20 Noteworthy Quotes By Ernesto Cardenal
LIFE IS SUBVERSIVE
... You can't be with God and be neutral. / True contemplation is resistance. And poetry, / gazing at clouds is resistance I found out in jail.
My poetry is not lyric. The epigrams are lyric because they come from my youthful period of lyricism, but my other poetry is not lyric.
All human eyes have longing in them.
We turn outward, attracted by the beauty we see in created things without realizing that they are only a reflection of the real beauty. And the real beauty is within us.
Slogan-making is not poetry.
I am not interested in poetry for poetry's sake.
I began to write poetry when I was about four years old. In other words, I've always been writing poetry.
I speak of the current civilization and I consider her not as a symbol but as victim-victim, really, of the commercialization, of the falsification of this real world. That is my theme.
What Marxism calls atheism is basically the negation of an idol, which sometimes bears the name of God.
I myself have never called what I write anti-poetry. I also think that my poetry should not be only known as the poetry of Ernesto Cardenal but rather as Nicaraguan poetry.
I am not interested in an economic liberation of man without the liberation of the whole man.
According to some liberation theologians atheism is not the cause of the conflict between Christianity and Marxism, but is rather the link between them.
God may do something silly at any time, because, like any lover, God does not reason. God is drunk with love.
We all share in the same cosmic rhythm... For all natural laws are like the rhythm of the strings of the harp.
Like a lover who spends all his time thinking of his distant love, God has been thinking of me since before I was born, for all eternity.
I think that the proclamation of the Gospel is sometimes nearer to an atheistic point of view than to traditional religious attitudes.
Some liberation theologians maintain that they are not influenced by Marxist philosophy at all. In this case it is necessary to discern whether they say this for tactical reasons, so as not to be compromised politically or whether they are really convinced that Marxism doesn't influence them in any way. I personally think that it is not possible to evade the influence of Marxism, as we cannot commit ourselves to the revolutionary struggle without drawing support from the conclusions of scientific socialism.
The revolution in Nicaragua was the first of its kind to be accomplished with the mass support of Christians, a fact that cannot fail to influence the further development of revolutionary movements in the whole of Latin America, whose inhabitants are predominantly Christian.
There is however difference between the theology of liberation and traditional theology, the latter being based primarily On the Word of God made incarnate in the Holy Scripture Liberation theology is of course also inspired by the Word, but its representatives are convinced that God also speaks to us in everyday events and that, for example, information obtained through the mass media can be a special way in which God speaks to us.
