When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable and, to the citizen, most dismal, swamp. I enter a swamp as a sacred place, a sanctum sanctorum.
via: Vasco Brondi, Una cosa spirituale (Einaudi, 2025), chapter Una noia necessaria
Info & reflection: the most uncomfortable, darkest place as a sacred place. Renewal doesn't go through beauty.
Related in anthology
- Una cosa spirituale. Non fare niente, altre forme d'arte — Brondi quotes Thoreau entering the swamp as a sanctum sanctorum: renewal sought in the darkest place, the primeval forest under the city