Paul Valery's Blog Revelation


'THE PHOTO-POETIC PHENOMENON'
from *Analects*

"The poet has a great advantage in the fact that most people
feel incapable of pushing their thought *beyond* the point
where it can dazzle, excite, or elate them.

The spark lights up an area that seems infinite in the given
instant for which it is seen. The expression dazzles.


The shock of wonderment cannot be separated from the
objects it reveals. The strong dark outlines that appear
during the instant remain like wonderful properties in the
memory.

They are not distinguished from real objects. They are
seen as positive things.

But one must note that, to the great good luck of poetry,
*the tiny moment* I spoke of cannot be prolonged; there is no
turning the spark into a *fixed, continuous illumination.*

*That would light up something altogether different.*

In this case the phenomena a dictated by the source of
light.

The tiny instant offers glimpses or gleams of quite another
system or "world" than what can be revealed by a contin-
uous illumination. This world (to which it would be use-
less and absurd to attribute any metaphysical value) is essen-
tially *unstable.* It is perhaps the world of free and characteristic
association among the mind's potential resources? The world
iof magnetic forces, of shortest distances, of resonances...


Perhaps the element of the inexplicable here would have
*distance* as its symbol? Action at a distance, induction, and so
forth?"