Status Updates From The Work of Mourning

Finding this captivating.

Death is not one example of absence among others; it speaks to us of absence itself by naming the most absent of absences, [...] death, which is expressed [...] by all other absences as absences, is what gives painting its greatest force, for 'divine force' also means 'the greatest force.' But because it bears death, so to speak, this greatest force is also 'without-force,' the mourning of the absolute of force.

And after having cited this last line from Mallarme's 'Tombeau for Verlaine, [de Man] added: 'Anyhow, I prefer that to the brutality of the word tumeur'--which, in fact, is more terrible, more insinuating and menacing in French than in any other language (tumeur/tu meurs: you are dying.