He uses it to move from publication to publication, to draw connections, to enter varied published architects into dialogue not only with himself but with each other. He was the writer, but also the co-editor of the journal, its visible and invisible author. Writing for Gray, in direct contrast, was a kind of foreign language. The manifesto, essential to Le Corbusier and Loos in their self-promotion as architectural practitioners, was alien to the development of her architecture and ideas. Valery, who wrote frequently in the form of dialogue, describes the genre in his notebooks.
Dialogue is the operation that transforms certain givens by exchange groups.
The number of variables that enter into play is itself variable. At the base of this operation is the interior dialogue. Monologue does not exist. Because thought tends towards dialogue, and is only monologue in appearance, it can be elucidated by this operation. Modernism as manifesto is an equally artificial construct, to which the underpublished contributions of Charlotte Perriand and Lily Reich to the work of Le Corbusier and Mies also attest.