Roger Caillois & Jean Paulhan, 1934-1967
Roger CailloisJean PaulhanWhat is a correspondence, if not an effort to dispel misunderstandings, to verify an understanding, that is to say also to constantly put it back into play. If Jean Paulhan and Roger Caillois corresponded so faithfully, it is undoubtedly in the conviction that each apprehended a side irreducible to the other of the same truth. And this conviction was not without reasons. Because, beyond what opposes their intuitions, we can only be sensitive to what brought them together: namely, the contradiction itself. Because there is a lot of the profane in the sacred of Paulhan, even though Caillois brings out a horror and a fascination very specific to the sacred of profane Nature. The symmetry of their positions is less the sign of a radical separation than that of a necessary ambiguity of the truth. It is to the elucidation of this truth that Paulhan and Caillois are subject. And the rigor that they constantly demanded of each other until the end clearly shows that they expected from their dialogue a common breakthrough in understanding what eludes all clarity.
Publisher : Gallimard