“Paul Valéry insists on the inescapable commitment of the poetic language to the negation. The verses of this language “ne parlent jamais que de choses absentes.” They speak of that which, though absent, haunts the established universe of discourse and behavior as its most tabooed possibility—neither heaven nor hell, neither good nor evil but simply “le bonheur.””

—  Herbert Marcuse , book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), p. 67

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Herbert Marcuse photo
Herbert Marcuse 105
German philosopher, sociologist, and political theorist 1898–1979

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