What are these rules? They are empirical, like the rules of syntax, grammar, and language itself, originating in usage and tradition. Are they also psychological laws of the ear, instincts innate to our race? We firmly believe so. Are they exclusive, definitive, and immutable? We make no such claim.   The numbering of syllables in French seems straightforward but is, in fact, twofold. There is quantitative numbering, which could be called mechanically applied, and qualitative numbering, which is parallel yet free, wholly entrusted to the poet's intuition. This qualitative aspect is often ignored by poor versifiers but serves as an invaluable resource for true artists, marking the originality of their compositions. ​ It is a measured irregularity—a repeated series of uneven elements—regulated by rhyme and relationships, from which the song of the poem arises, the first intonation that shapes and gives voice to the verse. Everything else is a matter of arrangement in writing, simple guidance for the eyes, which could be dispensed with but carries less importance for the ear and must be approached with caution. ​ When it comes to the predominance of the twelve-syllable line, the hallmark of the Alexandrine verse, it seems unnecessary to dispute it. It is a mathematical fact. ​ Now we must explain rhythm. When, some time ago, we wrote that in the poet's work, rhythm is the gesture of the soul, the image we sought to convey already suggested that we were far from retaining for the word "rhythm" its commonly restricted sense. Rhythm is not constituted by caesuras or stanza breaks. Only recently could we prove this as we can today. The harmonic theories of Helmholtz, the latest discoveries in Hertzian waves, Röntgen rays, and other advancements in biology have profoundly enlightened us. ​ And this increasingly accepted opinion has been confirmed in us: that everything in the universe is vibration, combinations of vibrations, forms of motion, numbers, and series, associations of rhythms; that the entire world is but a vast orchestration of rhythms; that we ourselves are a rhythm within an integral rhythm that fulfills a universal motion; and that the rhythm inherent in human language—the rhythm in the poet's work—is the very movement of inspiration. ​ It precedes even the conception of the poem itself. Initially obscure, it organizes and unfolds within the poem, and the tremor of the world seizes it. To integrate thought into rhythm is, in a way, to confer upon it the eternity of rhythm itself—a unifying force, creating harmonies and resonances, ensuring identity with psychic life, that is, with the beliefs and aspirations of humankind. ​ I. REALIZED POETRY IS THE TRANSCENDENT FORM OF KNOWLEDGE ​ It has been so since its origins and has always revealed itself as such in the works of great poets. Poetry emerges as the first spiritual educator of humanity. It has founded religions and philosophies. It has presided over all manifestations of beauty. Its hegemony shone through the centuries until recent times, when advancements in science and civilization submerged it, reducing it—at its most dignified—into a minor salon talent, a tea-time amusement, a pastime for young ladies; and at its most grotesque, a pompous feat of lofty muses. And we protest. ​ Poetry’s role, having always been to expand human consciousness beyond verified truths, no longer allows us to ignore what is happening around us. It is necessary to know this to reach that. Singing of life and humanity is worthwhile, but we must also understand what they are and what constitutes them today. Is it enough to sit on a mossy bench by a brook, place a hand on one’s heart, gaze at the moon or a favorite star, and evoke the white house with green shutters to proclaim oneself the herald of future fraternities and happiness? We do not believe so. ​ One must know many things in today’s world to teach anything to humanity and to deserve an audience for one’s writings. But let there be no misunderstanding here: didactic poetry is absurd to us. Poetry remains the gospel of the ineffable, imbued with its all-powerful emotion. It reaches toward all possibilities of affirmation, that is, toward the absolute, but it operates transcendentally, through the pathways of sentiment. Thus, we arrive at our second proposition, which derives from the first: ​ II. POETRY, A SUBJECTIVE PHENOMENON, IS THE PLEASURE OF KNOWING ​ By "knowing," we mean this in all its forms: notion or premonition, aspiration, imagination, or intuition. What is it, beyond the will and effort of humanity, but the comprehension, penetration, and possession of all things by the soul and the senses? Does poetry not establish the bridge of dreams, a mysterious connection between what we are and what everything else is, between individual life and universal life? In our investigations, we come across a delightful discovery: our formula is also a definition of love. And we continue, accordingly: ​ III. POETRY IS INFINITELY PERFECTIBLE; IT IS A PERPETUAL CREATION   It is evident that, being in direct correspondence with our intellectual sensitivity—which develops century by century under the impact of ever-expanding knowledge—poetry cannot remain stagnant. However, is it not often repeated that the poet has no choice but to return time and again to the primal inspiration, the angelic freshness of the soul, the innocence, the enthusiasm of golden ages, and that above all, they must look with wide, new eyes? What does this mean? ​ We must clarify. To what extent, to what point, must we retreat to rediscover this soul’s freshness and enchanting innocence? To the time of cavemen, the Flood, or the Crusades? Or perhaps to the mindset of the Iroquois? ​ Oh, we understand the joke! It is clear. —Let us return to infantilism! Innocent hands, hands full!