This text is interested by what, for any reader of the Chimères, imposes itself and, simultaneously, evades: the « element » in which the sonnets seem to float and that can be variously felt by the contents of the poems or the figures which arise in them, by their rythmical tenseness, or by their mutual relations. This text also sketches several comparisons or confrontations with other works: by Balzac, Vigny, Baudelaire, Hugo, Michaux, Artaud, Queneau and even, in the « black paintings », by Goya.
