I run after certain words… I catch them in mid-air, as they buzz past; I trap them, clean them, peel them, I set myself in front of the dish, they have a crystalline texture to me, vibrant, ivory, vegetable, oily, like fruit, like algae, like agates, like olives… And I stir them; I shake them; I drink them; I gulp them down; I mash them; I garnish them; I let them go…
–Pablo Neruda, date unknown, translated by C. MacCullum.
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“Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.” — Geroge Eliot
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“We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection.” — Anais Nin
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“The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.” — Anais Nin
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“How can writers not speak about war, poverty, and inequality when people who suffer from these afflictions don’t have a voice to speak?” — Isabel Allende
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What a touching way to describe the poet’s and writer’s love of word. Visualizing words as elusive food, an essential component of life, shows that words are his life force.
This passage helps be to understand how writing is part of who you are not something you do. This is such a beautiful quote.
R3
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It is beautiful.
I catch them in mid-air, as they buzz past
I love this image. It reminds me of the way I often reach my hand up to catch a kiss that is blown to me from across the room. I like the image of catching the intangible.
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Wisdom and madness are in the air, is it by choice or merely random?
I love that one too!
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neath, good point. I wonder if we have a choice of which we catch – wisdom or madness. I’m guessing it’s more random – a thought which both excites and scares me!
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