" A book is not shut in by its contours, is not walled up as in a fortress. It asks nothing better than to exist outside itself, or to let you exist in it it."
"the book is no longer a material reality.... It has become a series of words, of images, of ideas which in their turn begin to exist. And where is this new existence? Surely not in the paper object. Nor, surely, in external space. There is only one place left for this new existence: my innermost self...dependent on my consciousness."
"Language surrounds me with its unreality."
paraphrasing:
I have thoughts which are part of a book I am reading, the thoughts of another.
"I am thinking the thoughts of another...
But I think (it) as my very own...
My consciousness behaves as though it were the consciousness of another."
The work lives its own life within me; in a certain sense, it thinks itself, and it even gives itself a meaning within me."
In this essay, Poulet argues that we cannot know the author by the work, but I disagree. We can know the author's mind at the moment in time when the work was being created and as such know as much about the author as the author is likely to know about herself. Do we know the author's biography? Of course not, but we know the author's mind, as fleetingly as thought based language will allow.
Check out Mallerme's opion in "THE BOOK: A Spiritual Instrument"
