination. In its purest
says, "Did you hear it?" "No," the other replies. Whereupon the mas- and most primitive form the experience of "otherness" is strangeness,
ter says, "'Why didn't you ask me to play lorider?" 3 stupefaction, paralysis of the mind: astonishment. The same German
Strangeness is wonder at a commonplace reality that is suddeuly philosopher acknowledges this when he says that the term "mysteri-
revealed as that which was never seen before. Alice's doubts show us um" must be understood as the "capital notion" of the experience.
to what extent the ground of so-called certainties can sink beneath bur Mystery-that is, "absolute inaccessibility"-is nothing but the ex-
feet: "I'm sure I'm not Ada, for her hair goes in such long ringlets pression of "otherness," of this Other that presents itself as something
and mine doesn't go in ringlets at all, and I'm sure I can't be Mabel. by definition alien or strange to us. The Other is something that is ndt
... Besides, she's she, and I'm I, and-oh dear, how puzzling it all is!" like us, a being that is also nonbeing. And the first thing its presence
Alice's doubts are not very different from those of the poets and mys- evokes is stupefaction. Now, stupefaction vis-a-vis the supernatural is
/ . tics. Like them, Alice is astonished. But what is she astonished at? At not manifested as' terror' or dread, as joy or love, but as horror. In-
her own reality, yes, but also at something that casts doubt on cluded in the horror is terror-the drawing back-and the fascination
her reality, the identity of her very being. This ·thing that is before us that makes us want to fuse with the presence. The horror paralyzes us.
-tree, mountain, image of stone or of wood, I myself who contem- And not because the Presence is 'in itself a threat, but because its ap·
pia.te myself-is not a natural presence. It is another. It is inhabited by parition is unbearable and fascinating at the same time.· And that pres-

2 the Other. The experience of the supernatural is the experience of

the Other. · ·
For Rudolf Otto the presence of the Other-and we could add, the
ence is horrible because in it all has been externalized. It is a face into
which all depths flow, a presence that shows the obverse and reverse
of being.· ·
sensation of "otherness"-manifests itself "as ·a tremendum mysteri- Baudelaire has devoted unforgettable pages to horrible, irregular
um, a mystery that causes one to tremble.''• In analyzing the content of beauty. That beauty is not of this world: the supernatural has cons<:' I
the tremendous, the German thinker finds three elements. First, sacred crated it and it is an 'incarnation of the Other. The fascination it causes \
terror, that is, "a special terror," which cannot be compared to the fear us to feel is the fascination of vertigo: But before falling ·into it, we
a known danger produces in us. Sacred terror is inexpressible dread, experience a kind of paralysis. Not in vain does the theme of petrifac-
precisely because it is the experience of the inexpressible. The second tion appear again and again in myths and legends. Horror "takes our
element is the majesty of the Presence or Apparition: "tremendous breath away," "freezes our ·blood," petrifies us." StUpefaction before
majesty." Finally, to the majestic power is allied the notion of "energy the strange Presence is above all a state of suspended animation, that
of the numinous" and thus the idea of a living; active, omnipotent is, an interruption of the breathing, which is the flow of life. Horror
God is the third element. Now, the last two notes are attributes of the interdicts existence. An invisible hand keeps us in suspense: we are /
presence and seem td be ·derived from the experience rather nothing and that which surrounds us is nothing. The universe becomes ,
an abyss and there is nothing before us but that motionless Presence, )
3D. T. Suzuki, E!fayr on Zen Buddhism, first series {London, 1927). . which does not talk; or move, or affirm this or that, but is only pres·
.4 Rudolf Otto, Thtt Idee: of the Holy, translated a:; Lo santo by Fernando .Vela (Ma-
drid, 1928). . . . ent. And that just being present engenders the horror. __,.
 THE POETIC REVELATION THE OTHER SHORE

The central moment of the Bhagavad Gila is the epiphany of Krish- forms: those of life as well as those of death. Horror is wonder at a
na. The god has assumed the form of the driver of Arjuna's war char- fully packed and inaccessible whole. Before this Presence, which com-
iot. Before battle Arjuna and Krishna engage in a dialogue. The hero prises all presences, good and evil cease to be contrary and discernible
vacillates. It is not cowardice that troubles his spirit, but piety: victory worlds and our acts lose weight, become inscrutable. Measures are dif-
means the slaying of people of his own blood, since the leaders of the ferent. Krishna sums up the situation in a phrase: Thou arl my tool.
enemy army are his cousins, his teachers, and his half brother. The Arjuna is merely a tool in the hands of the god. The axe does not
destruction of the caste, Arjuna says, brings about "the destruction of know what animates the hand that grasps it. There are acts that cannot
the laws of .the caste." And with them, the very foundations of the be judged by the morality of men: sacred acts.
world, the destruction of the whole universe. At first Krishna attacks In Aztec sculpture the sacred is also expressed as the replete, the too
these reasons with earthly arguments: the warrior must fight because full. But the horrible does not consist in the mere accumulation of
struggle is his "dharma." To withdraw from combat is to betray his forms and symbols; rather it is the showing, on the same plane and at
destiny and that which he himself is: a fighter. None of this convinces the same instant, of the two sides of existence. The horrible the
Arjuna: to kill is a crime. And an inexpiable crime, because it will entrails of being. Coatlicue is. covered with ears of corn and skulls,
produce an endless karma. Krishna replies with reasons that are equal- flowers and claws. His being is every being. That which is within is
ly powerful: to abstain will not prevent bloodshed, but will lead the outside. The entrails of life are visible at last. But those entrails are
Pandavas to defeat and death. Arjuna's situation remiw;l!; us a little of death. Life is death. And death, life. The organs of gestation are also
Antigone's, but the conflict of the Gita is more radical. Antigone wa- those of destruction. Through the mouth of Krishna flows the river .of
vers between the sacred law and the law of the city: to inter an enemy creation. Through it the universe hurtles toward its ruin. All is !'resent.
of the state is an unjust·act; not to bury a brother is impiety. The act And this all is present is the equivalent of all is vacuous. Indeed, the
that Krishna proposes to Arjuna is not inspired by piety or' by justice.• horror is not only manifested as total presence, but also as absence: the
Nothing justifies it. Thus, when reasons have been exhausted, Krishna ground sinks, forms decay; the bleeds. All is rushing toward
manifests himself. It is not by accident that the god presents himself as the void. There is an open mouth, a pit. Baudelaire felt this like no one
a horrible form, because this is a true Apparition, I mean, a Presence else:
in which all the forms of existence and, above all, the hidden and con-
cea!c;d forms, become apparent-visible, external, palpable. Arjuna, avait son gouffre, avec hi.i se mouvant.
tout est abime-action, d6ir, rbe,
petnfied, stupefied, describes his vision thus:
Parole! et sur mon poi! qui tout droit se releve ·
Looking upon thy mighty form of many mouths and eyes,. of Mainte fois de !a Peur je sens passer le vent.
many arms and thighs and feet, of many bellies, and grim with En haut, en bas, partout, Ia profondeur, Ia greve,
many teeth, 0 mighty-armed one, the worlds and I quake. Le silence, !'espace affreux et captivant ...
For as I behold touching the heavens, glittering, Sur le fond de mes nuits Dieu de son doigt savant
.many·hued, with yawning mouths, with wide eyes agleam, my Dessine un cauchemar multiforme et sans treve.
inward soul trembles ...
J'ai peur du sommeil comme on a peur d'un grand trou,
Vishnu is the "house of the universe" and his appearance is horrible Tout plein de vague horreur, menant on ne sitit oU;
because he manifests himself as a variegated presence, made of all Je ne vois qu'infini par toutes les feuetres,

