Nothing is more comical than seriousness understood as a virtue that has to precede all important literature
Interpretation
This quote highlights the absurdity of taking seriousness too seriously in literature.
Julio Cortazar's quote suggests that viewing seriousness as an essential virtue can be comical and counterproductive, especially in the context of literature. It implies that a rigid adherence to seriousness may hinder creativity and lead to a lack of enjoyment in literary expression, as important literature often thrives on a balance between humor and depth.
In practice
This quote could be shared during a literary discussion to emphasize the importance of humor in writing.
La Maga did not know that my kisses were like eyes which began to open up beyond her, and that I went along outside as if I saw a different concept of the world, the dizzy pilot of a black prow which cut the water of time and negated it.
Wordplay hides a key to reality that the dictionary tries in vain to lock inside every free word.
The best literature is always a take [in the musical sense]; there is an implicit risk in its execution, a margin of danger that is the pleasure of the flight, of the love, carrying with it a tangible loss but also a total engagement that, on another level, lends the theater its unparalleled imperfection faced with the perfection of film. I donβt want to write anything but takes.
When one wants to write, one writes. If one is condemned to write, one writes.
Only in dreams, in poetry, in play do we sometimes arrive at what we were before we were this thing that, who knows, we are.
As if you could pick in love, as if it were not a lightning bolt that splits your bones and leaves you staked out in the middle of the courtyard. (...) You don't pick out the rain that soaks you to the skin when you come out of a concert.
I have been an author for 20 years and an ass for 55.
A sense of humor is the ability to understand a joke-and that the joke is oneself.
The other day I met a man who didn't know where Tripoli was. Tripoli happened to come into the conversation, and he was evidently at a loss. "Let's see," he said. "Tripoli is just down by the - er - you know. What's the name of that place?" "That's right," I answered, "just opposite, Thingumabob. I could show you in a minute on a map. It's near - what do they call it?" At this moment the train stopped, and I got out and went straight home to look at my atlas.
If I'm doing something on stage, and it evokes an emotion, then I might show that emotion, but I also don't believe in being a preacher. If you have a point, that's a bonus. But the funny has to come first; otherwise, you shouldn't call yourself a comedian.
You don't know what a rough crowd is. If all I have to do is go make people laugh, that's nothing. Let me tell you what a tough crowd is. A tough crowd is going to a morning service and you got six people there and you gotta pay your house payment. That's a tough crowd.
Nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the onset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have a malady in the less attractive forms.
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