“This book is not about Pierre Soulages, although he is referred to in the third person. Instead, it is a dialogue with Soulages. It is an interior dialogue rather than a formal one. And it is the result of a dialogue. True, ancient and continued. It is not a book ‘about’ its subject, but ‘with’ or ‘towards’ it.
“It is as much a study of language as of painting. It teaches us to keep on learning to see, to learn what language can do to help us to see better. Do we ever do anything besides skirting around language?”

Henri Meschonnic is the author of many works of literary theory and criticism, including Pour la Poétique, Le Signe et le Poème, Critique du Rythme, De la Langue Française and several volumes of poetry.