Forgetfulness heals everything and song is the most beautiful manner of forgetting, for in song man feels only what he loves.
Interpretation
Music serves as a healing force that allows us to forget our troubles and focus on what we cherish most.
In this quote, Ivo Andric highlights the therapeutic power of music, suggesting that forgetfulness can be a remedy for life's hardships. He emphasizes that through song, individuals are able to immerse themselves in feelings of love and joy, enabling them to escape from pain and find solace in the beauty of their emotions.
In practice
During a speech about overcoming difficulties, one might quote Andric to emphasize the therapeutic effect of music.
Of everything that man erects and builds in his urge for living nothing is in my eyes better and more valuable than bridges. They are more important than houses, more sacred than shrines. Belonging to everyone and being equal to everyone, useful, always built with a sense, on the spot where most human needs are crossing, they are more durable than other buildings and they do not serve for anything secret or bad.
It seems to me, that if people only knew how hard it was for me to endure life, they would find it easier to forgive me for all the wrong things Iβve done and all the good things that I have failed to do. And they would still find a little compassion within them to pity me.
To be a man, to have been born without knowing it or wanting it, to be thrown into the ocean of existence, to be obliged to swim, to exist; to have an identity; to resist the pressure and shocks from the outside and the unforeseen and unforeseeable acts - one's own and those of others - which so often exceed one's capacities? And what is more, to endure one's own thoughts about all this: in a word, to be human.
That wild beast which lives in man and does not dare to show itself until the barriers of law and custom have been removed, was now set free.
Lands of great discoveries are also lands of great injustices.
Between the fear that something would happen and the hope that still it wouldn't, there is much more space than one thinks. On that narrow, hard, bare and dark space a lot of us spend their lives.
Most poets are young simply because they have not been caught up. Show me an old poet, and I'll show you, more often than not, either a madman or a master... it's when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order simply to make a poem that you fail. That is why I do not rework poems.
As artists, we have an opportunity to help the public evolve, raise consciousness and awareness, teach, heal, enlighten and inspire in ways the democratic process may not be able to touch. So we keep it moving.
I would wish my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them.
My goal as a creative person is to express truth and beauty in whatever I do
If you write for God you will reach many men and bring them joy. If you write for men--you may make some money and you may give someone a little joy and you may make a noise in the world, for a little while. If you write for yourself, you can read what you yourself have written and after ten minutes you will be so disgusted that you will wish that you were dead.
The things that affect you most deeply - the things that will destroy you if you don't sing about them - are the things that you often end up singing about. It's really just about saying those things that everybody thinks but no one will say and making a connection by uncovering these diamonds that are inside of all of us that no one wants to tell each other about.
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