/
 .
"
,•

II7
n6 THE POETIC REVELATION THE OTHER SHORB

Et mon esprit, toujours du vertige h,;,;te, very compact reality causes us to doubt: are things thus or are they
Jalouse du neant l'insensibilite. otherwise? No, what we are seeing for the first time we had already
-Ah! ne jamais sortir des Nombres et des seen before. In a certain place, where we have perhaps never been, were
the wall, the street, the garden. And the strangeness is followed by nos-
Wonder, stupefaction, joy, the gamut of sensations vis-a-vis the
talgia. We seem to remember and we would like to go back there, to
?ther is _very rich. But they all have this in common: the spirit's first
that place where things are always thus, bathed in a very ancient light
rmpulse IS to draw back. The Other repels us: abyss, serpent, delight,
and, at the same time, newly born. We too are from there. A puff of
beautiful and atrocious monster. And this repulsion is followed by the
wind touches our forehead. We are enchanted, suspended in the midst
opposite impulse: we cannot take our eyes away from the presence, we
of the motionless evening. We feel that we are from another world.
lean toward the bottom of the precipice. Repulsion and fascination.
It is the "former life," which returns.
And then, vertigo: to fall, to lose oneself, to be one with the Other.
States of strangeness and recognition, of repulsion and fascination,
To empty oneself. To be nothing: to be everything: to be. Force of
separation from and union with the Other, are also states of loneliness
gravity of death, forgetting of self, abdication, and, simultaneously,
and communion with ourselves. The one who is truly alone with him-
instantaneous .realization that this strange presence is also we. This
self, the one who is sufficient unto hiniSelf in his own solitude, is not
thing that repels me, attracts me. That Other is also I. The fascination
would be inexplicable if the horror at "otherness" were not; from its
alone. Real loneliness consists in being separated from one's being, in G-·
being two. All of us are all of us are two. The strange
origin, tinged by the suspicion of our final identity with that which
one, the other, is our double. Ag.iin and again we try to lay hold upon ,,
seems so strange and alien to us. Immobility is also a fall; the fall,
him. Again and again he eludes us. He has no face or name, but he is 1:
ascension; presence, absence; fear, profound and invincible attraction.
always there, hiding. Each night for a few hours he fuses with us
The experience of the Other culminates in the experience of Unity.
again. Each morning he breaks away. Are we his hollow, the trace of
The two opposite movements are intermingled. In the drawing back
his absence? Is he an image? Yet it is not the mirror, but time, that
the leap forward is already latent. The downward plunge into the
multiplies him. And it is useless. to flee, to be disconcerted, to .get
Other presents itself as a return to something from which we were
caught in the web of occupations, tasks, pleasures. The other is always
previously uprooted. Duality ceases, we are on the other shore. We
absent. Absent and present. There is a hole, a pit at our feet. Man is
have taken the mortal leap. We have become reoonciled with ourselves.
violent, angnished, searching for that other who' is he himself. And
Sometimes, without an apparent cause-or as we say in Spanish: nothing can bring him back to hiffiself, except the mortal leap: love,
porqne sf [just because}-we truly see that which surrounds us. And the image, the Apparition.
that vision is, in its own way, a kind of theophany or apparition, be- In the presence of the Apparition, because it is a real apparition, we
cause the world is revealed to us in plicatures and abysses as Krish- waver between advimcing and retreating. The contradictory character
na revealed himself to Arjuna. Every day we cross the same street or of our emotions paralyzes us. That body, those 'eyes, that voice hurt
the same garden; every evening our eyes encounter the same reddish us and at the same time they fascinate us. We had never seen that face
wall, made of bricks and urban time. Suddenly, any day, the street before, and already it is confused with our most remote past. It is
leads to another world, the garden ha$ just been born, the weary wall total strangeness ao.d the return io something that can on!y be qualified
is covered with signs. We never saw them before, and now it as- by the word intiinati:. To touch that body is to lose oneself in the un-
tonishes us that they are like this: sucli and so oppressively real. Their known; but, also, it is to reach solid ground. Nothing is more alien and
 T
.I
I

IIS THE OTHER SHORE

II9
'I'HE POETIC REVELATION

nothing more our own. Love suspends us, draws us out of ourselves uprooted or separated from himself. And this of
and throws us the strange par excellence: another body, other ture is followed by another of total identificatiOn w1th that wh1ch
another bemg. And only in that body that is not ours and in that seemed alien to us and with which we have become so closely entwined
Irremediably alien life can we be ourselves. There is no longer anoth- that it is now indistinguishable and inseparable from our own being.
e_r, are no longer two. The instant of the most complete aliena- Why, then, should we not think that the common center of all these
IS that of the absolute reconquest of our being. Here too all makes experiences is something more ancient than sexuality, economic or
present a_nd w_e see the other side, the dark and hidden side, of social organization, or any other "cause"?
ex1stence. Agarn bemg opens up its entrails. The sacred transcends sexuality and the social institutions in which
The between love and the experience of the sacred are it is crystallized. It is eroticism, but it is something that goes beyond
somethmg more than coincidences. These are acts that issue from the the sexual impulse; it is a social phenomenon, but it is something else.
sa;ne source. On different levels of existence one takes the leap and The sacred eludes us. When we try to lay hold upon it, we find that it
tnes to reach the shore. Communion, to cite a very common has its origin in something preexistent, something that is
example, operates a kind of change in the believer's nature. The sacred with our being. The same is true of love and poetry. The three expen-
food us. And that being "others" is simply the recovery of ences are manifestations of something that is the very root of man.
our nature or condition. "Woman " Novalis s• ;d "· th Latent in all three is the nostalgia for a former state. And that state of
h" h ' ' u e primordial unity, from which we were previ.ously separ::t:d, from
1g corporal Thanks to erotic cannibalism man changes,
that 1s: to former state. The idea of the return-present in which we are constantly being separated, constitutes our ongmal con-
all acts, m all myths, and even in utopias-is the force of dition, to which we return again and again. We scarcely know what it
g_rav1ty of love. Woman exalts us, makes us come out of ourselves, and, is that calls to us from the depths of our being. We glimpse its dialec-
simultaneously, makes us return. To fall: to be again. Hunger for life: tic and we know that the antagonistic movements in which it expresses
hu?ger for L:"-p of explosion, expansion of being: itself-strangeness and recognition, rise and fall, horror and devotion,
lazmess, cosm1c mert1a, fall mto the infinite. Strangeness before the repulsion and fascination-tend to be resolved into unity. Is this how
return to oneself. Experience of the unity-and final identity of we escape our condition? Do we truly return to that which we are? A
bemg. return to what we were and foretaste of what we shall be. Nostalgia
first to perceive that love, religion, and poetry have a common for the former life is presentiment of the future life. But a former
or1gm wer: the poets. Modern thinking has appropriated this dis- life and a future life that are here and now and are resolved in a
for 1ts own purposes. For contemporary nihilism, poetry and lightning flash. That nostalgia and that presentiment are the substance
rel1g_1on :ue mer.ely forms of sexuality: religion is a neurosis, poetry a of all great human endeavors, whether poems or religious myths, so·
It IS not necessary to dwell at length on these explana- cia! utopias or heroic undertakings. And perhaps man's real name, the
twns. Nor on those attempt to explain one phenomenon by means emblem of his being, is Desire. For what is Heidegger's temporality or
of. another-econom1c, social, or psychological-which in turn re- Machado's "otherness," what is man's continuous casting himself to-
qwres .another explanation. All those hypotheses , as has been sat - 'd ward that which is not he himself, if not Desire? If man is a being who
many times: betray the ascendancy of the particular, characteristic of is not, but who is being himself, a being who never finishes being him-
the conceptwns of the I.ast century. The truth is that in the experience self, is he not a being of desires as much as a desire for being? In the
of the supernatural, as 1n that of love and in that of poetry, man feels amorous encounter, in the poetic image and in theophany, thirst and
I20
THE POETIC REVELATION

satisfaction are joined together: we are at once fi:ul't and mo th . .

di "bl · u ,mm-
VISI. e Man,. th_e moderns say, is temporality. But that tern' 7. The Poetic Revelation
poral!ty to qmet Itself, to satiate itself, to contemplate itself It
?ut order to ·satisfy itself. Man imagines himself; and. in
=gmmg hunself, reveals himself. But what is it that poetry reveals to

