When the superficial wearies me, it wearies me so much that I need an abyss in order to rest.

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) was an Italian-born Argentine writer best known for his aphoristic book *Voces* (*Voices*), first published in Buenos Aires in 1943 and expanded in later editions. Porchia lived a largely private, working-class life and wrote brief, paradoxical reflections that resist conventional “literary” polish. The quoted line fits *Voces*’ recurring movement away from social surfaces—talk, appearances, easy optimism—toward inward depth, silence, and metaphysical extremity. In English, Porchia’s aphorisms circulated widely through translations and endorsements by writers such as André Breton and later readers of modernist and existential short forms.

Porchia frames “the superficial” not as harmless lightness but as an exhausting shallowness that drains the spirit. The startling remedy—“an abyss”—suggests that only radical depth, even darkness or vertigo, can provide genuine rest. The aphorism reverses ordinary expectations: we typically seek comfort in the easy and familiar, but Porchia implies that true relief comes from confronting what is bottomless—silence, solitude, mortality, or the unknown. The line also hints at a mystic or existential sensibility: when surface meanings fail, one must descend into the profound, where the self can stop performing and simply be.