Milan Kundera Ignorance Quotes

The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.

A man is responsible for his ignorance.

To die; to decide to die; that's much easier for an adolescent than for an adult. What? Doesn't death strip an adolescent of a far larger portion of future? Certainly it does, but for a young person, the future is a remote, abstract, unreal thing he doesn't really believe in.

The more vast the amount of time we've left behind us, the more irresistible is the voice calling us to return to it.

And there lies the horror: the past we remember is devoid of time. Impossible to reexperience a love the way we reread a book or resee a film.

A person who messes up her goodbyes shouldn't expect much from her reunions.

Now time has a very different look; it is no longer the conquering present capturing the future; it is the present conquered and captured and carried off by the past.

Man can only be certain about the present moment. But is that quite true either? Can he really know the present? Is he in a position to make any judgment about it? Certainly not. For how can a person with no knowledge of the future understand the meaning of the present? If we do not know what future the present is leading us toward, how can we say whether this present is good or bad, whether it deserves our concurrence, or our suspicion, or our hatred?

Remembering now all those farewells (fake farewells, worked-up farewells), Irena thinks: a person who messes up her goodbyes shouldn’t expect much from her re-unions.

تختفي الذكريات إذا لم تُستحضر مرة وأخرى في أحاديث الأصدقاء.

We won't understand a thing about human life if we persist in avoiding the most obvious fact: that a reality no longer is what it was when it was; it cannot be reconstructed.

In that etymological light nostalgia seems something like the pain of ignorance, of not knowing. You are far away, and I don’t know what has become of you. My country is far away, and I don’t know what is happening there.

In Irena’s head the alcohol plays a double role: it frees her fantasy, encourages her boldness, makes her sensual, and at the same time it dims her memory. She makes love wildly, lasciviously, and at the same time the curtain of oblivion wraps her lewdness in an all-concealing darkness. As if a poet were writing his greatest poem with ink that instantly disappears.

All predictions are wrong, that's one of the few certainties granted to mankind.

When she is older she will see in these resemblances a regrettable uniformity among individuals (they all stop at the same spots to kiss, have the same tastes in clothing, flatter a woman with the same metaphor) and a tedious monotony among events (they are all just an endless repetition of the same one); but in her adolescence she welcomes these coincidences as miraculous and she is avid to decipher their meanings.

That’s another enigma about memory, more basic than all the rest: do recollections have some measurable temporal volume? do they unfold over a span of time? […] And there lies the horror: the past we remember is devoid of time. Impossible to reexperience a moment the way we reread a book or resee a film.

إذ يستطيع جيشان كبيران أن يتصارعا حتى الموت من أجل قضايا مقدسة، لكن بكتيريا صغيرة ونتنة تقضي دائما على الاثنين.

Eventually we come to know and understand a lot of things, but it's too late, because a whole life has already been determined at a stage when we didn't know a thing.

We will never cease our critique of those persons who distort the past, rewrite it, falsify it, who exaggerate the importance of one event and fail to mention some other; such a critique is proper (it cannot fail to be), but it doesn't count for much unless a more basic critique precedes it: a critique of human memory as such. For after all, what can memory actually do, the poor thing? It is only capable of retaining a paltry little scrap of the past, and no one knows why just this scrap and not some other one, since in each of us the choice occurs mysteriously, outside our will or our interests. We won't understand a thing about human life if we persist in avoiding the most obvious fact: that a reality no longer is what it was when it was; it cannot be reconstructed. Even the most voluminous archives cannot help.

كلما كان الزمن الذي نخلفه وراءنا أكبر كلما أصبح الصوت الذي يحثّنا على العودة لا يُقاوم ، يبدو هذا الحكم مبدءاً عاماً، لكنه مزيف. فالكائن البشري يشيخ والنهاية تقترب، فتصبح كل لحظة ثمينة ولا يعود هناك وقت يُضيّع على الذكريات. يجب فهم التناقض الرياضي الظاهري للحنين : يظهر هذا بقوة في مرحلة الشباب الأولى، حين يكون حجم الحياة الماضية زهيداً.

لكنه في إيثاكا لم يكن غريبا، كان واحدا منهم ولذلك لم يخطر لأحد منهم أن يقول له "احكِ".

The life we have left behind us has a bad habit of stepping out of the shadows, of bringing complaints against us, of taking us to court.

In Spanish añoranza comes from the verb añorar (to feel nostalgia), which comes from the Catalan enyorar, itself derived from the Latin word ignorare (to be unaware of, not know, not experience; to lack or miss), In that etymological light nostalgia seems something like the pain of ignorance, of not knowing. You are far away, and I don't know what has become of you. My country is far away, and I don't know what is happening there

للحياة التي نخلفها وراءنا عادةُ الخروج السيئة من الظلمات، تقديم الشكايات ، وفرض الأحكام علينا .

