Bruno Schulz Quotes

My ideal goal is to "mature" into childhood. That would be genuine maturity.

The days hardened with cold and boredom like last year's loaves of bread. One began to cut them with blunt knives without appetite, with a lazy indifference.

Let's say it once and for all: Poe and Lovecraft - not to mention a Bruno Schulz or a Franz Kafka - were what the world at large would consider extremely disturbed individuals. And most people who are that disturbed are not able to create works of fiction. These and other names I could mention are people who are just on the cusp of total psychological derangement. Sometimes they cross over and fall into the province of 'outsider artists.' That's where the future development of horror fiction lies - in the next person who is almost too emotionally and psychologically damaged to live in the world but not too damaged to produce fiction.

There are things than cannot ever occur with any precision. They are too big and too magnificent to be contained in mere facts. They are merely trying to occur, they are checking whether the ground of reality can carry them. And they quickly withdraw, fearing to loose their integrity in the frailty of realization.

An event may be small and insignificant in its origin, and yet, when drawn close to one’s eye, it may open in its center an infinite and radiant perspective because a higher order of being is trying to express itself in it and irradiates it violently.

When people dis fantasy—mainstream readers and SF readers alike—they are almost always talking about one sub-genre of fantastic literature. They are talking about Tolkien, and Tolkien's innumerable heirs. Call it 'epic', or 'high', or 'genre' fantasy, this is what fantasy has come to mean. Which is misleading as well as unfortunate. Tolkien is the wen on the arse of fantasy literature. His oeuvre is massive and contagious—you can't ignore it, so don't even try. The best you can do is consciously try to lance the boil. And there's a lot to dislike—his cod-Wagnerian pomposity, his boys-own-adventure glorying in war, his small-minded and reactionary love for hierarchical status-quos, his belief in absolute morality that blurs moral and political complexity. Tolkien's clichés—elves 'n' dwarfs 'n' magic rings—have spread like viruses. He wrote that the function of fantasy was 'consolation', thereby making it an article of policy that a fantasy writer should mollycoddle the reader. That is a revolting idea, and one, thankfully, that plenty of fantasists have ignored. From the Surrealists through the pulps—via Mervyn Peake and Mikhael Bulgakov and Stefan Grabiński and Bruno Schulz and Michael Moorcock and M. John Harrison and I could go on—the best writers have used the fantastic aesthetic precisely to challenge, to alienate, to subvert and undermine expectations. Of course I'm not saying that any fan of Tolkien is no friend of mine—that would cut my social circle considerably. Nor would I claim that it's impossible to write a good fantasy book with elves and dwarfs in it—Michael Swanwick's superb Iron Dragon's Daughter gives the lie to that. But given that the pleasure of fantasy is supposed to be in its limitless creativity, why not try to come up with some different themes, as well as unconventional monsters? Why not use fantasy to challenge social and aesthetic lies? Thankfully, the alternative tradition of fantasy has never died. And it's getting stronger. Chris Wooding, Michael Swanwick, Mary Gentle, Paul di Filippo, Jeff VanderMeer, and many others, are all producing works based on fantasy's radicalism. Where traditional fantasy has been rural and bucolic, this is often urban, and frequently brutal. Characters are more than cardboard cutouts, and they're not defined by race or sex. Things are gritty and tricky, just as in real life. This is fantasy not as comfort-food, but as challenge. The critic Gabe Chouinard has said that we're entering a new period, a renaissance in the creative radicalism of fantasy that hasn't been seen since the New Wave of the sixties and seventies, and in echo of which he has christened the Next Wave. I don't know if he's right, but I'm excited. This is a radical literature. It's the literature we most deserve.

Even in the depths of sleep, in which he had to satisfy his need for protection and love by curling himself up into a trembling ball, he could not rid himself of the feeling of loneliness and homelessness.

Reality is as thin as paper, and betrays with all its cracks its imitative character.

...."the sound of a barrel organ rising from the deepest golden vein of the day; two or three bars of a chorus, played on a distant piano over and over again, melting in the sun on the white pavement, lost in the fire of high noon.

Animals! the object of insatiable interest, examples of the riddle of life, created, as it were, to reveal the human being to man himself, displaying his richness and complexity in a thousand kaleidoscopic possibilities, each of them brought to some curious end, to some characteristic exuberance.

Can you understand,' asked my father, 'the deep meaning of that weakness, that passion for colored tissue, for papier-mache, for distemper, for oakum and sawdust? This is,' he continued with a pained smile, 'the proof of our love for matter as such, for its fluffiness or porosity, for its unique mystical consistency. Demiurge, that great master and artist, made matter invisible, made it disappear under the surface of life. We, on the contrary, love its creaking, its resistance, its clumsiness. We like to see behind each gesture, behind each move, its inertia, its heavy effort, its bearlike awkwardness.

His unlived life worried him, tortured him, turning round and round inside him like an animal in a cage. In Dodo's body, the body of a half-wit, somebody was growing old, although he had not lived; somebody was maturing to a death that had no meaning at all.

Man was entering under false pretenses the sphere of incredible facilities, acquired too cheaply, below cost price, almost for nothing, and the disproportion between outlay and gain, the obvious fraud on nature, the excessive payment for a trick of genius, had to be offset by self-parody.

there is no dead matter," he taught us, "lifelessness is only a disguise behind which hide unknown forms of life. The range of these forms is infinite and their shades and nuances limitless.

After we passed a few more houses, the street ceased to mantain any pretense of urbanity, like a man returning to his little village who, piece by piece, strips off his Sunday best, slowly changing back into a peasant as he gets closer to his home.

It is strange how interiors reflect their dark turbulent past, how in their stillness bygone history tries to be reenacted, how the same situations repeat themselves with infinite variations, turned upside down and inside out by fruitless dialectic of wallpapers and hangings.

The possibility suggests itself that no dreams, however absurd or senseless, are wasted in the universe. Embedded in the dream is a hunger for its own reification, a demand that imposes an obligation on reality and that grows imperceptibly into a bona fide claim, an IOU clamoring for payment.

