Part I: Paradoxes
In this study, dating from 1994, we try to clarify the principle that when a text is considered attentively, a great distance between words will often prevent two meanings from being linked unless a reminder is given. To illustrate this, we choose a simple example, that of the paradoxes in Baudelaire’s poem, "Correspondences". The advantage of this text is that it has a minimal logical form, with very few reminders of meaning. In this way the circumstances are favourable for observing the extent to which distance affects how words used previously are forgotten. First, in "Correspondences", the greatest paradoxes are made with words that are a short distance apart. Next, conversely, paradoxes that could be imagined with words that are far apart remain weak. Finally, paradoxes with closely related meanings strongly reinforce each other only when there are few words separating them. A way of measuring this was devised using a fraction with 1 as the numerator and a series of numbers measuring the risks as the denominator. The results are the degrees of plausibility of the interpretations considered, for example "such a judgement is a paradox" and "such paradoxes reinforce each other".
Michel Magnen
Translated into English by Fay Guerry