RELIGION AND POETRY tend to fulfill, once and for all, that possibility
of being that we are and that constitutes our own mode of being; both
are attempts to embrace that "otherness" that Machado called the "es-
sential heterogeneity of being." The poetic experience, like the re-
ligious one, is a mortal leap: a change of nature that is also a return to
our original nature. Hidden by the profane or prosaic life, our being
suddenly remembers its lost identity; and then that "other" that we are
appears, emerges. Poetry and religion are a revelation. But the poetic
word dispenses with divine authority. The image is sustained by itself,
without the need to appeal to rational demonstration or to the protec-
tion of a supernatural power: it is the revelation of himself that man
makes to himself. The religious word, on the contrary, aims to reveal a
mystery that is, by definition, alien to us. This diversity does not fail
to make the similarities between religion and poetry more disturbing.
How, if they seem to issue from the same source and to obey the same
dialectic, do they branch apart until they crystallize into irreconcilable
forms: on the one hand, rhythms and images; on the other, theopha-
nies and rites? Is poetry a kind of excrescence of. religion or a sort of
 INSPIRATION I4I
,,' unexpected collaboration. This collaboration can be given with our
"
8. Inspiration will or without it, but it always assumes the form of an intrusion. The
poet's voice is and is not his own. What is his name, who is it that in-
terrupts my discourse and makes me say things that I did not intend to
say? Some call it demon, muse, spirit, genius; others name it work,
':· chance, the unconscious; reason. Some affirm that poetry comes from
'II . without; others, that the poet is sufficient unto himself. But all are
obliged to admit of exceptions. And these exceptions are so frequent
• that only out of laziness can one call them thus. To prove this, let us
imagine two poets as ideal types of "these opposite conceptions of
cieation. ·
Bending over his desk, his eyes fixed in a vacant stare, the-poet-who-
does-not-believe-in-inspiration has just finished his first stanza in ac-
cordance with the prearranged plan. Nothing has been left to chance.
Each rhyme and each image possess the rigorous necessity of an axiom,
as well as the gratuitousness and lightness of a geometric game. But
"one word is needed to complete the final hendecasyllable. The poet
consults the dictionary, searching for the rebel rhyme. He does not find
THE REVELATION of our condition is, likewise, the creation of our it. He smokes, stands up, sits down, stands up again. Nothing: empti-
selves. As we have seen, that revelation can be given in many ways and ness, sterility. And suddeuly, the rhyme appears. Not the expected
can even exist in the absence of any verbal formulation whatever. .But one, but another-always another-that completes the stanza in an
even then it implies a creation of the very thing it reveals: man.' Our unforeseen way, perhaps contrary to the original plan. How can we
original condition is, by its very nature, something that is always explain this strange collaboration? It is not enough to say: the poet had
making itself. Now, when the revelation assumes the particular form a flash of wit, which exalted him and took him out of himself for a
of the poetic experience, the act is inseparable from its expression. moment. Nothing comes from nothing. That word-where was it?
Poetry is not felt: it is said. I mean: it is not an experience that words And above all, how do these poetic "flashes of wit" occur to us?
translate later, but rather the words themselves constitute the nucleus Something similar happens in the opposite case. Abandoned to
of the experience. The experience is given as a naming of that which, ·inexhaustible flow of the ·murmur," his eyes dosed to the outside
until it is named, properly lacks existence. Therefore, the analysis of world, the poet writes without pause. At first, the words come. too fast
the experience includes the analysis of its expression. The two are one or too slowly, but gradually the rhythin of the hand ·that wntes con-
and the same. In the preceding chapter I tried to dredge up and isolate forms to that" of the thought that dictates. Now l:he fusion has been
the meaning of the poetic revelation. Now it is necessary to see how it ·achieved, there is no. longer any distance between thought and utter-
is actually given. Or rather: how are poems written? ance. The poet has lost consciousness of the act he performs: he does
The first difficulty our question confronts lies in the ambiguity of not know if he is writing or not, or what it is that he is writing. Every·
the testimonies we possess concerning poetic creation. If one is to be- . thing flows with felicity until the interruption comes: there is a word
lieve the poets, at the moment of expression there is always a fatal and --or the reverse of a word: a silence--that blocks his way. The poet
 THE POETIC REVELATION INSPIRATION 143

tries again and again to elude the obstacle, to go around it, to avoid it fested at the precise moment of creation. What is the true name of
somehow and continue. But it is useless: every path leads back to the that will? Is it really ours?
same stone wall. The spring has dried up. The poet rereads what he
has just written and confirms, not without wonder, that this snarled The act of writing poems looms up before us like a knot of op·
text is possessed of a secret coherence. The poem has an undeniable posing forces, in which our voice and the other voice are entwined and
unity of tone, rhythm, and temperature. It is a whole. Or the frag· confused. The contours grow dim: our thinking is imperceptibly trans·
ments, still living, still coruscating, of a whole. But the poem's unity formed into something that we cannot control completely; and our
is not of a physical or material order: the tone, temperature, rhythm, ego gives place to an unnamed pronoun, which is not totally a you or
and images possess unity because the poem is a work. And the work, a he. The mystery of inspiration consists in this ambiguity. Mystery or
every work, is the fruit of a will that transforms and subjects raw rna· problem? Both: for the ancients inspiration was a mystery; for us, a
terial to its own designs. In that text, in the writing of which the problem that contradicts our psychological conceptions o':r
critical consciousness has scarcely participated, there are words that are idea of the world. Now, this conversion of the mystery of InSptratiOn
repeated, images that give birth to others in accordance with certain into a psychological problem is the root of our inability to understand
tendencies, phrases that seem to stretch out their arms in search of an i:orrectly the nature of poetic creation.
elusive word. The poem flows, marches. And that flowing is what gives Unlike what happens in Hindu thought, which from the beginning
it unity. Now, to flow not only means to move but to move toward raised the problem of the existence of the external world, W
something; the tension that inhabits words and hurtles them forward thought long accepted the world's reality with confidence and dtd not
is a going to the encounter of something. Words seek a word that will question what our eyes see. The poetic act, in which !nter·
give meaning to their march, stability to their mobility. The poem is venes as a decisive trait, was always regarded as something mexpltcable
illuminated by and in relation to that last word. It is an aiming at that and obscure without constituting a problem that jeopardized the con·
unsaid and perhaps unsayable word. In short, the poem's unity, like ception of the world. On the contrary, it was a phenomenon that
that of every work, is given by its direction or meaning. But who conld be inserted quite naturally into the world and that, far from
stamps a meaning on the poem's zigzagging course? contradicting its existence, affirmed it. It can even be asserted that it
In the case of the reflective poet we discover a mysterious alien col· was a proof of the world's objectivity, reality, and dynamism. For Pia·
laboration, with the uninvoked apparition of another voice. In that of to the poet is a person possessed, whose delirium and enthusiasm are
the romantic poet, we face the no less inexplicable presence of a will signs of the demonic possession. In the Ion, Socrates defines the poet as
that makes of the murmur a concerted whole possessed of an obscure "a winged being, light and sacred, incapable of producing unless en·
premeditation. Manifested in both cases is what, at the risk of inac· thusiltsm draws him and makes him come out of himself.... It is not
curacy, must be provisionally called ·the "irruption of an alien will." the poets who say such marvelous "things, but rather they are the organs
But it is obvious that we give this name to something that has scarcely of the divinity that speaks to us through their mouth." Aristotle con·
any relation with the phenomenon called will. Something, perhaps, ceives poetic creation as an imitation of nature. But, as we have already
more ancient than the will and on which the will leans. Indeed, in the seen, it cannot be clearly understood what this imitation means if one
usual meaning of the word, the will is that faculty that makes plans forgets that for Aristotle nature is an animate whole, an organism, and
and subjects our acts to certain norms in order to carry them out. The a living model. In his Introduction to Aristotle's Poetics, Garda Bacca
will that concerns us here does not involve reflection, calculation, or pertinently emphasizes that the conception .of is
foresight; it is anterior to every intellectual operation and it is mani- animated by a more or less hidden hylozotsm. Thus, poetic onginality
 144 THE POETIC REVELATION INSPIRATION 145

