New York is something awful, something monstrous. I like to walk the streets, lost, but I recognize that New York is the world's greatest lie. New York is Senegal with machines.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a complex view of New York as both fascinating and deceptive.
Federico Garcia Lorca's quote reveals his ambivalence towards New York City, depicting it as a place that is both appealing and grotesque. He suggests that while the city has a vibrant life and energy, it also embodies falsehoods under the surface, portraying an identity that is artificial and disconnected from its true essence. The comparison to Senegal, a place with its own deep cultural roots, highlights the disparity between the city's technological advancements and the human experiences that define life.
In practice
During a discussion on urban life at a conference, I could use this quote to illustrate the duality of city experiences.
The wounds were burning like suns at five in the afternoon, and the crowd broke the windows At five in the afternoon. Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon! It was five by all the clocks! It was five in the shade of the afternoon!
There is nothing more poetic and terrible than the skyscrapers' battle with the heavens that cover them. Snow, rain, and mist highlight, drench, or conceal the vast towers, but those towers, hostile to mystery and blind to any sort of play, shear off the rain's tresses and shine their three thousand swords through the soft swan of the fog.
The poem, the song, the picture, is only water drawn from the well of the people, and it should be given back to them in a cup of beauty so that they may drink - and in drinking understand themselves.
Death laid its eggs in the wound
The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extra human architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish.
Woodcutter. Cut my shadow from me. Free me from the torment of being without fruit. Why was I born among mirrors? Day goes round and round me. The night copies me in all its stars. I want to live without my reflection. And then let me dream that ants and thistledown are my leaves and my parrots.
The essence of the question is the opening up, and keeping open, of possibilities.
… people didn't seem to be able to remember what it was like with the elves around. Life was certainly more interesting then, but usually because it was shorter. And it was more colorful, if you liked the color of blood.
Rulers, Statesmen, Nations, are wont to be emphatically commended to the teaching which experience offers in history. But what experience and history teach is this - that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it. Each period is involved in such peculiar circumstances, exhibits a condition of things so strictly idiosyncratic, that its conduct must be regulated by considerations connected with itself, and itself alone.
The question is very understandable, but no one has found a satisfactory answer to it so far. Yes, why do they make still more gigantic planes, still heavier bombs and, at the same time, prefabricated houses for reconstruction? Why should millions be spent daily on the war and yet there's not a penny available for medical services, artists, or for poor people? Why do some people have to starve, while there are surpluses rotting in other parts of the world? Oh, why are people so crazy?
Human beings are never to be treated as a means but always as ends.
The rich, by unfair combinations, contribute frequently to prolong a season of distress among the poor.
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