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the spiritual haughtiness and disgust of every human being who has suffered deeply—how deeply human beings can suffer almost determines their order of rank—the harrowing certainty, with which he is wholly permeated and coloured, that by virtue of his suffering he knows more than even the cleverest and wisest can know, that he is familiar with, and was once 'at home' in, many distant, terrible worlds of which "you know nothing!' … this spiritual, silent haughtiness of the sufferer, this pride of the elect of knowledge, of the 'initiated', of the almost sacrificed, finds all forms of disguise necessary to protect itself against contact with importunate and pitying hands and in general against everything which is not its equal in suffering. profound suffering ennobles; it separates. one of the most subtle forms of disguise is epicureanism and a certain ostentatious bravery of taste which takes suffering frivolously and arms itself against everything sorrowful and profound. —friedrich nietzsche, from beyond good and evil

— The Daily Telegraph on Pierre Clémenti, January 12, 2000

Man Ray, L'Étoile de mer, 1928.

Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

Georges Bataille, The Impossible

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