does not spring from nothing, nor does the poet extract iffroni him· voice," the "strange will," continue to defy us. Thus, a wall has come
self: it is the fruit of the encounter between that animated nature, pos,. between our idea of inspiration and our idea of the world. Inspiration
sessing an existence of its own, and the poet's soul. has become a problem for us. Its existence denies our most deeply
Greek hylozoism is transformed later into Christian transcendence. rooted intellectual beliefs. It is not strange, therefore, that throughout
But external reality did not lose consistency on that account. Whether the nineteenth century there were numerous attempts to attenuate or
nature was inhabited by gods or created by God, the external world is put an end to the scandal of a notion that tends to return to external
there, before us, visible or invisible, always our necessary horizon. reality its former sacred power. ·
Angel, stone, animal, demon, plant, the "other" exists, has a life of its One way to solve problems is to deny them. If inspiration is incom·
own and sometiriJ.es takes possession of us and speaks through our patibie with our idea of the world, nothing is easier than to deny its
mouth. In a society where external realilj, far from being questioned, existence. From the sixteenth century on, inspiration begins to be con·
is the source from which ideas and archetypes spring, it is not difficult ceived as a rhetorical phrase or·a literary figure. No one speaks through
to identify inspiration. The "other voice," the "strange will," are the the mouth of the poet, exceprhis own consciousness; the true poet does
"other," that is, God or nature with its gods and demoris. Inspiration '1. not hear another voice, nor does he write from dictation: he is wide·
is a revelation because it is a manifestation of the divine powers. A awake and in control of himself. The impossibility of finding an an·
numen speaks and supplants man. Sacred or profane, epic or lyric, swer that would really explain poetic creation is gradually transformed
poetry is a grace, something external that descends on the poet. Poetic into a condemnation of a moral and aesthetic order. At one time the
creation is a mystery because it consists in the gods' speaking through excesses resulting from the belief in inspiration were denounced. Their
a hutruin mouth. But that mystery does not provoke any problem, nor true names were laziness, negligence, love for improvisation, ease.
does it contradict commonly accepted beliefs. Nothing more natural Delirium and inspiration were transformed into synonyms for mad-
than for the supernatucil to be incarnated in men and to speak their ness and disease. The poetic act was work and discipline; to write: "to
language. struggle against the current." It is not an exaggeration to see in these
Since Descartes, our idea of external reality has been radically trans· ideas an abusive transfer of certain notions of bourgeois morality into
formed. Modern subjectivism affirms the existence of the external the sphere of aesthetics. One of the major merits- of surrealism is its
world only is a derivation of consciousness. Again and again that con' having denounced the moral core of this mercantilist aesthetic. Indeed,
sciousness is postulated as a transcendental consciousness and again inspiration has no relation whatever to' such ba:se notions as those of
and again it opposes solipsism. Consciousness cannot come out of it· ease and difficulty, laziness :ind work, negligence and expertise, which
sclf and found the world. Meanwhile, nature has been changed for us are contained in the notion of reward and punishment: the "hard casli
into a cluster of objects and relations. God has disappeared from our· payment" by which the bourgeoisie, according to Marx,' has repl:tced
vital perSpectives, and the notions Of object, substance, and cause have the human relations of old. The value of a creative work is not
reached a crisis. Where idealism has not destroyed eXternal reality- measured by the labor it has cost its author.
in the sphere of science, for example.:....it has changed it into an object; Moreover, it must be said that poetic creation requires a complete re·
into a "field of experiences" and thus has stripped it of its former at· arranging of our everyday perspectives: the happy faeililj of inspira·
tributes: · · · · · · · tion springs from an abyss. The· poet's utterance begins as silence,
Narure has ceased to be a living and animate whole, a power pos· sterility, and drought. It is a lack arid a thirst before it is a pleO.itude
sessed: of obscure or clear designs:But tlie disappearance of the former and a harmony; and afterward, it is an even greater lack, because the
idea of the: world ·has' not done ·away with inspiration .. The "alien poem separates from the poet and ceases to belong to him. Before and

/
 q6 THE POETIC REVELATION INSPIRATION I47
after the poem there is nothing and nc:i one around; we are alone with of the artist. But there is more to it than that: in undirected thought-
ourselves; and as soon as we begin to write, that "we," that I, also or rather, in dream or fantasy-the flow of images and words does not
disappears and sinks. Bending over the paper, the poet throws him- lack meaning: "It has been demonstrated that it is untrue that we sur-
self into himself: Thus, poetic creation is irreducible to ideas of gain render ourselves to a succession of representations lacking in purpose
and loss, effort and reward. All is gain in poetry. All is loss. But the . . . when the notions of purpose that we know cease, others that are
pressure of bourgeois morality often caused poets to pretend to stop up unknown immediately assert themselves-unconscious ones, as we say
their ears to the nomen's ancient voice. Even Baudelaire insinuates the maintain determinate the progress of reJ::resenta-
praise of work-he who wrote so much about the barren wastes of tions alien to our will. A thought cannot be formulated without a
sterility and the paradises of laziness! But the displeasure of critics notion of purpose... ,"1 Here Freud hits the mark exactly. The
and creators did not stop the outpouring of inspiration. And the poetic of purpose is indispensable even in unconscious But, havmg
voice continued to be a challenge and a problem.
divided the human being into different layers: consciOusness, subcon-
One of the attributes of the modern age consjsts in the creation of sciousness, etc., he conceives two different purposes: one rational, in
abstract divinities. The prophets reproached the Jews for their falls which our will participates; the other, alien to us, "unconscious" or
into idolatry. The moderns could be reproached for doing the oppo- unknown to man, purely instinctive. In reality, Freud transfers the
site: everything tends to be discarnated. Modern idols have no body or notion of purpose to the libido and the instinct, omits the.
form: they are ideas, concepts, forces. The place of God and of the mental and decisive explanation: what is the meamng of that mstmc-
old nature populated by gods and demons is now occupied by faceless tive purpose? The "unconscious" purpose is not such a purpose, be-
beings: Race, Class, the Unconscious (individual or collective), the cause it lacks an object and a meaning: it is pure appetite, a natural
Genius of Peoples, Heredity. Irupiration can easily be explained by mechanism. And this is not all. The notion of purpose implies a cer-
appealing to any of these ideas. The poet is a medium through whom tain awareness and a knowledge, no matter how obscure, of what one
Sex, Climate, History, or some other succedaneum of the ancient gods is trying to achieve. The notion of purpose requires that of conscious-
and demons is expressed in code. I do not mean to deny the value of ness. Psychoanalysis, in all its branches, has hitherto been powerless
these ideas. But they are inadequate; conspicuous in them all is a limi- to answer these questions in a satisfactory way. And even to state them
tation that permits us to reject them totally: their exclusivism, their
correctly. .
attempting to explain the whole by the part. Moreover, in them all is Something similar can be said of the conception of the poet as
evident their incapacity to grasp and explain the essential and decisive ·"spokesman " or "expression"· of history: how are "historical forces"
fact: how are those determinate forces or realities transformed into transformed into images and how do they "dictate" the poet's words to
words; how does the libido, race, class, or historical moment become him? No one denies the interrelation that is presupposed by every his-
word, rhythm, and image? For psychoanalysts, poetic cre,;tion is a sub- torical existence: man is a cluster of interpersonal forces. The poet's .
limation; then, why does that sublimation become a poem in some voice is always social and common, even when it is most hermetic.
cases and not in others? Freud confesses his ignorance and speaks of a as is the case with psychoanalysis, it is not clear how that "march of his-
mysterious "artistic faculty." He is obviously dodging the issue, be- tory" or of "economics," those "historical purposes"-alien to the ?u-
cause he merely gives a new name to an enigmatic reality, whose es- man will like the "purposes" of the libidO-Can really be purposes with-
sence is unknown to us. To explain the difference between the'poet's i, out passing through consciousness. Moreover, no one "is in history," as
words and those of the simple neurotic, one would have to resort to a
classification of the subconscious: that of the average mortal and that
1 S. Freud, The lnte,pretation of DreamJ.
 THE POETIC REVELATION INSPIR.ATION 149

