A Poet Reflects

seabois:

“Melancholy, the pondering of existing sorrows, has nothing to do with a death wish. It is a form of resistance. And on an artistic level, its function is completely different than simply reactive or reactionary. When, with a fixed gaze, it goes over how things have happened, it is revealed that the motor functions of hopelessness and knowledge are identically executed. The description of misery involves the possibility of overcoming it.”

—W. G. Sebald, Die Beschreibung des Unglücks, 1985