I learnt all the words worthy of the court of blood So that I could break the rule I learnt all the words and broke them up To make a single word: Homeland.
Mahmoud DarwishRead
Against barbarity, poetry can resist only by confirming its attachment to human fragility like a blade of grass growing on a wall while armies march by.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Poetry serves as a reminder of human vulnerability in the face of destruction and conflict.
In this quote, Mahmoud Darwish suggests that poetry has the power to resist the brutality of the world, but its strength lies in recognizing and embracing human fragility. The imagery of a blade of grass growing on a wall amidst the march of armies symbolizes resilience and beauty in the midst of conflict, highlighting the importance of art as a means of preserving humanity.
Themes
PoetryFragilityResistanceHumanityArt
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about art's role in society, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of poetry in understanding our shared vulnerabilities.
More from Mahmoud Darwish
All quotes βFar away, our dreams have nothing to do with what we do. The wind carries the night, and passes on, aimless.
Mahmoud DarwishRead
Some people ask, 'How do you attract the young and so many different people when your poetry is complicated and different?' I say, 'My accomplishment is that my readers trust me and accept my suggestions for change.'
Mahmoud DarwishRead
The days have taught you not to trust happiness because it hurts when it deceives.
Mahmoud DarwishRead
A person can only be born in one place. However, he may die several times elsewhere: in the exiles and prisons, and in a homeland transformed by the occupation and oppression into a nightmare.
Mahmoud DarwishRead
The metaphor for Palestine is stronger than the Palestine of reality.
Mahmoud DarwishRead
Similar quotes
I'm having so much fun, because you know what? They cast a Star Wars fan in a Star Wars movie. Biiiiiig mistake!
John BoyegaRead
I make a model of the site. There are some obvious things: where the entrance should be, where the cars have to go in. You start to get the scale of it. You understand the client's needs, and what the client is hoping for and yearning for.
Frank GehryRead
The ability to be the first African-American painter to paint the first African-American president of the United States is absolutely overwhelming. It doesn't get any better than that.
Kehinde WileyRead
In the best of all possible worlds, directors would obsess about the quality of their storytelling, and not the details of their technical methods.
Roger EbertRead
All forms of beauty, like all possible phenomena, contain an element of the eternal and an element of the transitory - of the absolute and of the particular. Absolute and eternal beauty does not exist, or rather it is only an abstraction creamed from the general surface of different beauties. The particular element in each manifestation comes from the emotions: and just as we have our own particular emotions, so we have our own beauty.
Charles BaudelaireRead
I'm writing all the time. And as the songs begin to coalesce, I'm not doing anything else but writing. I wish I were one of those people who wrote songs quickly. But I'm not. So it takes me a great deal of time to find out what the song is.
Leonard CohenRead