The necessities of life and the consequences of dreams, introductory note

The singular error of Victor Hugo, Stéphane Mallarmé and Madame Mathieu de Noailles can make us think, further, that words, far from carrying taste, smell or music, the very meaning is not such an assured quality for them that they do not get rid of them as soon as the writer neglects them, or welcomes them with the appropriate brutality of mind, or even refuses to take into account their veins, their thread and their particular resistance. For proverbs, examples and all words forever marked with a first discovery, how much this void around them makes them more absurd and pure, equally difficult to maintain, to invent. I like that Paul Éluard receives them as such, or seeks them out. Then his poems begin.

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[Untitled text, ("the note on Examples, according to Éluard"). At the head of The necessities of life and the consequences of dreams, preceded by Examples (Au Sans Pareil, 1921), reprinted in Éluard, OC I, p.55]
(Appendix III of the Correspondence P. Éluard & J. Paulhan, p. 196, Éditions Claire Paulhan).