67
" It is taken for granted too easily that passion befogs the mind : in fact, it baffles only that vulgar aspect of the mind, diligence. The amusements of lovers and the bemusements of savants remain equally diverting : they represent an identical process of adaptation to a very great objective. I discovered in love, through the very mechanism of love, what the absence of love had prevented me from perceiving. An emanation from this woman, beyond her image, re-formed itself into that same image which then blossomed into a particular world, that taste, that divine taste that I know so well in every vertigo, forewarning me yet again that I was entering this concrete universe which is closed to passers-by. For me, the metaphysical spirit was reborn from love. Love was its source, and I hope never to leave this enchanted forest. "
― Louis Aragon , Paris Peasant
70
" What is marvelous is that I should have fled from womankind towards this woman. A vertiginous crossing : the incarnation of thought, and there I am, I cannot conceive of a greater mystery. Yesterday I clutched blindly at empty abstractions. Today a single person dominates me, and I love her, and her absence is an intolerable pain, and her presence . . . Her presence passes my understanding, for every aspect of her, her very power over me, springs from a source beyond nature. An attitude. A word. A single rustle of her dress. O, when the bracelet plays against the flesh. "
― Louis Aragon , Paris Peasant
75
" Greetings to you, Legendary One : you are a haunted house, and nothing at all would be achieved by sending a delegation of scientists with all their little bits of apparatus to observe the strange phenomena to which you play martyred host. But midnight is not long enough for your adorable ghosts : even the whole day, even the hours of sleep are scarcely sufficient, between your walls a perpetual sound of trailing robes makes you deliciously uneasy, you are in love with this sound. O what queen then has the palace that takes your form the palace from whose vault there once issued a damnable song and a black knight ? Her arms, her beautiful white arms embrace your memory. Your memory ? why no, it is she herself defying time and its quagmires, she is returning through the crannies of your veins, she gives a long, slow smile, is about to speak, the air she sings and breathes is quite changed by some new sovereign thought, she is aroused, she speaks, her breast quivers, and I hear. It is the sound of her heart which marks the beat of all my dreams. Here I am, my love, I have not left you. "
― Louis Aragon , Paris Peasant
