Roth Joseph Quotes

A lot of truths about the living world are recorded in bad books; they are just badly written about.

That was how things were back then. Anything that grew took its time growing, and anything that perished took a long time to be forgotten. But everything that had once existed left its traces, and people lived on memories just as they now live on the ability to forget quickly and emphatically.

Anyway, I am unfitted to hold down a job anywhere unless they were to pay me for getting angry at the world." 96

There is a fear of voluptuousness that is itself voluptuous, just as a certain fear of death can itself be deadly.

[O]ur relationship with nature has become warped. You see, nature has acquired a purpose where we are concerned. Its task is to amuse us. It no longer exists for its own sake.

The good man believed that shortsighted people were also deaf and that their spectacles would become clearer if their ears heard more sharply.

Only the small things in life are important

What I see, what I see. What I see is the day in all its absurdity and triviality.

I believe that my observations have always led me to find that the so-called realist moves about the world with a closed mind, ringed as it were with concrete and cement, and that the so-called romantic is like an unfenced garden in and out of which truth can wander at will.

Von der Humanität durch Nationalität zur Bestialität.

Our grandfathers didn't leave us much strength, not enough strength to live with, but just about enough to die a meaningless death. Ach!

Откакто съм възрастен, вече не плача и не се смея.

Anyone called upon to view misery will view criminality differently. All state officials should be required to spend a month serving in a homeless shelter to learn love.

A moving shadow means more to us than a body at rest. We are no longer taken in by a fixed grin. We know that only death has a rictus.

Our living room had a clock in it that used to clear its throat before striking the hours. He is that harrumphing.

In no time, the platoon were on their feet in front of him, formed up into two ranks, and it struck him suddenly, and probably for the first time in his military career, that these men with their drilled precision were dead parts of dead machines that didn't produce anything.

I am alone. My heart beats only for myself. The strikers mean nothing to me. I have nothing in common with the mob, nor with individuals. I am a cold person. In the war I did not feel I was part of my company. We all lay in the same mud and waited for the same death. But I could think only about my own life and death. I would step over corpses and it oftened saddened me that I could feel no pain.

Is a people that elects as its president an icon that has never read a book all that far away from burning books itself?

Погледнах за миг нагоре и в погледа ми се съдържаше цяла тирада. Три дни непрестанно да бях говорил, нямаше да мога да ѝ кажа толкова много неща.

That is how a farmer walks across the soil in spring--and later, in summer, the traces of his steps are obscured by the billowing richness of the wheat he once sowed.

Uno se pierde en la vida diaria como si entrara en un bosque. Se encuentra gente, se la pierde de nuevo, como los árboles pierden sus hojas.

On Sundays the world is as bright and empty as a balloon.

His heart was pounding. But his soul was easy.

It is the - actually profoundly unartistic - impulse to produce exterior likeness rather than inner truth: the same impulse as naturalistic photograpy and the "copy.

If someone had the ability to sit at every table at once, he would hear nothing but good about himself, and yet even such contortions would pale in comparison to those of the others.

Many of us served in the war, many died. We have written for Germany, we have died for Germany. We have spilled our blood for Germany in two ways: the blood that runs in our veins, and the blood with which we write. We have sung Germany, the real Germany! And that is why today we are being burned by Germany!

Morning birdsong filled the room. For all his high opinion of birds, privileged among God's creatures, still, deep in his heart, the Emperor did not trust them, just as he did not trust artists.

Отнесено към живота на народите, това означава: те напразно търсят така наречените национални добродетели, които са още по-съмнителни от индивидуалните. Затова мразя нациите и националните държави.

The weeping willows, on the other hand, are evocative of death. They are a little contrived, a little exaggerated, still green in the middle of all the colors of autumn, and there is a human pathos to them.

Confronted with the truly microscopic, all loftiness is hopeless, completely meaningless. The diminutive of the parts is more impressive than the monumentality of the whole. I no longer have any use for the sweeping gestures of heroes on the global stage. I'm going for a walk.

