Quotes About Symbolism

Work that endures is always capable of an infinite and plastic ambiguity; it is all things for all men, like the Apostle; it is a mirror that reflects the reader's own features and it is also a map of the world. Moreover, all this must come about in an evanescent and modest way, almost in spite of the author, who must appear to be ignorant of any and all symbolism.

If you ask me why I wrote "A thousand tambourines of crystal, wounded the light of daybreak –Mil panderos di cristal, herían la madruga," I will tell you that I saw them in the hands of trees and angels, but I cannot say more: I cannot explain their meaning. And that is how it should be. Through poetry a man more quickly reaches the cutting edge that the philosopher and the mathematician silently turn away from.

Para aprender el arte del olvido. Un símbolo, una rosa, te desgarra.

We took out our heavy revolvers (all of a sudden there were revolvers in the dream) and joyfully killed the Gods.

Sentí, en la última página, que mi narración era un símbolo del hombre que yo fui, mientras la escribía y que, para redactar esa narración, yo tuve que ser aquel hombre y que, para ser aquel hombre, yo tuve que redactar esa narración, y así hasta lo infinito.

Nouns are abbreviations. Instead of saying cold, sharp, burning, unbreakable, shining, pointy, we utter dagger; - Verbiage for Poems

El orden inferior es un espejo del orden superior; las formas de la tierra corresponden a las formas del cielo; las manchas de la piel son un mapa de las incorruptibles constelaciones; Judas refleja de algún modo a Jesús.

En la ventana estaban los tejados de siempre y el sol nublado de las seis. Me pareció increíble que ese día sin premoniciones ni símbolos fuera el de mi muerte implacable.

Panagulis, en 1973, la llevó a una colina del Peloponeso a ver tres letras escritas en la tierra, entre los árboles. Las letras eran OXI (que en griego significa «NO»). Cuenta cómo a pesar del viento y la lluvia, y del intento de los generales por desaparecerla con cal, las tres palabras reaparecían tercamente.

Work that endures is always capable of an infinite and plastic ambiguity; it is all things for all men[...]and it must be ambiguous in an evanescent and modest way, almost in spite of the author; he must appear to be ignorant of all symbolism.

Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed.

The latest incarnation of Oedipus, the continued romance of Beauty and the Beast, stand this afternoon on the corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, waiting for the traffic light to change.

When you translate the Bible with excessive literalism, you demythologize it. The possibility of a convincing reference to the individual's own spiritual experience is lost. (111)

Mythology, in other words, is psychology misread as biography, history, and cosmology.

If you want to understand what's most important to a society, don't examine its art or literature, simply look at its biggest buildings.

If myth is translated into literal fact, then myth is a lie. But if you read it as a reflection of the world inside you, then it's true. Myth is the penultimate truth.

Mythology is to relate found truth to the living of a life.

The first function of mythology is showing everything as a metaphor to transcendence.

It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth—penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words, beyond images

Some things die after they born, others born after they die. myths are public dreams, dreams are privet myths...

In the absence of an effective general mythology, each of us has his private, unrecognized, rudimentary, yet secretly potent pantheon of dream.

A ritual is the enactment of a myth.

If a being from another world were to ask you, How can I learn what it's like to be human? a good answer would be, Study mythology.

Woman, in the picture language of mythology, represents the totality of what can be known. The hero is the one who comes to know.