I've always had the sense that my life is run by other people.

The stronger their nostalgia, the emptier of recollections it becomes.

أتخيل انفعال كائنين يلتقيان بعد سنوات. قديما تعاشرا، فيظنان إذن أنهما مرتبطان بنفس التجربة، بنفس الذكريات. نفس الذكريات؟ هنا يبدأ سوء الفهم: ليس لديهما نفس الذكريات، كلاهما، يحتفظ من لقاءاتهما باثنين أو ثلاثة مواقف صغيرة، لكن لكل منهما ما يخصه منها، ذكرياتهما لا تتشابه، لا تتقاطع، وحتى كميا ليست قابلة للمقارنة: أحدهما يتذكر للآخر أكثر مما يتذكر الآخر هو له، أولا لأن قدرة الذاكرة تختلف من شخص لآخر (مازال هذا تفسيرا مقبولا من كليهما) لكن أيضا (وهذا صعب التسليم به) لأنه ليس لأحدهما لدى الآخر نفس الأهمية. عندما رأت إرينا جوزيه فى المطار، تذكرت كل تفاصيل مغامرتهما السابقة، لم يتذكر جوزيه شيئا. منذ الثانية الأولى يقوم لقاؤهما على عدم مساواة ظالمة ومغيظة

As early as 1930 Schoenberg wrote: "Radio is an enemy, a ruthless enemy marching irresistibly forward, and any resistance is hopeless"; it "force-feeds us music . . . regardless of whether we want to hear it, or whether we can grasp it," with the result that music becomes just noise, a noise among other noises. Radio was the tiny stream it all began with. Then came other technical means for reproducing, proliferating, amplifying sound, and the stream became an enormous river. If in the past people would listen to music out of love for music, nowadays it roars everywhere and all the time, "regardless whether we want to hear it," it roars from loudspeakers, in cars, in restaurants, in elevators, in the streets, in waiting rooms, in gyms, in the earpieces of Walkmans, music rewritten, reorchestrated, abridged, and stretched out, fragments of rock, of jazz, of opera, a flood of everything jumbled together so that we don't know who composed it (music become noise is anonymous), so that we can't tell beginning from end (music become noise has no form): sewage-water music in which music is dying.

During the twenty years of Odesseus' absence, the people of Ithaca retained many recollections of him but never felt nostalgia for him. Whereas Odysseus did suffer nostalgia, and remembered almost nothing. ..... For four long books of the Odyssey he had retraced in detail his adventures before the dazzled Phaeacians. But in Ithaca he was not a stranger, he was one of their own, so it never occurred to anyone to say, 'Tell us!

Memory cannot be understood, either, without a mathematical approach. The fundamental given is the ratio between the amount of time in the lived life and the amount of time from that life that is stored in memory. No one has ever tried to calculate this ratio, and in fact there exists no technique for doing so; yet without much risk of error I could assume that the memory retains no more than a millionth, a hundred-millionth, in short an utterly infinitesimal bit of the lived life. That fact too is part of the essence of man. If someone could retain in his memory everything he had experienced, if he could at any time call up any fragment of his past, he would be nothing like human beings: neither his loves nor his friendships nor his angers nor his capacity to forgive or avenge would resemble ours. We will never cease our critique of those persons who distort the past, rewrite it, falsify it, who exaggerate the importance of one event and fail to mention some other; such a critique is proper (it cannot fail to be), but it doesn't count for much unless a more basic critique precedes it: a critique of human memory as such. For after all, what can memory actually do, the poor thing? It is only capable of retaining a paltry little scrap of the past, and no one knows why just this scrap and not some other one, since in each of us the choice occurs mysteriously, outside our will or our interests. We won't understand a thing about human life if we persist in avoiding the most obvious fact: that a reality no longer is what it was when it was; it cannot be reconstructed.

Everyone is wrong about the future. Man can only be certain about the present moment. But is that quite true either? Can he really know the present? Is he in a position to make any judgment about it? Certainly not. For how can a person with no knowledge of the future understand the meaning of the present? If we do not know what future the present is leading us toward, how can we say whether this present is good or bad, whether it deserves our concurrence, or our suspicion, or our hatred?

when she looked longer at herself in her new dress, it was she but she living a different life, the life she would have lived if she had stayed in Prague.

The feeling, the irrepressible yearning to return, suddenly reveals to her the existence of the past, the power of the past, of her past; in the house of her life there are windows now, windows opening to the rear, onto what she has experienced; from now on her existence will be inconceivable without these windows.

