Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility. In that case, you ask me, of what use is it? Of no use. Who will see it? No one. Which does not prevent it from being an outrage to modesty, though its exhibitionism is squandered on the blind. It is enough for poetry to express a personal ethic, which can then break away in the form of a work. It insists on living its own life. It becomes the pretext for a thousand misunderstandings that go by the name of glory...

The ultimate politeness in art consists of speaking only to those who are able to uncover and measure its relationships. Anything else is symbolic, and symboli…

Beauty is always the result of an accident. Of a violent lapse between acquired habits and those yet to be acquired. It baffles and disgusts. It may even horri…

Anything of any importance cannot help but be unrecognizable, since it bears no resemblance to anything already known.

Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.

There is a sense of life so real that it becomes the sense of something more real than life:It is the meaning at work in what has no meaning; it is, at its cle…

Klopstock was questioned regarding the meaningof a passage in his poem. He replied, 'God and I both knew what it meant once; now God alone knows.'