Quotes |
Bob Glück |
From Antonin Artaud Anthology, ed. Jack Hirschman From this pain rooted in me like a wedge, at the center of my purest reality, at the point of my sensibility where the two worlds of body and mind are joined, I have learned to distract myself by the effect of a false suggestion. For in the space of that minute the illumination of a lie can last, I manufacture a notion of escape; I rush off in any wrong direction my blood takes. I close the eyes of my intelligence and open my mouth to the speech of the unspoken; I give myself the illusion of a system whose vocabulary escapes me. But from this minute of error there remains the feeling that I have snatched something real from the unknown. I believe in spontaneous bewitchments. It is impossible that I shall not some day discover a truth somewhere on the routes my blood carries me. (22) Jesus saw some little ones nursing. He said to his disciples, What these little ones who are nursing resemble is those who enter the kingdom. They said to him, So shall we enter the kingdom by being little ones? Jesus said to them, When you make the two one and make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside and the above like the below, and that you might make the male and the female be one and the same, so that the male might not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye and a hand in the place of a hand and a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image then you will enter the kingdom.
From The Madness of the Day, by Maurice Blanchot, trans. Lydia Davis
I am not learned;
I am not ignorant. I have known joys. That is saying too little: I am
alive, and this life gives me the greatest pleasure. And what about death?
When I die (perhaps any minute now), I will feel immense pleasure. I am
not talking about the foretaste of death, which is stale and often disagreeable.
Suffering dulls the senses. But this is the remarkable truth, and I am
sure of it: I experience boundless pleasure in living, and I will take
boundless satisfaction in dying.
I have wandered: I
have gone from place to place. I have stayed in one place, lived in a
single room. I have been poor, then richer, then poorer than many people.
As a child I had great passions, and everything I wanted was given to
me. My childhood has disappeared, my youth his behind me. It doesn't matter.
I am happy about what has been. I am pleased by what is, and what is to
come suits me well enough.
Is my life better
than other peoples lives? Perhaps. I have a roof over my head and many
do not. I do not have leprosy, I am not blind, I see the worldwhat
extraordinary happiness! I see this day, and outside it there is nothing.
Who could take that away from me? And when this day fades, I will fade
along with ita thought, a certainty, that enraptures me.
I have loved people.
I have lost them. I went mad when that blow struck me, because it is hell.
But there was no witness to my madness, my frenzy was not evident: only
my innermost being was mad. Sometimes I became enraged. People would say
to me, Why are you so calm? But I was scorched from head to foot; at night
I would run through the streets and howl; during the day I would work
calmly.
From "Crossing
into Poland" by Isaac Babel trans. Walter Morison The Collected
Stories. |