If in the past people would listen to music out of love for music, nowadays it roars everywhere and all the time, "regardless whether we want to hear it", it roars from loudspeakers, in cars, in restaurants, in elevators, in the streets, in waiting rooms, in gyms, in the earpieces of Walkmans, music rewritten, reorchestrated, abridged, and stretched out, fragments of rock, of jazz, of opera, a flood of everything jumbled together so that we don't know who composed it (music become noise is anonymous), so that we can't tell beginning from end (music become noise has no form): sewage-water music in which music is dying.

[Large countries'] patriotism is different: they are buoyed by their glory, their importance, their universal mission. The Czechs loved their country not because it was glorious but because it was unknown; not because it was big but because it was small and in constant danger. Their patriotism was an enormous compassion for their country.

Mesmerized, all she can do is watch this piece of her life move off; all she can do is watch it and suffer. She is experiencing a brand-new feeling called nostalgia. That feeling, that irrepressible yearning to return, suddenly reveals to her the existence of the past, the power of the past, of her past; in the house of her life […] from now on her existence will be inconceivable without these feelings.

كان يعلم جيدا أن ذاكرته تمقته، ولا تفعل شيئا آخر غير الافتراء عليه، وبالتالي فقد جهد كيلا يعطيها مصداقية ويصبح أكثر تسامحا مع حياته. لكن دون نتيجة، لم يكن يشعر بأيّة لذة بالنظر إلى الخلف وكان يفعل ذلك بأقل ما يمكن .

isn't beer the holy libation of sincerity? the potion that dispels all hypocrisy, any charade of fine manners? the drink that does nothing worse than incite its fans to urinate in all innocence, to gain weight in all frankness?

The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return. To express that fundamental notion most Europeans can utilize a word derived from the Greek (nostalgia, nostalgie) as well as other words with roots in their national languages: añoranza, say the Spaniards; saudade, say the Portuguese. In each language these words have a different semantic nuance. Often they mean only the sadness caused by the impossibility of returning to one's country: a longing for country, for home. What in English is called "homesickness." Or in German: Heimweh. In Dutch: heimwee. But this reduces that great notion to just its spatial element. One of the oldest European languages, Icelandic (like English) makes a distinction between two terms: söknuour: nostalgia in its general sense; and heimprá: longing for the homeland. Czechs have the Greek-derived nostalgie as well as their own noun, stesk, and their own verb; the most moving, Czech expression of love: styska se mi po tobe ("I yearn for you," "I'm nostalgic for you"; "I cannot bear the pain of your absence"). In Spanish añoranza comes from the verb añorar (to feel nostalgia), which comes from the Catalan enyorar, itself derived from the Latin word ignorare (to be unaware of, not know, not experience; to lack or miss), In that etymological light nostalgia seems something like the pain of ignorance, of not knowing. You are far away, and I don't know what has become of you. My country is far away, and I don't know what is happening there. Certain languages have problems with nostalgia: the French can only express it by the noun from the Greek root, and have no verb for it; they can say Je m'ennuie de toi (I miss you), but the word s'ennuyer is weak, cold -- anyhow too light for so grave a feeling. The Germans rarely use the Greek-derived term Nostalgie, and tend to say Sehnsucht in speaking of the desire for an absent thing. But Sehnsucht can refer both to something that has existed and to something that has never existed (a new adventure), and therefore it does not necessarily imply the nostos idea; to include in Sehnsucht the obsession with returning would require adding a complementary phrase: Sehnsucht nach der Vergangenheit, nach der verlorenen Kindheit, nach der ersten Liebe (longing for the past, for lost childhood, for a first love).

Misery and pride. 'On horseback, death and a peacock'.

If I were a doctor, I would diagnose his condition thus: "The patient is suffering from nostalgic insufficiency.

In a society run by terror, no statements whatsoever can be taken seriously. They are all forced, and it is the duty of every honest man to ignore them.

Men grow old, the end draws near, each moment becomes more and more valuable, and there is no time to waste over recollections.

She felt happy in Paris, happier than here, but only Prague held her by a secret bond of beauty.

and she thinks, almost joyfully, that it's fine this way because the truth is finally revealed: she feels no need to understand him or to have him understand her.

When we ignore the body, we are more easily victimized by it.

Even though the sewer pipelines reach far into our houses with their tentacles, they are carefully hidden from view and we are happily ignorant of the invisible Venice of shit underlying our bathrooms, bedrooms, dance halls, and parliaments.

If we do not know what future the present is leading us toward, how can we say whether this present is good or bad, whether it deserves our concurrence, or our suspicion, or our hatred?

He knew very well that his memory detested him, that it did nothing but slander him; therefore he tried not to believe it and to be more lenient toward his own life. But that didn't help: he took no pleasure in looking back, and he did it as seldom as possible.