Now the windows, blinded by the glare of the empty square, had fallen asleep. The balconies declared their emptiness to heaven; the open doorways smelt of coolness and wine.

After tidying up, Adela would plunge the rooms into semidarkness by drawing down the linen blinds. All colors immediately fell an octave lower, the room filled with shadows, as if it had sunk to the bottom of the sea and the light was reflected in mirrors of green water–and the heat of the day began to breathe on the blinds as they stirred slightly in their daydreams.

Groping blindly in the darkness, he sank between the white mounds of cool feathers and slept as he fell, across the bed or with his head downward, pushing deep into the softness of the pillows, as if in sleep he wanted to drill through, to explore completely, that powerful massif of feather bedding rising out of the night.

Matter never makes jokes: it is always full of the tragically serious. Who dares to think that you can play with matter, that you can shape it for a joke, that the joke will not be built in, will not eat into it like fate, like destiny? Can you imagine the pain, the dull imprisoned suffering, hewn into the matter of that dummy which does not know why it must be what it is, why it must remain in that forcibly imposed form which is no more than a parody? Do you understand the power of form, of expression, of pretense, the arbitrary tyranny imposed on a helpless block, and ruling it like its own, tyrannical, despotic soul?

I lead a life much below my level. Beyond the books, which trickle in slowly (I have to read what I can get, not what I have a mind to read), I have nothing to sustain my inner life; and everything around me exudes an indescribable prosiness, which presses down on me too with its brutal weight. Nothing on the order of a stroll with a dear person, not one hour of quiet and serene contemplation--all is tainted by mundane worry and staleness. I take it that productive creators fence themselves off from their environment by a certain regimen of living, a certain organization of their daily routine that does not allow the workaday banality, humdrum job, and the rest of it to get to them. I badly feel the lack of such a regimen, my incapacity to subject myself to such a discipline. One must, for instance, fence off one's inner life, not permit the vermin of ordinary cares to infest it. Some blindness used to protect me from this truth; I wore blinkers like a horse in harness. Now reality has won and penetrated my interior.

Was he happy? One would ask that question in vain. A question like this makes sense only when applied to creatures who are rich in alternative possibilities, so that the actual truth can be contrasted with partly real probabilities and reflect itself in them.

It is part of my existence to be the parasite of metaphors, so easily am I carried away by the first simile that comes along. Having been carried away, I have to find my difficult way back, and slowly return to my senses.

Should I tell you that my room is walled up?...In what way might I leave it? Here is how: Goodwill knows no obstacle; nothing can stand before deep desire. I have only to imagine a door, a door old and good, like in the kitchen of my childhood, with an iron latch and bolt. There is no room so walled up that it will not open with such a trusty door, if you have but the strength to insinuate it.

On those luminous mornings Adela returned from the market, like Pomona emerging from the flames of day, spilling from her basket the coloful beauty of the sun –the shiny pink cherries full of juice under their transparent skins, the mysterious apricots in whose golden pulp lay the core of long afternoons. And next to that pure poetry of fruit, she unloaded sides of meat with their keyboard of ribs swollen with energy and strength, and seaweeds of vegetables like dead octopuses and squids–the raw material of meals with a yet undefined taste, the vegetative and terrestrial ingredients of dinner, exuding a wild and rustic smell.

On that night the sky laid bare its internal construction in many sections which, like quasi-anatomical exhibits, showed the spirals and whorls of light, the pale-green solids of darkness, the plasma of space, the tissue of dreams.

The room was dark and velvety from the royal blue wallpaper with its gold pattern, but even here the echo of the flaming day shimmered brassily on the picture frames, on doorknobs and glided borders, although it came through the filter of the dense greenery of the garden.

On Saturday afternoons I used to go for a walk with my mother. From the dusk of the hallway, we stepped at once into the brightness of the day. The passerby, bathed in melting gold, had their eyes half-closed against the glare, as if they were drenched with honey, upper lips were drawn back, exposing the teeth. Everyone in this golden day wore that grimace of heat–as if the sun had forced his worshippers to wear identical masks of gold. The old and the young, women and children, greeted each other with these masks, painted on their faces with thick gold paint; they smiled at each other's pagan faces–the barbaric smiles of Bacchus.

If, forgetting the respect due to the Creator, I were to attempt a criticism of creation, I would say ‘Less matter, more form!

Stupida, facilona primavera! Ricopre tutto senza discernimento, confonde il senso con il nonsenso, eternamente buffona, finta tonta, di una leggerezza senza limiti.

I did not have enough courage to go round to the back of the villa. I should certainly have been noticed by someone. Why in spite of this, did I have the feeling of having been there already–a long time ago? Don't we infact know in advance all the landscapes we see in our life? Can anything occur that is entirely new, that in depths of our being, we have not anticipated for a long time?

The crowd laughs at the parody. Weep, ladies, over your own fate, when you see the misery of imprisoned matter, of tortured matter which does not know what it is and why it is, nor where the gesture may lead that has been imposed on it forever. The crowd laughs. Do you understand the terrible sadism, the exhilarating, demiurgical cruelty of that laughter? Yet we should weep, ladies, at our own fate, when we see that misery of violated matter, against which a terrible wrong had been committed.

Beds unmade for days on end, piled high with bedding crumpled and disordered from the weight of dreams, stood like deep boats waiting to sail into the dank and confusing labyrinths of some dark starless Venice.

Nimrod began to understand that what he was experiencing was, in spite of its appearance of novelty, something which had existed before–many times before. His body began to recognize situations, impressions, and objects. In reality, none of there astonished him very much. Faced with new circumstances, he would dip into the fount of his memory, the deep-seated memory of the body, would search blindky and feverishly, and often find ready made within himself a suitable reaction: the wisdom of generations, deposited in his plasma, in his nerves. He found actions and decisions of which he had not been aware but which had been lying in wait, ready to emerge.