Astonishing, really, that they still look human. They ought to look like megaphones, like screams, like brutal desires, like beery ecstasies... like decadent barism. But the unconscious drive to remain in God's image seems to be so strong that not even the six-day races can quite eradicate it.

Er war so einfach und untadelig wie seine Konduitenliste, und nur der Zorn, der ihn manchmal ergriff, hätte einen Kenner der Menschen ahnen lassen, daß auch in der Seele des Hauptmanns Trotta die nächtlichen Abgründe dämmerten, in denen die Stürme schlafen und die unbekannten Stimmen namenloser Ahnen.

So they bring our poor Andreas into the vestry, and unfortunately he's no longer capable of speech, all he can do is reach for the left inside pocket of his jacket where he has the money he owes the little creditress, and he says: 'Miss Thérèse!' - and he sighs once, and he dies. May God grant us all, all of us drinkers, such a good and easy death!

Засаждам преживяванията си като диви лози и ги наблюдавам как растат.

„Er übertraf die Erwartungen, die er niemals auf sich gesetzt hatte

Voglia Dio concedere a tutti noi,a noi bevitori,una morte così lieve e bella

Somebody cracks a joke, a whole row laughs, one witticism sets off another, and, like matches, they flare up and burn down.

A skyscraper is the incarnate rebellion against the supposedly unattainable; against the mystery of altitude, against the otherworldliness of the cerulean.

And in the evening concealed fluorescent tubes light the room so evenly that it is no longer illuminated, it is a pool of luminosity.

Because human nature will not deny its weaknesses, even where it is seemingly in the process of overcoming them.

Ora toda a gente entende sempre palavrões bem arrotados

As he spoke he stroked both sides of his mutton-chop whiskers as if he wished to caress simultaneously both halves of the Monarchy

She looked like the dangerous proprietress of all the cushions and pillows.

Vede, caro amico, la natura non è mai tanto benigna come quando ci regala un piccolo difetto. Se fossi venuto al mondo senza imperfezioni, probabilmente non avrei imparato niente.

… insanlar ellerini pantolonundan güçlükle çıkardılar. Ceplerinin boş olduğunu ancak o zaman gördüler.” Joseph Roth, Toplu Hikâyeler

There is really nothing that people get used to so readily as miracles, once they have experienced them two or three times.

Domestic interior design is a fraught affair. It makes me hanker for the mild and soothing and tasteless red velvet interiors in which people lived so undiscriminatingly no more than twenty years ago. It was unhygienic, dark, cool, probably stuffed full of dangerous bacteria, and pleasant.

E il mondo non era più il vecchio mondo. Tramontava. Ed era nell'ordine delle cose che un'ora prima del suo tramonto le valli avessero ragione dei monti, i giovani dei vecchi, gli stolti dei savi.

Therefore, the very large department store should not be viewed as a sinful undertaking, as, for example, the Tower of Babel. It is, rather, proof of the inability of the human race of today to be extravagant. It even builds skyscrapers: and the consequence this time isn't a great flood, but just a shop...

He felt light, lighter than ever in all his years. He had severed all relationships. It occurred to him that he had been alone for years. He had been alone since that moment when desire had ceased between his woman and himself. He was alone -alone. Wife and children had surrounded him and had hindered him from bearing his pain. Like useless poultices that do not aid healing, they had lain upon his wounds and had merely covered them.

Lieutenant Trotta wasn't experienced enough to know that uncouth peasant boys with noble hearts exist in real life and that a lot of truths about the living world are recorded in bad books; they are just badly written.

In those days before the Great War when the events narrated in this book took place, it had not yet become a matter of indifference whether a man lived or died. When one of the living had been extinguished another did not at once take his place in order to obliterate him: there was a gap where he had been, and both close and distant witnesses of his demise fell silent whenever they became aware of his gap. When fire had eaten away a house from the row of others in a street, the burnt-out space remained long empty. Masons worked slowly and cautiously. Close neighbors and casual passers-by alike, when they saw the empty space, remembered the aspect and walls of the vanished house. That was how things were then. Everything that grew took its time in growing and everything that was destroyed took a long time to be forgotten. And everything that had once existed left its traces so that in those days people lived on memories, just as now they live by the capacity to forget quickly and completely.