—We imagined it. For us, who no longer believe that the human soul remains immutable across the ages—who conceive it as perpetually evolving, shaped by all the accumulations of the past and inheritance, by all the acquisitions and influences of knowledge and environments—it is difficult to admit that the poet should indefinitely content themselves with contemplating two or three general phenomena of nature, long ago noted across all latitudes. ​ It is further ahead—more profoundly—where their aspirations must aim. Poetry is creation, or rather, perpetual revelation. What is revealed is. But in the long run, that revelation aligns with our way of seeing. Our personality claims it, makes it our own, and desires something different. ​ IV. POETIC CREATION IS AN INTEGRATION ​ It is no longer permissible for the poet to ignore everything, we say. But universal knowledge is unattainable. Humanity has established partial sciences—physical, natural, moral, social, etc. These evolve within their respective fields, each pursuing the truth. Now, truth, in its absolute sense, is singular. Therefore, relationships must exist between them—correspondences sometimes difficult to discover, even harder to define. Poetry intervenes in the heart of these mysterious correspondences, summoning our intellectual activity, memory, aspirations, and entire being, constituting that state of consciousness where, apparently, we commune with the infinite. ​ Apparently, we must say, for alas, poetic creation consists merely of determining, down to the subtlest tremor, the extreme limits of a sum of infinitely small elements, of a highly complex nature, that are our perceptions of all kinds. ​ Now, this sum of infinitely small elements, this complex of perceptions—what are they but the very core of our personality, our soul, in a word? Thus, it concerns the limits of the soul within the universal soul. Every realized poem tends to resolve part of the eternal problem of individuation. This question corresponds, moreover, in advanced sciences, to certain other problems well known to scholars but often deliberately ignored by poets. Essentially, it is an integration. ​ When we add to the inscription at the Temple of Delphi—"Know thyself"—the formula of Terence: Homo sum, et nihil humani a me alienum puto, and when we write that we seek to express human life in terms of all humanity and our individuality in terms of the universe and the unknowable, we profess the purest integralism. V. THE POETIC SYMBOL INTEGRATES POTENTIAL KNOWLEDGE; RHYTHM, AS AN EMOTIVE FACTOR, IDENTIFIES IT WITH PSYCHIC LIFE AND CREATES POETRY This final principle is a conclusion. Certainly, we must also address the symbol. We will not seek complicated definitions. For us, the symbol is a generalization of thought through imagery. As for rhythm, as mentioned earlier, its relationship to prosodic rules is that of master to servant. It is the very movement of inspiration, somehow materialized through verse, rooted in the profound laws of the organism and the universe. It culminates in the poet’s gift, without which, alas, there is no salvation. We have always asserted this. The poet’s gift, as we have written before, is a superior psychic condition, akin to heroism. To fully develop this idea, we further declare that the language of verse, if it is to express only things repeated a thousand times, or even simply well-known to all, seems to us a triviality, condemned to the discreet ridicule of the clever. Indeed, it is unimaginable, in the midst of the 20th century, for a man of true value to devote himself to treating a given subject in verse or to recounting his little ecstasies or disappointments in rhyme. Oh, vanity—to desire to be a poet and to proclaim it! To believe oneself superior to those poor mortals whom fate did not endow with the vocation of a Benserade or a Chaplain. To swell with a few praises obtained by surprise and, dreaming of immortality, to quickly forget that, on the evening when applause was so abundant, there was also, above all, a violinist and a singer. Oh, the glitter and tinsel of histrionics! Parody of prestige! To be someone! But whom are we fooling, for heaven’s sake? The old question of substance versus form does not even deserve to be raised in poetry. If one is perfect and the other admirable, we will still consider the work useless if it is nothing more than a prosodic adaptation. There must be identification, meaning that the thought and its form are so fused in the rhythm that their respective roles can no longer be distinguished. This is the only way to justify the poem in our time. Otherwise, there is prose. It has all the advantages for narrating, translating, commenting, and teaching, and great poetry, as one can easily see, does not always disdain it. If the poet is no longer truly an initiator and visionary, as in times past, they have nothing to contribute in modern times. CONCLUSION This is how we conceive poetry. Should we add that shared aspirations should not alienate individual independence? To jointly look toward new summits is not to subordinate oneself. Our doctrine does not systematically oppose any other. On the contrary, by declaring that poetry is infinitely perfectible and a perpetual creation, it calls upon all impulses of noble individualism. Its goal would be to reassign poetry to its prophetic mission, from which it seems to have strayed far. We do not hide the danger of such ambition. However, we have deemed it necessary to assert it here. The human ideal always retreats, retreats toward infinity, but in infinity, today, we can cast much more light! Is it not for this purpose that all our glorious predecessors—great initiates of all eras, prophets and visionaries, great emancipators of human consciousness—prepared us, whose memory we cannot evoke without a tremor in our hearts, whose mighty words resound so profoundly in our dreams that we lift our heads to follow them? There exists, in the generation that will face life tomorrow, an enormous intellectual potential. It is disordered, lacking cohesion; it is a chaotic body of knowledge that generates conflicts within each consciousness. But should a spark pass, this immense force will organize itself, find order, and perhaps even magnify itself. And perhaps, too, at this moment when there is so much talk of decadence, we stand at the threshold of a new Periclean age. And we, surrounded by all this strength and fervor, we who in our poetic solitudes tremble each day upon hearing, like a multiplied echo, all the “Eureka!” cries of human knowledge responding to one another from one end of the world to the other, have been conquered by a hope that comforts and exalts us. Without a doubt, an anxiety envelops it, but within that anxiety shines a certainty. And why not express it, if the words tremble on our lips? Nothing enduring and vast will be achieved in humanity, no great social movement will perpetuate itself in the name of the brightest truth unless it is poetry that proclaims this truth deep within souls. Our immediate predecessors declared that their doctrine responded to the needs of their time. Invoking the present, we simply ask permission to speak as they did. — Adolphe Lacuzon, Creulier de Beynac, Adolphe Boscot, Sébastien Ch. Leconte, Léon Vannoz