It is not quite as dark here as we thought. On the contrary, the interior is pulsating with light. It is, of course, the internal light of roots, a wandering phosphorescence, tiny veins of a light marbling the darkness, an evanescent shimmer of nightmarish substances. Likewise, when we sleep, severed from the world, straying into deep introversion, on a return journey into ourselves, we can see clearly through our closed eyelids, because thoughts are kindled in us by internal tapers and smolder erratically. This is how total regressions occur, retreats into self, journeys to the roots. This is how we branch out into anamnesis and are shaken by underground subcutaneous shivers. For it is only above ground, in the light of day, that we are a trembling, articulate bundle of tunes; in the depth we disintegrate again into black murmurs, confused purring, a multitude of unfinished stories.

The books we read in childhood don't exist anymore; they sailed off with the wind, leaving bare skeletons behind. Whoever still has in him the memory and marrow of childhood should rewrite these books as he experienced them.

Ulica Krokodyli była koncesją naszego miasta na rzecz nowoczesności i zepsucia wielkomiejskiego. Widocznie nie stać nas było na nic innego, jak na papierową imitację, jak na fotomontaż złożony z wycinków zleżałych, zeszłorocznych gazet.

For us old-age pensioners, autumn is on the whole a dangerous season. He who knows how difficult it is for us to achieve any stability at all, how difficult it is to avoid distraction or destruction by one's own hand, will understant tha autumn, its winds, disturbances, and atmospheric confusions, does not favour our existence, which is precarious anyway.

For ordinary books are like meteors. Each of them has only one moment, a moment when it soars screaming like the phoenix, all its pages aflame. For that single moment we love them ever after, although they soon turn to ashes. With bitter resignation we sometimes wander late at night through the extinct pages that tell their stone dead messages like wooden rosary beads.

There open up, deep inside a city, reflected streets, streets which are double, make-believe streets. One's imagination, bewitched and misled, creates illusory maps of the apparently familiar districts, maps in which the streets have their proper places and usual names but are provided with new and fictitious configurations by the inexhaustible inventiveness of the night.

It was difficult to anticipate—in these monsters with enormous, fantastic beaks which they opened wide immediately after birth, hissing greedily to show the backs of their throats, in these lizards with frail, naked bodies of hunchbacks—the future peacocks, pheasants, grouse or condors. Placed in cotton wool, in baskets, this dragon brood lifted blind, walleyed heads on thin necks, croaking voicelessly from their dumb throats.

Homicide is not a sin. It is sometimes a necessary violence on resistant and ossified forms of existence which have ceased to be amusing. In the interests of an important and fascinating experiment, it can even become meritorious. Here is the starting point of a new apologia for sadism.

Matter is the most passive and most defenseless essence in cosmos. Anyone can mold it and shape it; it obeys everybody. All attempts at organizing matter are transient and temporary, easy to reverse and to dissolve. There is no evil in reducing life to other and newer forms. Homicide is not a sin.

I harbored in my mind a sort of utopia about ‘an age of genius’ that supposedly existed in my life once upon a time, not in any calendar year but on a level above chronology, an age when everything blazed with godly colors and one took in the whole sky with a single breath, like a gulp of pure ultramarine.

The cashier had long since left for home. By now she was probably bustling by an unmade bed that was waiting in her small room like a boat to carry her off to the black lagoons of sleep, into the complicated world of dreams. The person sitting in the box office was only a wraith, an illusory phantom looking with tired, heavily made-up eyes at the empyiness of light, fluttering her lashes thoughtlessly to disperse the golden dust of drowsiness scattered by the elctric bulbs.

The horse was panting, hanging its head. I hugged its head to my breast and saw that there were tears in its large eyes. I noticed a round black wound on its belly. "Why did not you tell me?" I whispered, crying. "My dearest, I did it for you," the horse said and became very small, like a wooden toy. I left him and felt wonderfully light and happy.

One imagined these barrel organs, beautifully painted, carried on the backs of little grey old men, whose indistinct faces, corroded by life, seemed covered by cobwebs – faces with watery, immobile eyes slowly leaking away, emaciated faces as discoloured and innocent as the cracked and weathered bark of trees, and now like bark smelling only of rain and sky.

They were villages forgotten in the depth of time, peopled by creatures chained forever to their tiny destinies.

Sada se često glasno i cvrkutavo smejao, prosto se zanosio od smeha, ili je kucao u krevet i sam sebi odgovarao "molim" u raznim intonacijama, po čitave sate.

Can there be anything sadder than a human being changed into the rubber tube of an enema?

As a matter of fact, there are many books. The book is a myth which we believe when we are young, but which we cease to take seriously as we get older.

Each of them has only one moment, a moment when it soars screaming like the phoenix, all its pages aflame. For that single moment we love them ever after, although they soon turn to ashes.

On a small square, wood is being cut for the city school. Cords of healthy, crisp timber are piled high and melt slowly, one log after another, under the saws and axes of workmen. Ah, timber, trustworthy, honest, true matter of reality, bright and completely decent, the embodiment of the decency and prose of life! However deep you look into its core, you cannot find anything that is not apparent on its evenly smiling surface, shining with that warm, assured glow of its fibrous pulp woven in a likeness of the human body. In each fresh section of a cut log a new face og the human body. In each fresh section of a cut log a new face appears, always smiling and golden. Oh, the strange complexion of timber, warm eithout exaltation, completely sound, fragrant, and pleasant!

I am sorry," he would say, addressing himself unexpectedly to the astonished onlooker. "I am sorry, I am concerned with that section of space which you are filling. Couldn't you move a little to one side for a minute?

Charles yawned out of his body, out of the depth of all its cavities the remains of yesterday. The yawning was convulsive as if his body wanted to turn itself inside out. In this way he got rid of the sand and ballast, the undigested remains of the previous day.

But in vain did he apostrophize the insect in this new language, born of sudden inspiration, as a cockroach's understanding is not equal to such a tirade: the insect continued on its journey to a corner of the room, with movements sanctified by an ageless ritual of the cockroach world.

Fascynowały go formy graniczne, wątpliwe i problematyczne, jak ektoplazma somnambulików, pseudomateria, emanacja kataleptyczna mózgu, która w pewnych wypadkach rozrastała się z ust uśpionego na cały stół, napełniała cały pokój, jako bujająca, rzadka tkanka, astralne ciasto, na pograniczu ciała i ducha.

bore a hidden grudge against Mother for the ease with which she moved on past the loss of Father to daily routine. She never loved him, I thought, and because Father was not rooted in the heart of any woman, he also could not grow into any reality and floated eternally on the periphery of life, in half-real regions, on the edges of actuality.

