Jean Genet Quotes
When I beheld you, suddenly - for perhaps a second - I had the strength to reject everything that wasn't you and to laugh at the illusion. But my shoulders are very frail. I was unable to bear the weight of the world's condemnation. And I began to hate you when everything about you would have kindled my love and when love would have made men's contempt unbearable, and their contempt would have made my love unbearable. The fact is, I hate you.
Genet, Jean. The Blacks: A Clown Show. Translated by Bernard Frechtman, Grove Press, 1960, p. 41.
Two of Genet's poems, "The Man Sentenced to Death" and "The Fisherman of the Suquet" were adapted, respectively, as "The Man Condemned to Death" and "The Thief and the Night" and set to music for the album Feasting with Panthers, released in 2011 by Marc Almond and Michael Cashmore. Both poems were adapted and translated by Jeremy Reed.