Jean Paulhan. A philosophy and practice of expression and reflection
Maurice-Jean Lefebve“Jean Paulhan has existed in letters for around twenty-five years, and his presence imposed itself without anyone being aware of it. So that we could sometimes criticize him; it has never really been challenged. Can we challenge head-on what always escapes you at some point?... Everywhere in the Letters, precisely nowhere, it is this almost fickle character and this insinuating work that we must try here to bring together, to define, to fix. This is not without danger. Because Paulhanian thought concerns precisely objects and phenomena which, by essence, cannot be analyzed or expressed with all the desirable distinction. The method here merges with its object, and the thought is in action. Thus, each work, even theoretical, contains a part of implication that we would not highlight without betraying it, but of which we can, at least, identify the presence and show the secret role... Jean Paulhan's essays would therefore be, through this sort of duplication, quite singular works of art, and his thought would be a poetic thought. It is this poetry that the critic must strive to grasp at the very heart of thought.”