Pedro Salinas (Madrid 1891 – Boston 1951) was one of the most acclaimed and remembered Spanish writers of the so-called Generation of ’27.
His essays and poetic works were already a great success in his time, and the passing of the years has only increased his figure, worthy of study and analysis in academic and literary circles throughout the Spanish-speaking world.
Exiled to the United States after the Spanish Civil War because of his republicanist approaches, he experienced firsthand the bitterness of the war and dedicated many of his verses and writings to this event.
In this article we are going to remember this great writer through a compilation of the best phrases of Pedro Salinas.
1. You always live in your actions. With the tips of your fingers you touch the world, you extract dawns, triumphs, colors, joys from it: it is your music. Life is what you touch.
A sample of his poetic brilliance.
2. In this light of the poem, everything, from the most nocturnal kiss to the zenithal splendor, everything is much clearer.
Literature always illuminates what monotony silences.
3. Now I love you, like the sea loves its water: from outside, above, non-stop creating with it storms, escapes, shelters, rests, calms.
A romantic reflection on unbridled love.
4. What you are distracts me from what you say.
A beautiful thought that dislocates what we really are with what we verbalize. Since the latter, at the end of the day, is only the way we show ourselves to the outside.
5. There was no need to search: your dream was my dream.
Sharing wishes and desires is the most poetic way to say I love you.
6. And you were never wrong, except once, one night when you were infatuated with a shadow, the only one you ever liked. A shadow seemed. And you wanted to hug her. And it was me.
About sentimental errors and their ephemeral nature.
7. You always live in your actions. With the tips of your fingers you touch the world, you extract dawns, triumphs, colors, joys from it: it is your music. Life is what you touch.
8. When you chose me – love chose – I came out of everyone’s great anonymity, out of nowhere.
This verse by Pedro Salinas portrays the warmth that is felt when being loved.
9. And while they continue to go around and around, surrendering, deceiving, your faces, your whims and your kisses, your fickle delights, your rapid contacts with the world, having reached the pure, immobile center of yourself, and seeing you how You change, and you call it living, in everything, in everything, except in me, where you survive.
Beautiful poem to the free interpretation of each reader.
10. Within man neither hope pushes nor memory holds.
One of those philosophical phrases that has been the subject of debate and analysis by Spanish and foreign writers.
11. I kissed you on the lips. Dense, red. It was a kiss so short, it lasted longer than a lightning bolt, longer than a miracle. The time after giving it to you I didn’t want it at all, she had not wanted it at all before.
About the intensity and frugality of a kiss.
12. I don’t trust the paper rose, so many times I made it with my hands. I don’t even trust the other true rose, daughter of the sun and season, the bride of the wind. I never made you, I never made you, I trust you, round sure chance.
Another example of his poetic and creative virtuosity.
13. Tonight green, red, blue, very fast strange lights cross your eyes. Will it be your soul?
The enjoyment of the present moment is not so much in what happens outside, but in what we feel subjectively.
14. I love you like this, innocent, completely alien, palpitating in what is outside of you, your eyes proclaiming the vivid colored truths of the night.
A phrase by Pedro Salinas that calls for a pure and noble love.
15. I know that when I call you among all the people in the world, only you will be you.
Even with a life full of comings and goings, Salinas maintained the illusion of a pure and transcendent love.
16. I have no prison for you in my being. Your freedom keeps you for me. I will release her again, and through the sky, through the sea, through time, I will see how she goes towards her destiny. If her fate is me, she is waiting for you.
An ode to free love, in a complicated time.
17. Never words, hugs, will tell me that you existed, that you loved me: Never. White sheets, maps, omens, telephones tell me; you do not. And I am hugging you without asking you, for fear that it is not true that you live and love me. And I am hugging you without looking and without touching you. It’s not going to be that I discover with questions, with caresses, that immense loneliness of loving you only me.
One of those phrases of heartbreak that can make your blood run cold.
18. In the night and the late night, and love and translove, already changed in final horizons, you and I, of ourselves.
Romantic verse that awakens conscience.
19. I just want to bring out your best self. The one that you didn’t see and that I see, a swimmer at your bottom, precious.
A ceaseless search to connect souls. Great reflection by Pedro Salinas.
20. Each perfect kiss separates time, pushes it back, widens the brief world where you can still kiss…
