Using Arthur Adamov

In reading the incredible testament called The Theatre of the Absurd by Martin Esslin, especially the chapter on Arthur Adamov, I came upon a quotation that seems familiar in its details. It was regarding the playwright’s neurosis but could have easily been used to define my own physiological and thus, psychological, reactions to Temporal Lobe Seizures, which I have at least monthly, if not more.

Adamov wrote this in his book called L’Aeu, translated as The Confession (Pairis: Editions du Sagittaire, 1946, p.p. 25-6):

“Everything happens as though I were only one of the particular existences of some great incomprehensible and central being… Sometimes this great totality of life appears to me so dramatically beautiful that it plunges me into ecstasy. But more often it seems like a monstrous beast that penetrates and surpasses me and which is everywhere, within me and outside me… And terror grips and envelops me more powerfully from moment to moment… My only way out is to write, to make others aware of it, so as not to have to feel all of it alone, to get rid of however small a portion of it.”

(ART: In the Throes by Linda O'Neill, Migraine Masterpieces 2003 - Nat'l Headache Foundation))