Хубаво е, когато майките ни не са у дома, майките с недоверчиво питащи очи, тъжни и разплакани, строги и страшни, и все пак тъжни, клетите ни майки, които нищо не разбират и все ни се карат и които сме принудени да лъжем. Няма на кого да даваме обяснения и да изпитваме страх от лъжата, страх от принудителната лъжа и от разкриването ѝ.

Carl Joseph kept silent. It was as if there were no answer to Dr. Demant’s question in the whole big wide world. One could have wasted years searching for an answer, as if human speech were exhausted and dried up for all eternity.

Never yet has such furious movement brought in its train such slowness in the passage of time. Everything is spinning, only time stands still. The rotation goes on forever. And when the wheel finally stops spinning, the riders in their relief forget that they have paid money to enjoy themselves, and only had the fright of their lives. They feel glad to have gotten out alive.

It wasn’t till much later — long after the Great War, which people call the “World War,” and in my view rightly, and not for the usual reason, that the whole world was involved in it, but rather because as a result of it we lost a whole world, our world.

I might be capable of making figures that have heart, conscience, passion, emotion and decency. But there's no call for that at all in the world. People are only interested in monsters and freaks, so I give them their monsters. Monsters are what they want!

Отзвучала е сладката музика на неизвестността, хубавият примамлив напев на начеващия живот, избледняла е бляскавата далнина на безкрайните дни, охладняла е закрилящата топлина на младостта. Завършен е краткият ни път и чужд ни е мъжът, с всеки изминал ден става все по-чужд.

And the world was not what it had been. It was at an end. And it was in the disposition of these things that, barely an hour before its end, the valleys and the young and the fools would all be in the right, while the mountains and the old and the wise would all be in the wrong.

Among the writers he was reading when he wrote these stories in the 1950s—and he was reading all the time, all kinds of books, dozens and dozens of them—were David Riesman, Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, John Cheever, James Baldwin, Randall Jarrell, Sigmund Freud, Paul Goodman, William Styron, C. Wright Mills, Martin Buber, George Orwell, Suzanne Langer, F. R. Leavis, David Daiches, Edmund Wilson, Alfred Kazin, Ralph Ellison, Erich Fromm, Joseph Conrad, Dylan Thomas, Sean O’Casey, e. e. cummings—who collectively represented a republic of discourse in which he aspired to

The escalator seems to me to typify this: It leads us up, by climbing on our behalf. Yes, it doesn't even climb, it flies. Each step carries its shopper aloft, as though afraid he might change his mind. It takes us up to merchandise we might not have bothered to climb an ordinary flight of steps for.

Gradually too, Trotta's disappointment was replaced by a sweet melancholy. He made a pact with his sadness. Everything in the world was as sad as it could be, and at the very heart of this wretched world was the Lieutenant. It was for him that the frogs were bruiting so piteously tonight, and the pain-filled crickets were waiting on his behalf. It was for him that the spring night was filled with such a sweet and easy sadness, for him that the stars were positioned so unattainably high in the sky, and it was to him alone that their light blinked so longingly and vainly. The unending pain of the world fitted itself to Trotta's hurt.

Only on Sundays do you come across political scout troops with sandals, walking sticks, and knives. In the woods they do round dances, they rave about nature, and have big brawls with each other. It's a strange, baffling young generation. It covet's the poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling, but not his shy piety and love of nature.

I am not a man of my time. In fact I find it hard not to declare myself its enemy. Not, as I often remark, that I fail to understand it. My comment is merely a pious one. Because I am easy-going I prefer not to be aggressive or hostile and therefore I say that I do not understand those matters which I ought to say I hate or despise. I have sharp ears but I pretend to be hard of hearing, finding as I do that is more elegant to feign this handicap than to admit that I have heard some vulgar sound

So war es damals! Alles, was wuchs, brauchte viel Zeit zum Wachsen; und alles, was unterging, brauchte lange Zeit, um vergessen zu werden. Aber alles, was einmal vorhanden gewesen war, hatte seine Spuren hinterlassen, und man lebte dazumal von den Erinnerungen, wie man heutzutage lebt von der Fähigkeit, schnell und nachdrücklich zu vergessen.

