Thorkild Hansen > Quotes

“Una delle ragioni per cui il mondo non è ancora scomparso è forse che, anche nei momenti più drammatici, c'è sempre qualcuno che impassibile guarda da un'altra parte. Dei cerchi nella sabbia... Il frontone di una casa a Delft... A bordo di una nave i cui cannoni si stanno preparando a sostenere i loro argomenti di vita e di morte, c'è un uomo completamente assorto nell'osservazione del passaggio di Venere. Per noi che cerchiamo di seguire la storia di Niebuhr e dei suoi compagni duecento anni dopo, quando altre rampe di lancio vengono preparate per ben altre detonazioni, vi è quasi un che di consolatorio in questa immagine. Anche noi vorremmo osservare questi lontani avvenimenti con tutta la precisione possibile, ma anche il nostro astrolabio a volte trema un po’...”
― Thorkild Hansen, Arabia Felix: The Danish Expedition of 1761-1767

“Even in times of the most entrenched rationalism, there lives in every man a little Alexander who never managed to conquer his Eudaimon Arabia.”
― Thorkild Hansen, Arabia Felix The Danish Expedition

“Towns have their palaces and palaces their rich men, who have problems with their horses and their slave girls. But in the Arabian desert there were no palaces, no rich men, and no real problems. In the Arabian desert people rise before the sun; it is important to use those hours when it is light but not yet too hot. In the dawn, long before the sun makes its appearance and sets the day on fire, the Arab has already lit his own camp-fire, squatted down before it, picked out a glowing piece of wood and put it into the top of his pipe while waiting for the water to boil for his coffee. When coffee is ready, he pours it into small cups and hands it round to the others. He offers only a single mouthful at a time; when they have drunk that, they must hand the cup back and get another mouthful. This is the natural law of hospitality. To hand someone a cup brimful would be tactless; it would be like saying: There you are, drink it and go! Instead, things proceed unhurriedly, and one sits a while with the empty cup in one’s hand before handing it across to get another mouthful. Meanwhile, the ball of the sun comes up, clings a little to the low horizon, and then sets off with a jerk. Nothing else happens. No bird-song introduces the start of the day, no trees rustle in the wind. The human voice is the first and only one to break the great silence. Everything seems to have withdrawn to make it easier to scrutinise one’s own life more clearly. Indeed, there is scarcely anything else. It is inscribed upon the surrounding space; it is one’s own voice in the silence, one’s own footprint in the warm sand. It is not much—as one realises—and what there is will soon be erased. One is almost nothing. But the Arabs in the desert are content with small things; they live their lives as they drink their coffee, and are content with a little each time. They are guests of fate, and they accept it as reasonable that fate should not pour an abundance of wealth into the vessels they hold out. It would not be in accord with the laws of hospitality. It would be as though it bade them scornfully go their way. In the desert no other definition of life is to be found but poverty.”
― Thorkild Hansen