En griego, «regreso» se dice nostos. Algos significa “sufrimiento”. La nostalgia es, pues, el sufrimiento causado por el deseo incumplido de regresar. La mayoría de los europeos puede emplear para esta noción fundamental una palabra de origen griego (nostalgia) y, además, otras palabras con raíces en la lengua nacional: en español decimos “añoranza”; en portugués, saudade. En cada lengua estas palabras poseen un matiz semántico distinto. Con frecuencia tan sólo significan la tristeza causada por la imposibilidad de regresar a la propia tierra. Morriña del terruño. Morriña del hogar. En inglés sería homesickness, o en alemán Heimweh, o en holandés heimwee. Pero es una reducción espacial de esa gran noción. El islandés, una de las lenguas europeas más antiguas, distingue claramente dos términos: söknudur: nostalgia en su sentido general; y heimfra: morriña del terruño. Los checos, al lado de la palabra “nostalgia” tomada del griego, tienen para la misma noción su propio sustantivo: stesk, y su propio verbo; una de las frases de amor checas más conmovedoras es styska se mi po tobe: “te añoro; ya no puedo soportar el dolor de tu ausencia”. En español, “añoranza” proviene del verbo “añorar”, que proviene a su vez del catalán enyorar, derivado del verbo latino ignorare (ignorar, no saber de algo). A la luz de esta etimología, la nostalgia se nos revela como el dolor de la ignorancia. Estás lejos, y no sé qué es de ti. Mi país queda lejos, y no sé qué ocurre en él. Algunas lenguas tienen alguna dificultad con la añoranza: los franceses sólo pueden expresarla mediante la palabra de origen griego (nostalgie) y no tienen verbo; pueden decir: je m?ennuie de toi (equivalente a «te echo de menos» o “en falta”), pero esta expresión es endeble, fría, en todo caso demasiado leve para un sentimiento tan grave. Los alemanes emplean pocas veces la palabra “nostalgia” en su forma griega y prefieren decir Sehnsucht: deseo de lo que está ausente; pero Sehnsucht puede aludir tanto a lo que fue como a lo que nunca ha sido (una nueva aventura), por lo que no implica necesariamente la idea de un nostos; para incluir en la Sehnsucht la obsesión del regreso, habría que añadir un complemento: Senhsucht nach der Vergangenheit, nach der verlorenen Kindheit, o nach der ersten Liebe (deseo del pasado, de la infancia perdida o del primer amor).

...Nostalgia seems something like the pain of ignorance, of not knowing. You are far away, and I don't know what has become of you. My country is far away, and I don't know what is happening there.

Promatra njihova usta koja se otvaraju sva istodobno, usta koja melju, izbacuju riječi i bez prestanka praskaju u smijeh (zagonetka: kako se žene koje se međusobno ne slušaju mogu smijati onome što govore?).

I imagine the feelings of two people meeting after many years. In the past they spent some time together, and therefore they think they are linked by the same experience, the same recollections. The same recollections? That's where the misunderstanding starts: they don't, have the same recollections; each of them retains two or three small scenes from the past, but each has his own; their recollections are not similar; they don't intersect.

ქვეყნისათვის სიცოცხლის გაწირვა: ყველა ერმა იცის ამ შესაწირავის ფასი. ჩეხების მტრებმაც, გერმანიამაც და რუსეთმაც, იციან, რა არის ეს, მაგრამ ისინი ხომ დიდი ერები არიან, ამიტომ მათი პატრიოტიზმიც გასხვავებულია: მათ თავბრუ ესხმით თავიანთი დიდებისაგან, თავიანთი მნიშვნელობისაგან, თავიანთი საკაცობრიო მისიისაგან. ჩეხებს ყოველთვის უყვარდათ სამშობლო არა იმიტომ, რომ იგი სახელგანთქმული და დიდებული იყო, არამედ იმიტომ, რომ იგი უცნობი იყო; არა იმიტომ, რომ დიდი იყო, არამედ იმიტომ, რომ პატარა იყო და თანაც მუდმივად საფრთხე ემუქრებოდა. მათი პატრიოტიზმი ქვეყნის მიმართ უზომო თანაგრძნობაა.

Toilets in modern water closets rise up from the floor like water lilies. The architect does all he can to make the body forget how paltry it is, and to make man ignore what happens to his intestinal wastes after the water from the tank flushes them down the drain. Even though the sewer pipelines reach far into our houses with their tentacles, they are carefully hidden from view, and we are happily ignorant of the invisible Venice of shit underlying our bathrooms, bedrooms, dance halls, and parliaments.

The life we've left behind us has a bad habit of stepping out of the shadows, of bringing complaints to us, of taking us to court.

Plus vaste est le temps que nous avons laissé derrière nous, plus irrésistible est la voix qui nous invite au retour

Oh, all that was so far away, almost forgotten. But during her mother's five-day stay in Paris, that feeling of inferiority, of weakness, of dependency came over her again.

He reflected that he had only one life and that he wanted to live it somewhere else.

Indeed, all he remembers are situations that make him displeased with himself.

She admired her passion, knowing that passion is by definition excessive.

Everyone is wrong about the future.

Love is the glorification of the present

The more vast the amount of time we’ve left behind us, the more irresistible is the voice calling us to return to it.

All predictions are wrong, that’s one of the few certainties granted to mankind. But though predictions may be wrong, they are right about the people who voice them, not about the future but about their experience of the present moment.

All predictions are wrong, that's one of the few certainties granted to mankind. But though predictions may be wrong, they are right about the people who voice them, not about their future but about their experience of the present moment.

That’s the age people marry, have their first child, choose a profession. Eventually we come to know and understand a lot of things, but it’s too late, because a whole life has already been determined at a stage when we didn’t know a thing.

Vê um jovem que se afasta da vida dela e se vai, parra sempre inacessível. Hipnotizada, nada pode fazer senão olhar esse pedaço da sua vida que se afasta, não pode senão olhá-lo e sofrer. Experimenta uma sensação inteiramente nova que se chama nostalgia.

I've always had the sense that my life is run by other people. Except for a few years after Martin died. Those were the toughest years, I was alone with my children, I had to cope by myself. Complete poverty. You won't believe this, but nowadays when I look back, those are my happiest years.

She pictures his jovial figure, dressed up in his T-short, shouting that Kafka was born in Prague, and she feels a desire rising through her body, the irrepressible desire to take a lover. Not to patch up her life as it is. But to turn it completely upside down. Finally take possession of her own fate.

The gigantic invisible broom that transforms, disfigures, erases landscapes has been at the job for millennia now, but its movements, which used to be slow, just barely perceptible, have sped up so much that I wonder: Would an Odyssey even be conceivable today? Is the epic of the return still pertinent to our time?

The scene taking place illustrates an immemorial error of men: having appropriated the role of seducers, they never even consider any women but the ones they might desire; the idea doesn't occur to them that a woman who is ugly or old, or who simply stands outside their own erotic imaginings, might want to possess them.

Quanto mais vasto é o tempo que deixámos para trás de nós, mais irresistivel é a voz que nos convida ao regresso.

The past we remember is devoid of time. Impossible to reexperience a love the way we reread a book or resee a film.

Le malade souffre de la déformation masochiste de sa mémoire

Irena went to the window to savor the freedom of solitude.

an old villa surrounded by a garden looked to them like the image of a comforting home, the dream of an idyll long past.

He goes on reading, and remembers nothing. So what has this stranger come to tell him? To remind him that he used to live here under Josef's name?

It was the incommunicable scent of this country, its intangible essence, that she had brought along with her to France.

È questa la cosa spaventosa: il passato di cui ricordiamo è senza tempo. Impossibile rivivere un amore come rileggendo un libro o rivedendo un film

The day was lit with the beauty of the land forsaken, the night by the horror of returning to it. The day would show her the paradise she had lost; the night, the hell she had fled.

The situation is very slightly solemn and thus embarrassing, as are all such situations when after the initial lovemaking, the lovers confront a future they are suddenly required to take on.

through the magical power of a dress she could see herself imprisoned in a life she did not want and would never again be able to leave. As if long ago, at the start of her adult life, she had had a choice among several possible lives and had ended up choosing the one that took her to France. And as if those other lives, rejected and abandoned, were still lying in wait for her and were jealously watching for her from their lairs.

She had always taken it as a given that emigrating was a misfortune. But, now she wonders, wasn't it instead an illusion of misfortune, an illusion suggested by the way people perceive an émigré? Wasn't she interpreting her own life according to the operating instructions other people had handed her? And she thought that even though it had been imposed from the outside and against her will, her emigration was perhaps, without her knowing it, the best outcome for her life.

How can she explain to Gustaf that within the magic circle of maternal energy, Irena has never manage to rule over her own life? How can she explain that the constant proximity of the mother would throw her back, into her weakness, her immaturity?

He was on a quest for sensations he had never experienced, did not understand; he was looking for them in his partner (on the watch for each little emotion her face might reflect), he looked for them in himself (for interminable hours of introspection)

دختر در اندوه عمیقی فرورفت، اما باز هم نسبت به او احساس خشمی نداشت. می دانست عشق یعنی بخشیدن همه چیز. همه چیز به معنای واقعی کلمه. و سرشار از شرم، دریافت که علی رغم همه چیز، عشق اش قادر به رویایی با این شهامت نیست. چه قدر مسخره بود! آن قدر مسخره که او را به گریه انداخت.