if history were one "thing" and we, before it, another: we are all histo· plies the destruction of in:spiration, that is, of that duality of the poet
ry and all make it together. The poem is not the echo of society, but who receives and the power that dictates. Therefore, Navalis
rather 1t 1s, at the same time, its offspring and its maker,.as occurs with that the unity is broken as soon as it is won. Contradiction springs
every activity. In short, neither Sex, nor the Unconscious, from identity, in an endless process. Man is plurality and dialogue,
nor H1story IS a merely external reality, object, power, or substance c_easelessly agreeing and uniting with. himself, but also splitting apart
th.at on us. The world is not outside us; nor, in reality, is it ceaselessly. Our voice is many voices. Our voices are a single voice.
w1thm. If mspiration is a "voice" that man hears in his own conscious- The poet is, at the same time, the object and the subject of poetic crea·
ness, will it not be better to interrogate that consciousness which alone iion: he is the ear that listens and the hand that writes what his own
has heard it and which constitutes its own ambit? ' voice dictates. "To dream and not to dream simultaneously: the opera-
tion of genius." And similarly: the poet's receptive passivity requir:S
. For the also, for the common man-inspiration an activity by which that passivity is sustained. Navalis expresses thts
IS a probl':m, a or a fact that resists the explanations of paradox in a memorable phrase: "Activity is the faculty of receiving."
modern saence. ca:e, he may shrug his shoulders and slough The poet's dream requires, on a more profound level, wakefulness;
the from his mmd, ltke one who flicks a speck of dust from his and wakefulness, in turn, involves abandoning oneself to the dream.
cl_othmg. the other hand poets must face up to it and live the con· In what, then, does poetic creation consist? the poet;Novalis tells us;
fltct. The h1story of modern poetry is that of the continuous dichotomy "does not make, but makes it possible for one to make." The sentence
of the_ poet,_ torn between the modern conception of the world and the is scintillating, and aptly describes the phenomenon. But who is that
some:1mes mtolerable presence of inspiration. The first to suffer this "one"? Whom does the poet empower "to make"? Novalis does not
were the German romantics. They were also those who faced say clearly. Sometimes, the one who "makes" is Spirit, People, Idea, or
1t w1th _the greatest lucidity and plenitude, and the ouly ones-until the any other power with a capital letter. Then again, it is the poet him·
surrealtst movement-who did not merely suffer it but who tried to self. We must pause at this second explanation. ,. . .
transcend it. Descendants, on the one side, of the Enlightenment and, For the romantics, man is a poetic being. In human nature there IS a
on the other, of the Sturm und Orang, they lived between the sword of kind of innate faculty-the poet, Baudelaire said, "is. born with ex-
the Napoleonic Emp!re and the reaction of the Holy Alliance, lost on ·a perience"--that leads us to poetize. This is analogous to· the
dead-end street, as 1t were. In them, opposites waged an unending divinizing disposition that permits us to percetve the_ holy: the poet-
battle. · · izing facultY is an a priori category. the explanation is not unlike the
Inspiration, tenaciously oefended by these poets and thinkers is ir- one that appeals to the "feeling of dependence" to ground the divinity
reconcilable with the subjectivism and idealism that, no less vehe'ment- upon the subjectivity of the believer. The analogy with Protestant
ly, is preached by romanticism. The very violence of the dilemma pro- theological thought is not aocidental. None of these poets completely
vokes the and temerity of the endeavors that aim to resolve it. separated the poetic from the religious, and many of the German· ro-.
Nova!ts proclaims that "to destroy the principle of contradic- mantics owed their conversions to their poetic conception of religion as
_1s perhaps the loftiest task of"higher logic," is he not alluding, much as to their religious conception of poetry. Again and again No;.
tn most general way, to the need to suppress the duality between valis affirms that poetry is something like religion in a wild state and
subject and object that divides modern man and thus to resolve once that religion-iS merely practical poetry, poetry "lived and made· act.:
for all the problem of inspiration? But the suppression of the prin- Therefore, the category of the poetic is merely" one of the names of
aple of contradiction-for example, by a "return to unity"-also im- sacred. It is not necessary to repeat here what I said in the foregoing
 '

I5I
I 50 THE POETIC REVELATION INSPIRATION

chapter:. the really of the religious ·experience does up to the reader and shows him its translucent abyss. The reader leans
consist.so much m the revelation of our original condition as in the forward and plunges. And as he falls--or as he ascends, as he pene-
Interpretation of that revelation. Moreover, the poetic operation is in- trates the chambers of the image and abandons himself to the flow of
separab:e :rom_ the word. Poetizing consists, primarily, in naming. The the poem-he breaks away from himself to enter "another himself"
word poetic activity from any other. To poetize is to previously unknown or ignored. The reader, like the poet, becomes an
words: to make poems. The poetic is not something given, image: something that is projected and separates from itself and goes
which Is. m man since his birth, but something that man makes and to the encounter of the unnamable. In both cases the poetic is not
reaprocally, man. The poetic is a possibility, not an a pri- something that is outside, in the poem, or inside, in us, but something
ort category or an mnate faculty. But it is a possibility th·at we ourselves that we make and that makes us. Navalis' sentence could then be
for ourselves. In naming, in creating with words, we create that modified: the poem does not make, but makes it possible for one to
which we name and which did not exist before except as threat void make. And the one who makes is man, the creator. The poetic is not
and cha?s. the poet affirms that he does not know it in man like something given, nor does poetizing consist in taking the
that he Is gomg to write" he means that he does not yet know what is poetic out of us, as if it were a matter of "something" that "someone"
name of that which his poem is going to name and which, until it had deposited inside us or with which we were born. The poet's
IS named, only presents itself in the guise of unintelligible silence. consciousness is not a cave where the poetic lies like a hidden treasure.
Re_ader and poet create themselves in creating that poem that only In the presence of the future poem the poet is naked and empty of
exists of them and so that they may truly exist. Thus there are words. Anterior to creation, the poet as such does not exist. Nor after
no _as there no poetic words. The essence of poetry it. He is a poet because of the poem. The poet is a creation of the poem
consists m a contmuous creation and thus driving us out of as much as the poem is a creation of the poet.
d1slodgmg us, and leading us to the limits of our possibili- The conflict is prolonged throughout the nineteenth century. It is
ties. prolonged, aggravated, and, at the same time, veiled and confused.
nor amorous exaltation, nor joy or enthusiasm is a The contradiction is keener and the consciousness of the split is en-
poeti_c sta.te m Itself, because the poetic in itself does not exist. They hanced; the lucidity to face it and the courage to resolve it, diminished.
are that, because of' their extreme character, cause the world Victims, witnesses, and accomplices of inspiration, none of the great
and everythmg that surrounds including the dead everyday Ian- poets of the nineteenth century possess the clarity of Navalis. They
guag_e, to Then all that Is left for us is silence or image. And all struggle in a contradiction with no exit. To renounce inspiration
that IS a creation, something that was not in the original feeling, was to renounce poetry itself, that is, the only thing that justified their
somethmg that we have created in order to name the unnamable and to presence on earth; to affirm its existence was an act incompatible with
say the unsayable. Forthat reason every poem lives at the expense of its the idea they had of themselves and of the world. Thus these poets
creator. Once the ?oem has. been written, that which he was prior to frequently reject and condemn the world. There is no doubt that, from
poem :and which led him to creation-that, inexpressible: Jove, a moral standpoint, Baudelaire's attacks, Mallarme's disdain, Poe's
JOY, angmsh, boredom, nostalgia for another condition loneliness criticism are completely justified: the world they had to live in was
anger-has been resolved into an image: it has been nam:d and it is abominable. (We know this only too well, because those times im-
poem, transparent word. After creation, the poet is alone· now it is mediately foreshadow the unparalleled horror of our own.) But it is
others, the readers, ';ho going to create themselves in not enough to deny or condemn the world; no one can escape from his
the poem. The expenence IS repeated, but in reverse: the image opens world and that denial and condemnation are also ways of living it
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THE POETIC REVELATION INSPIRATIO.N 153

