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Patient as one of the alchemists, I’ve always imagined
and attempted something else, and would be willing
to sacrifice all satisfaction and vanity for its sake, just
as in the old days they used to burn their furniture
and the beams of their roofs to feed their furnace for
the magnum opus. What is it? Difficult to say: simply
a book, in several volumes, a book that is truly a book,
architecturally sound and premeditated, and not a
collection of casual inspirations however wonderful
that might be.… So there, dear friend, is the bare
confession of this vice which I’ve rejected a
thousand times.… But it holds me in its sway and
I may yet be able to succeed, not in the completion of
this work as a whole (one would have to be
God-knows-who for that!) but in showing a
successful fragment.… proving through finished
portions that this book does exist, and that
I was aware of what I wasn’t able to accomplish.

STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ
Letter to Paul Verlaine, November 16, 1869