We wrote verses that condemned us, with no hope of pardon, to the most bitter solitude.

At the point when continuity was interrupted by the first nuclear explosion, it would have been too easy to recover the formal sediment which linked us with an age of poetic decorum, of a preoccupation with poetic sounds.

A poet clings to his own tradition and avoids internationalism.

The antagonism between the poet and the politician has generally been evident in all cultures.

An exact poetic duplication of a man is for the poet a negation of the earth, an impossibility of being, even though his greatest desire is to speak to many men, to unite with them by means of harmonious verses about the truths of the mind or of things.

Europeans know the importance of the Resistance; it has been the shining example of the modern conscience.

The Resistance is a moral certainty, not a poetic one. The true poet never uses words in order to punish someone. His judgment belongs to a creative order; it is not formulated as a prophetic scripture.