Solitude lies at the lowest depth of the human condition. Man is the only being who feels himself to be alone and the only one who is searching for the Other.
Octavio PazRead
In each verse, a decision awaits us, and we can't choose to close our eyes and let instinct work on its own. Poetic instinct consists of an alert tension.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of conscious decision-making in creativity, suggesting that true artistic expression requires awareness and intention.
Octavio Paz highlights that every moment in the creative process is a choice rather than a passive flow of inspiration. The phrase 'poetic instinct' refers to the deep, attentive awareness needed to navigate these choices, suggesting that creativity is a blend of instinct and conscious effort, requiring both alertness and intention.
In practice
An artist can share this quote during a workshop to emphasize the importance of intentional decision-making in their work.
Solitude lies at the lowest depth of the human condition. Man is the only being who feels himself to be alone and the only one who is searching for the Other.
By suppressing differences and peculiarities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death
The North American system only wants to consider the positive aspects of reality. Men and women are subjected from childhood to an inexorable process of adaptation certain principles, contained in brief formulas are endlessly repeated by the Press, the radio, the churches, and the schools, and by those kindly, sinister beings, the North American mothers and wives. A person imprisoned by these schemes is like a plant in a flowerpot too small for it he cannot grow or mature.
Poetry is not a genre in harmony with the modern world; its innermost nature is hostile or indifferent to the dogmas of modern times, progress and the cult of the future.
If we are a metaphor of the universe, the human couple is the metaphor par excellence, the point of intersection of all forces and the seed of all forms. The couple is time recaptured, the return to the time before time.
Man, even man debased by the neocapitalism and pseudosocialism of our time, is a marvelous being because he sometimes speaks. Language is the mark, the sign, not of his fall but of his original innocence. Through the Word we may regain the lost kingdom and recover powers we possessed in the far-distant past.
Stand up for yourself and fight for your right to be the artist that you want to be. There's plenty of pressure from outside; people tell you how to dress and how to sing or what to sing, but I always felt like if I'm going to fail or succeed, I want to do it on my own terms.
The purpose of theatre is... making an event in which a group of fragments are sudde nly brought together... in a community which, by the natural laws that make every community, gradually breaks up... At certain moments this fragmented world comes together and for a certain time it can rediscover the marvel of organic life ... The marvel of being one.
No author has created with less emphasis such pathetic characters as Chekhov has.
When I see a white piece of paper, I feel I've got to draw. And drawing, for me, is the beginning of everything.
From all these experiences the most important thing I have learned is that legibility and beauty stand close together and that type design, in its restraint, should be only felt but not perceived by the reader.
Everybody comes to film differently; everybody has different backgrounds. Just find whatever your lane is naturally. Don't try to force yourself into someone else's vision or try to tell a story that you're not passionate about.
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