passages from "Imagination's Speech" (aragon)

As I said to the students of Germany in 1819, one can anticipate everything from the power of mind. Already its pure, fantastic inventions have, to giddy effect, given you mastery over yourselves; I have invented memory, writing, infinitesimal calculus.
…
Everything stems from the imagination, and all that is imaginary sheds light. The telephone is purportedly useful: don’t believe a word of it; just observe man convulsing over the receiver as he shouts ”Hello?” What is he if not an addict of sound, dead drunk on conquered space and the transmitted voice? My poisons are yours: here is love, strength, speed. Do you want pains, death or songs? (51)

Go right ahead, buy your damnation; at last you’re about to lose yourself—here’s a machine to upend your soul. I bring tidings of supreme importance: a new vice has just been born, one more source of vertigo has been given to man, surrealism, son of frenzy and darkness. Enter, enter, here begin the realms of the instantaneous. (52)

Soon, tomorrow, the obscure desire for security which unites mankind will dictate primitive taboos. (53)

Some words are mirrors, optical lakes toward which hands stretch in vain. (73)

- Le Paysan de Paris, Louis Aragon