ABSTRACT
With admirable consistency, the poet Michel de Smet has long focused on what he calls the "essential enigma[s]." This phrase is drawn from a poem included in De saisons and the poet associates these fundamental mysteries that we at best fleetingly intuit with an "inner feat" or even "mira-cle"—his words are "prouesse intime"—that is "sheltered from memories." In all interpretations, the humble stubble is suddenly enveloped in one of those essential enigmas for which de Smet is always on the lookout. That is, there are moments when the essential enigmas "accost"—the literal meaning of "aborder"—our experiences in the daily world. Moreover, in contrast to numerous contemporaries, de Smet tends to be optimistic in his quest for those remote horizons which, as he states in Edifices de memoire, "determine / a kind of knowledge." De Smet is always trying to get back to a situation, a "place," where all possibilities are open.
