When I was a little boy, I was reading Dante and I was saying to myself 'Bravo, Dante, Bravo.' It's so beautiful, the music, the sound, the meaning. I felt like calling him by phone, like a friend.
Roberto BenigniRead
I'm a storyteller: the crux of the matter is to reach beauty, poetry; it doesn't matter if that is comedy or tragedy. They're the same if you reach the beauty.
Interpretation
Storytelling aims to evoke beauty and poetry, regardless of whether the narrative is comedic or tragic.
Roberto Benigni emphasizes that the essence of storytelling lies in its ability to convey beauty and poetry, transcending the boundaries between comedy and tragedy. The emotional depths of a story, whether it elicits laughter or sorrow, can ultimately lead to a profound appreciation of beauty, highlighting the universal nature of human experience in art.
In practice
During a creative writing workshop, I quoted Benigni to encourage participants to embrace both humor and sorrow in their narratives.
When I was a little boy, I was reading Dante and I was saying to myself 'Bravo, Dante, Bravo.' It's so beautiful, the music, the sound, the meaning. I felt like calling him by phone, like a friend.
In Italy, the country where fascism was born, we have a particular relation with the Holocaust, but as a turning point in history it belongs to everybody in the world. It is a part of humanity.
Only comedians can talk about death, life, God and Virgin Mary. If I was a tragic actor, I couldn't allow myself. But with this accent I can do it. I can talk with death in person because I am a clown. Yes. And I am proud to be a clown - very much.
When we talk to somebody and we want to be nice or polite or show our more beautiful side, we try to use the best words that we know. This is what poets are doing. They are cleaning the words, they are inventing the sentiments, they are giving us a way to communicate.
My head is full of fire and grief and my tongue runs wild, pierced with shards of glass.
I trust that if God gives me music for someone else, that's what He wants that person to have. I have to trust that that's what they're supposed to do and that's the music that should specifically be released for them and their ministry, for their career and for their audience.
The bright dawn flooded the room, and swept the fantastic shadows into dusky corners, where they lay shuddering.
To say that these men paid their shillings to watch twenty-two hirelings kick a ball is merely to say that a violin is wood and catgut, that Hamlet is so much paper and ink.
The basis for poetry and scientific discovery is the ability to comprehend the unlike in the like and the like in the unlike.
Any time is the time to make a poem.
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