withbut transcending it, that is,. of suffering it passively. Nothing more reason?" For. Dante, inspiration is a supernatural mystery that the
nothing more illuminative of the mysteries of the poetic poet accepts with reflection, humility, and veneration. For Nerval, it
operation, Its barren wastes and its· paradises, than the· descriptions of is a catastrophe· and a mystery that provokes and Challenges us. A
Baudelaire, Coleridge, or Mallarme. And at the .same time, nothing mystery that must be unveiled. The transition to be
less dear than the explanations and. hypotheses with which they try to deciphered" and "problem to be solved" is gradual and will be made
reconcile the notion of inspiration with the modem idea of the world. by. Nerval's succesSors.
Read ·any of the capital texts of modern poetics (Poe's Philosophy of·
Composition, for example), to verify their disconcerting and contra- The need to reflect and meditate on poetic creation, to root out its
dictory lucidity and The contrast to the ancient texts is re- ,secret, an ouly be explained as a consequence of the age. Or
v.ealing. For tl>e poets of the past inspiration was a natural thing, pre- rather, modernity consists in that attitude. And the vexatt?n of· poets
asely because the supernatural formed part of their world. . stems from their inability to explain, as modern men and m terms of
· ··A spirit as self-possessed as Dante relates with simplicity and candor our conception of the world, that strange phenomenon that seems to
that during sleep Love and inspires his poems, and he ·adds deny us and to deny the foundations of the modern age: there, at the
that that revelation occurs at certain hours and under circumstances ·heart of consciousness, in the ego, pillar of the world, the only rock
that make the intervention of higher powers unequivocal and abso- that does not disintegrate, suddenly appears a strange element, one
lutely certain: "On saying those words, it disappeared and my dream ·that· destroys .the identity of consciousness. Our conception of
was interrupted. And later, reflecting on this Vision, I discovered that world had to be shaken, that is, the modern age had to reach a crlSls,
I had experienced it at.the ninth hour of the day; and therefore, even before the problem of inspiration conld· be properly formulated. In
before leaving my chamber, I resolved to compose that ballad irt which the history of poetry that moment is called surrealism. .
I' wowd carry out the mandate of my Lord (Love); and then I made Surrealism presents itself as a radical attempt to suppress the duel
the ballad that begins as follows .... " 2 The number nine has for Dante between subject and object, the form assumed for us by that which we
the same importance that seven has for Nerval. ·But for Dante the call rea!J'ty. ·For the ancients the world existed with the same plenitu?e
6f ri!ne a mysterious and sacred·meaning, as consciousness, and its relations were clear and natural. For us Its
whidunerely illUOllnes with a purer light the exceptional character of existence takes on the form of a bitter controversy: on the one hand,
his:love and the redemptive· significance of Beatrice. For Nerval seven the world evaporates and chaitges into an image of consciousness; on
is an ambiguous number, sometimes disastrous, sometimes beneficent, the other, consciousness is a reflection of the world. The surrealist ad-
whose true meaning· is impossible to determine. Dante accepts the venture is ari attack on the modern world because it tries to suppress
revelation. and uses it to show us the arcana of heaven and hell;·Nerval the quarrel between subject and· object. Heir of romanticism, it sets
recoils fascinated, and does ·not try' to communicate his visions to us .S out to accomplish the task that Navalis assigned to ."higher logic": to
much as to !.earn the revelation is: "I decided to examine my destroy the "old antinomy" that divides us. The romantics deny reality
and discover Its secret. I told myself, why not fc:irce these mys- -the spectral husk of a world replete with !ife yesterday-i": favor
tical doors at last, ·armed with all my will to dominate my sensations of the subject. Surrealism also attacks the object. The same aCid that
instead of tolerating them? Is it not possible to conquer this.atttactive dissolves the object disintegrates the subject. There is no self,.
and dreadful chimera, to impose order on the spirits that mock our iS no creator, but rather a kind of poetic force that blows where It wdl
I and produces gratuitous and inexplicable images.
We can all make poetry together because the poetic act is, by nature,

I
2 Vita Nuova, XII.

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154 THE POETIC REVELATION INSPIRATION

.,,
involuntary and it is always produced as a negation of the subject. The idea that is not contradictory to our fundamental conceptions. ThiS
poet's mission consists in attracting that poetic force and converting does not mean that inspiration has changed its nature, but that for the
himself into a high-tension wire that will permit the discharge of first time our idea of inspiration does not clash with the rest of our
images. Subject and object dissolve in favor of inspiration. The "sur· beliefs. . . .
realist object" turns to vapor: it is a bed that is an ocean that is a cave All great poets prior to surrealism had meditated on msptratton,
that is a mousehole that is a mirror that is the mouth of Kali. The sub· trying to fathom its secret-and this trait distinguishes them _from
ject also disappears: the poet is transformed into a poem, meeting baroque, renaissance, and medieval poets-but none was able to_tnsert
place of two words or two realities. In this way surrealism tries to inspiration fully into the image that modern man makes for hunself
break, at its two extremes, contradiction and solipsism. Bent on dras· of the world and of himself: In them all there were remnants of
tic measures, it doses all the exits: neither world nor consciousness. former ages. And what is-more: for them all, inspiration to return
Neither consciousness of the world nor world in consciousness. There to the past: to become medieval, Greek, savage. The of the
is no escape, except the upward flight: the imagination. Inspiration is romantics, the general archaism of modern and, m short, the
manifested or actualized in images. By means of inspiration, we figure of the poet as an exile in h_eart_of aty from the fact
imagine. And as we imagine, we dissolve subject and object, we dis· that it is impossible to acclimatize msptratto?. the
solve our selves and suppress contradiction. opposition and the exile to cease as it affirms msptratton as an tdea
Unlike the previous poets, who merely suffer it, surrealists bran· the world, without positing its dependenc_e an exter.nal
dish inspiration like a sword, transforming it into idea and theory. t;od, Nature, History, Race, etc. ts sornethmg that ts
Surrealism is not a poetry but a poetics and even more, and more de- given in man, is confused with his very bemg and c"? only ex·
cisively, a vision of the world. External revelation, inspiration breaks plained by roan. That is the point of departure of the Ftr:t Manifesto.
the subjectivistic labyrinth: it is something that assanlts us as soon as And the originality, hitherto little mentioned, of the attitude of Bre·
consciousness dozes, something that irrupts through a door that only ton and his friends, is rooted in this.
opens when the doors of wakefulness dose. Internal revelation, it During the movement's "research period" -th: epoch of auto·
causes our belief in the unity and identity of that same consciousness rnatism, autohypnosis, induced dreams, and collective garnes-:-poets
to waver: there is no self, and within each one of us diverse voices are adopted a twofold attitude toward inspiration: th_ey suffered tt, but
in conflict. The surrealist idea of inspiration presents itself as a de· they also observed it. The most valiant did not hesttate to break _away
struction of our vision of the world, since it denounces as mere phan· to go and seek ifin those places from which few return. Surrealist ac·
toms the two terms that constitute it. At the same time, it postulates a tivity denounced the penury of many of our
new vision of the world, in which it is precisely inspiration that oc· which consists in seeing in every human creattve :vork the
cupies the central place. The surrealist vision of the world is grounded " "!!"-and showed the suspicious frequency With whtch d!Strac·
WI d" .
on the activity, which both dissociates and re-creates, of inspiration. t.100, " "chan,
ce" and "negligence" intervene in great tscovenes.
.. "d
Surrealism proposes to make a poetic world, to establish a society in With a fascination that did not exclude Breton
which the central place of God or reason will be occupied by inspira· earth the mysterious mechanism of that whtch he called
tion. Thus, the true originality of surrealism consists not only in chance," meeting place of man and the ''othe:," of chOice of
having made of inspiration an idea but, more radically, an idea of the "otherness." Woman, image, mathematical or btologtca!law, all those
world. Thanks to this transmutation, inspiration ceases to be an indeci· Americas sprout in the middle of the ocean, when we look for some·
pherable mystery, a vain superstition or an anomaly and becomes an thing else or when we have ceased to look. How and why, are those
 THE POETIC REVELATION INSPIRATION I 57

