" I have nothing to do with the poet: perjure your verse, it is gifted with only a feeble outer power. You preferred to feed the remainder of intrigues entrusted to the individual. Why should I make it clear for you, child, you know it just as I do, retaining no notion of it except by some quality or lack which is childhood’s alone; this point, that everything, whether vehicle or investment, now offered to the ideal, is contrary to it—almost a speculation on your modesty, for your silence—or it is defective, not direct and legitimate in the sense that impulse required just now, and it is tainted. "

― Stéphane Mallarmé , Selected Poetry and Prose