I am imbued with the notion that a Muse is necessarily a dead woman, inaccessible or absent; that the poetic structure - like a cannon, which is only a hole surrounded by steel - can be based only on what one does not have; and that ultimately one can write only to fill a void or at the very least to situate, in relation to the most lucid part of ourselves, the place where this incommensurable abyss yawns within us.

-Michel Leiris, Manhood (trans. Richard Howard)

William Blake - Immortals who fall into the Abyss (1794)

(Source: corinthian-girl)