Creative Reality

Abstract

We would say that all poets, have lived in the acute awareness of a conflict between the mind and the body. We might perhaps add that poetry arises from that opposition. We might finally say that this tension is the very condition of poetry. However, what side should the poet take in this conflict? Assuredly not that of natural life. It would submerge him, and it is precisely against natural life that the conflict arises; he becomes a poet only in claiming his rights against the amorphous dominion of that life. As far as the misadventures of the pure mind, taken exclusively, are concerned, we have shown them in the example of M. Teste. At the same time, all too much has been said about the “evasion” of reality adopted by romantic poets, surrealistic poets, etc., as well as about their refuge in dreams. Mallarmé, whose powerful demands traverse the entire effort of his great disciple, was not satisfied with the ephemeral region of dreams and erected an ideal kingdom with its own laws, an artificial sphere supporting itself like Aristophanes “Cloud-cuckooland,” a kingdom built by the birds halfway between the earth of men and the heaven of the gods and separated from each. If Valéry refuses this solution, it is because he refuses to seek a refuge in poetry. Escaping also means that one admits defeat, that one turns his back to an essential point.