The Mexican Dream, or The Interrupted Thought of Amerindian Civilizations Quotes

“It is, I believe, the primary charm of poetry to give the lesson of mirage, that is, to show the fragile and vibrant movement of creation, in which the word is in a certain way human quintessence, prayer.”
― Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, The Mexican Dream, or The Interrupted Thought of Amerindian Civilizations

“From that imbalance rose the tragic results of the coming together of two worlds. It was the extermination of an ancient dream by the frenzy of a modern one, the destruction of myths by a desire for power. It was gold, modern weapons, and rational thought pitted against magic and gods: the outcome could not have been otherwise.”
― Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, The Mexican Dream, or The Interrupted Thought of Amerindian Civilizations

“In their purest form myths, not unlike tragedy, are perhaps the most important moment in the troubled history of Mexican civilization. The cement of dreams, the architecture of language, made of images and rhythms which respond to and harmonize with each other through time and space, their wisdom is not of that which can be measured on the scale of the everyday. They are concurrently religion, ritual, belief, phantasmagoria, and the primary affirmation of a human coherence, the coagulating strength of language against the anguish of death and the certainty of nothingness. Myths express life, despite the promise of destruction, of the weight of the inevitable. They are without any doubt the most durable monuments of men, in America as in the ancient world.”
― Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, The Mexican Dream, or The Interrupted Thought of Amerindian Civilizations

“Abruptly, with the shock of the Conquest, the sober and puritanical man of the Christian Inquisition encountered, through their violent and upsetting nature, peoples who through their rituals were identified with the gods.”
― Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, The Mexican Dream, or The Interrupted Thought of Amerindian Civilizations

“Among the Inca, as among the Aztec, dreams were considered to be true voyages of the soul outside the body, during which men could know the future and receive divine warnings . . . Dreams and visions affirmed a relationship between the divinity and man which was absolutely contrary to the strongly hierarchical structures of the Church of the first Christian missionaries. Shamanic ecstasy signified the individuality of faith, revelation, and immediate relationship with the forces of the beyond. It was upon that ecstatic relationship with the divine world that the identity of the barbarian peoples was built, where each man could, thanks to the gift of his dreams, merge into the other world.”
― J.M.G. Le Clézio, The Mexican Dream, or The Interrupted Thought of Amerindian Civilizations