The image is the first manifestation, a fundamental hypostasis, of the poetic act. It is Breath-Matter seized by Word-Forms. The immediate image, like a flash of light, represents, for the poet, the one and only view of the world. It is his monad designed in advance for him alone but still only existing inside him. Discrimination between visual, auditory and tactical imagery will only come later on. For now all the boiling life that has been trying to spout from the poet, having found its only outlet and form in a vocal design established by the Word, is violently expelled. Now this life is seen as a hollow sphere at the center of which is the poet. And this bubble, which later on will dissolve once again and again, from itself, become reborn, dissolve once again and again, from itself, become reborn, also engenders the “poetic delirium” about which Plato spoke in Phaedrus. It is the act of imagining, an essentially instantaneous act, which is born, which dies and which re-emerges in time. Through the image and its exterior character, such as it is, correlations are established between the now liberated vital movements and mechanics of language. The essential Word is therefore not effected by those verbal forms that tend to express it. For it is not, itself, directly expressed. It is the Password, the open door that permits bursts of lyrical chaos to find, through the intermediary of the image, words that suits them. The Word opens the poet’s mouth, but it is breath that speaks in its stead, with as much approximation as the human instrument permits. -René Daumal, Le Contre-Ciel

The image is the first manifestation, a fundamental hypostasis, of the poetic act. It is Breath-Matter seized by Word-Forms. The immediate image, like a flash of light, represents, for the poet, the one and only view of the world. It is his monad designed in advance for him alone but still only existing inside him. Discrimination between visual, auditory and tactical imagery will only come later on. For now all the boiling life that has been trying to spout from the poet, having found its only outlet and form in a vocal design established by the Word, is violently expelled. Now this life is seen as a hollow sphere at the center of which is the poet. And this bubble, which later on will dissolve once again and again, from itself, become reborn, dissolve once again and again, from itself, become reborn, also engenders the “poetic delirium” about which Plato spoke in Phaedrus. It is the act of imagining, an essentially instantaneous act, which is born, which dies and which re-emerges in time.

Through the image and its exterior character, such as it is, correlations are established between the now liberated vital movements and mechanics of language. The essential Word is therefore not effected by those verbal forms that tend to express it. For it is not, itself, directly expressed. It is the Password, the open door that permits bursts of lyrical chaos to find, through the intermediary of the image, words that suits them. The Word opens the poet’s mouth, but it is breath that speaks in its stead, with as much approximation as the human instrument permits.

-René Daumal, Le Contre-Ciel