Raw hatred took its time making an outpost of its rage and prepared for me a savage crown with rusty, bloodstained spikes. It wasn't pride that made me keep my heart at a distance from such terror, nor did I waste on revenge or the pursuit of power the forces that came from my selfish griefs or my accumulated joys. It was something else-my helplessness.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the struggle between deep emotions like hatred and the choice to rise above them with humility and acceptance.
Pablo Neruda addresses the complexity of human emotions, highlighting how raw hatred can create a powerful but destructive force. Despite the allure of pride, revenge, and power stemming from pain and joy, he emphasizes that his true reaction is one of helplessness, suggesting that true strength lies in recognizing and accepting one's vulnerabilities rather than succumbing to the darker impulses of rage and revenge.
In practice
In a speech about overcoming personal struggles.
Perhaps this war will pass like the others which divided us leaving us dead, killing us along with the killers but the shame of this time puts its burning fingers to our faces. Who will erase the ruthlessness hidden in innocent blood?
I want to see the thirst inside the syllables I want to touch the fire in the sound: I want to feel the darkness of the cry. I want words as rough as virgin rocks.” - Verb.
Only do not forget, if I wake up crying it's only because in my dream I'm a lost child hunting through the leaves of the night for your hands.
And here am I, budding among the ruins with only sorrow to bite on, as if weeping were a seed and I the earth's only furrow.
Once more I am the silent one who came out of the distance wrapped in cold rain and bells: I owe to earth's pure death the will to sprout.
I learned about life from life itself, love I learned in a single kiss and could teach no one anything except that I have lived with something in common among men.
What is moral is what you feel good after, and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.
Are these things good for any other reason except that they end in pleasure, and get rid of and avert pain? Are you looking to any other standard but pleasure and pain when you call them good?
The only thing harder than getting a new idea into the military mind is to get an old one out.
This is a world where everybody’s gotta do something. Ya know, somebody laid down this rule that everybody’s gotta do something, they gotta be something. You know, a dentist, a glider pilot, a narc, a janitor, a preacher, all that . . . Sometimes I just get tired of thinking of all the things that I don’t wanna do. All the things that I don’t wanna be. Places I don’t wanna go, like India, like getting my teeth cleaned. Save the whale, all that, I don’t understand that . . .
It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts.
Before I latched onto the concept of stereotypes, not once did I reckon with the fact that I would never be a 'Hollywood starlet.'
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