Note 99 — Chapter X
Reading edition
I think there should be nothing but allusions. The contemplation of objects, the flying image of reveries evoked by them, make the song. The Parnassians state the thing completely, and show it, and thereby lack mystery; they deprive the mind of that delicious joy of imagining that it creates. To name an object is to take away three-fourths of the enjoyment of the poem, which consists in the happiness of guessing little by little: to suggest it, that is the dream. It is the perfect use of this mystery that constitutes the symbol: little by little to evoke an object in order to show a state of the soul; or inversely, to choose an object, and from it to disengage a state of the soul by a series of decipherings.
... If a being of mediocre intelligence and insufficient literary preparation chances to open a book made in this way and pretends to enjoy it, there is a misunderstanding—things must be returned to their places. There should always be an enigma in poetry, and the aim of literature—it has no other—is to evoke objects.