László Krasznahorkai Quotes

Apple cores, bits of old boots, watch-straps, overcoat buttons, rusted keys, everything, he coolly noted, that man may leave his mark by, was here, though it wasn’t so much this ‘icy museum of pointless existence’ that astonished him (for there was nothing remotely new about the particular range of exhibits), but the way this slippery mass snaking between the houses, like a pale reflection of the sky, illuminated everything with its unearthly, dull, silvery phosphorescence.

But nothing could assuage the unconscious fury of our new and tragic understanding, our sense of having been cheated, our fear, for, however we looked for it, we could not find a fit object for our disgust and despair, and so we attacked everything in our way with an equal and infinite passion…

نحن غارقون في الخراء يا صديقي، ولا نستطيع أن نفعل شيئًا في هذا الشأن إلى حين، علينا البقاء معهم

"Catastrophe! Of course! Last judgement! Horseshit! It's you that are the catastrophe, you're the bloody last judgement, your feet don't even touch the ground, you bunch of sleepwalkers. I wish you were dead, the lot of you. Let's make a bet,' and here he shook Nadaban by the shoulders, ‘that you don't even know what I'm talking about!! Because you don't talk, you "whisper" or "expostulate"; you don't walk down the street but "proceed feverishly"; you don't enter a place but "cross its threshold", you don't feel cold or hot, but "find yourselves shivering" or "feeling the sweat pour down you"! I haven't heard a straight word for hours, you can only mew and caterwaul; because if a hooligan throws a brick through your window you invoke the last judgement, because your brains are addled and filled up with steam, because if someone sticks your nose in shit all you do is sniff, stare and cry "sorcery!

So, doing nothing, he simply remained on the alert, careful to preserve his failing memory against the decay that consumed everything around him, much as he had done from the moment that he — once the closing of the estate had been announced and he personally had decided to stay behind and survive on what remained until “the decision to reverse the closure should be taken” — had gone up to the mill with the elder Horgos girl to observe the terrible racket of the abandonment of the place, with everyone rushing round and shouting, the trucks in the distance like refugees fleeing the scene, when it seemed to him that the mill’s death-sentence had brought the whole estate to a condition of near collapse, and from that day on he felt too weak to halt by himself the triumphal progress of the wrecking process, however he might try, there being nothing he could do in the face of the power that ruined houses, walls, trees and fields, the birds that dived from their high stations, the beasts that scurried forth, and all human bodies, desires and hopes, knowing he wouldn’t, in any case, have the strength, however he tried, to resist this treacherous assault on humanity; and, knowing this, he understood, just in time, that the best he could do was to use his memory to fend off the sinister, underhanded process of decay, trusting in the fact that since all that mason might build, carpenter might construct, woman might stitch, indeed all that men and women had brought forth with bitter tears was bound to turn to an undifferentiated, runny, underground, mysteriously ordained mush, his memory would remain lively and clear, right until his organs surrendered and “conformed to the contract whereby their business affairs were wound up,” that is to say until his bones and flesh fell prey to the vultures hovering over death and decay.

Faith, thought Eszter . . . is not a matter of believing something, but believing that somehow things could be different; in the same way, music was not the articulation of some better part of ourselves, or a reference to some notion of a better world, but a disguising of the fact of our irredeemable selves and the sorry state of the world, but no, not merely a disguising but a complete, twisted denial of such facts: it was a cure that did not work, a barbiturate that functioned as an opiate.

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

"While on the one hand," he said, "our most prominent scientists, the inexhaustible heroes of this perennial confusion, have finally and somewhat unfortunately extricated themselves from the metaphor of godhead, they have immediately fallen into the trap of regarding this oppressive history as some kind of triumphant march, a supernatural progress following, what they call, the victory of 'will and intellect', and though, as you know, I am no longer capable of being the least surprised by this, I must confess to you I still cannot understand why it should be the cause of such universal celebration for them that we have climbed out of the trees. Do they think it's good like this? I find nothing amusing in it. Furthermore it doesn't fit us properly: you only have to consider how long, even after thousands of years of practice, we can keep going on two legs. Half a day, my dear friend, and we shouldn't forget it."

