A few months before he died, Franz Kafka wrote one of his finest and _ saddest tales. In ‘The Burrow’, a solitary, mole-like creature has dedicated its life to building an elaborate underground home in order to protect itself from outsiders. ‘I have completed the construction of my burrow and it seems to be successful, the protagonist notes at the outset.
Quickly, however, the creature’s confidence begins to wane: how can it know if its defences are working? How can it be certain?
Kafka’s protagonist wants nothing less than complete security, so nothing can be left out of its calculations. In the small world of its burrow, every detail is significant, a possible ‘sign’ of a looming attack. Eventually, the creature begins to hear a noise it believes to be that of an invader. The noise is equally loud wherever it happens to be standing. It would appear, then, to originate within the creature’s own body: the sound, perhaps, of its own heart beating, its own frantic breathing; life happening and ebbing away, while the creature is worrying about something else.
— Will Rees, “Kafka the hypochondriac”
“A smiling angel pierced my heart again and again with a golden arrow, producing a pain so sweet I screamed aloud and simultaneously felt a sweetness so infinite that I wished the pain to last forever.”
— St. Teresa of Ávila
In the head. In the heart of hearts. It is in my ability, I think, to love something fully only if I am naturally, compulsively, irrationally drawn to it.
— Anne Sexton, A Self-Portrait in Letters
I could not capture you even if the words were written in my own blood, because this skin can only hold so much.
Because I can no longer look at you without burning.
You are too painful for poetry and too big for language.
You are far too many things I don’t know how to write about.
— Kim Visda, from “For Lack Of A Better Poem.”
Would you describe the mania as watching a bird die on your doorstep or the sensation of having wings?
I want you to know the second time I went crazy there was no one to blame except my own soft burning brain.
— Clementine von Radics, from “A conversation between / my therapist / and the mouth that sometimes belongs to me:” In a Dream You Saw a Way to Survive
“The language of birds is very ancient, and like other ancient modes of speech, very elliptical; little is said, but much is meant and understood.”
— Gilbert White, from Letter XLIII, Selborne, 9 September 1778, The Natural History of Selborne (1789).
And I, too, am dim to my friends and unknown; a phantom, sometimes seen, often not.
— Virginia Woolf, The Waves
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