EG:Who – except Stéphane Mallarmé – is being portrayed in your principal work Pli selon pli – portrait de Mallarmé? Nobody? The listener? Or Pierre Boulez himself?

PB: I think that it is a double portrait: It is a portrait of Mallarmé and myself. Of course Mallarmé is a poet who has been terribly important to me. The kind of relationship we had, our working together – in spite of the difference in centuries! – brings up somebody else: That is the portrait of a kind of mixture of Mallarmé and me, finally.