A piactéren álló ház első emeleti lakásán nap mint nap végigvonult az egész hatalmas nyár: rezgő léglombikok csöndje, forró álmukat alvó fényes négyszögek a padlón; a nappal tárházának legmélyéből kiszabadult verklidallam; egy zongorarefrén újra meg újra felhangzó két-három taktusa napfénybe ájultan a fehér kövezeten, a nappal mélyének tüzébe veszve.

During the period of the shortest, sleepy days of winter that are demarcated from morning and evening on both sides by furry edges of twilight, when the city branches out ever more deeply into the labyrinths of the winter nights and is summoned back by a brief dawn to reflection, to a return home, my father was already lost, sold, sworn to that other sphere.

A valóság lényege az értelem. Aminek nincs értelme, az számunkra nem valóságos. A valóság minden darabja azáltal létezik, hogy részese valamiféle egyetemes értelemnek. A régi kozmogóniák ezt azzal a szentenciával fejezték ki, hogy „Kezdetben vala az Ige”. Aminek nincs neve, az számunkra nem létezik. Valamit megnevezni annyit tesz, mint egyféle egyetemes értelem részévé tenni.

… a közönséges könyvek olyanok, mint a meteorok. Mindegyiknek van egy pillanata, egyetlen szempillantás, amikor rikoltva felröppen, mint a főnix, lángot vet minden oldala. Ezért az egy pillanatért, ezért az egyetlen szempillantásért szeretjük őket továbbra is, amikor már hamuvá váltak. S keserű rezignáltásggal vándorlunk néha később e kihűlt oldalakon át, fásult kerepeléssel szemelgetve holt formuláikat, akár egy rózsafüzért.

And then as the knives and forks began to clank softly above the white tablecloths, the violins would rise alone, now suddenly mature although tentative and unsure just a short while before; slim and narrow-waisted, they eloquently proceeded with their task, took up again the lost human cause, and pleaded before the indifferent tribunal of stars, now set in a sky on which the shapes of the instruments floated like water signs or fragments of keys, unfinished lyres or swans, an imitatory, thoughtless starry commentary on the margin of music.

No one has ever charted the topography of a July night. It remains unrecorded in the geography of one's inner cosmos. A night in July! What can be likened to it? How can one describe it? Shall I compare it to the core of an enormous black rose, covering us with the dreams of hundreds of velvety petals? The night winds blow open its fluffy center, and in its scented depth we can see the stars looking down on us. Shall I compare it to the black firmament under our half-closed eyelids, full of scattered speckles, white poppy seeds, stars, rockets, and meteors? Or perhaps to a night train, long as the world, driving through an endless black tunnel; walking through a July night is like passing precariously from one coach to another, between sleeping passengers, along narrow drafty corridors, past stuffy compartments.

Ez az üres és kihalt lakás nem ismerte el őt, ezek a bútorok meg falak néma kritikával fürkészték. Csendjükbe hatolva úgy érezte magát, mint hivatlan vendég a víz alatti, elsüllyedt birodalomban, ahol más, külön időszámítás van. Saját fiókjait nyitogatva betörőnek érezte magát, és önkéntelenül lábujjhegyen járt, attól tartva, hogy felveri a zajos és szertelen visszhangot, mely ingerülten leste az alkalmat, hogy kitörhessen. És midőn végre-valahára, nesztelenül surranva szekrénytől szekrényig, darabonként mindent megtalált, és befejezte öltözködését a bútorok közt, amelyek némán, idegenül tűrték meg őt, midőn végre elkészült, és ott állt indulásra készen, kezében a kalappal, zavar fogta el, hogy az utolsó pillanatban sem talál rá a szóra, mely feloldotta volna ezt az ellenséges hallgatást, és lemondóan, lassan, lehorgasztott fejjel elindult az ajtóhoz — miközben az ellenkező irányba — a tükör mélyébe — a nemlétező szobák kihalt során — örökre hátat fordítva ráérősen távolodott valaki.

At such a time [at dawn] I would dream of being a baker who delivers bread, a fitter from the electric company, or an insurance man collecting the weekly installments. Or at least a chimney sweep. In the morning, at dawn, I would enter some half-opened gateway, still lighted by the watchman's lantern. I would put two fingers to my hat, crack a joke, and enter the labyrinth to leave late in the evening, at the other end of the city. I would spend all day going from apartment to apartment, conducting one never-ending conversation from one end of the city to the other, divided into parts among the householders; I would ask something in one apartment and receive a reply in another, make a joke in one place and collect the fruits of laughter in the third or fourth. Among the banging of doors I would squeeze through narrow passages, through bedrooms full of furniture, I would upset chamberpots, walk into squeaking perambulators in which babies cry, pick up rattles dropped by infants. I would stop for longer than necessary in kitchens and hallways, where servant girls were tidying up. The girls, busy, would stretch their young legs, tauten their high insteps, play with their cheap shining shoes, or clack around in loose slippers.

… a város lázrózsái elsötétültek és bíborszínre fakadtak, hirtelen az egész világ hervadni és feketedni kezdett, s csakhamar kavargó szürkületet bocsátott ki magából, mely megfertőzött mindent. Álnokul és mérgezőn terjedt a szürkület e ragálya körös-körül, egyik dologról a másikra szállt, s amihez hozzáért, az nyomban elkorhadt, megfeketedett, porrá foszlott. Az emberek halk riadalomban menekültek előle, ám hirtelen utolérte őket is ez a lepra, sötét kiütéssel ütött ki a homlokukon, s elveszítették arcukat, nagy, alaktalan foltokban hullott le róluk az arcuk, s így mentek tovább, immár arcvonások nélkül, szem nélkül, egyik álarcot a másik után veszítve el útközben — csak úgy hemzsegtek az eldobott, menekülésük nyomán elszórt lárvák a szürkületben. Azután korhadó fekete kéreg kezdett bevonni mindent, melyről nagy cafatokban, beteges varokban hámlott le a sötétség. S míg alant minden fellazult és semmivé lett ebben a halk kavarodásban, a gyors bomlás pánikjában, fönt megmaradt és egyre magasabbra nőtt az alkonypír hallgatag riadója, s milliók halk, csengő csiripelése remegett benne, millió láthatatlan őacsirta szárnybontása duzzasztotta, melyek együtt repültek egy ezüstös, nagy végtelenségbe. Azután hirtelen mégis éjszaka volt — nagy éjszaka, melyet még tovább növelt, tágított a szél fuvallata.

