Literature knows simultaneously that it is a resistance to death and yet not properly life either.
I think all writers implicitly believe in reincarnation of some kind—floating souls; writing takes you out of your own subjectivity, or vacuums up and incorporates other subjectivities into the self… gives you a sense of belonging to more than one body, one fate.
Poetry notebook:
In the lion’s mouth: the first of the deep things of the mind
Sleeping in the autumn arboretum. It is never as fittingly as you conceive it
And yet it endures without the encumbrance of grace. If the bare rock
Glitters, then you would reappear, offering the posthumous romances
And withheld mercies that only a purely verbal figure can bear.
It all fits and locks together: the twin covenants of de-
Symbolization and despair.
What a funny word writer is. Joyce didn't say writer, he said artist. Portrait of the artist, not portrait of the writer as a young man. The writer has to become an artist and sacrifice something within himself rather than other people. The artist turns violence inward not outward. The artist is Isaac, the writer is Abraham.
There's something very universal about theater and dramatic writing, something much more ancient than other forms of writing.