How was she to reconcile men's desire with the desire to be beautiful in their eyes? At first she had tried for a compromise (desperate journeys abroad, where nobody knew her and no indiscretion could betray her); then, later on, she had gone radical and sacrificed her erotic life to her beauty.

O mesmo cineasta do subconsciente que de dia lhe enviava pedaços da paisagem natal como imagens de felicidade, organizava-lhe de noite, regressos aterradores ao seu país. O dia era iluminado pela beleza do país abandonado, a noite pelo terror de lá voltar. O fia mostrava-lhe o paraíso que perdera, a noite o inferno de onde fugira.

for the first time in his life, sex is located away from all danger, away from conflict and drama, away from persecution, away from any accusation, away from worries; he has nothing to take care of, love is taking care of him, love as he's always wanted it and never had it: love-repose; love-oblivion; love-desertion; love-carefreeness; love-meaningless.

Nunca nos cansaremos de criticar a quienes deforman el pasado, lo reescriben, lo falsifican, exageran la importancia de un acontecimiento o callan otro; esas críticas están justificadas (no pueden no estarlo), pero carecen de importancia si no van precedidas de una crítica más elemental: porque la crítica de la memoria humana como tal. Porque, la pobre, ¿qué puede hacer ella realmente? Del pasado sólo es capaz de retener una miserable parcela, sin que nadie sepa por qué exactamente ésa y no otra, pues esa elección se formula misteriosamente en cada uno de nosotros ajena a nuestra voluntad y nuestros intereses. No comprendemos nada en la vida humana si persistimos en escamotear la primera de todas las evidencias: una realidad, tal cual era, ya no es; su restitución es imposible.

Bėgant metams, ji ims įžvelgti visuose šiuose panašumuose žmonių suvienodėjimą (žmonės norėdami pasibučiuoti visi iki vieno sustoja toje pačioje vietoje, visi rengiasi vienodai, girdami moterį vartoja tas pačias metaforas) ir alinamą įvykių monotoniją (įvykių, kurie yra tik amžinas to paties įvykio pasikartojimas); tačiau būdama paauglė ji kaupia šiuos sutapimus tarsi stebuklą, trokšdama įspėti jų reikšmes.

¿No veía una llamativa desproporción entre la insignificancia de la causa y la enormidad del acto? ¿Acaso no sabía si lo que proyectaba hacer era excesivo? Sí, pero precisamente lo que le atraía era el exceso. No quería ser razonable. No quería ser comedida. No quería medir, no quería razonar. Admiraba su propia pasión, aún sabiendo que la pasión, por definición, es un exceso. Como ebria, no quería salir de esa ebriedad.

To cover his tracks and mask his erotic withdrawal, he took pleasure in good-naturedly dirty stories and mildly ambiguous allusions, all delivered loudly and with laughter. The mother was his best ally, ever quick to support him with smutty remarks that she would pronounce in some exaggerated, parodic manner, and in her puerile English. Listening to the two of them, Irena got the sense that eroticism had once and for all turned into childish clowning.

And that was exactly her gamble: that they'd accept her as the person she is now, coming back. She left here as a a naive young woman, and she has come back mature, with a life behind her, a difficult life that she's proud of. She means to do all she can to get them to accept her with her experiences of the past twenty years, with her convictions, her ideas; it'll be double or nothing: either she succeeds in being among them as the person she has become, or else she won't stay.

Until then her view of time was the present moving forward and devouring the future; she either feared its swiftness (when she was awaiting something difficult) or rebelled at its slowness (when she was awaiting something fine). Now time has a very different look; it is no longer the conquering present capturing the future; it is the present conquered and captured and carried off by the past. She sees a young man disconnecting himself from her life and going away, forevermore out of her reach. Mesmerized, all she can do is watch this piece of her life move off; all she can do is watch it and suffer. She is experiencing a brand-new feeling called nostalgia.

