Jacob Cow, the pirate, by Jean Paulhan

There is in this delicious little book an apparent play of paradoxes which makes it continually oscillate between reality and dream. The appearance of the paradox is introduced by this quote, quite unexpected, from Father Botzarro: "I am accustomed to wondering if words are not the thing in the world least suited to speaking." Jean Paulhan says: "We do not hear words directly, but according to the meaning that we form them. The presence of the image in this sense reveals a delay, a rupture of understanding, and like a short circuit of language. In the same way we judge writers." I want to quote again, because Jean Paulhan's book explains itself. Who are the authors today of whom we can say this? There are few. "It is difficult to speak of words in a detached way, as a painter describes the grinding of colors; they mingle so closely with our concern to make them useful that we never very clearly distinguish where the concern begins and where the word ends. However, there is no perceptible difference or gap from the word to the sentence, from the sentence to the story. Philosophers notice that we comb our hair and tie our shoes according to the idea we have of the world: the writer, maker of language, it is by imitating his first opinion on the play of words that he foresees and composes himself. In this way, the author's thought and his dialectic clearly appear: both rich, firm, subtle without exaggerated finesse; thought chooses its words, places them, moves them, gives them the color it pleases; choosing with sobriety, nuance with art. Part of the work is dedicated to Paul Valéry.

(Article published in Le Disque Vert, 1st year, n° 9, January 1922.)