Man cannot produce a single work without the assistance of the slow, assiduous, corrosive worm of thought.

Man cannot produce a single work without the assistance of the slow, assiduous, corrosive worm of thought.

Narrative art, the novel, from Murasaki to Proust, has produced great works of poetry.

For my part, if I consider poetry as an object, I maintain that it is born of the necessity of adding a vocal sound (speech) to the hammering of the first tribal music.

Mass communication, radio, and especially television, have attempted, not without success, to annihilate every possibility of solitude and reflection.

The most dangerous aspect of present-day life is the dissolution of the feeling of individual responsibility. Mass solitude has done away with any difference between the internal and the external, between the intellectual and the physical.

But poets were not considered dangerous and they were advised to exercise self-censorship. At most, poets were requested not to write at all. I took advantage of this negative liberty.