Marketa really desired, with both her body and her senses, the women she considered Karel's mistresses. And she also desired them with her head: fulfilling the prophecy of her old math teacher, she wanted - at least to the limits of the disastrous contract - to show herself enterprising and playful, and to astonish Karel. But as soon as she found herself naked with them on the wide daybed, the sensual wanderings immediately vanished from her mind, and seeing her husband was enough to return her to her role, the role of the better one, the one who is wronged, Even when she was with Eva, whom she loved very much and of whom she was not jealous, the presence of the man she loved too well weighed heavily on her, stifling the pleasure of the senses. The moment she removed his head from the body, she felt the strange and intoxicating touch of freedom. That anonymity of the body was a suddenly discovered paradise. With an odd delight, she expelled her wounded and too vigilant soul and was transformed into a simple body without past or memory, but all the more eager and receptive. She tenderly caressed Eva's face, while the headless body moved vigorously on top of her. But here the headless body interrupted his movements and, in a voice that reminded her unpleasantly of Karel's, uttered unbelievably idiotic words: "I'm Bobby Fischer! I'm Bobby Fischer!" It was like being awakened from a dream. And just then, as she lay snuggled against Eva (as the awakening sleeper snuggles against his pillow to hide from the dim first light of day), Eva had asked her, "All right?" and she had consented with a sign, pressing her lips against Eva's. She had always loved her, but today for the first time sh loved her with all her senses, for herself, for her body, and for her skin, becoming intoxicated with this fleshly love as with a sudden revelation. Afterward, while they lay side by side on their stomachs, with their buttocks slightly raised, Marketa could feel on her skin that the infinitely efficient body was again fixing its eyes on hers and at any moment was going to start again making love to them. She tried to ignore the voice talking about seeing beautiful Mrs. Nora, tried simply to be a body hearing nothing while lying pressed between a very soft-skinned girlfriend and some headless man.

Povratak se na grčkom kaže nostos. Algos znači patnja. Nostalgija je, znači, patnja izazvana neostvarenom željom za povratkom. Za to osnovno značenje većina Evropljana može da se posluži rečju grčkog porekla (nostalgia) i drugim izrazima koji svoj koren imaju u njihovom jeziku : anoranya, kažu Španci; saudade, kažu Portugalci. U svakom od jezika, ove reči nose drugačiju semantičku nijansu. Najčešće označavaju samo tugu izazvanu nemogućnošću povratka u domovinu. Tugovanje za domovinom. Tugovanje za zavičajem. To se na engleskom kaže : homesickness. Ili na nemačkom : Heimweh. A na holandskom : heimwee. Ali to je samo prostorno ograničenje jednog sveobuhvatnog značenja. Jedan od najstarijih evropskih jezika, islandski, dobro razlikuje ta dva izraza : soknudur : tugovanje u opštem značenju, heimfra : tugovanje za domovinom. Česi, pored reči nostalgija, pozajmljene iz grčkog, imaju za taj pojam i sopstvenu imenicu, stesk, i njoj odgovarajući glagol; najdirljivija rečenica na češkom glasi : stzska mi se po tobe : tugujem za tobom, ne mogu da podnesem bol zbog našeg rastanka. Na španskom, anoranza nastaje od glagola anorar (tugovati) koji dolazi od katalonskog glagola enjorar, koji je, pak, izveden od latinske reči ignorare. Pod tim semiotičkim osvetljenjem, nostalgija se javlja kao patnja zbog onoga što ne znamo. Ti si daleko i ne znam šta se dešava sa tobom. Moja je domovina daleko i ne znam šta se tamo događa. Neko jezici iamju poteškoća sa nostalgijom : Francuzi mogu jedino da je izraze imenicom grčkog porekla, a nemaju glagol; oni mogu da kažu : je m' ennuie de toi ali reč s' ennuzer je slaba, hladna, u svakom slučaju previše lagana za jedno tako ozbiljno osećanje. Nemci retko koriste reč nostalgija u njenoj grčkoj formi i više vole d akažu : Sensucht : tuga za odsutnim; ali Sehnsucht može da se tiče onoga što se zbilo kao i onoga što se još nije (nova pustolovina) i ne uključuje obavezno ideju nostosa; jer da bi se u reči Sehnsucht uključila ideja povratka, treba dodati neku od odredbi : Sehnsucht nach der Vergangenheit, nach der verloren Kindheit, nach der ersten Liebe (tuga za prošlošću, za izgubljenim detinjstvom, za prvom ljubavi). Odiseja, epopeja koja je rodonačelnik priče o nostalgiji, rođena je u zoru antiučke grčke kulture. naglasimo i to : Odisej, najveća lutalica svih vremena, ujedno je i najveći nostalgičar. Otišao je (bez vidljivog zadovoljstva) u trojanski rat koji je potrajao deset godina. Potom je požurio da se vrati na svoju rodnu Itaku, međutim, svađe bogova produžiše njegovo stradanje najpre na tri godine ispunjene najčudnovatijim događajima, a potom na još narednih sedam kao talac i ljubavnik boginje Kalipso koja ga, zaljubljena, nije puštala da napusti njeno ostrvo. Na kraju petog pevanja Odiseje, on joj kaže : "Stoga se, boginjo gospo, ne srdi na me, ja znadem veoma dobro da se Penelopa mudra i licem i veličinom na oči neznatnija čini; ona je smrtna, a ti si vekovita i vazda mlada; ali i takvu ja je žudim i jednako želim domu svojem da dođem i ugledam povratku danak!" I Homer nastavlja : "Tako Odisej reče, i spusti se mrak, jer sunce se već smiri, a njih oboje uđu u prostranu špilju pa se ležeć jedno kraj drugoga ljubiše slatko.

