"Nothing ceases to exist – there is no example of this in nature.. .There is an entire mass of things that cannot rationally explained. There are newborn thoughts that have not yet found form. How foolish to deny the existence of the soul. After all, that a life has begun, that cannot be denied. It is necessary to believe in immortality, insofar as it can be demonstrated that the atoms of life or the spirit of life must continue to exist after the body’s death. But of what does it exist, this characteristic of holding a body together, causing matter to change and develop, this spirit of life? I felt it as a sensual delight that I should become one with – become this earth which is forever radiated by the sun in such a constant ferment and which lives – lives – and which will grow plants from my decaying body – trees and flowers – and the sun will warm them and I will exist in them – and nothing will perish – and that is eternity."
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Original Language: English
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Sources
T 2760 (January 1892); as quoted in Edvard Much – behind the scream, Sue Prideaux; Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007, p. 119
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edvard_Munch
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Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch (12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944) was a Norwegian Symbolist painter and printmaker, and an important forerunner of the Expressionistic art movement.
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