House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories Quotes

“A poetess who had died young of cancer had said in one of her poems that for her, on sleepless nights, 'the night offers toads and black dogs and corpses of the drowned.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“ربما ليس هناك بوذا للعجائز لكى يبتهلوا إليه لكن فتاة عارية جميلة يضمونها بين أذرعهم ذارفين دموعا باردة غارقين فى شهقات قوية منتحبين , فتاة غافلة عن كل شىء ولن تستفيق مطلقاً تمنحهم حريتهم المطلقة فى الندم حريتهم المطلقة فى النحيب دون أن يشعروا بأى ندم أو طعن كبريائهم أفلا يمكن إذا إعتبار الجميلات النائمات من هذه الوجهة إلهات مثل بوذا ونابضات بالحياة فوق ذلك ؟ أليست رائحة فتاة شابة وبشرتها تكفيراً للعجائز التاعسين وتعزية لهم !؟ ص 91”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“كيف تسنى لثدى الأنثى البشرية وحدها من بين جميع الحيوانات أن يتخذ بعد تطور طويل هذا الشكل الرائع أليس الجمال الذى بلغه نهد المرأة المثال الأبهى لتطور الإنسانية . ص 35”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“Los viejos tienen la muerte, y los jóvenes el amor, y la muerte viene una sola vez y el amor muchas.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“Any kind of inhumanity, given practice, becomes human. All the varieties of transgression are buried in the darkness of the world.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“إذا اتفق ونمت نوماً أبدياً فلن أتذمر ص 96”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“Сякаш някакво друго сърце размаха криле в гърдите на стария Егучи.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“Οι γέροι έχουν το θάνατο ενώ οι νέοι έχουν τον έρωτα, ο θάνατος έρχεται μια φορά, ενώ ο έρωτας έρχεται και ξαναέρχεται πολλές φορές.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“لا شيء أجمل من الوجه البارد لإمرأة شابة نائمة. أليس هو التعزية الكبرى التي يمكن أن يهبها العالم؟ حتى المرأة الأكثر جمالاً لا تقدر على إخفاء عمرها عندما تكون نائمة. أما الوجه الفتيّ فهو عذبٌ في حالة النوم، حتى ولو لم تكن صاحبته جميلة ص 86”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“نحن لا نستقبل هنا إلا زبائن لا يجلبون المتاعب ص 51”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“Una poetisa muerta de cáncer en su juventud había dicho en uno de sus poemas que para ella, en las noches de insomnio, la noche ofrece sapos, perros negros y cadáveres de ahogados”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“Ο γερο-Εγκούτσι μπορούσε να δει, με τα μάτια της φαντασίας του, την απέραντη σκοτεινή θάλασσα και το χαλάζι να πέφτει και να λιώνει μέσα της. Ένα άγριο πουλί, κάτι σαν μεγάλος αετός πετούσε ξυστά στα κύματα, κρατώντας στο στόμα του κάτι που έσταζε αίμα. Μήπως ήταν ένα μωρό; Δεν μπορεί να ήταν. Ίσως ήταν το φάσμα της ανθρώπινης κακοήθειας.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“And were there among them old men who secretly asked to sleep forever beside a girl who had been put to sleep? There seemed to be a sadness in a young girl’s body that called up in an old man a longing for death.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“And was that it? Was that why, in “the house of the sleeping beauties,” as he lay with the girl’s arm over his eyes, the images of the camellia in full bloom and the other flowers came to him? There was of course neither in the girl sleeping here nor in Eguchi’s youngest daughter the richness of the camellia. But the richness of a girl’s body was not something one knew by looking at her or by lying quietly beside her. It was not to be compared with the richness of camellias. What flowed deep behind his eyelids from the girl’s arm was the current of life, the melody of life, the lure of life, and, for an old man, the recovery of life. The eyes on which the girl’s arm rested were heavy, and he took the arm away.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“That the “experienced” witch tonight was still a virgin was less the mark of the old men’s respect for their promises than the grim mark of their decline. The purity of the girl was like the ugliness of the old men.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“virgin prostitute, and at her age! What was she if not a prostitute?”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“Eguchi had thought before that girls who did not awaken were ageless freedom for old men. Asleep and unspeaking, they spoke as the old men wished.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“A strange thought came to him: why, among all animals, in the long course of the world, had the breasts of the human female alone become beautiful? Was it not to the glory of the human race to have made woman’s breasts so beautiful?”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“Kiga picked one up. Toying with it, he told Eguchi of the secret house. He went to the house, he said, when the despair of old age was too much for him. “It seems like a very long time since I lost hope in every last woman. There’s a house where they put women to sleep so they don’t wake up.” Was it as if a girl sound asleep, saying nothing, hearing nothing, said everything to and heard everything from an old man who, for a woman, was no longer a man?”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“ربما لم يعرفأحد في هذا العالم باستثناء إيغوشي أن جمالها لا مثيل له؛ وكان يلّذ له أن يتخيِّل أنه بموته المقبل ، ستموت معه ذكراها إلى الأبد في هذا الوجود”
― ياسوناري كاواباتا, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“Her breasts seemed to be beautifully rounded. A strange thought came to him: why, among all animals, in the long course of the world, had the breasts of the human female alone become beautiful? Was it not to the glory of the human race to have made woman’s breasts so beautiful?”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“They were quite free to indulge in unlimited dreams and memories of women. Was that not why they felt no hesitation at paying more than for women awake? And the old men were confident in the knowledge that the girls put to sleep for them knew nothing of them. Nor did the old men know anything of the girls—not even what clothes they wore—to give clues of position and character. The reasons went beyond such simple matters as disquiet about later complications.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“Thoughts almost fatherly came to him as he asked himself what vicissitudes this witchlike girl faced through the years ahead. In them was evidence that Eguchi too was old. There could be no doubt that the girl was here for money. Nor was there any doubt that, for the old men who paid out the money, sleeping beside such a girl was a happiness not of this world. Because the girl would not awaken, the aged guests need not feel the shame of their years.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“It would be odd to explain, now that he had come to the house, that for an old man who was no longer a man, to keep company with a girl who had been put to sleep was “not a human relationship.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“And then you may think of it as promiscuous, but the girl herself is asleep, and doesn’t even know who she has slept with. The girl the other time and the girl tonight will never know a thing about you, and to speak of promiscuousness is a little…”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“There was in the touch a strange flicker of something, as if this were the breast of Eguchi’s own mother before she had him inside her. He withdrew his hand, but the sensation went from his chest to his shoulders.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“In the spray the girl stood naked. The facts were different, but in the course of time Eguchi’s mind had made them so. As he grew old, the hills of Kyoto and the trunks of the red pines in gentle clusters could sometimes bring the girl back to Eguchi; but memories as vivid as tonight’s were rare. Was it the youth of the sleeping girl that invited them?”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“Eguchi, now sixty-seven, had lost many friends and relations, but the memory of the girl was still young. Reduced now to three details, the baby’s white cap and the cleanness of the secret place and the blood on the breast, it was still clear and fresh.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“Perhaps it was a melancholy comfort for an old man to be sunk in memories of women who would not come back from the far past, even while he fondled a beauty who would not awaken.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“As old age approached, Eguchi would, on nights when he had difficulty sleeping, sometimes remember the woman’s words, and count up numbers of women on his fingers; but he did not stop at anything so simple as picturing those he would not mind kissing. He would travel back over memories of women with whom he had had affairs. An old love had come back tonight because the sleeping beauty had given him the illusion that he smelled milk.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories