Pablo Neruda on originality
I’ve been thinking a lot about the illusion of pure originality ever since I read this comment from Pablo Neruda… I’m putting this here to remind myself that next time I feel the desire to defend and clamp down on my work, it might be time to try making something new instead. And accept that even the new-for-me thing is not going to be totally original.
Nice thoughts from Ann. (Her newsletter rules.) Another bit from Neruda’s Memoirs:
I don’t believe in originality. It is just one more fetish made up in our time, which is speeding dizzily to its collapse. I believe in personality reached through any language, any form, any creative means used by the artist. But out-and-out originality is a modern invention and an electoral fraud.
Filed under: originality