produced? We know that there is a magnetic field, a point of imreBective "occupying oneself with tools".:_in which the nltimate
mtersectwn and that is all. We know that the "other voice" filters teference, man's radical pre-occupation, death, does not disappear but ",,
through the holes that the vigilance of attention leaves unattended rather, hidden, continues to be the foundation of every occupation-is I'
?nt-where do':s it come from and why does it leave us as perfectly applicable to the surrealist doctrine of inspiration. The rev-
It comes? Despite the experimental work of surrealism, Breton con- elations of the unconscious imply a kind of consciousness of those
fessed that "we continue to be as little informed as ever about the revelations. Only by a free and voluntary act do those revelations come
origin of this voice." Let us say, in pa5sing, that we do indeed know out in the open, just as the censorship of the ego involves a prior
something: eacb time w_e hear the "voice," each time the unexpected knowledge of what is going to be censored. When we repress certain
encounter IS produced, It seems that we hear our selves and see that desires or impulses, we do so by means of a will that is masked and
which we had already seen. It seems that we return, hear again, re- disguised, and therefore we mike it "unconscious," so that it will not
member. Although we shall come back to this sensation of already compromise us. At the moment of the liberation of that "uncon-
heard, and already recognized that the irruption of scious," the operation is repeated, but in the opposite direction: once
otherness gives us, let us emphasize that Breton's confession of again the will intervenes and chooses, now hidden under the mask of
ignorance is of utmost value: it reveals the intimate resistance of the pas'sivitY. In both cases consciousness intervenes; in both, there is a
author of Nadja to the purely psychological interpretation of inspira- decision, either to mike unconscious that which offeqds us, or to bring
tion. And this leads us to treat more concretely the theme of the sur- it· out in the open. This decision does not sprout from a separate
realists' idea of inspiration. facultY, will or reason, but rather it is the very totality of being that is
Since ron;anticism, the P?et' s ego had grown in direct proportion to expressed in it. Pre-meditation is the determinate trait of the act of
the contractwn of the poetic world. The poet felt himself the master creating and that which mikes it possible. Without pre-meditation
of his poem with the same naturalness--and the same absence of le- there is no inspiration or reVelation of "otherness." But pre-medita-
gality-fel.t by the lan.downer or factory proprietor toward the pro- tion is anterior to will, to desire, or to any other inclination, conscious
ducts of h1s land or h1s factory. In answer to the individualism and or unconscious, of the spirit. Because an willing and desiring, as Hei-
rationalism that precede them, the surrealists accentuate the uncon- degger has shown, have their root and foundation in man's very
scious, and collective character of all creation. Inspiration being, which is now and has been since his birth a wanting to be, a
and the dictation of the unconscious become synonyms: that which is permanent yearning for being, a continuous pre-being-himself. And
properly poetic lies in the unconscious elements that, without the thus, it is not in the unconscious or in consciousness, understood as
poet's willing it, are revealed in his poem. Poetry is undirected "parts" or "compounds" of man, nor in impulse, in passivity, or in
thought. To dualism subject and object, Breton appeals being alert, that we can find the source of inspiration, because they all
to Freud: the poetic Is the revelation of the unconscious and there- [ are grounded upon man's being.
fore, it is never deliberate. But the problem that torments Bre;on is a Breton never lost sight of the inadequacy of the psychological ex-
false problem, as Novalis had already seen:" to abandon oneself to the )' planation, and, even at his moments of greatest adherence to Freud's
of the w:conscious requires a voluntary act; passivity involves ideas, he was careful to reiterate that inspiration was an inexplicable
an. activity on which the former leans. I do not believe it is inappro-
priate to break up the word pre-meditation to show that it treats of ari
I phenomenon for psychoanalysis. The doubt concerning the possibili-
ties of real comprehension that psychology offers induced him to ex-
act prior to all meditation in which something that we could also· call I -periment with occultist hypotheses. Now, occultism can aid us only to
pre-reflection intervenes: Heidegger's criticism of the mechanical and the extent to which it ceases to be occultism, or, in other words, when

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 THE POETIC REVELATION 159
INSP·IRATION

it becomes revelation and shows us that which it hides. If inspiration is rection, of unity that is resolved into "otherness" to be re:uranged in
a mystery, occultist explanations make it doubly mysterious. Occultism a new unity, it may perhaps be possible to penetrate the emgma of the
claims, exactly as inspiration does, to be a revelation of "otherness"; "other voice."
therefore, it is incompetent to explain it except by analogy. If we are Here is the poet before the paper. It does not J_"atter whether or
interested in knowing what inspiration is, it does not suffice to say that he has a plan, if he has meditated for a long ttme about what h: ts
it is something like the revelation proclaimed by occultists, since we do going to write, or if his consciousness is as empty and as the tm·
not know in what that revelation coqsists, either. Moreover, the insis- maculate paper that alternately attracts and repels hun. The act of
tence with which Breton appeals to the possibility of an occult or su- writing involves, as the first movement, a oneself from
pernatural explanation does not fail to be revealing. That insistence world, something like throwing oneself into vmd. Now the ts
betrays his growing displeasure with the psychological explanation as alone. All that was his everyday world and h1s usual pr':"ccupatlons a
well as the persistence of the phenomenon of "otherness." And thus, moment ago, disappears. If the poet truly wishes wnte and not to
it is not so much the idea of inspiration that is valid in Breton, as his perform a vague literary ceremony, his act leads h1m to. away
having made of inspiration an idea of the world. Although he may not from the world and to interdict everything-not excluding
succeed in giving us a description oLthe phenomenon, neither does Then there are two possibilities: can turn to vapor and
he hide it or reduce it to a mere psychological mechanism. By this integrate, lose weight, float, and finally or else, _everythmg
keeping "otherness" in abeyance, the surrealist doctrine does not end can close and turn aggressively into an object _w•thout matter
4t a summary, and ultimately superficial, psychological affirmation but tliat is unseizable and impenetrable to the hght of stgmficance. The
rather it opens the door to an interrogation. Surrealism not only accli- world opens: it is an abyss, an immense yawn; the world-the table,
matized inspiration among us as an idea of the world, but, because of the wall, the goblet, the remembered faces--closes and a wall
the same and admitted inadequacy of the psychological explanation without fissures. In both cases, the poet is left alone, w1thout
adopted, it made visible the very core of the problem: "otherness." to Jean on. It is time to create the world anew and to name agam ';'th
The answer is perhaps rooted in this and not in the absence of pre- words that menacing external vacnity: table, tree, lips, stars, nothmg.
meditation. But the words have evaporated too, they too have slipped away.
are surrounded by the silence that precedes the word. Or the other s1de
The difficulties experienced by spirits such as Novalis and Breton of silence: the senseless and untranslatable murmur, "the sound and
may perhaps lie in their conception of man as something given, that is, the fury," the prattle, the noise that does not say anything, that only
as the master of a nature: poetic creation is an operation during which says: nothing. In being left without a world, poet has been left
the poet plucks or extracts certain words from within him. Or, if one without words. Perhaps, at that instant, he recoils and draws back: he
utilizes the opposite hypothesis, from the substratum of the poet, at
certain privileged moments, words pour out. Now, there is no such
substratum, man is not a thing and even less a static, motionless thing,
t wishes to remember language, to take from within it all that. he
learned, those beautiful words with which, a moment before, he made
his way in the world and which were like keys opened every_do_or
in whose depths lie stars and serpents, jewels and viscous animals. Ar- for him. But there is no longer a backward, there 1s no
row extended, always tearing the air, always ahead of himself, throw-
ing himself beyond himself, shot, exhaled, man ceaselessly advances
I
•I
The poet thrown forward, tense and attentive, is literally outstde
self. And like him, the words are beyond, always beyond, to fltght
and falls, and at each step he is another and he himself. "Otherness"
is in man himself. From this perspective of incessant death and resur-
! as soon as he grazes them. Thrown out of himself, he ne_ver be

I able to be one with the words, one with the world, one With hunself.

