László Krasznahorkai Quotes

Ma quando vide che anche qui sulla Terra, nella città dove viveva, le storie e gli eventi, i movimenti e le intenzioni, si ripetevano tutti secondo un ordine, incominciò a girare tra i suoi compagni inconsciamente convinto che era assurdo cercare cambiamenti laddove non ce n’erano, e non bisognava far altro che eseguire senza sosta – come una goccia di pioggia che cade si stacca dalla nuvola – il compito assegnatoci.

[...] for it was the approaching dawn that held him in its spell, that 'promise kept each morning' that the earth, along with the town and his own person, would emerge from beneath the shadow of the night, and that the delicate glimmer of dawn would yield to the bright light of day...

„Ne könyörögjünk! Mert értelmünk nem telt el az igazsággal, s nem dicsőültünk meg az Úr színe előtt. És ne fogadd el, Urunk, keserű gyülekezeted ajándékait, hiszen ebben a megszentelt házban néped a titkokon keresztül nem nyerte el az örök üdvösséget. És bizony méltó, igazságos, illő és üdvös, hogy bevalljuk mindezt, s most szomorúan visszalépjünk az imádságnak ebből az emberi munkával épített templomából, s így legyen ez a templom itt az el nem ért üdvösség háza és mennyei szentségek örökre elérhetetlen csarnoka.

... to pour out one's heart and not drink vodka at the same time, well, that is inconceivable for a Russian soul...

this epidemic of fear was not born out of some genuine, daily increasing certainty of disaster but of an infection of the imagination whose susceptibility to its own terrors might eventually lead to an actual catastrophe, in other words the false premonition that a man who had lost his bearings might succumb to once the inner structure of his life,

A fost o greseala. Pentru ca adineauri am inteles ca intre mine si o insecta, intre o insecta si un rau, intre un rau si un strigat, care se arcuieste peste acesta, nu este nici o deosebire. Totul functioneaza gol si fara noima sub presiunea dependentei si a unui stravechi balans salbatic, astfel ca numai imaginatia, nicidecum esecul etern al simturilor, ne ispiteste neincetat cu credinta, ca sa putem iesi din viziunile mizeriei.

It was a long struggle against invisible foes, or to put it more accurately, against invisible foes that might not have been there at all, but it was a victorious struggle, in the course of which they understood that the victory would only be unconditional if they annihilated or, if he might put it in such old fashioned terms, said Korin, exiled, exiled anything that might have stood against them, or rather, fully absorbed it into the repulsive vulgarity of the world they now ruled, ruled if not exactly commanded, and thereby besmirched whatever was good and transcendent, not by saying a haughty 'no' to good and transcendent things, no, for they understood that the important thing was to say 'yes' from the meanest of motives, to give them their outright support, to display them, to nurture them; it was this that dawned on them and showed them what to do, that their best option was not to crush their enemies, to mock them or wipe them off the face of the earth, but, on the contrary, to embrace them, to take responsibility for them and so to empty them of their content, and in this way to establish a world in which it was precisely these things that would be the most liable to spread the infection so that the only power that had any chance of resisting them, by whose radiant light it might still have been possible to see the degree to which they had taken over people's lives... how could he make himself clearer at this point, Korin hesitated...

In vain would we talk about nature, nature doesn’t want this; it is no use to talk about the divine, the divine doesn’t want this, and anyway, no matter how much we want to, we are unable to talk about anything other than ourselves, because we are only capable of talking about history, about the human condition, about that never-changing quality whose essence carries such titillating relevance only for us; otherwise, from the viewpoint of that “divine otherwise,” this essence of ours is, actually, possibly of no consequence whatsoever, for ever and aye.

When we speak, we speak fluent, unbroken sentences, and this kind of speech doesn’t need any periods. Only God needs the period — and at the end He will use one, I am sure.

He heard hundreds of exhausted feet scraping the ground behind him, he saw the stray cats at his own feet as they scattered in fear before the silently advancing mass of raised iron stakes, but he felt nothing except the weight of the hand on his shoulder steering him through the army of fur caps and heavy boots. Don't be afraid, the other man repeated. Valuska gave a quick nod and glanced up at the sky. He glanced up and suddenly had the sensation that the sky wasn't where it was supposed to be; terrified, he looked up again and confirmed the fact that there was indeed nothing there, so he bowed his head and surrendered to the fur caps and boots, realizing that it was no use to search because what he sought was lost, swallowed up by this coming together of forces, of details, of this earth, this marching.