...Оттогава тя се отдава на очарованията на тези родства, на тези бегли съприкосновения на настоящето и миналото, търси тези отгласи, тези съответствия, тези съзвучия, които я карат да чувства дистанцията между онова, което е било, и това, което е, времевото измерение (така ново, така удивително) на живота си; има чувството, че по този начин излиза от юношеството, че става зряла, възрастна, което за нея означава: става тази, която е опознала времето, което е оставила къс от живота си зад себе си и може да обърне глава, за да го погледне. Един ден вижда новия си любовник да тича към нея със синьо сако и си спомня, че първият й любовник също й харесваше със синьо сако. Друг път, гледайки я в очите, той възхвалява красотата им с много необичаен метафоричен израз; тя е възхитена, защото първият й любовник и бе казал за очите й, дума по дума, същата необичайна фраза. Тези съвпадения я пленяват. Никога не се чувства така пропита с красота, както когато носталгията по отминалата й любов се смесва с изненадите на новата й любов. Нафлуването на някогашния любовник в историята, която в момента преживява, за нея не е тайна изневяра, а още повече увеличава нежността й към този, който върви до нея. Като по-възрастна тя ще види в тези прилики жалкото еднообразие на индивидите (които, за да се целунат, се спират всички на едни и същи места, имат едни и същи вкусове за дрехи, ласкаят жената с една и съща метафора) и уморителната монотонност на събитията (които са само вечно повторение на същото); но през юношеството си приема тези повторения като чудо и е нетърпелива да разгадае значенията им. Фактът, че днешният й любовник странно прилича на някогашния, го прави още по-изключителен, още по-оригинален и тя вярва, че по тайнствен начин той е предопределен за нея.

Tokom dvadeset godina njegovog odsustva, Itačani su sačuvali mnoga sećanja na Odiseja, ali nisu za njim tugovali. Pri tom, Odisej je patio od nostalgije, ali se nije sećao gotovo ničega. Tu čudnu protivrečnost možemo razumeti ako prihvatimo da sećanje, kako bi moglo dobro da nas služi, moramo neprekidno vežbati; ako, u razgovorima između prijatelja, uspomene nisu stalno prisutne njih nestane. Emigranti okupljeni u svoje zajednice prepričavaju do mučnine uvek iste priče i na taj način pamte. Međutim, oni koji ne viđaju svoje zemljake, kao Irena ili Odisej, neminovno budu pogođeni gubitkom sećanja. Što nostalgija jača, to se više oslobađa uspomena. Što je Odisej više čeznuo, više je zaboravljao. Jer, nostalgija ne pojačava rad pamćenja, ne budi sećanja, sebi samoj dovoljna, služi sebi samoj, potpuno predana tuzi. Pošto je poubijao prosce koji su hteli da se ožene Penelopom i zavladaju Itakom, Odisej je bio primoran da živi sa ljudima o kojima nije ništa znao. Da bi mu se dodvorili, prežvakavali su mu sve čega su mogli da se sete do njegovog polaska u rat. Ubeđeni da ga ništa drugo osim njegove Itake ne zanima (kako bi i mogli misliti drugačije kad je on preplovio morski beskraj da se u nju vrati ?), do zamora su ponavljali događaje koji su se odigrali u njegovom odsustvu, željni da odgovore na sva njegova pitanja. Ništa mu nije bilo dosadnije od toga. On je očekivao samo jednu stvar; da mu napokon kažu : pričaj ! a to je bila jedina reč koju mu nisu nikada rekli. Dvadeset godina maštao je samo o povratku, a kada se vratio, razumeo je, začuđen, da se suština njegovog življenja, njeno središte, njeno blago, načazi izvan Itake, u onih dvadeset godina lutanja. To blago je izgubio, a mogao ga je pronaći samo pričajući. Nakon što je napustio Kalipso, ploveći natrag, on je doživeo brodolom kod Fenikije čiji ga je kralj primiio na svome dvoru. Tamo je bio stranac, tajanstveni neznanac. Svakog neznanca zapitaju „Ko si ti ? Odakle dolaziš? Pričaj!“ I on je pričao. Tokom dugih osam pevanja Odisej, potanko je opisivao svoje pustolovine pred zabezeknutim Feničanima. Međutim, na Itaki, nije bio stranac, bio je jedan od njihovih, te zato nikome od njih ne dođe pomisao da mu kaže : „Pričaj !“.