"Fortunately, in the realm of poetry there is no recognized means of prescribing or forbidding anything to anybody. In truth, there exist—there must exist—certain purely statistical laws, but this kind of law is, by definition, inapplicable to the judgment of works of art. "As for rules—but it betrays an ignorance of their essence to call them rules—there are no rules for pleasures, but one may associate conventions with them. One can learn to make the most of a few well-observed conventions: this is the mainspring of all games. "Once they exist and one is used to expecting them, one can enjoy breaking them. "I believe I have never written any but fairly regular verses…Some people have even complained of this, instead of commiserating with me. Moreover, I have sometimes, for very personal reasons, set myself some extra trammels and conditions. But if tomorrow I were to be seized by a desire to throw away rhyme and everything else, no longer count by syllables, and abandon myself completely to the desires of my ear, I know quite well that I should find no truth essential to poetry standing in their way, and I should do as I pleased." -Paul Valery
"Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them." -Paul Valery
Une commission se réunit ce lundi pour examiner les résultats...
Posted by: | Jun 23, 2009 at 03:33 PM