Poetry is not truth, it is the resurrection of presences. Octavio Paz More Quotes by Octavio Paz More Quotes From Octavio Paz What characterizes a poem is its necessary dependence on words as much as its struggle to transcend them. Octavio Paz poetry struggle art Because two bodies, naked and entwined, leap over time, they are invulnerable, nothing can touch them, they return to the source. There is no you, no I, no tomorrow, no yesterday, no names, the truth of two in a single body, a single soul, oh total being. Octavio Paz names yesterday two It may seem paradoxical to say that we have been expelled from the present, but it is a feeling we have all had at some moment. Some of us experienced it first as a condemnation, later transformed into consciousness and action. The search for the present is neither the pursuit of an earthly paradise nor that of a timeless eternity: it is the search for a real reality. Octavio Paz paradise real feelings If each of my words were a drop of water, you would see through them and glimpse what I feel: gratitude, acknowledgement. Octavio Paz gratitude thank-you water Today we all speak, if not the same tongue, the same universal language. There is no one center, and time has lost its former coherence: East and West, yesterday and tomorrow exist as a confused jumble in each one of us. Different times and different spaces are combined in a here and now that is everywhere at once. Octavio Paz confused space yesterday Modern man likes to pretend that his thinking is wide-awake. But this wide-awake thinking has led us into the mazes of a nightmare in which the torture chambers are endlessly repeated in the mirrors of reason. Octavio Paz mirrors men thinking I thought that the world was a vast system of signs, a conversation between giant beings. My actions, the cricket's saw, the star's blink, were nothing but pauses and syllables, scattered phrases from that dialogue. What word could it be, of which I was only a syllable? Who speaks the word? To whom is it spoken? Octavio Paz phrases giants stars Contemporary man has rationalized the myths, but he has not been able to destroy them. Octavio Paz myth able men Tradition is no longer a continuity but a series of sharp breaks. The modern tradition is the tradition of revolt. Octavio Paz modern tradition break Eroticism is first and foremost a thirst for otherness. And the supernatural is the supreme otherness. This is perhaps the most noble aim of poetry, to attach ourselves to the world around us, to turn desire into love, to embrace, finally what always evades us, what is beyond, but what is always there – the unspoken, the spirit, the soul. Octavio Paz noble soul desire Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. Octavio Paz learning wisdom lying Without democracy freedom is a chimera Octavio Paz democracy-freedom chimera democracy Ruy-Sanchez's works of fiction are always amazing: adventure, poetry and intelligence in a new geometry of words... His writing has nerve and agility, his intelligence is sharp without being cruel, his mood is sympathetic without complicity. Octavio Paz nerves writing adventure Mineral cactai, quicksilver lizards in the adobe walls, the bird that punctures space, thirst, tedium, clouds of dust, impalpable epiphanies of wind. The pines taught me to talk to myself. In that garden I learnedto send myself off. Later there were no gardens. Octavio Paz wall garden clouds Art is an invention of aesthetics, which in turn is an invention of philosophers... What we call art is a game. Octavio Paz games beauty art For every language that becomes extinct, an image of man disappears. Octavio Paz disappear language men If society abolishes poetry it commits spiritual suicide. Octavio Paz commit suicide spiritual Death is the mother of forms. Octavio Paz form mother death Erotic acts are instinctive; they fulfill a role in nature. The idea is familiar, but it is one that contains a paradox: there is nothing more natural than sexual desire; there is nothing less natural than the forms in which it is made manifest and satisfied. Octavio Paz erotic desire ideas Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone, and the only one who seeks out another. His nature - if that word can be used in reference to man, who has ‘invented’ himself by saying ‘no’ to nature - consists in his longing to realize himself in another. Man is nostalgia and a search for communion. Therefore, when he is aware of himself he is aware of his lack of another, that is, of his solitude. Octavio Paz saying-no solitude men