Така става с хората, които се поддават на изкушението на дявола: в пъклените си дела те надминават дори дявола.

He had lived long enough to know that it is foolish to tell the truth

Quand on tombait malade, il fallait mourir. La maladie n'était qu'une tentative de la nature pour habituer l'homme à mourir.

De rails strekten zich uit tot ver in de wereld, als een ijzeren net omspanden ze de aarde.

Next to the old man’s dark gravity, the boy’s jingling colorfulness seemed even noisier and more radiant. At

Sometimes the district captain swung his cane slightly; it hinted at an exuberance that knows where to stop.

He simply used water to clear the way for liquor, the way streets are cleaned before an official visit.

Que Dios nos dé a todos los bebedores una muerte así de hermosa y fácil!»).

Zwonimir aber tat, als wäre Ignatz sein bester Freund, rief ihn beim Namen - "liebster Ignatz!" sagte Zwonimir, und Ignatz kam auf leisen Sohlen, ein alter Kater.

Ein weißer Schein erfüllt die Gasse, es ist, als ob ein Stück des Mondes in die schmale Gasse gefallen wäre. […] So kam also Bloomfield, wie ein Nachtangriff.

Übrigens könnte ich gar keinen Beruf in dieser Welt haben, es sei denn, man würde mich dafür bezahlen, dass ich mich über die Welt ärgere.

Die Vögel jubelten und der Alte lächelte ihnen zu, als ob er sie sähe.

Nach der Art der Europäer, die geographische Begriffe literarisch werten, hielt er den Osten für rätselhaft, den Westen für gewöhnlich.

Ich fuhr in das Atelier des modernen Schneiders. Mit einem Blumenstrauß drang ich vor, wie mit einer gezückten Waffe.

Die Blumen sind von Alexander Böhlaug", sagt sie, "aber ich schicke niemals Blumen zurück. Was können sie dafür?

Es klang wie ein Schlachtruf durchs Haus: Kaleguropulos kommt! Er kam immer am Vorabend, ehe die Sonne verschwand. Geschöpf der Dämmerung war er, Herr der Fledermäuse.

But the sound of despair is never pleasant; it sounds suspiciously like lying.

Taittinger pondered, but he was well aware that no amount of pondering had yet helped him to a sensible conclusion.

Die gefährlichste aller Krankheiten ist die Frau

Perhaps one can see one’s destiny accomplished before one’s very eyes and still feel hungry.

Dazzled by the luminosity of logic, she leans back, closing her eyes. She loses herself, she is lost.

A puff of wind blew out their skirts, and they looked like two wandering flags.

No one is as cautious as an elderly mocker, especially when he knows how sensitive the local press and rotary club are.

When I leave the hotel the porter stands beside the revolving door, primed to greet me, like a talking fork.

But the policeman radiates the calm and ease of a traffic light;

The woman who had escaped with her life now wept for the loss of her umbrella and was not at all grateful that her limbs were intact.

The calendrical harshness of nature is nothing to the boundless cruelty of history.

He wore a gleaming top hat. He had a pomaded, uptwirled black moustache. He looked like a first-class funeral.

Of course, it’s the things you’re not told that arouse your interest. The gaps in the news are the interesting bits.

His round cheeks are of a red that seems to glow from within, as if he had a lit candle in his mouth like a paper lantern at a summer fete.

Sunday is the bridge to the forgotten and discarded Holies of the world . . .

They talk about prohibition in America. What can one do in a country such as that?    'What does one do in America when one is sad - without alcohol?' asks Zwonimir.

Alla scuola dei cadetti non si è mai imparato nulla su come un ufficiale debba comportarsi in un caso simile

Alla scuola dei cadetti non si è mai imparato nulla su come un ufficiale comportarsi in un caso simile.

