Note 153 — Chapter III · (continued 2)

I may here be allowed to remind my readers that in the year 1885, and, accordingly, before the promulgation of the professed symbolistic programme, I laid down in my Paradoxe (popular edition, part ii., p. 253) the principle that the poet must ‘to the majority of his readers utter the deep saying, “Tat twam asi!”—“That art thou!” of the Indian sage,’ and ‘must be able, with the ancient Romans, to repeat to the sound and normally developed man, “Of thee is the fable related.” In other words, the poem must be “symbolical” in the sense that it brings into view characters, destinies, feelings and laws of life which are universal.’