“He searches his soul, inspects it, tests it, learns it.”

Original: Il cherche son âme, il l’inspecte, il la tente, l’apprend. — The poet is presented as an explorer whose territory is consciousness itself. · Letter to Paul Demeny, 15 May 1871 (French)

• Discovery
• Poetry
• Self Knowledge

“The first study of the man who wants to be a poet is his own complete knowledge of himself.”

Original: La première étude de l’homme qui veut être poète est sa propre connaissance, entière. — Rimbaud links poetic ambition with an uncompromising investigation of the self. · Letter to Paul Demeny, 15 May 1871 (French)

• Knowledge
• Poetry
• Self Knowledge

“I draw the bow; the symphony stirs in the depths, or leaps onto the stage.”

Original: Je lance un coup d’archet: la symphonie fait son remuement dans les profondeurs, ou vient d’un bond sur la scène. — Poetic creation is imagined as the release of something already stirring beneath conscious awareness. · Letter to Paul Demeny, 15 May 1871 (French)

• Creation
• Music
• Poetry

“If brass wakes up as a bugle, it is not its fault.”

Original: Si le cuivre s’éveille clairon, il n’y a rien de sa faute. — The metaphor presents the poet as an instrument through which something beyond conscious intention finds expression. · Letter to Paul Demeny, 15 May 1871 (French)

• Consciousness
• Creation
• Poetry

“The poet is truly a thief of fire.”

Original: Le Poète est vraiment voleur de Feu. — The poet is cast as a Promethean figure who takes transformative knowledge and power beyond ordinary human limits. · Letter to Paul Demeny, 15 May 1871 (French)

• Creation
• Knowledge
• Poetry

“Poetry will no longer set the rhythm of action; it will be in advance of it.”

Original: La poésie ne rythmera plus l’action; elle sera en avant. — Rimbaud gives poetry a prophetic role, imagining it as something that anticipates rather than merely reflects change. · Letter to Paul Demeny, 15 May 1871 (French)

• Action
• Future
• Poetry

“The poet devotes and consumes himself to defining and constructing a language within language.”

Original: Le poète se consacre et se consume à définir et à construire un langage dans le langage. — Poetry is presented as the creation of a heightened language within ordinary language. · Variété (French)

• Craft
• Language
• Poetry

“The poem — this prolonged hesitation between sound and meaning.”

Original: Le poème — cette hésitation prolongée entre le son et le sens. — Valéry presents poetry as a delicate balance between music and meaning. · Rhumbs, 1921 (French)

• Language
• Music
• Poetry

“No lines of print will ever intoxicate me as Rossetti's rather florid verses did.”

Recalling the overwhelming force of his first encounter with poetry · Essay, Remembered Verses, 1933

• Poetry
• Reading

“If you like it, listen to it; if not, let it alone.”

Insisting poetry owes its audience nothing beyond its own beauty · Essay, Poetry, Gongorism, and a Thousand Years, New York Times, 1948

• Freedom
• Poetry

“It belongs out-doors, it has tides as nature has.”

Describing poetry as wild and natural rather than domestic · Preface, June 1922

• Nature
• Poetry

“I put my whole heart into my verses, for they are the direct outcome of what I have felt and seen.”

Reflecting on the authentic connection between lived experience and literary expression · Autobiographical sketch / introductory note

• Experience
• Poetry
• Sincerity

“I'm so off on cinquains. I think they're quite lovely. They're so brief.”

Reflecting on her creation and fondness for the concise five-line poetic form · Letter to Esther Lowenthal, 1914

• Creation
• Form
• Poetry

“When a poet paints his love for you in magnificent verse, doubt him. When he reveals it to you in prose, and bad prose at that, believe him.”

Original: Cuando un poeta te pinta en magníficos versos su amor, duda. Cuando te lo dé á conocer en prosa, y mala, cree. — With characteristic irony, Bécquer suggests that spontaneous prose may reveal genuine feeling more honestly than polished verse. · Letter II, Cartas literarias a una mujer (Spanish)

• Irony
• Love
• Poetry

“Everyone feels. Only some are given the gift of preserving, like a treasure, the living memory of what they have felt. I believe these are the poets.”

