The writer must make himself, in the text, the spiritual actor either of his sufferings, those dragons he has nurtured, or of some happiness. Floor, … - Stéphane Mallarmé

The world was made in order to result in a beautiful book.

It seems to me that there should be only allusions. The contemplation of objects, the volatile image of the dreams they evoke, these make the song: the Parnassians [the classicist movement of Leconte de Lisle, Heredia, etc.] who make a complete demonstration of the object thereby lack mystery; they deprive the [reader's] mind of that delicious joy of imagining that it creates. To name the thing means forsaking three quarters of a poem's enjoyment-which is derived from unraveling it gradually, by happy guesswork: to suggest the thing creates the dream. Symbols are formed when this secret is used to perfection: to evoke little by little, the image of an object in order to demonstrate a mood; or, conversely, to choose an object and to extract from it a mood, by a series of decipherings.)

No water murmurs but what my flute pours On the chord sprinkled thicket; and the sole wind Prompt to exhale from my two pipes, before It scatters the sound in a waterless shower, Is, on the horizon's unwrinkled space, The visible serene artificial breath Of inspiration, which regains the sky.