#nimrod

“To feel” another writer is to bring oneself into the most intimate part of his being, to invite oneself into his laboratory. It is to live his life, to move to the rhythm of his heartbeat.

When a painter composes an image, Valéry says, he “brings his body.” As for Senghor, he revisits the question by referring to a story. I quote: “‘I want you to feel me,’ […] ‘I want you to know me.’”

Reading others is being open to creation. Within each of us singular forms and structures are being sketched. We undoubtedly take energy from others (that is the meaning of human destiny), but elaboration is our own, because each of us digests the world in our own way.

The language used in forced labor is not the same as the one that allows us to write poems. One divides, the other unites. One lowers us to the level of animals, the other recognizes our humanity, our universal humanity, as these poems were not written for us. And yet we are sensitive to them; their beauty ennobles us.

To write is to write politically.

I love her like an exile seized by the sorrow of hoping.