Analysis & Behind the Scenes

Duality

Dear all,

As promised in this new version of my blog, I’m sharing today a few elements of analysis around the poem Duality, published last Friday — you’ll find the link below.

I chose this text for a simple reason: it marks a turning point in my writing journey. Several years separate it from Astra, the poem analyzed previously, and that distance already says a lot.

To start with a bit of storytelling, I think back to a piece of advice my guitar teacher — a mentor at the time — once gave me. I was deep down the rabbit hole of my passion for music when he told me:
“The hardest thing, when you’re an artist, isn’t reproducing what others do. It’s finding your own signature.”

I understood his words… but it took me years to truly grasp them and, more importantly, to carve out my own style, my own sound.

So what does this have to do with Duality? Everything !

When I first started writing, I was drawn to a very classical style — almost aristocratic in its form. Verlaine, Shakespeare, Baudelaire, Blake, Poe: they were my literary pantheon. I loved the beauty of the words, the elegance of images, that delicate musicality capable of elevating even the darkest themes.
Writing about death without vulgarity. Describing betrayal without naming - a first form of duality: painting shadow with light.

Then my tastes evolved. I discovered writers who shattered these codes: Bukowski, Céline… and that was a shock.
A freedom that bordered on anarchic. A raw, rugged, vulgar, sometimes violent voice and yet: an authenticity that struck like a punch.

I realized then that “ugly” words could provoke the same emotional intensity as the most ornate ones. Different, yes — but equally true.
In the end, what has always moved me, no matter the style, is that precise moment when I’m left utterly speechless.

And Duality captures exactly that.

I chose it for two reasons:
First, because it reflects the fracture that was happening within me — the urge for a freer, more direct writing style, while still being deeply attached to the beauty of language.
Second, because it embodies this inner ambivalence: that blend of sweetness that screams, and anger that whispers.
(I’ll admit it: sometimes I still fall entirely into one extreme or the other.)

This poem is a kind of battle between good and evil, forced to walk hand in hand to form a unified whole.

And that’s where the anecdote from the beginning ties in: for a long time, I stayed in restraint, imitating the masters who gave this art its letters of nobility. Then I finally let go. I allowed what needed to surface to come out — whether noble or raw.

Last but not least, as a cinephile and lover of philosophy, I can’t end without mentioning that iconic scene from Full Metal Jacket, a perfect metaphor for this inner duality of mine — almost Jungian in nature, in line with the principles brilliantly detailed by Carl Jung, whom I’m an avid reader of.

Peace & Bliss,
Aaron

“Full Metal Jacket “ By Stanley Kubrick - All Rights Reserved