"A poet’s life is null and worthless because it is never absolute, never a
thing in itself and for itself, because it is always there only in relation
to something, and this relation is meaningless and yet it completely absorbs
the life—for a moment at least; but then life is made up of nothing but such
moments."
Georg Lukacs, "Søren Kierkegaard and Regine Olsen," Soul and Form