Stéphane Mallarmé

“ Beauty, lastly, having through man's science found in the entire Universe its correlative stages, having had the supreme word from itself [1] , having recalled the secret horror that was forcing it to smile in Da Vinci's time, and to smile mysteriously — now smiling mysteriously but with happiness and with the eternal tranquility of the Vénus de Milo found again — having had the idea of the mystery for which Mona Lisa only knew the fatal sensation. ”

“ Melancholic lake stork, motionless, does not your soul see itself appear, in their mirror, with boredom in excess — which, cloudy from its hazy twilight, the magical and pure charm, reminds you that it is your body that, on one leg, the other sickly folded into your feathers, holds itself, forsaken? ”

“ The Vénus de Milo ― that I like to attribute to Phidias, so much the name of this great artist has become generic to me; Da Vinci's Mona Lisa; seem to me, and are, the two great scintillations of the Beauty on this earth and this Work, such as it is done [sic] , the third. Complete and unconscious Beauty, unique and unalterable, or Phidias' Venus, Beauty, having been bitten at the core since Christianity, by the Chimera, and grievously re-emergent with a smile filled with mystery, but with forced mystery that it feels to be the condition of its being. ”