My readers at that time were still men of letters; but there had to be other people waiting to read my poems.

The poet's other readers are the ancient poets, who look upon the freshly written pages from an incorruptible distance. Their poetic forms are permanent, and it is difficult to create new forms which can approach them.

Thus, the poet's word is beginning to strike forcefully upon the hearts of all men, while absolute men of letters think that they alone live in the real world.

The writer of stories or of novels settles on men and imitates them; he exhausts the possibilities of his characters.

War, I have always said, forces men to change their standards, regardless of whether their country has won or lost.

An exact poetic duplication of a man is for the poet a negation of the earth, an impossibility of being, even though his greatest desire is to speak to many men, to unite with them by means of harmonious verses about the truths of the mind or of things.