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!
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the intensity of experience and the passage of time, suggesting moments of crisis or revelation.
Federico Garcia Lorca's quote captures the profound sense of urgency and emotional pain associated with a specific time of day, 'five in the afternoon'. It conveys a feeling of inevitability and fatalism as the imagery of burning wounds juxtaposes the mundane passage of time with the intensity of human experience and suffering. The repetitive emphasis on 'five in the afternoon' suggests a moment that is pivotal, encapsulating both personal turmoil and a collective response to it.
In practice
In a speech about perseverance, one might say, 'Remember Lorca's words, the wounds may burn, but we must face the time, even when it feels fatal.'
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.
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.
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.
For when is death not within our selves? And as Heracleitus says: “Living and dead are the same, and so are awake and asleep, young and old. The former when shifted are the latter, and again the latter when shifted are the former."
Of the many unforeseen consequences of typography, the emergence of nationalism is, perhaps, the most familiar
We're not thought of in terms of color because we are entertainers. We are there to entertain you not because we are black, white, pink, or green or gay or straight or because we are Catholic or Protestant.
After a crisis we tell ourselves we understand why it happened and maintain the illusion that the world is understandable. In fact, we should accept the world is incomprehensible much of the time.
There really is no such thing as a sick child; there are children who happen to be sick. Think about it, and you will understand the magic of the Camps
It is my firm belief that the infinite and uncontrollable fury of nuclear weapons should never be held in the hands of any mere mortal ever again, for any reason.
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