Monday, 29 October 2007

Poetry and anarchy

“There is in all poetry an essential contradiction. Poetry is pulverised multiplicity and it produces flames. And poetry, which restores order, first revives disorder, disorder with semblances ablaze; it causes appearances to clash in restoring them to a singular point: fire, gesture, blood, cry.

“To restore poetry and order to a world whose very existence is a threat to order, is to bring back war and the permanence of war; it is to bring in an enforced state of cruelty, to arouse a nameless anarchy, anarchy of things and appearances which awaken before sinking anew and melting into unity.”

Antonin Artaud, Heliogabalus or, The Anarchist Crowned

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