Jean Paulhan the Underground

Each inventor has his inventions and his discoveries. And it is painful for others to understand.

Lead sun, black face, mouth of shadow. Light in the veins, but eyes in a splendid and, without error, perfect night. Only the smell of flames and smoke, only blood and wind, this soul swallowed, exhaled.

Fruits come, no doubt, behind this masked earth, fruits on every branch.

The final surge, to witness, by his friend, the sharing of a visible art: dust given in surprise to the grass, the shocks of flowers against the shocks of hills, and common sense to the elastic wind, stark naked in the void.

P. E.

(text published in Littérature n° 9, November 1919, p. 31, section "Palets")