René MAGRITTE (1898-1967). L.A.S., Brussels January 5, 1955, [to Belgian journalist Yves Duval]; 2 pages in-8 (small trace of rust on verso; photograph attached). About his self-portrait with four arms. "I am sending you herewith a pen-and-ink drawing called 'The Sorcerer' for which the character represents me. He would like to receive a few copies of the newspaper in which it will be reproduced and hopes that the article will fit "with the feeling of certainty that we belong - in fact - to an enigmatic world, and that the certainty of this belonging is of a moral order, quite foreign to the domain where things are 'taken', discovered and opposed. This belonging of fact, becomes a belonging "of right" when the intelligence gets rid of the maniacal will to dominate or to use the things. Instead of giving a meaning to things, intelligence can see the meaning. It is this intelligence that sees in works of art, the essence of what really concerns us, that is to say what morality and poetry can affirm. This affirmation is necessarily enigmatic and mysterious, as wonderful as the light that comes from the World. It is to notice that the enigma is not a kind of secret of Polichinelle. It does not consist in a "key" [...] The enigmatic wonder of which I speak and which can be perceived by the intelligence, is that of the World, and not of a more or less esoteric author"...