Çünkü dünyanın kendisini katbekat aştığını biliyor, kendisinin de aralarında olduğu, o sessiz yuvalarında onurluluk ve ağırbaşlılığın ufak vahasında yaşayanların, dışarıda neler olup bittiğini korkudan titreyerek düşündükleri sırada, kirli sakallının tüm barbar soyunun, o yoldan çıkmış süprüntüler sürüsünün, içgüdüsel bir güvenle dizginleri ele geçireceğini de açıkça görebiliyordu.

The onset of catastrophe is not signaled by the sense of falling through the dark to an accidental death: everything, including a catastrophe, has a moment-by-moment structure - a structure that is beyond measurement or comprehension, one that is maddeningly complex or must be conceived in quite another manner, in which the degree of complexity can be articulated only in terms of images that seem impossible to conjure - visible only if time has slowed down to the point that we see the world as indifferent owing to the available circumstances and having doomed preconditions that arrive at a perfect universal conclusion, if only because they are composed of individual intentions - because the moment is the result of unconscious choices, because a key doesn't automatically fit into the ignition, because we do not start into third gear and move down to second but we start in second and move into third, rolling down the hill then turning onto a highway above the village, because the distance before us is like looking down a tunnel, because the greenery on the boughs still smells of morning dew, because of the death of a dog and someone's badly executed maneuver when turning left, that is to say because of one choice or another, of more choices and still more choices ad infinitum, those maddening had-we-but-known choices impossible to conceptualize because the situation we find ourselves in is complicated, determined by something that is in the nature of neither God nor the devil, something whose ways are impenetrable to us and are doomed to remain so because chance is simply a matter of choosing, but the result of that which might have happened anyway.

You have every cause for anxiety. We are on the threshold of a more searching, more honest, more open society.

. . .really, he didn’t want to be a nuisance to anyone, nor would he, he decided, be a nuisance, then sat down on the bed, got up again, went over to the window, then sat back down on the bed once more, before getting up again, and so it went on for several minutes, since the feeling of joy continued welling up in him, overwhelming him, so time and again he had to sit down or stand up and eventually achieved complete happiness by pulling the table ever so gently over to the window, turning it so the light should fall fully on it, drew up the chair, then sat on the bed and stared at the table, at the arrangement of it, stared and stared, gauging whether the light was falling on it in the best possible way, then turning the chair a little so that it was at a different angle to the table, so it should fit better, staring at that now, and it was plain that the happiness was almost too much for him, for he now had somewhere to live, a place with a table and a chair, because he was happy that Mr. Sárváry existed in the first place, and that he should have this apartment on the top floor of 547 West 159th Street, right next to the stairs to the attic, and without the resident’s name on the door.

"هكذا قال فى نفسه مقرًا بأنه لا يسطيع الاطمئنان إلى قرار مرضٍ فى شأن التحسّن الذى لا يزال مستمرًا فى حالته التى هى حالة مؤسفة عامة. وكأنما أراد التشديد على الفكرة بأن ركّز انتباهه، المشتت ظاهرًا، على ما كانت كلمات فالوسكا الرنانة تصفه بأنه "ذلك الإعلان الأبدى عن البشائر الطيبة"، وعلى قبة السماء غير المبالية بأى شئ، عندما أدرك فجأة، مثلما حدث مع الأستاذ ذى الذهن الشارد الذى صار مضرب الأمثال عندما اكتشف نظارته المفقودة فوق أنفه... أدرك أن ليس عليه أن ينظر إلى الأعلى، بل إلى الأسفل، عند قدميه لأن ما يبحث عنه موجود هناك... موجود هناك إلى حد أنه كان واقفًا عليه، وكان يطأ سطحه طيلة الوقت، وكان مقدّرًا له أن يواصل السير عليه فى مستفبل وشيك. ومع ملاحظته هذا الأمر، أرجع إدراكه المتأخر له إلى حقيقة أنه أمر ظاهر كثيرًا، قريبًا كثيرًا، فكانت المشكلة كامنة فى قربه غير المتوقع. كان قادرًا على لمسه بيده، وعلى السير عليه؛ وهذا ما جعله غير منتبه إليه."