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 I6o THB POETIC REVELATION INSPIRATION
'161

He is always just beyond. The "\Vords are nowhere, they are not some- word becomes something that is the poet's exclusively,' without ceasing
thing given, which awaits us. They have to be created, they have to be ·on that accountto be the world's, that is, without ceasing to be word.
invented, just as we create ourselves and create the world each day. That is why the poetic word. is personal and instantaneous-emblem
How can wdrds be invented? Nothing comes from nothing. Even if of the instant of creation-as well as historical. Because they are· in-
the poet could create from nothing, what sense would there be ·in stantaneous and personal emblems, all poems say the same thing. They
ta!l<ing about "inventing a language"? Language is, by its: very nature, re\>eal an act that is repeated 'ceaselessly: that of the incessant destruc-
dtalogue. l.angilage is social and always implies, at least, two: the one tion and creation of man, his langilage, and his wodd, that of the per-
who speaks and the one who hears. Thus, the word that the poet in- manent "otherness" in which being· man consistS. But illso, because'it
vents--the word that, for an instant that is every instant, had evapo· is historical, because it is word in common, each poem says something
rated ·or been con'verted 'into an impenetrable object-is the word of distinct and imique: Saint John does not say the same tliing as Homer
every day..The poet does not take it from himself. Nor does it come to or Racine; each one alludes to his world, each one re-creates his world.
him from without: There is no without or within; as there is not a Inspiration is a manifestation of man's constitutive "otherness." It is
world before us: ever since we are, we are in the world and the world not inside, within us, or belllnd, like something that suddenly sprouted
is "one of the constituents of our being. And the same occurs with from the slime of the past, but rather it is, so to speak, ahead of us: it
wdrds: they ate neither illSide nor outside, but they are we ourselves, is something (or 'rather, someone) that calls us to be' ourselves. And
are part of our being'. They ate our own being. And because they are that someone is our verj being: And in tnith· iil.spirition is not any-
part of us, they are alien, they belong to others:. they are one of the ·where, it simply is not, nor is it a thing: it is an aspiration, a movirig, a
forms of our constitutive "otherness." When the poet feels ci.It off forward thrust: toward that which we ourselves are. Thus, poetic
from the worla and everything; even language itself, flees from him ·creation is the exercise' of· our freedom, of our decision to be. This
and scatters, he himSelf flees and is annihilated. And at the secbhd freedom, as has been said many times, is the act by which' we go beyond
when he decides to face the silence or the noisy and deaf- ·ourselves, in order to be more completely. Freedom and transcendence
erun? chaos, and he stammers and· tries to invent a language, he him- are expressions, movements of temporality. Inspiration,· the "other
self ts theo?e who invents himself and takes the mortal leap and is voice," "otherness" are, in their essence, temporality gushing forth,
reborn and ts another. In order to be he himself he m\lst be another. manifesting itself unceasingly. Inspiration; "otherness," freedom;· arid
And the same happens with his language: it is his because it belongs temporality are transcendence. But they are transcendence, ·movement
to the others. To make it truly his, he resorts to image, to adjective, to of being..:.toward what? Toward ourselves. When Baudeliriie main-
rhythm, that is, to everything that makes it distinct. Thus, his words tains that the "highest and most philosophical of our faculties is the
are and are not' his. The poet does not listen to a strange voice his imagination," he affirms a trutli that can also be worded thus: by the
voice and his word are the strange ones: they are the words and the is to say, by our capacity, inherent in our essential
voices of to which he gives new meaning. And not only his temporality, to convert into images that same temporality's
w?rds and hts votce are strange; he himself, his entire being; is some- aviditY to be incarnated-we can come out of ourselves, go beyond
thmg ceaselessly alien, something that is always being another. 'The ourselves to the encounter of oursi!lves.' In its first movement, inspira-
poetic word is a revelation of our original condition because by it man tion is that by which we cease to be we; in its second movement, this
actually names himself another, and thus he is, at the same time, this coming out of us is a being ourselves more fully. The truth of myths
and that, he himself and the other. and of poetic images--so manifestly mendacious-lies in this dialectic
The poem makes our condition transparent because at its core the of departure and return, of "otherness" and unity.
 I62 THE POETIC REVELATION INSPIRATION
,,
magnetizes the him and for him, all the beings and desires: another body, another being. The voice of desire is the very
ObJects that surround h1m are 1mpregnated with meaning: they have voice of being, because being is nothing but desire for being. Beyond,
a name. Everything points to man. But man-to what does he point? outside of me, in the green and gold thicket, among the tremulous
He does not know for certain. He wants to be another; his being al- branches, sings the unknown. It calls to me. But the unknown is fa-
;;ays leads him to go beyond himself. And man constantly loses foot- miliar and therefore we do know, with a knowledge of memory,
mg} at he plunges down and happens upon that other that where the poetic voice comes from and where it goes. I was here be-
he 1magmes hunself to be and which slips from his grasp. Empedocles fore. The rock of the homeland still bears the traces of mY. footsteps.
that he had been a man and a woman, a rock and, ''in the The sea knows me. That star once blazed to the right of me. I know
Brmy Deep, fish." He is not the only ·one. Every day we hear your eyes, the weight of your tresses, the temperature of your cheek,
?,f th1s kind: .when so-and-s? is excited, he is "unrecogniza- the paths that lead to your silence. Your thoughts are transparent. In
ble, he becomes a d1fferent ' Our name also shelters a strang- them I see my image confused with yours a thousand times a thousand
er, about whom we know nothmg except that he is we ourselves. Man to the point of incandescence. Because of you I am an image, because
is temporality and change and "otherness" constitutes his own mode of of you I am another, because of you I am. All men are this man who
being.. Man realizes or fulfills himself when he becomes another. In is another and I myself. I is you. And also he and we and you and this
another he recovers himself, reconquers his original being, and that. The pronouns of our languages are modulations, inflections
pnor to the fall or the plunge into the world, prior to the split into of another secret, unutterable pronoun, which sustains them all, origin
self and "other." of language, end and limit of the poem. Languages are metaphors of
distinctive essence of man does not consist so much in being an that original pronoun that I and the others, my voice and the other
entity of words as in this possibility that he has of being "another." voice, every man and each man, am. Inspiration is to throw oneself
And because he can be another he is an entity of words. They are one into being, yes, but also and above all it is to remember and to be
of he poss_esses to make himself another. But this poetic again. To return to Being.
poss1b1hty 1s only real1zed if we take the mortal leap, that is, if we ac-
tually come out of ourselves and surrender and lose ourselves in the
"other." There, in the very act of leaping, man, suspended in ·the
abyss, between the this and the that, for a lightning instant is this and
that, he was and what he will be, life and death, in a being him-
self 1s an absolute being, a present plenitude. Now man is all that
he WIShed to be: rock, woman, bird, the other men and the other
He is image, marriage of opposites, poem saying itself to itself.
He Is, finally, the image of man being incarnated in man.
The voice, the "other voice," is my voice. Man's being al-
ready contams that other that he wishes to be. "The beloved " M ch _
d ... 'hth 1 ' a a
o o?e ';,It · e over, n?t at the of the erotic process, but
at tis begmnzng. The beloved 1s already m our being, as thirst and
"otherness." is eroticism. Inspiration is that strange voice that
takes man out of hunself to be everything that he is, everything that he