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? ”

“ Before letting us go to our whisper, genuine bird talk like the reeds, and mixed to their vague astonishment when we return from our immutability on the pond of dreams to life — on the pond of dreams, where we never fish but our own image, without pondering on the silver fish scales! ”