U tim dalekim danima, po prvi put sam, zajedno sa prijateljima, podlegao toj nemogućoj i apsurdnoj misli da odem još dalje, dalje od banje, na zemlju ničiju i božju, u spornu i neutralnu pograničnu oblast, gde su se gubile konture država, gde je ruža vetrova bludno jurila sopstveni rep pod visokim, višespratnim nebom. Tamo smo želeli da se ukopamo u rovove, da se odvojimo od odraslih, da u potpunosti napustimo sferu njihovog uticaja, da proklamujemo republiku mladih. Tamo smo nameravali da konstituišemo novo i nezavisno zakonodavstvo, da uzdignemo novu hijerarhiju mera i vrednosti. Trebalo je da to bude život pod znakom poezije i pustolovine, neprekidnih oduševljenja i čuda. Činilo nam se, da treba samo razrgnuti barijere i granice konvencija, stara ležišta, kojima je bio obuhvaćen tok ljudskih tekovina, pa da se u naš život izlije svežina, veliki talas nepredvidljivog, potop romantičnih ideja i fabula. Želeli smo da posvetimo svoj život tom potoku romantične svežine, nadahnutoj plimi avantura i događaja, i da dozvolimo da budemo poneseni tim nadirućim talasima, bezvoljni i samo njima predani. Duh prirode je, u suštini, bio veliki bajkopisac. Iz njegove suštine isticale su nezadrživim tokom slatkorečive priče i povesti, romanse i epopeje. Čitava velika atmosfera bila je puna romanesknih tokova. Trebalo je samo postaviti zamke pod nebom punim fantoma, zabiti štap koji igra na vetru, i već su se u klopci nervozno okretali uhvaćeni komadi priča.

Ei, tämä ei ollut eskatologinen, profeettojen jo kauan sitten ennustama traaginen finaali, jumalallisen näytelmän viimeinen näytös. Ei, tämä oli pikemminkin pyöräilyakrobaattinen sirkusfinaali, taikurimainen hupsis-loppu, jota säesti kaikkien edistyksen henkien kättentaputus. Melkein kaikki uskoivat siihen hetkeäkään epäröimättä. Tyrmistyneet ja vastalauseita huutavat karjuttiin heti paikalla mataliksi. Miksi he eivät ymmärtäneet, että tämä oli yksinkertaisesti ennen kuulumaton tilaisuus, äärimmäisen edistyksellinen maailmanloppu, vapaamielinen päätös, ajan huipulla oleva, korkeinta viisautta syvästi kunnioitava ja suojeleva tapahtuma? Sitä tulkittiin haltiokkaasti, sitä kuvattiin irti reväistyille muistikirjan lehdille, selitettiin, että se oli kumoamaton; vastustajille ja epäilijöille jaettiin korvapuusteja. Kuvalehdissä ilmestyi kokosivun piirroksia, kuvitelmia katastrofista, vaikuttavia näyttämösovituksia. Näimme väkirikkaita kaupunkeja yöllisen pakokauhun vallassa, valomerkkejä ja valoilmiöitä kipunoivan taivaan alla. Etäisen meteorin hämmästyttävät vaikutukset olivat jo kaikkien nähtävissä. Pyrstötähti, jonka vertauskuvallinen kärki tähtäsi heltiämättä maapalloa, leijali liikkumattomana taivaalla ja lähestyi maata niin ja niin monen kilometrin nopeudella sekunnissa. Lakit ja hatut lentelivät ilmaan kuin sirkusilveilyssä, hiukset nousivat pystyyn, sateenvarjot aukenivat itsestään ja kaljut paljastuivat lentoon lehahtavien peruukkien alta - ja yllä oli musta, jättimäinen taivas, jonka laella välkkyi kakkien tähtien yhtäaikainen hälytys.

U julu je moj otac odlazio u banju i ostavljao me s majkom i starijim bratom na milost i nemilost letnjih dana belih od žege i onesvešćujućih. Prevrtali smo, ošamućeni svetlom, tu veliku knjigu raspusta, čiji su svi listovi goreli sjajem i imali na dnu opojno slatko meso zlatnih krušaka. Adela se vraćala u svetla jutra, kao Pomona iz vatre užarenog dana, prosipajući iz kotarice šarenu lepotu sunca – sjajne trešnje, pune vode ispod prozračne kožice, crne višnje, čiji je miris prelazio ono što se ostvarivalo u ukusu; kajsije, u čijem se zlatnom mesu nalazila srž dugih popodneva; a pored te čiste poezije voća istovarivala je komađe mesa sa klavijaturom telećih rebara nabreklih snagom i hranljivošću, alge povrća, kao ubijene sepije i meduze – sirovi materijal ručka sa još neformiranim i jalovim ukusom, vegetativne i zemaljske primese koje su mirisale divljinom i poljem. Kroz tamni stan na prvom spratu zidane zgrade na trgu svaki dan je skroz prolazilo leto: tišina drhtavih vazdušnih slojeva, kvadrati svetla koji su na podu snivali svoj strasni san; melodija vergla izvučena iz najdublje zlatne žile dana; dva-tri takta refrena, koji je, sviran negde na klaviru, stalno iznova, malaksavao na suncu na belim pločicama, izgubljen u vatri dubokog dana. Pospremivši, Adela je pravila hlad u sobama navlačeći platnene zavese. Tada su se boje spuštale za oktavu dublje, senka je ispunjavala sobu, kao utonulu u svetlost morske dubine, ogledajući se još mutnije u zelenim zrcalima, a sva žega dana se odmarala na zavesama koje su se lako talasale od sanjarija podnevnih sati. Subotom popodne izlazio sam s majkom u šetnju. Iz polumraka trema ulazilo se odmah u sunčano kupanje dana. Prolaznici, hodajući u zlatu, imali su oči sužene od žege, kao slepljene medom, a malo podignuta gornja usna otkrivala im je desni i zube. I svi koji su hodali tog zlaćanog dana imali su tu grimasu žege, kao da je sunce svim svojim pristalicama bilo stavilo istu masku – zlatnu masku sunčanog bratstva, i svi, koji su danas išli ulicama, susreli su se, mimoilazili, stari i mladi, deca i žene, pozdravljali su se u prolazu tom maskom, naslikanom debelom, zlatnom bojom na licu, kezili su se jedni na druge tom bahantskom grimasom – varvarskom maskom paganskog kulta.

