René Magritte (1898–1967).

A fine letter on his painting, mystery and art. He sends his friend Bosmans some notes that could be used for the planned monograph... « – The sense of mystery (the mystery without which neither the world nor thought would be possible) takes hold of us. It is not something to be ‘grasped’ as if it were something one could study more or less calmly. – Painted images that evoke mystery resemble the world – not understood as a ‘spectacle’. A ‘spectator’ believes himself to be ‘outside the world’, just as the dreamer who knows he is dreaming believes himself to be outside the dream. – It is not possible to be seized by the sense of mystery if one is dreaming or if one knows one is dreaming. The evocation of mystery halts the usual flow of thought that imagines questions likely to elicit more or less satisfactory answers. – Mystery implies neither a meaning associated with optimism, nor any nonsense 41906

associated with pessimism. (It is neither meaning nor nonsense, since meaning and nonsense are definable). – Painted images that evoke mystery affirm the beauty of that which is neither meaning nor nonsense. This beauty differs from the beauty of wisdom and reason. It lies beyond the diversity mingled with good and evil, without this diversity being denied in favour of total harmony: on the contrary, this beauty accentuates the contrasts. Light and shadow no longer belong to a systematised world governed by abstract laws; they are united in a world that evokes mystery and which forbids the mind from being satisfied with the questions one might ask and the answers one might find to them. – The evocation of mystery must not be confused with a ‘means’ of reaching an end such as, for example, ‘that point where contradictions cease’, described by André BRETON as the supreme goal to be attained. It does not require renouncing anything contradictory and must be distinguished from a form of aesthetic appeasement. The beauty of mystery is not compatible with relative optimism or tempered pessimism – which are, moreover, equally valid – nor with intellectual hesitation. This beauty restores to light and shadow their violently contradictory nature (which vanishes from thought that dreams or knows it is dreaming). Systems live in the world of dreams. Mystery, by definition, is resistant to the demands of any system. It is complete and can only be evoked through the fulfilment of thought’s essential act: that of resembling the world and its mystery"...