“Surrealism is not a school of poetry but a movement of liberation... A way of rediscovering the language of innocence, a renewal of the primordial pact, poetry is the basic text, the foundation of the human order. Surrealism is revolutionary because it is a return to the beginning of all beginnings.” WayHumansSchoolOrderLanguageMovementReturnFoundationInnocenceLiberationRevolutionaryPoetry IsRenewalSurrealismPact Book:Alternating Current Source: Alternating Current
“The religion of art, like the religion of politics, was born from the ruins of Christianity. Art inherited from the old religion the power of consecrating things and endowing them with a sort of eternity; museums are our temples, and the objects displayed in them are beyond history. Politics--or more precisely, Revolution--co-opted the other function of religion: changing human beings and society. Art was an asceticism, a spiritual heroism; Revolution was the construction of a universal church.” HumansArtSpiritualPoliticsBornChurchHuman BeingsChristianityObjectsRevolutionUniversalEternityFunctionRuinsTemplesMuseumsConstructionHeroismAsceticism Book:1904-1912 Source: 1904-1912
“Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.” KnowsMenHumansFactsConditionsLonelinessSolitudeHuman ConditionBeing AloneLoneliness And SolitudeOne Tree Hill VoiceoverOne Tree Hill OpeningShort One Tree HillAlone Man Author:Octavio Paz
“Literature is the expression of a feeling of deprivation, a recourse against a sense of something missing. But the contrary is also true: language is what makes us human. It is a recourse against the meaningless noise and silence of nature and history.” HumansFeelingsLiteratureLanguageSilenceHistoryMissingExpressionContraryNoiseMeaninglessDeprivationRecourseSensory Deprivation Book:Alternating Current Source: Alternating Current
“If we are a metaphor of the universe, the human couple is the metaphor par excellence, the point of intersection of all forces and the seed of all forms. The couple is time recaptured, the return to the time before time.” IfsHumansFormUniverseForceRelationshipReturnCoupleExcellenceMetaphorSeedsIntersectionsCouple Things Book:Alternating Current Source: Alternating Current
“I sat at the foot of a huge tree, a statue of the night, and tried to make an inventory of all I had seen, heard, smelled, and felt: dizziness, horror, stupor, astonishment, joy, enthusiasm, nausea, inescapable attraction. What had attracted me? It was difficult to say: Human kind cannot bear much reality.” HumansKindStillsRealityJoyNightNamesFeltDifficultHeardTreeFeetHugeBearsHorrorAttractionEnthusiasmSatExcessStatuesAstonishmentInventoryUnrealityBalconiesNausea Author:Octavio Paz
“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.” IfsKnowsMenHumansFactsUsedRealizingConditionsSolitudeLongingNostalgiaHuman ConditionCommunionAnother ManSaying No Author:Octavio Paz
“Solitude lies at the lowest depth of the human condition. Man is the only being who feels himself to be alone and the only one who is searching for the Other.” MenFeelsHumansLyingConditionsAdventureSolitudeDepthHuman ConditionLowest Author:Octavio Paz
“We must cultivate and defend particularity, individuality, and irregularity-life. Human beings do not have a future in the collectivism of bureaucratic states or in the mass society created by capitalism. Every system, by virtue as much of its abstract nature as of its pretension to totality, is the enemy of life. As a forgotten Spanish poet, José Moreno Villa, put it with melancholy wit: "I have discovered in symmetry the root of much iniquity."” LifeHumansStatesHuman BeingsEnemyVirtuePoetMassCapitalismRootsForgottenIndividualityWitAbstractMelancholyTotalityCollectivismPretensionSymmetryIniquityVillaIrregularity Book:1904-1912 Source: 1904-1912
