walter benjamin

“In modernist art, obscurity can be a conscious strategy. It is one of the ways in which the artwork can avoid being consumed too easily. Poems need to thicken their textures and scramble their syntax if they are not to slip down too easily, which is the fate of the commodity. Everyday language is no longer a medium of truth. It has grown stale and threadbare, and only by wreaking violence on it can you force it to yield something of value....