Ale przede mną leżała jeszcze przyszłość. Jakiż bezmiar doświadczeń, eksperymentów, odkryć otwierał się teraz! Sekret życia, jego najistotniejsza tajemnica, sprowadzona do tej prostszej, poręczniejszej i zabawkowej formy, odsłaniała się tu nienasyconej ciekawości. Było to nad wyraz interesujące, mieć na własność taką odrobinkę życia, taką cząstkę wieczystej tajemnicy, w postaci tak zabawnej i nowej, budzącej nieskończoną ciekawość i respekt sekretny swą obcością, niespodzianą transpozycją tego samego wątku życia, który w nas był, na formę od naszej odmienną, zwierzęcą. Zwierzęta! Cel nienasyconej ciekawości, egzemplifikację zagadki życia, jakby stworzone po to, by człowiekowi pokazać człowieka, rozkładając jego bogactwo i komplikacje na tysiąc kalejdoskopowych możliwości, każdą doprowadzoną do jakiegoś paradoksalnego krańca, do jakiejś wybujałości pełnej charakteru. Nie obciążone splotem egotycznych interesów, mącących stosunki międzyludzkie, otwierało się serce pełne sympatii dla obcych emanacyj wiecznego życia, pełne miłosnej, współpracującej ciekawości, która była zamaskowanym głodem samopoznania. Piesek był aksamitny, ciepły i pulsujący małym, pośpiesznym sercem. Miał dwa miękkie płatki uszu, niebieskie, mętne oczka, różowy pyszczek, do którego można było włożyć palec bez żadnego niebezpieczeństwa, łapki delikatne i niewinne, z wzruszającą, różową brodaweczką z tyłu nad stopami przednich nóg. Właził nimi do miski z mlekiem, żarłoczny i niecierpliwy, chłepcący napój różowym języczkiem, ażeby po nasyceniu się podnieść żałośnie małą mordkę z kroplą mleka na brodzie i wycofywać się niedołężnie z kąpieli mlecznej. Chód jego był niezgrabnym toczeniem się, bokiem na ukos w niezdecydowanym kierunku, po linii trochę pijanej i chwiejnej. Dominantą jego nastroju była jakaś nieokreślona i zasadnicza żałość, sieroctwo i bezradność – niezdolność do zapełnienia czymś pustki życia pomiędzy sensacjami posiłków. Objawiało się to bezplanowością i niekonsekwencją ruchów, irracjonalnymi napadami nostalgii z żałosnym skomleniem i niemożnością znalezienia sobie miejsca. Nawet jeszcze w głębi snu, w którym potrzebę oparcia się i przytulenia zaspokajać musiał, używając do tego własnej swojej osoby, zwiniętej w kłębek drżący – towarzyszyło mu poczucie osamotnienia i bezdomności. Ach, życie – młode i wątłe życie, wypuszczone z zaufanej ciemności, z przytulnego ciepła łona macierzystego w wielki i obcy, świetlany świat, jakże kurczy się ono i cofa, jak wzdraga się zaakceptować tę imprezę, którą mu proponują – pełne awersji i zniechęcenia! Lecz z wolna mały Nemrod (otrzymał był to dumne i wojownicze imię) zaczyna smakować w życiu. Wyłączne opanowanie obrazem macierzystej prajedni ustępuje urokowi wielości. Świat zaczyna nań zastawiać swe pułapki: nieznany a czarujący smak różnych pokarmów, czworobok porannego słońca na podłodze, na którym tak dobrze jest położyć się, ruchy własnych członków, własne łapki, ogonek, figlarnie wyzywający do zabawy z samym sobą, pieszczoty ręki ludzkiej, pod którymi z wolna dojrzewa pewna swawolność, wesołość rozpierająca ciało i rodząca potrzebę zgoła nowych, gwałtownych i ryzykownych ruchów – wszystko to przekupuje, przekonywa i zachęca do przyjęcia, do pogodzenia się z eksperymentem życia. I jeszcze jedno. Nemrod zaczyna rozumieć, że to, co mu się tu podsuwa, mimo pozorów nowości jest w gruncie rzeczy czymś, co już było – było wiele razy – nieskończenie wiele razy. Jego ciało poznaje sytuacje, wrażenia i przedmioty. W gruncie rzeczy to wszystko nie dziwi go zbytnio. W obliczu każdej nowej sytuacji daje nura w swoją pamięć, w głęboką pamięć ciała, i szuka omackiem, gorączkowo – i bywa, że znajduje w sobie odpowiednią reakcję już gotową: mądrość pokoleń, złożoną w jego plazmie, w jego nerwach.

...jer prirodaje puna potencijalne arhitekture, projektovanja i gradnje. Šta su drugo radili neimari velikih stoleća? Slušali su široki patos prostranih polja, dinamičnu perspektivu daljine, nemu pantomimu simetričnih aleja. Davno pre nastanka Versaja oblaci na prostranim nebesima slagali su se za letnjih večeri u projekte širokih eskorijala, vazdušne i megalomanske rezidencije, isprobavali su inscenacije, mogućnosti, ogromne i univerzalne aranžmane. Taj veliki teatar neobuhvaćene atmosfere neiscrpan je u idejama, u planovima, u vazdušnim modelima - halucinira ogromnu i nadahnutu arhitekturu, oblačnu i transcendentalnu urbanistiku.

