Danilo Kiš > Quotes

“Ne volim ljude koji se izvlače iz sveta kao kišne gliste. Bez ožiljka i bez ogrebotine. Komedijaši. Agnosceo veteris vestigia flamme. Ožiljkom jednim obogaćen.”
― Danilo Kiš

“Kad budu svi roktali svojim svinjskim srcima, poslednji koji će još gledati ljudskim očima i osećati ljudskim srcem biće oni kojima ne bejaše strano iskustvo umetnosti.”
― Danilo Kiš

“‎Bejah zauzet čitanjem i pisanjem, kad grunu u moju sobu velik broj tih ljudi naoružanih neznanjem tupim kao batina i mržnjom oštrom poput noža. To ne bejahu moje svile od kojih im se zakrvaviše oči, no moje knjige poređane po policama; svilu smotaše pod ogrtače, a knjige pobacaše na pod i stadoše ih gaziti nogama i cepati ih na moje oči. A knjige te bejahu u kožu povezane i obeležene brojevima i bejahu napisane od učenih ljudi, i u njima bejaše, da su ih hteli čitati, hiljade razloga da me smesta ubiju i bejaše u njima, da su ih hteli čitati, leka i melema za njihovu mržnju. I rekoh im da ih ne cepaju, jer mnoge knjige nisu opasne, opasna je samo jedna; i rekoh im da ih ne cepaju, jer čitanje mnogih knjiga dovodi do mudrosti, a čitanje jedne jedine do neznanja naoružanog mahnitošću i mržnjom.”
― Danilo Kiš, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich

“Istoriju pišu pobednici. Predanja ispreda puk. Književnici fantaziraju. Izvesna je samo smrt.”
― Danilo Kiš, The Encyclopedia of the Dead

“Mislila sam, kao što ljudi u teškim nevoljama misle, da će mi promena mesta pomoći da zaboravim svoj bol, kao da svoju nesreću ne nosimo U sebi.”
― Danilo Kiš, The Encyclopedia of the Dead

“Otela mi je, Igore brate, moju sebičnost, moje remekdelo!”
― Danilo Kiš, Mansarda

“I wish to live in peace with myself and not with the world.”
― Danilo Kiš, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich

“I dislike people who get out of things unscraped. No scars, no scratches. Agnosceo veteris vestigia flamme. Refined through a scar.”
― Danilo Kiš

“Nacionalista je, po definiciji, ignorant. Nacionalizam je, dakle, linija manjeg otpora, komocija. Nacionalisti je lako, on zna, ili misli da zna, svoje vrednosti, svoje, što će reći nacionalne, što će reći vrednosti nacije kojoj pripada, etičke i političke, a za ostale se ne interesuje, ne interesuju ga, pakao to su drugi (druge nacije, drugo pleme). Njih ne treba ni proveravati. Nacionalista u drugima vidi isključivo sebe – nacionaliste. Pozicija, rekosmo li, komotna. Strah i zavist. Opredeljenje, angažovanje koje ne iziskuje truda. Ne samo “pakao to su drugi”, u okviru nacionalnog ključa, naravno, nego i: sve što nije moje (srpsko, hrvatsko, francusko…) to mi je strano. Nacionalizam je ideologija banalnosti. Nacionalizam je, dakle, totalitarna ideologija. Nacionalizam je, pre svega, paranoja. Kolektivna i pojedinačna paranoja. Kao kolektivna paranoja, ona je posledica zavisti i straha, a iznad svega posledica gubljenja individualne svesti; te, prema tome, kolektivna paranoja i nije ništa drugo do zbir individualnih paranoja doveden do paroksizma.”
― Danilo Kiš

“U svakom mom retku, u svakoj mojoj reči, u svakoj tački nalaziš se i ti, kao polen.”
― Danilo Kiš, The Encyclopedia of the Dead

