Death! (Artaud)

Who, in the depths of certain kinds of anguish, at the bottom of certain dreams, has not known death as a shattering and marvelous sensation unlike anything else in the realm of the mind?

One must have to know this suctionlike rise of anguish whose waves cover you and fill you to bursting as if driven by some intolerable bellows.

And anguish which approaches and withdraws, each time more vast, each time heavier and more swollen.

It is the body itself that has reached the limit of its distension and its strength and which must nevertheless go further.

It is a kind of suction cup placed on the soul, whose bitterness spread like an acid to the furthest boundaries of perception.

And the soul does not even possess the ability to burst. For this distension itself is false.

Death is not satisfied so cheaply.

In the physical sphere, this distension is like the reverse image of the contraction which must occupy the mind over the whole extent of the living body.

by Antonin Artaud, 'Art and Death'
https://www.amazon.com/Antonin-Artaud-Selected-Writings/dp/0520064437