Reditelj pejzaža i kosmičkih scenarija. Njegovo umeće se zasniva na tome da prihvata namere prirode, da ume da čita njene tajne aspiracije, jer priroda je puna potencijalne arhitekture, projektovanja i gradnje. Šta su drugo radili neimari velikih stoleća? Slušali su široki patos prostranih polja, dinamičnu perspektivu daljine, nemu pantomimu simetričnih aleja. Davno pre nastanka Versaja oblaci na prostranim nebesima slagali su se za letnjih večeri u projekte širokih eskorijala, vazdušne i megalomanske rezidencije, isprobavali su inscenacije, mogućnosti, ogromne i univerzalne aranžmane. Taj veliki teatar neobuhvaćene atmosfere neiscrpan je u idejama, u planovima, u vazdušnim modelima - halucinira ogromnu i nadahnutu arhitekturu, oblačnu i transcendentalnu urbanistiku.

It has to be remembered that the typical Polish writer was Bruno Schulz.

They do not discover anything new after that, they only learn how to understand better and better the secret entrusted to them at the outset; their creative effort goes into an unending exegesis, a commentary on that one couplet of poetry assigned to them.

But for that to be remembered, Bruno Schulz has to be remembered,

To this day I cannot understand how we became the conscious perpetrators of it. A strange fatality must have been driving us to it; for fate does not evade consciousness or will but engulfs them in its mechanism, so that we are able to accept, as in hypnotic trance, things that under normal circumstances would fill us with horror.

In die wilde en peilloze nachten van de voorlente, bedekt onder reusachtige, nog rauwe en geurloze hemels, die met hun woeste leegten en weidse luchten naar de sterrendoolhoven leidden - nam vader me mee uit eten in een klein tuinrestaurant dat ingesloten tussen de achtermuren van de laatste kleine huizen van het marktplein lag. In het natte licht van de lantaarns, rinkelend in de zuchten van de wind, staken we het grote gewelfde plein dwars over, eenzaam en terneergedrukt door de enormiteit van de luchtlabyrinten, verloren en gedesoriënteerd in de lege ruimen van de atmosfeer. Vader tilde zijn door flauw schijnsel overgoten gezicht op naar de hemel en keek bitter en bekommerd naar dat sterrenkiezel waarmee de banken tussen de wijd vertakte en uitstromende kolken lagen bezaaid. Hun ontelbare, onregelmatige verdikkingen waren nog niet geordend in constellaties, die oeverloze en dorre uiterwaarden waren nog niet door figuren beteugeld. De triestheid van stellaire leegten drukte op de stad, waar de nacht door licht van lantaarns werd doorweven, die onverschillig hun stralenbundels van knoop tot knoop samenbonden.

resumiremos a nossa ambição nesta orgulhosa divisa: um ator para cada gesto

J'ai rencontré chez [Giorgio] Bassani des dilemmes similaires aux miens. Dans un contexte italien, certes, et traités avec une simplicité sereine, plutôt classique. De ce point de vue, sans doute, je suis plus proche de Max Blecher et de Bruno Schulz voire de [Saul] Bellow… [...] Je ne suis pas plus proche de [Max] Blecher que de Bassani seulement parce que Roman la ville de Blecher, est plus proche de Burdujeni [quartier de Suceava où est né Norman Manea] ou de Bucarest que Ferrara. Je communique différemment avec Schulz, parce que la Galicie n'est pas très éloignée de la Bucovine, mais pas seulement pour cette raison là. Je suis probablement plus réceptif à l'œuvre de Camil Petrescu qu'à celle d' [Ilya] Ehrenburg ou d'Anna Seghers. Je me suis énormément intéressé à Musil, qui n'a rien de judaïque, et moins à [Lion] Feuchtwanger par exemple même si j'ai lu certains de ses livres avec plaisir. (p. 57-58)

How does the old cliché go? When every Arab girl stood in line waiting for God to hand out the desperate-to-get-married gene, I must have been somewhere else, probably lost in a book. I do understand that it isn’t just Arab girls who have that gene, but it is dominant in our part of the world. A force of nature and nurture, an epigenetic hurricane, herds us into marrying and breeding. Social cues, community rites, religious rituals, family events—all are meant to impress upon children the importance and inevitability of what Bruno Schulz calls the “excursion into matrimony.” No girl of my generation could imagine rebelling, nor would she want to.

The feeling of loathing had as yet no permanence or strength in the dog’s soul. The newly awakened joy of life transformed every sensation into a great joke, into gaiety. Nimrod kept on barking, but the tone of it had changed imperceptibly, had become a parody of what it had been - an attempt to express the incredible wonder of that capital enterprise, life, so full of unexpected encounters, pleasures, and thrills.

A művészi tevékenység nem más, mint kész tételek dedukciója. A művészek később már semmi újat nem fedeznek fel, csak a kezdetben gondjaikra bízott titkot tanulják meg egyre jobban megérteni; alkotóerejük szüntelen exegézis, egyetlen versfeladványhoz írt kommentár. A művészet egyébként nem oldja fel teljes egészében a titkot, az végül is megfejthetetlen marad. A csomó, amelyre a lelkünket kötötték, nem hamis csomó, amely egy rántással kioldható. Ellenkezőleg, egyre jobban megszorul. Babrálunk vele, követjük a szálat, keressük a végét, és e babrálásból megszületik a művészet.

Nagy Sándor érzékeny volt az országok illatára. Orra megérezte a rendkívüli lehetőségeket. Azok közé tartozott, akiknek arcán álmukban Isten tenyere simított végig, így hát tudják, hogy mit nem tudnak, tele vannak feltevéssel és kétellyel, zárt szemhéjukon pedig távoli világok visszfénye szűrődik be. Mindazonáltal túlságosan is szó szerint vette az isteni allúziót. Lévén a tettek embere, vagyis lelkiekben szegény, úgy értelmezte misszióját, mint világhódító küldetést. Szívét ugyanaz a telhetetlen érzés töltötte el, mint az enyémet, keblét ugyanazok a sóhajok feszítették, látóhatárról látóhatárra, tájról tájra érve. Senki sem akadt, aki figyelmeztette volna tévedésére. Maga Arisztotelész sem értette meg őt. Noha meghódította a világot, Nagy Sándor csalódottan halt meg, kételkedve az előle örökösen eltűnő Istenben és csodáiban. Minden ország érméin és bélyegein az ő arcképe díszelgett. Büntetésül saját korának Ferenc Józsefévé vált.

