Bitter love, a violet with it's crown of thorns in a thicet of spiky passions, spear of sorrow, corolla of rage: how did you come to conquer my soul? What brought you?
Interpretation
This quote expresses the complex and painful nature of love, highlighting its beauty and suffering.
Pablo Neruda's quote captures the dual nature of love, illustrating how it can be both beautiful and painful. The imagery of a 'violet with its crown of thorns' symbolizes love's delicate beauty marred by sorrow and rage, suggesting that love can simultaneously bring joy and deep emotional wounds. The question of how love has the power to 'conquer' one's soul reflects the intense and sometimes uncontrollable nature of romantic feelings, which can lead to profound vulnerability.
In practice
In a wedding speech, to reflect on the beauty and challenges of love.
Perhaps this war will pass like the others which divided us leaving us dead, killing us along with the killers but the shame of this time puts its burning fingers to our faces. Who will erase the ruthlessness hidden in innocent blood?
I want to see the thirst inside the syllables I want to touch the fire in the sound: I want to feel the darkness of the cry. I want words as rough as virgin rocks.β - Verb.
Only do not forget, if I wake up crying it's only because in my dream I'm a lost child hunting through the leaves of the night for your hands.
And here am I, budding among the ruins with only sorrow to bite on, as if weeping were a seed and I the earth's only furrow.
Once more I am the silent one who came out of the distance wrapped in cold rain and bells: I owe to earth's pure death the will to sprout.
I learned about life from life itself, love I learned in a single kiss and could teach no one anything except that I have lived with something in common among men.
And most people have a woman in their heart, most men have a woman in their heart and most women have a man in their heart.
Love is the most important thing in our lives, a passion for which we would fight or die, and yet we're reluctant to linger over its names. Without a supple vocabulary, we can't even talk or think about it directly.
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Joy is always an integral part of loving. There is joy in every act of life, no matter how menial or repetitive. To work in love is to work in joy. To live in love is to live in joy... Why not choose joy?... Why not live in joy?
Is it easy to love God' asks an old author. 'It is easy,' he replies, 'to those who do it.' I have included two Graces under the word Charity. But God can give a third. He can awake in man, towards Himself, a supernatural Appreciative love. This is of all gifts the most to be desired. Here, not in our natural loves, nor even in ethics, lies the true centre of all human and angelic life. With this all things are possible.
But till we are built like angels, with hammer and chisel and pen, we will work for ourself and a woman, forever and ever, Amen.
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