i ♥ foucault
Another beautiful quote from Michel Foucault, this time from Madness and Civilization.
We must therefore listen attentively to every whisper of the world, trying to detect the images that have never made their way into poetry, the phantasms that have never reached a waking state.
He then goes on to stir up the waters.
No doubt this is an impossible task in two senses; first because it would force us to reconstitute the dust of those actual sufferings and foolish words that nothing preserves in time; second, and above all, because those sufferings and words exist only in the act of separation.
The first half is a kind of poetic mandate for artists. The second points at how futile the activity is.