Abstract
Paul Valéry's poem " Palme " explores the two causes of the work : on the one hand, the mind's propensity to produce ; on the other, an external causality, that induced by the social world. Indeed, according to Valéry, and in line with Bergsonian philosophy, every creator creates for others : the " dissimilar " (the unique, the creator) creates for his fellow creator.
And what if this relationship with others, this recognition of an otherness endowed with intention, were primary to the existence of works? For the fact is, even if there is no material production of works, works spontaneously cut themselves out of the real, under our gaze and sometimes without the exercise of our will ; in other words, we spontaneously cut works out of the real : this is the role of perception, of interpretation. The poetic state is a natural state, experienced spontaneously.
Thus, the simple contemplation of the world can give rise to a poetic state, which poetry consists in recreating. Hofmannsthal's famous Letter from Lord Chandos is written by someone who claims to be unable to put into words the intensity of reality, the superabundance of reality (he is nonetheless able to write the letter we are reading, but that's another story). Nevertheless, the beauty of the world has been seen as proof of God's existence at least since Psalm 19 : " The heavens declare the glory of God, / The firmament proclaims the work of his hands. " Even without the hypothesis of a creator God, the ability of the mind to distinguish works in the world, to " read " the world as a text, is according to Mallarmé the prerogative of the poet.
