Stephane Mallarme in The Paris Review:
Stéphane Mallarmé died 118 years ago today. He wrote the letter below to his friend Eugène Lefébure, in May 1867, at age twenty-five, when he was working as a teacher in the provinces. It was, apparently, stressful, and Mallarmé came to feel that he’d entered “the Void”—a liberating (albeit terrifying) abyss of constant, torturous renewal.
I think that to be truly a man, to be nature capable of thought, one must think with one’s entire body, which creates a full, harmonious thought, like those violin strings vibrating directly with their hollow wooden box. As thoughts are produced by the brain alone (which I so abused last summer and part of this winter), they now appear to me like airs played on the high part of the E-string without being strengthened by the box,—which pass through and disappear without creating themselves, without leaving a trace of themselves. Indeed, I no longer remember any of those sudden ideas I had last year.
More here.