From the "Art Poétique"

Once in Japan, as I was travelling from Nikkö

to Chuzenji, I saw, although widely separated, juxta-

posed by the line of my vision, the green of a maple

crown the pattern proposed by a pine tree. These pages

are comments on this forest text, on the arboreal enun-

ciation, in June, of a new poetics of the universe, of a

new logic. The old logic had the syllogism as an organ,

the new has the metaphor, the new word, the operation

resulting from the joined simultaneous existence of

two different things. The starting point of the first is

a general and absolute affirmation, an attribution, for

all time, to the subject, of a quality and a character.

Without reference to time and place, the sun shines,

the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right

angles. It creates, by defining them, abstract indi-

viduals, it establishes between them invariables. Its

procedure is a naming. All the terms, once decided

upon, classified by genre and species in the columns of

its bookkeeping, by separate analysis, it applies to any

waltaee FOURIE

subject proposed. I would compare this logic to the

first part of grammar which determines the nature

and function of different words. The second logic is

like syntax which teaches the art of putting the words

together, and this is practised before our eyes by na-

ture itself. Science deals only with the general, and

creation only with the particular. The metaphor, the

basic iamb or the combination of a long and a short

accent, are not manifested solely on the pages of books:

they are part of the autochthonous art used by every-

thing which comes into being. And do not speak of

chance. The planting of this cluster of flowers, the

form of that mountain are no more the effect of

chance than the Parthenon or this diamond which ages

the lapidary in cutting it, but the result of a treasury

of plans certainly far richer and more scientific. I al-

lege many proofs of geology and temperature, of na-

tural and human history; our works and our means

do not differ from nature's. I understand that each

thing does not exist alone in itself, but in an infinite set

of relationships with all others....