The new names filled him with a profound anxiety; he felt that if he could understand the reasons why the objects evoked names -- or, as he had begun to think of them, captions -- which refused to denote, explain, or illuminate them, which, in fact, disintegrated in them, he might then be able to understand the fearsome emptiness of his childhood as well as the subtly disfigured adult life to which it had so relentlessly led. But he could never understand, and his attempts led him to more convoluted experiences, as on the night when a couple of aspirins became pubic hair. One morning, staring at the closed lids of his eyes, he conceived of himself as absolutely nothing, and a great silence, which turned to death, enveloped him. -- Under the Shadow It is only by persistence that the imagination is freed in order that it may create anything; the Splendide-Hotel, for example. This hotel was invented by Arthur Rimbaud who later went to live there. I have it on good authority that there...