“Since childhood, I was afflicted with a sick hypersensitivity, and my imagination quickly turned everything into a memory, too quickly: sometimes one day was enough, or an interval of a few hours, or a routine change of place, for an everyday event with a lyrical value that I did not sense at the time, to become suddenly adorned with a radiant echo, the echo ordinarily reserved only for those memories which have been standing for many years in the powerful fixative of lyrical oblivion.”
― Danilo Kiš, Garden, Ashes

“Na kraju - kažem na kraju, a trebalo je da prođu godine patnji, rastanaka, raskida - uvideli smo da su nam životi vezani zauvek i da svojim slabim ljudskim snagama ne možemo ništa ni protiv svoje ljubavi ni protiv prepreka koje joj stoje na putu.”
― Danilo Kiš, The Encyclopedia of the Dead

“...the reading of many books brings wisdom, and the reading of one brings ignorance armed with rage and hatred.”
― Danilo Kiš

“Borise Davidoviču, ne dajte se pasjim sinovima!”
― Danilo Kiš, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich

“You can't play the role of a victim all your life without becoming one in the end.”
― Danilo Kiš, Garden, Ashes

“Kad se jedna laž ponavlja dugo, narod počinje da veruje.”
― Danilo Kiš, The Encyclopedia of the Dead

“I would have liked to catch hold of sleep at least once, just as I had been resolved to catch hold of death one day, to catch hold of the wings of the angel of sleep when it came for me, to grab it with two fingers like a butterfly after sneaking up on it from behind. [...] My sleep game was practice for the grand struggle with death.”
― Danilo Kiš, Garden, Ashes

“Što je bilo, bilo je. Prošlost živi u nama i ne možemo je izbrisati. Pošto su snovi slika onoga sveta, i dokaz njegovog postojanja, susrećemo se u snovima; kleči kraj furune u koju trpa vlažna drva; ili me doziva promuklim glasom. Tada se budim i palim svetlo. Kajanje i bol se polako pretvaraju u sumornu radost sećanja. Naš dugi, strasni i strašni roman ispunio je moj život, osmislio ga je, i ja ne tražim nikakve nadoknade. Mene neće biti u indeksu knjiga Mendela Osipoviča, u njegovim biografijama ili u fusnoti uz neku pesmu. Ja, gospodine, jesam delo Mendela Osipoviča, kao što je i on moje delo. Ima li lepšeg proviđenja?”
― Danilo Kiš, The Encyclopedia of the Dead

“Thanks to suffering and madness, I have had a finer, richer life than any of you, and I wish to go to my death with dignity, as befits the great moment after which all dignity and majesty cease. Let my body be my ark and my death a long floating on the waves of eternity. A nothing amid nothingness. What defense have I against nothingness but this ark in which I have tried to gather everything that was dear to me, people, birds, animals, and plants, everything that I carry in my eye and in my heart, in the triple-decked ark of my body and soul. Like the pharaohs in the majestic peace of their tombs, I wanted to have all those things with me in death, I wanted everything to be as it was before; I wanted the birds to sing for me forever, I wanted to exchange Charon's bark for another, less desolate and less empty; I wanted to ennoble eternity's unconscionable void with the bitter herbs that spring from the heart of man, to ennoble the soundless emptiness of eternity with the cry of the cuckoo and the song of the lark. All I have done is to develop that bitter poetic metaphor, carry it with passionate logic to its ultimate consequence, which transforms sleep into waking (and the converse); lucidity into madness (and the converse); life into death, as though there were no borderline, and the converse; death into eternity, as if they were not one and the same thing. Thus my egoism is only the egoism of human existence, the egoism of life, counterweight to the egoism of death, and, appearances to the contrary, my consciousness resists nothingness with an egoism that has no equal, resists the outrage of death with the passionate metaphor of the wish to reunite the few people and the bit of love that made up my life. I have wanted and still want to depart this life with specimens of people, flora and fauna, to lodge them all in my heart as in an ark, to shut them up behind my eyelids when they close for the last time. I wanted to smuggle this pure abstraction into nothingness, to sneak it across the threshold of that other abstraction, so crushing in its immensity: the threshold of nothingness. I have therefore tried to condense this abstraction, to condense it by force of will, faith, intelligence, madness, and love (self-love), to condense it so drastically that its specific weight will be such as to life it like a balloon and carry it beyond the reach of darkness and oblivion. If nothing else survives, perhaps my material herbarium or my notes or my letters will live on, and what are they but condensed, materialized idea; materialized life: a paltry, pathetic human victory over immense, eternal, divine nothingness. Or perhaps--if all else is drowned in the great flood--my madness and my dream will remain like a northern light and a distant echo. Perhaps someone will see that light or hear that distant echo, the shadow of a sound that was once, and will grasp the meaning of that light, that echo. Perhaps it will be my son who will someday publish my notes and my herbarium of Pannonian plants (unfinished and incomplete, like all things human). But anything that survives death is a paltry, pathetic victory over the eternity of nothingness--a proof of man's greatness and Yahweh's mercy. Non omnis moriar.”
― Danilo Kiš, Hourglass

