The poet is one who is able to keep the fresh vision of the child alive.
Anais NinRead
The child in me could not die as it should have died, because according too legends it must find its father again. The old legends knew, perhaps, that in absence the father becomes glorified, deified, eroticized, and this outrage against God the Father has to be atoned for. The human father has to be confronted and recognized as human, as man who created a child and then, by his absence, left the child fatherless and then Godless.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the enduring impact of a father's absence on a child's identity and development.
In this quote, Anais Nin explores the profound influence of a father's absence on a child's psyche, suggesting that legends perpetuate the idea of a child's search for their father as a means of understanding and reconciling their own identity. This absence can lead to an idealization of the father figure, complicating the child's development and relationship with both earthly and divine authority, ultimately urging the acknowledgment of one's human father as flawed yet pivotal in shaping their existence.
Themes
FatherAbsenceChildIdentityLegends
In practice
Example use cases
During a discussion on parental impact in psychology class.
More from Anais Nin
All quotes →Anxiety is love's greatest killer, because it is like the stranglehold of the drowning.
Anais NinRead
We celebrate peace. Yet we pay no attention to the ways of curing aggression in human beings. And when one sees in psychoanalysis hostility disappearing as people conquer their fears, one wonders if the cure is not there.
Anais NinRead
The impetus to grow and live intensely is so powerful in me I cannot resist it. I will work, I will love my husband, but I will fulfill myself.
Anais NinRead
We have been poisoned by fairy tales.
Anais NinRead
But I lie. I embellish. My words are not deep enough. They disguise, they conceal. I will not rest until I have told of my descent into a sensuality which was as dark, as magnificent, as wild, as my moments of mystic creation have been dazzling, ecstatic, exalted.
Anais NinRead
Similar quotes
My mother was the first singer I had contact with. She sang constantly to us around the house, in church.
Whitney HoustonRead
The door', replied Maimie, 'will always, always be open, and mother will always be waiting at it for me.
James M. BarrieRead
This is part of what a family is about, not just love. It's knowing that your family will be there watching out for you. Nothing else will give you that. Not money. Not fame. Not work.
Mitch AlbomRead
The family is the basic cell of government: it is where we are trained to believe that we are human beings or that we are chattel, it is where we are trained to see the sex and race divisions and become callous to injustice even if it is done to ourselves, to accept as biological a full system of authoritarian government.
Gloria SteinemRead
Almost any American can connect on some level to a family background of having come across some ocean. They say, 'My great-grandparents came from wherever... this is why we have this last name, why we do this thing at Christmas.' All the details get watered down but don't quite disappear.
Jhumpa LahiriRead
My father and mother had no sense of entitlement for their children.
Seamus HeaneyRead