Original: Todo el mundo siente. Sólo á algunos seres les es dado el guardar, como un tesoro, la memoria viva de lo que han sentido. Yo creo que éstos son los poetas. — For Bécquer, the poet's distinctive gift is preserving the life of emotion in memory. · Letter II, Cartas literarias a una mujer (Spanish)

• Feeling
• Memory
• Poetry

“Religion is love, and because it is love, it is poetry.”

Original: La religión es amor, y, porque es amor, es poesía. — The statement completes Bécquer's imaginative equation between spiritual devotion, love and poetry. · Letter IV, Cartas literarias a una mujer (Spanish)

• Love
• Poetry
• Religion

“Love is poetry; religion is love. Two things resembling a third are equal to each other.”

Original: El amor es poesía; la religión es amor. Dos cosas semejantes á una tercera son iguales entre sí. — Bécquer builds an intentionally playful chain linking love, religion and poetry. · Letter IV, Cartas literarias a una mujer (Spanish)

• Love
• Poetry
• Religion

“Poetry is the sudden joy that illuminates your features with a gentle smile, whose hidden cause you do not know.”

Original: Poesía, el gozo improviso que ilumina tus facciones con una sonrisa suave, y cuya oculta causa ignoras donde está. — Poetry can be an involuntary moment of happiness whose source remains mysterious even to the person experiencing it. · Letter III, Cartas literarias a una mujer (Spanish)

• Joy
• Mystery
• Poetry

“Poetry is that melancholy, vague longing that stirs your spirit with the desire for an impossible perfection.”

Original: Que poesía es, y no otra cosa, esa aspiración melancólica y vaga que agita tu espíritu con el deseo de una perfección imposible. — Bécquer links poetry with longing for an ideal that can never be completely attained. · Letter III, Cartas literarias a una mujer (Spanish)

• Longing
• Perfection
• Poetry

“The poetry is you because that vague aspiration towards beauty which characterises it, and which in man is a faculty of intelligence, might in you be called an instinct.”

Original: La poesía eres tú, porque esa vaga aspiración á lo bello que la caracteriza, y que es una facultad de la inteligencia en el hombre, en tí pudiera decirse que es un instinto. — Beauty is presented as an instinctive impulse as much as an intellectual one. · Letter I, Cartas literarias a una mujer (Spanish)

• Beauty
• Instinct
• Poetry

“There are notes in the poet's intelligence that belong to that of woman, and these are the ones that express tenderness, passion and feeling.”

Original: En la escala de la inteligencia del poeta hay notas que pertenecen á la de la mujer, y éstas son las que expresan la ternura, la pasión y el sentimiento. — He places tenderness and emotional sensitivity at the heart of poetic intelligence. · Letter I, Cartas literarias a una mujer (Spanish)

• Feeling
• Poetry
• Tenderness

“The one who feels seizes an idea, clothes it in a form, casts it into the realm of knowledge, and passes on.”

Original: El que la siente se apodera de una idea, la envuelve en una forma, la arroja en el estadio del saber y pasa. — The poet transforms an inward perception into artistic form without claiming to explain it completely. · Letter I, Cartas literarias a una mujer (Spanish)

• Creation
• Expression
• Poetry

“The poetry is you, I told you, because poetry is feeling, and feeling is woman.”

Original: La poesía eres tú, te he dicho, porque la poesía es el sentimiento, y el sentimiento es la mujer. — Bécquer identifies poetry with feeling rather than with literary technique or formal rules. · Letter I, Cartas literarias a una mujer (Spanish)

• Feeling
• Love
• Poetry

“I don't believe that any woman can write poetry unless she has suffered.”

Linking poetic expression with personal suffering and emotional experience · Conversation, as reported in biographical reminiscence

• Experience
• Poetry
• Suffering