“History is written by the victors. Legends are woven by the people. Writers fantasize. Only death is certain.

"To Die for One's Country is Glorious," p. 131”
― Danilo Kiš, The Encyclopedia of the Dead

“Even a stone would talk if you broke its teeth.”
― Danilo Kiš, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich

“It is hard to lift up your own misfortune. To be at once the viewer and the viewed. To be both above and below. The one below is a spot, a shadow . . . To consider your own person in the light of eternity (read: in the light of death). To rise into the air. The world from a bird's-eye view.”
― Danilo Kiš, Hourglass

“Opasno je naginjati se nad tuđom prazninom, a u pustoj želji da se u njoj, kao na dnu bunara, ogleda svoje sopstveno lice; jer i to je taština. Taština nad taštinama.”
― Danilo Kiš, The Encyclopedia of the Dead

“Dani teku kao reka vremena, ka ušću, ka smrti.”
― Danilo Kiš

“Y no permita que la literatura, en su caso, sustituya al amor. La literatura también es peligrosa. La vida no se puede reemplazar con nada.”
― Danilo Kiš, The Lute and the Scars

“Ulazimo u voz sa svojim smešnim prtljagom, vučemo sa sobom čergu svoga lutalaštva, žalosnu priču mog detinjstva.”
― Danilo Kiš, Rani jadi

“Ne volim ljude koji se izvlače iz svega kao kišne gliste. Bez ožiljka i bez ogrebotine. Komedijaši.”
― Danilo Kiš, Mansarda

“Ispod toga sam bio zapisao pre nekoliko večeri, kada mi je postalo jasno da Euridika više neće doći: Agnosceo veteris vestigia flamme.
Ožiljkom jednim obogaćen.”
― Danilo Kiš, Mansarda

“I assigned myself the role of Lot’s wife, because her behavior seemed the most human, the most sinful, and therefore closest to mine. Consumed by curiosity, I was drawn to the magnificent, horrible sight of fire and disaster as houses collapsed and towers folded like dominoes amidst human wailing that rose to the sky. My curiosity, brought to an explosive point by the divine warning, was suddenly transformed into my sole trait, overwhelming reason and the feeling of fear, turning me into a weakling of a woman, unable to resist my inquisitiveness, and I would turn around abruptly with my whole body as if rotated by the centrifugal force of my curiosity, which had passed through me like a sword.”
― Danilo Kiš, Garden, Ashes

“Witnessing the blind fury of this mob and seeing them kill before my eyes the Jews who refused to be converted (some out of faith, and others from that pride which can sometimes be perilous), I answered that I would rather be converted than killed, since, in spite of everything, the temporary agony of being is more valuable than the ultimate void of nothingness.”
― Danilo Kiš, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich