The poet's other readers are the ancient poets, who look upon the freshly written pages from an incorruptible distance. Their poetic forms are permanent, and it is difficult to create new forms which can approach them.

A poet clings to his own tradition and avoids internationalism.

Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal but which the reader recognizes as his own.

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

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.

After the turbulence of death, moral principles and even religious proofs are called into question.

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.