The gods are fugitive guests of literature.
Interpretation
Literature holds a transient and vital connection to the divine, as if the gods briefly visit through storytelling.
Roberto Calassoβs quote suggests that the essence of gods, or the divine, is captured momentarily in literature. Just as guests experience a temporary stay, so too does the presence of divine inspiration flow through literary works, transforming human experiences into something greater than mere existence. This highlights the importance of literature as a sacred space for exploring themes of human nature and transcendence.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of storytelling in culture.
We establish a connection with the unknown through the act of giving something and, paradoxically, the act of destroying something. That is what is behind sacrifice. What you offer and what you destroy, it is that surplus which is life itself.
Myth is never a single story. It is always a tree with many branches.
Whatever else it might be, the divine is certainly the thing that imposes with maximum intensity the sensation of being alive.
Stories never live alone; They are the branches of a family that we have to trace back, and forward.
The monster does not need the hero. it is the hero who needs him for his very existence. When the hero confronts the monster, he has yet neither power nor knowledge, the monster is his secret father who will invest him with a power and knowledge that can belong to one man only, and that only the monster can give.
In Red Flags, Juris Jurjevics has brilliantly accomplished a feat that is becoming a major characteristic of 21st century literature: the seamless combining of a genre form with the deep resonance of literary art. This book is thrilling to read for both its narrative drive and its insight into the human heart.
The aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole.
If [hand-drawn animation] is a dying craft, we can't do anything about it. Civilization moves on. Where are all the fresco painters now? Where are the landscape artists? What are they doing now? The world is changing. I have been very fortunate to be able to do the same job for 40 years. That's rare in any era.
Something in me was responding now as the audience responded, not in fear, but in some human way, to the magic of that fragile painted set, the mystery of the lighted world there.
The effects of good music are not just because it's new; on the contrary music strikes us more the more familiar we are with it.
At its best, film should be like a ski jump. It should give the viewer the option of taking flight, while the act of jumping is left up to him.
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