Imre Kertész bol maďarský spisovateľ, prekladateľ židovského pôvodu. V roku 2002 dostal Nobelovu cenu za literatúru. Wikipedia
“Once you have started, the only way back is to go forward.”
Zdroj: Detective Story (2008), p. 91.
Kontext: There was truth in Diaz’s logic, yes: our line of work is like that. Once you have started, the only way back is to go forward.
“Survivors represent a separate species, just like an animal species.”
Liquidation (2003)
Kontext: Survivors represent a separate species, just like an animal species. We are all survivors, that is what determines our perverse and degenerate mental world. Auschwitz.
“Logos, the invisible spider’s thread that holds our lives together.”
Liquidation (2003)
Kontext: But I believe in writing — nothing else; just writing. Man may live like a worm, but he writes like a god. There was a time when that secret was known, but now it has been forgotten; the world is composed of disintegrating fragments, an incoherent dark chaos, sustained by writing alone. If you have a concept of the world, if you have not yet forgotten all that has happened, that you have a world at all, it is writing that has created that for you, and ceaselessly goes on creating it; Logos, the invisible spider’s thread that holds our lives together.
Liquidation (2003)
Kontext: But I believe in writing — nothing else; just writing. Man may live like a worm, but he writes like a god. There was a time when that secret was known, but now it has been forgotten; the world is composed of disintegrating fragments, an incoherent dark chaos, sustained by writing alone. If you have a concept of the world, if you have not yet forgotten all that has happened, that you have a world at all, it is writing that has created that for you, and ceaselessly goes on creating it; Logos, the invisible spider’s thread that holds our lives together.
“I am as much or as little accomplice to my staying alive as I was to my birth.”
Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)
Kontext: I am still here, although I don’t know why; accidentally, I guess, as I was born; I am as much or as little accomplice to my staying alive as I was to my birth.
“The régime was overthrown, and I'm not going to pretend it was me who overthrew it.”
Liquidation (2003)
Kontext: The régime was overthrown, and I'm not going to pretend it was me who overthrew it. A general liquidation is in full swing, and I'm not going to join in. I've become a spectator. And I'm not even spectating from the front rows in the stalls but from somewhere up in the gods. Maybe I'm worn out, but it could be that I never truly believed in what I believed. That would be the unseemlier alternative, because then they would have smashed my ear in for no reason at all. That is the assumption I'm inclining to these days. (He breaks off and ponders, book in hand.) I did time for no reason, dragged the millstone of a police record around for no reason, was on probation for years for no reason, and I'm no hero, I merely botched up my life.
Zdroj: Detective Story (2008), p. 66.
Kontext: "You mustn’t forget about your future, Enrique."
"I’m living for the present, Dad."
"Ah!" he waved that aside. "The present is just temporary."
‘ I boiled up. "I know," I burst out. ‘It only has to be accepted temporarily — temporarily, but every day afresh. And every day ever more. Temporarily. Until we have lived to the end of our temporary lives, and one fine day we temporarily die.
“For Kingbitter the Hamlet question did not run “To be or not to be?” but “Am I or am I not?””
Liquidation (2003)
Kontext: For Kingbitter the Hamlet question did not run “To be or not to be?” but “Am I or am I not?”.
“What we usually mean by fate is what we least understand, that is to say, ourselves”
Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)
Kontext: What we usually mean by fate is what we least understand, that is to say, ourselves, that subversive, unknown individual constantly plotting against us, whom, estranged and alienated but still bowing with disgust before his might, we call, for the of simplicity, fate.
Liquidation (2003)
Kontext: Thereafter, the scenes had succeeded one another, turn and turn about, in the drama as in reality, to the point that, in the end, Kingbitter did not know what to admire more: the author's-his dead friend's-crystal-clear foresight or his own, so to say, remorseful determination to identify with his prescribed role and stick to the story.
Nowadays, though, with the lapse of nine years, Kingbitter was interested in something else. His story had reached an end, but he himself was still here, posing a problem for which he more and more put off finding a solution. He would either have to carry on his story, which had proved impossible, or else start a new story, which had proved equally impossible. Kingbitter undoubtedly could see solutions to hand, both better ones and worse; indeed, if he reflected more deeply, solutions were all he could see, rather than lives.
“Only from our stories can we discover that our stories have come to an end”
Liquidation (2003)
Kontext: Only from our stories can we discover that our stories have come to an end, otherwise we would go on living as if there were still something for us to continue (our stories, for example); that is, we would go on living in error.
“He himself had said near enough exactly what was in the play.”
Liquidation (2003)
Kontext: He himself had said near enough exactly what was in the play. The only snag was that by the time that scene was played out in reality, almost word for word, the person who had written the play, and that scene in it, was no longer alive.
He had committed suicide.
“To live and to write, it's all the same, both together, for the pen is my spade”
Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)
Kontext: To live and to write, it's all the same, both together, for the pen is my spade; when I look ahead I only look back, when I stare at the paper I only see the past: she crossed that bluish green carpet as if she were crossing the sea because she wanted to talk to me, for she found out that I was "B.", author and literary translator, one of whose "works" had read, and which she definitely wanted to discuss with me, she said, and we talked and talked until we talked ourselves into bed — Good God! — and continued to talk even then, uninterrupted.
“Maybe I'm worn out, but it could be that I never truly believed in what I believed.”
Liquidation (2003)
Kontext: The régime was overthrown, and I'm not going to pretend it was me who overthrew it. A general liquidation is in full swing, and I'm not going to join in. I've become a spectator. And I'm not even spectating from the front rows in the stalls but from somewhere up in the gods. Maybe I'm worn out, but it could be that I never truly believed in what I believed. That would be the unseemlier alternative, because then they would have smashed my ear in for no reason at all. That is the assumption I'm inclining to these days. (He breaks off and ponders, book in hand.) I did time for no reason, dragged the millstone of a police record around for no reason, was on probation for years for no reason, and I'm no hero, I merely botched up my life.
Liquidation (2003)
Kontext: The state is always the same. The only reason it financed literature up till now was in order to liquidate it. Giving state support to literature is the state's sneaky way for the state liquidation of literature.
“If people had understood the greatness of those works, they would have destroyed them long ago.”
Liquidation (2003)
Kontext: That evening he talked about Leonardo and Michelangelo. It is impossible to place them in the human world, he said. It is impossible to comprehend how anything that attests to greatness has survived; it is obviously a result of innumerable chance events and of human incomprehension, he said. If people had understood the greatness of those works, they would have destroyed them long ago. Fortunately, people have lost their flair for greatness and only their flair for murder has persisted, though undoubtedly they have refined the latter, their flair for murder, to an art, almost to point of greatness, he said.
Zdroj: Detective Story (2008), p. 30.
Kontext: I exist. Is this a life still? No, just vegetating. It seems that only one philosophy can succeed the philosophy of existentialism: nonexistentialism, the philosophy of nonexistent existence.
Zdroj: Detective Story (2008), p. 69.
Kontext: If a person resolves to fight, he ought to know what he is fighting for. Otherwise it makes no sense. A person usually fights against a power in order to gain power himself. Or else because the power in question is threatening his life.
“I am sick of atrocities, though these are now the natural order of our world.”
Zdroj: Detective Story (2008), p. 37.
Kontext: I am sick of atrocities, though these are now the natural order of our world. And I would still like to act!
“Talking is not enough; words don’t clarify anything. I’ll have to hit upon something, but what?”
Zdroj: Detective Story (2008), p. 49.
