Gens (Ombres Chinoises), Pénombres Office de la Lune (Litanies et Antiennes), Clairière (Coryphées), Jets de Feu et Eaux d'Artifice (Aqua-Teintes), Lunatiques, Vieilles Lunes et Lunes Rousses, Candidates (Néomenies), Syzygie (Ombre portée), Ancien Regime. All this is supposed to represent "une concentration du mystère nocturne," and a prose commentary, which certainly makes darkness more visible, is added, because, the author tells us, "des sollicitudes amies veulent qu'un léger fil permette a des esprits curieux et bienveillants de reconnaître vite le labyrinthe, et, plus expressément, d'apprécier la division architectonique, voire architecturale, peut-être le meilleur mérite du poème." Probably nothing more calmly crazy than this book—in which there is all the disorder without any of the delirium of madness—was ever written: the book certainly has its interest. The possibilities of verse for the expression of fluent, contorted, and interminable nonsense have never been more cogently demonstrated than in the pages from which I cull at random these two stanzas:
