Newton described masses in space as being attracted to each other in inverse proportion to the square of their distance apart. Michel Magnen, following in one sense in the footsteps of Hume, has taken the liberty of imitating the physicist and imagining that, in certain conditions, within a text, the closer the meanings are, the more they attract each other and the further apart, the less they do so. For his research, he takes as his example the poem „Correspondences“ by Baudelaire.




Correspondences

Nature is a temple where living pillars
Let forth at times confused words;
There man passes through forests of symbols
Which observe him with familiar eyes.

Like long echoes which mingle in the distance,
In a dark and profound unity,
Vast as the night and the light,
Perfumes, colours and sounds answer each other.

There are perfumes as cool as the flesh of children,
Sweet as oboes, green as meadows,
-And others, corrupt, rich and triumphant,

Having the expansion of infinite things,
Like amber, musk, benzoin and incense,
Which sing of the transports of the mind and the senses.