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Music, feelings of happiness, mythology, faces worn by time, certain twilights and certain places, want to tell us something, or they told us something that we should not have missed, or they are about to tell us something; this imminence of a revelation that is not produced is, perhaps, the esthetic event.
Jorge Luis Borges
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Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote suggests that music and experiences evoke profound emotions that reveal deeper truths if we are attentive to them.

Jorge Luis Borges emphasizes the profound connection between art and our emotional experiences. He suggests that various elements of life, such as music, our feelings, and the beauty of nature, carry messages that we often overlook or are on the verge of understanding. The 'imminence of a revelation' indicates that these experiences can lead to significant insights if we remain open to them, making the appreciation of art an aesthetic event that resonates with our innermost selves.

Themes

MusicHappinessArtRevelationAesthetic

In practice

Example use cases

This quote could be used during a lecture on the emotional impact of art and music in our lives.

More from Jorge Luis Borges

You can't measure time by days, the way you measure money by dollars and cents, because dollars are all the same while every day is different and maybe every hour as well.
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To say good-bye is to deny separation; it is to say Today we play at going our own ways, but we'll see each other tomorrow. Men invented farewells because they somehow knew themselves to be immortal, even while seeing themselves as contingent and ephemeral.
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The execution was set for the 29th of March, at nine in the morning. This delay was due to a desire on the part of the authorities to act slowly and impersonally, in the manner of planets or vegetables.
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This felicitous supposition declared that there is only one Individual, and that this indivisible Individual is every one of the separate beings in the universe, and that these beings are the instruments and masks of divinity itself.
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A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.
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Let neither tear nor reproach besmirch this declaration of the mastery of God who, with magnificent irony, granted me both the gift of books and the night.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead

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