The gods are fugitive guests of literature.
Interpretation
Literature holds a transient and vital connection to the divine, as if the gods briefly visit through storytelling.
Roberto Calassoβs quote suggests that the essence of gods, or the divine, is captured momentarily in literature. Just as guests experience a temporary stay, so too does the presence of divine inspiration flow through literary works, transforming human experiences into something greater than mere existence. This highlights the importance of literature as a sacred space for exploring themes of human nature and transcendence.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of storytelling in culture.
We establish a connection with the unknown through the act of giving something and, paradoxically, the act of destroying something. That is what is behind sacrifice. What you offer and what you destroy, it is that surplus which is life itself.
Myth is never a single story. It is always a tree with many branches.
Whatever else it might be, the divine is certainly the thing that imposes with maximum intensity the sensation of being alive.
Stories never live alone; They are the branches of a family that we have to trace back, and forward.
The monster does not need the hero. it is the hero who needs him for his very existence. When the hero confronts the monster, he has yet neither power nor knowledge, the monster is his secret father who will invest him with a power and knowledge that can belong to one man only, and that only the monster can give.
The film is made in the editing room. The shooting of the film is about shopping, almost. It's like going to get all the ingredients together, and you've got to make sure before you leave the store that you got all the ingredients. And then you take those ingredients and you can make a good cake - or not.
It wasn't until I went to my first comic convention while I was in high school that I got to see actual comic book artists and original artwork in real life, up close. That was when I first realized that this is what I wanted to do for a living.
You hear it said time and time again by successful directors: You have to make a movie for yourself. Don't make it for anyone else.
The thing I love about music is that you can take things that are painful, deep things that hurt you, and you can turn them into something beautiful.
Painting isn't an aesthetic operation; it's a form of magic designed as mediator between this strange hostile world and us.
The world around us is in a sea change, and I think the glory of art is that it cannot only survive change, it can lead it
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