Translations:CP 02969/27/en

At last, thanks to you, Art and War have coincided! We are told about the poetry that the War will give birth to, but I don’t really believe that. In any case what has come out so far has been far unequal to Reality. I think rather that it is within you yourself, in that atavistic reflection like the one that places you among the pools of Versailles, that you have “read into the thoughts” (to take up your expression in Les Perles rouges), of our modern day d’Artagnan, our contemporary Louvois. Everybody will have their favourites from your Offrandes, just as they had from your “Prières”, which is to say all of them one after another, then they will come back to the one they have chosen especially. The negro’s prayer, the hairdresser’s prayer, the coachman’s prayer, the actor’s prayer, the servant’s prayer. Now it will be the agrarian offering, the strategic offering, the triple offering, the artistic offering. I can’t understand why you say that we have loved Wagner too much. But what I find wonderful is the justification of art, more evident than ever “when Virtue becomes Truth”. How many times through the course of this book does Truth express itself with such beauty and such strength. Which is what I shall soon be coming to tell you