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.

Two infidelities, an impossible choice: on the one hand, [...] to be content with just quoting [...] But this excess of fidelity would end up saying and exchanging nothing. It returns to death. It points to death, sending death back to death. On the other hand, by avoiding all quotation [...] as if one could add death to death and thus indecently pluralize it. We are left with having to do and not do both at once.