...and it really was extremely sudden, the way it struck him that, good heavens, he understood nothing, nothing at all about anything, for Christ's sake, nothing at all about the world, which was a most terrifying realization, he said, especially the way it came to him in all its banality, vulgarity, at a sickeningly ridiculous level, but this was the point, he said, the way that he, at age 44, had become aware of how utterly stupid he seemed to himself, how empty, how utterly blockheaded he had been in his understanding of the world these last 44 years, for, as he realized by the river, he had not only misunderstood it, but had not understood anything about anything, the worst part being that for 44 years he thought he had understood it, while in reality he had failed to do so; and this in fact was the worst thing of all that night of his birthday when he sat alone by the river, the worst because the fact that he now realized that he had not understood it did not mean that he did understand it now, because being aware of his lack of knowledge was not in itself some new form of knowledge for which an older one could be traded in, but one that presented itself as a terrifying puzzle the moment he thought about the world, as he most furiously did that evening, all but torturing himself in an effort to understand it and failing, because the puzzle seemed ever more complex and he had begun to feel that this world-puzzle that he was so desperate to understand, that he was torturing himself trying to understand, was really the puzzle of himself and the world at once, that they were in effect one and the same thing, which was the conclusion he had so far reached, and he had not yet given up on it, when, after a couple of days, he noticed that there was something the matter with his head.

Szédelegve nekidőlt a kocsmafalnak, elhárította a kocsmáros ajánlatát („Jöjjön csak, támaszkodjon rám, szarrá ázik itt kint, ne csinálja már…”), s csak állt bambán és üresen ebben a könyörtelen erőben, látta, de nem értette ezt a tántorgó világot maga körül, míg aztán – egy újabb félóra múlva – ahogy szinte átmosta az eső, egyszer csak azon vette észre magát, hogy kijózanodott. Befordult az épület sarkán, odaállt vizelni egy kopasz akáchoz, s ahogy közben felnézett az égre, rettentő kicsinek és gyámoltalannak érezte magát, és míg kiapadhatatlanul, férfias erővel csobogott belőle a húgy, ismét rátört a szomorúság. Kitartóan pásztázta maga fölött az eget, s arra gondolt, hogy számukra, valahol – bármilyen messze is legyen – mégiscsak véget ér ez az örökre föléjük feszített mennybolt, amiként „itt mindennek elrendelt vége van”. Mint egy ólba, gondolta, még mindig zúgó aggyal, beleszülettünk ebbe a körülkerített világba, s akárcsak a saját mocskukban hentergő disznók, mi sem tudjuk, mi végre ez a tülekedés a tápláló csecsek körül, minek ez az örökös közelharc a vályúhoz vezető sávban, vagy alkonyatkor az alvóhelyekért. Begombolkozott, s arrébb ment, hogy szabadon érje a víz. „Mossad csak öreg csontjaimat! – morogta keserűen. – Mossad, mert ez a vén hugyos nem húzza már sokáig.” S csak állt mozdulatlanul, behunyt szemmel, és hátravetett fejjel, mert szeretett volna megszabadulni ettől a makacs, újra és újra feltörő vágytól, hogy legalább most, utolsó éveiben megtudja végre, „minek is kellett ide ez a Futaki”.

it was not the pandemic that was the danger, but instead this infection, the main symptom of which was that people showed the worst side of themselves, and they were weak, immeasurably weak and immeasurably idiotic,

. . .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.

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.

I would leave everything here: the valleys, the hills, the paths, and the jaybirds from the gardens, I would leave here the petcocks and the padres, heaven and earth, spring and fall, I would leave here the exit routes, the evenings in the kitchen, the last amorous gaze, and all of the city-bound directions that make you shudder, I would leave here the thick twilight falling upon the land, gravity, hope, enchantment, and tranquility, I would leave here those beloved and those close to me, everything that touched me, everything that shocked me, fascinated and uplifted me, I would leave here the noble, the benevolent, the pleasant, and the demonically beautiful, I would leave here the budding sprout, every birth and existence, I would leave here incantation, enigma, distances, inexhaustibility, and the intoxication of eternity; for here I would leave this earth and these stars, because I would take nothing with me from here, because I've looked into what's coming, and I don't need anything from here.

Isi marturisi ca viata lui fara consistenta, care numara 52 de ani, care alunecase pe langa evenimente, e tot atat de neinsemnata in lupta indarjita a marilor destine, a marilor cariere, pe cat de imperceptibil e fumul unei tigari in in vagonul unui tren aflat in flacari.