Patrick S

“The poet makes himself a seer through a long, tremendous,
planned detachment of all his senses. All the forms of love,
of suffering, of madness; he himself seeks and in himself
exhausts all poisons, so as to keep only the quintessential.
A self torture that takes all his faith, all his superhuman
strength, that makes him, among his fellow men, The Sick
Man, The Criminal, The Accursed, and The Supreme Sage!
For he reaches the unknown! Because he has cultivated his
soul, rich already, more than anyone else and if maddened
in his pursuit, he should in the end lose all understanding
of his. . . .”
—Arthur Rimbaud”
― arthur rimbauld