# Poetics of Relation

- Author: [Édouard Glissant](https://www.leafyquotes.com/edouard-glissant.md)
- Quotes: 14
- Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/edouard-glissant/poetics-of-relation

## Quotes

> I thus am able to conceive of the opacity of the other for me, without reproach for my opacity for him. To feel in solidarity with him or to build with him or to like what he does, it is not necessary for me to grasp him. It is not necessary to try to become the other (to become other) nor to "make" him in my image. (p. 193)

> Roots make the commonality of errantry and exile, for in both instances roots are lacking. We must begin with that. ("Errantry, Exile")

> Contemporary violence is the response societies make to the immediacy of contacts and is exacerbated by the brutality of the flash agents of Communication.' It is not all that easy to forego the comfortable expanses of time formerly allowing changes to occur imperceptibly. In cities this speed becomes concentrated, and the response explodes. These same mechanisms are at work both in cultures of intervention and in emerging cultures: New York or Lagos. In the shantytowns and ghettos of even the smallest cities the same gears engage: the violence of poverty and mud but also an unconscious and desperate rage at not "grasping" [com-prendre] the chaos of the world. Those who dominate benefit from the chaos; those who are oppressed are exasperated by it. (beginning of "Distancing, Determining")

> What is here is open, as much as this there. (p. 190)

> We clamor for the right to opacity for everyone. (p. 194)

> As far as my identity is concerned, I will take care of it myself. That is, I shall not allow it to become cornered in any essence; I shall also pay attention to not mixing it into any amalgam. Rather, it does not disturb me to accept that there are places where my identity is obscure to me, and the fact that it amazes me does not mean I relinquish it. (p. 192)

> The world's poetic force (its energy), kept alive within us, fastens itself by fleeting, delicate shivers, onto the rambling pre-science of poetry in the depths of our being. The active violence in reality distracts us from knowing it. Our obligation to "grasp" violence, and often fight it, estranges us from such live intensity, as it also freezes the shiver and disrupts pre-science. But this force never runs dry because it is its own turbulence. Poetry-thus, nonetheless, totality gathering strength-is driven by another poetic dimension that we all divine or babble within ourselves. It could well be that poetry is basically and mainly defined in this relationship of itself to nothing other than itself, of density to volatility, or the whole to the individual. (beginning of "That That")

> This is why we stay with poetry. And despite our consenting to aIl the indisputable technologies; despite seeing the political leap that must be managed, the horror of hunger and ignorance, torture and massacre to be conquered, the full load of knowledge to be tamed, the weight of every piece of machinery that we shall finally control, and the exhausting flashes as we pass from one era to another-from forest to city, from story to computer-at the bow there is still sornething we now share: this murmur, cloud or rain or peaceful smoke. We know ourselves as part and as crowd, in an unknown that does not terrify. We cry our cry of poetry. ("The Open Boat")

> If we examine the process of "understanding" people and ideas from the perspective of Western thought, we discover that its basis is this requirement for transparency. In order to understand and thus accept you, I have to measure your solidity with the ideal scale providing me with grounds to make comparisons and, perhaps, judgments. I have to reduce. (p. 189-90)

> Agree not merely to the right to difference but, carrying this further, agree also to the right to opacity that is not enclosure within an impenetrable autarchy but subsistence within an irreducible singularity. (p. 190)

> Diversity, the quantifiable totality of every possible difference, is the motor driving universal energy, and it must be safe guarded from assimilations, from fashions passively accepted as the norm, and from standardized customs. ("Poetics," p. 30)

> Opacities can coexist and converge, weaving fabrics. To understand these truly one must focus on the texture of the weave and not on the nature of its components. (p. 190)

> Creolization ... is a new and original dimension allowing each person to be there and elsewhere, rooted and open, lost in the mountains and free beneath the sea, in harmony and in errantry. ("Poetics," p. 34)

> The opaque is not the obscure, though it is possible for it to be so and be accepted as such. It is that which cannot be reduced, which is the most perennial guarantee of participation and confluence. (p. 191)