Het begon met het uitbroeden van vogeleieren. Kosten noch moeite sparend liet vader uit Hamburg, uit Nederland, uit Afrikaanse zoologische stations bevruchte vogeleieren komen, die hij door reusachtige Belgische kloeken liet uitbroeden. Ook voor mij was dat een buitengewoon interessant bedrijf - die kuikentjes, ware wangedrochten in vorm en kleur, die zich uit hun ei pikten. In die monsters met grote, grillige snavels, die meteen na de geboorte onder vraatzuchtig gesis uit de afgrond van hun kelen werden opengesperd, in die salamanders met tere, naakte bochellijven, kon je onmogelijk de toekomstige pauwen, fazanten, auerhoenders en condors herkennen. In mandjes met watten gezet tilde dit drakegebroed zijn blinde, met vlies overtrokken koppen op dunne halzen op en kwekte onhoorbaar uit zijn stomme kelen. Met een groen voorschoot liep vader langs de planken heen en weer, als een tuinman langs zijn cactuskassen, en lokte ze uit het niets, die blinde, van leven pulserende blaasjes, die hulpeloze buikjes die de buitenwereld alleen in de vorm van voer ervoeren, die uitwassen van leven die tastend naar het licht kropen. En toen deze kiemen van leven een paar weken later naar het licht waren opengebarsten, stroomden de kamers vol met bont rumoer, het flikkerende gekwetter van hun nieuwe bewoners. Ze zetten zich op de gordijnlijsten, de randen van de kasten, nestelden zich in het gewas van de tinnen takken en arabesken van de veelarmige hanglampen.

Das Unwirkliche ist das, was man untereinander nicht teilen kann. Was auch immer aus dieser Gemeinsamkeit herausfällt, das fällt aus dem Kreis menschlicher Angelegenheiten, geht über die Grenzen des menschlichen Theaters, über die Grenzen der Literatur hinaus.

At that time, my father was definitely dead. He had been dying a number of times, always with some reservations that forced us to revise our attitude toward the fact of his death. This had some advantages. By dividing his death into installments, Father had familiarized us with his demise. We gradually became indifferent to his returns—each one shorter, each one more pitiful. His features were already dispersed throughout the room in which he had lived, and were sprouting in it, creating in some spots strange knots of likeness that were most expressive. The wallpaper in certain places began to imitate his habitual nervous tic; the flower designs arranged themselves into the doleful elements of his smile, symmetrical as the fossilized imprint of a trilobite. For a time, we gave a wide berth to his fur coat lined with polecat skins. The fur coat breathed. The panic of small animals sewn together and biting into one another passed through it in helpless currents and lost itself in the folds of its fur. Putting one’s ear against it, one could hear the melodious purring unison of the animal’s sleep. In this well-tanned form, amid the faint smell of polecat, murder, and night-time matings, my father might have lasted many years. But he did not last.

Emil, the oldest of my cousins, with his bright blond moustache and a face that life seemed to have wiped clean of any expression [...] His face, withered and clouded, seemed day by day to be forgetting itself, turning into an empty white wall covered with a pale network of veins, in which the dwindling memories of a tumultuous and wasted life intertwined like the lines on a faded map... With his eyes wandering over distant memories, he told strange anecdotes, which always broke off abruptly, disintegrating and dissipating into nothingness [...] His face was the mere breath of a face–a streak that some unkonwn passer-by had left behind in the air.

After a brief moment of splendour, the whole enterprise too a sad turn.

He took me between his knees and shuffled some photographs before my eyes with his dextorous hands, showing me images of naked women and boys in strange positions. I leant against him and peered at those delicate human bodies with distant, unseeing eyes, as the fluid of a vague agitation that had suddenely clouded the air reached me, running through me in a shiver of anxiety, a wave of sudden understanding. In the meantime, the haze of a smile that had appeared under his soft, beautiful moustache, the germ of desire that had stretched across his temple in a pulsing vein, the tension holding his features together for a momenr, fell back into nothingness, and his face departed into absence, forgot itself, and disintegrated.

There was something tragic in that sloppy and immoderate fertility: the misery of a creature struggling on the border of nothingness and death; the strange heroism of a femininity triumphant in its fecundity over the deformity of nature and the insufficiency of man. Yet her progeny revealed the cause of that maternal panic, that frenzy of birthing that had exhausted itself in abortive foetuses and an ephemeral generation of phantoms without blood or faces.

They sat as if in the shadow of their own fate...

Bo czyż pod stołem, który nas dzieli, nie trzymamy się wszyscy tajnie za ręce?

How boundless is the horoscope of spring! One can read it in a thousand different ways, interpret it blindly, spell it out at will, happy to be able to decipher anything at all amid the misleading divinations of birds. The text can be read forward or backward, lose its sense and find it again in many versions, in a thousand alternatives. Because the text of spring is marked by hints, ellipses, lines dotted on an empty azure, and because the gaps between the syllables are filled by the frivolous guesses and surmises of birds, my story, like that text, will follow many different tracks and will be punctuated by springlike dashes, sighs, and dots.

Suddenly the world began to wither and blacken, rapidly secreting from itself a hallucinatory dusk that infected all things. The plague of dusk expanded venomously and insidiously in all directions, creeping from one thing to another; whatever it touched at once decayed, blackened and disintegrated into rot. People fled from the dusk in silent panic, but the leprosy soon caught up with them, smearing a dark rash across their foreheads. They lost their faces, which fell away in great, shapeless stains, and so they went on, without features, without eyes, dropping mask after mask along the way, until the dusk teemed with those abandoned larvae, scattered behind them.