"The color of a thing is that one which, out of all the colors, it repels and cannot assimilate. High heaven refuses blue, returning azure to the retina. All summer long the leaves hold in the red. Charcoal gobbles all.
To our senses things offer only their rejections. We know them by their refuse. Perfume is what the flowers throw away.
Perhaps we only know other people by what they eliminate, by what their substance will not accept. If you are good, it is because you retain your evil. If you blaze, hurling off sparkles and lightnings, your sorrow, gloom and stupidity keep house within you. They are more you, more yours, than your brilliance. Your genius is everything you are not. Your best deeds are foreign to you."
- Paul Valéry
Agreed.
ReplyDeleteProbably thanks are due to Steve Sher at KUOW for hosting poet Heather McHugh, who read Valery's poem on the air on June 21st, inviting the rest of us to meditate on it as well...
Indeed! ;)
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