Wir saßen im Wartesaal dritter Klasse, umtobt vom Lärm der Betrunkenen, und sprachen leise und verstanden dennoch jedes Wort, denn wir hörten mit den Herzen, nicht mit den Ohren.

Des Menschen Heimweh erwacht draußen, es wächst und wächst, wenn keine Mauern es beengen.

Demek ki hayatının kırk beş yılını körlük içinde yaşamıştı, kendisine veya dünyaya ait hiçbir şey bilmeden.

El dolor le hará sabio. La deformidad, bondadoso. La amargura, tierno. Y la enfermedad, fuerte.

God had bestowed fertility on his loins, equanimity on his heart and poverty on his hands.

I am no longer Mendel Singer. I am the remains of Mendel Singer.

It was as if he had only just now lost his homeland and in it Menuchim, the most faithful of all the dead, the farthest away of all the dead, the closest of all the dead.

I have committed grave sins, and the Lord has closed his eyes. I have called him an izpravnik. He has covered his ears. He is so great that our badness becomes small.

Oggi tutti parlano la stessa, falsa lingua, e tutte le cose hanno le stesse ma false denominazioni.

La impaciencia, como sabe, es una enfermedad peligrosa. A menudo conduce incluso hasta la muerte a través del suicidio”.

El plebeyo es ambicioso. El hombre verdaderamente noble es anónimo. En la nobleza innata existe una fuerza, que es mayor que la luz que irradia la fama”.

Die Schatten waren eben Körper geworden und warfen eigene Schatten.

And so the widow married the periodically demented Taussig. She needed money, and he was less trouble than a baby.

And his fondness of people matched his low opinion of them.

»Stellen wir die Vernunft in den Dienst dessen, wozu sie uns gegeben ist: nämlich in den Dienst der Liebe.«

La famiglia Zipper abitava nel quartiere dei piccoli borghesi, dove gli appartamenti sono composti da stanze troppo anguste, hanno pareti sottili e contengono ninnoli inutili.

Los mendigos cayeron sobre él como una bandada de insectos, les dio dinero para rescatar su alma del pecado del dinero.

Abel apreciaba poco a las mujeres. Los hombres aman en una mujer la perfección que imaginan ver. Abel, en cambio, negaba la perfección”.

Every year, on the Emperor's birthday, he makes a resolution to begin a new life and not get into debt. And so he gets drunk. And comes home late at night, stands in the kitchen with drawn sword, and commands an entire regiment. The pots are platoons, the teacups are units, the plates are companies. Simon Demant is a colonel, a colonel in the service of Franz Joseph I.

But they bear the burden of being unpopular as proof of their importance - and these eminences turn the suspicion that less elevated customers are careful to disguise as courtesy into naked contempt and disdain. All the people one doesn't need right now are - for the person who will need them in a year's time - no more than air which he breathes but doesn't need to see.

[er dachte an] jenen Augenblick, in dem er das Bewusstsein verlor und der so war wie ein jäher, aber dennoch langsamer Fall in eine schwarzrote Schlucht aus Weichheit, Entsetzen und Tod.

The conductor was eating a young ladies’ cinema nibble with a rigid, humourless expression, as though it was the doorstop or hunk of sausage that would have accorded with his personality.

Er hieß Cäsar, nach dem früh verstorbenen Bruder seiner Mutter. […] Er mußte entweder ein Genie sein oder ein Hund. Wer war imstande, mit solch einem Namen seinen Eltern Freude zu bereiten?

...everything that had once existed left its traces, and people lived on memories, just as they now live on the ability to forget quickly and emphatically. ― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

God is with the vanquished, not with the victors! At a time when His Holiness, the infallible Pope of Christendom, is concluding a peace agreement, a Concordat, with the enemies of Christ, when the Protestant's are establishing a "German church" and censoring the Bible, we descendants of the old Jews, the forefathers of European culture, are the only legitimate German representatives of that culture. Thanks to inscrutable divine wisdom, we are physically incapable of betraying it to the heathen civilization of poison gases, to the ammonia-breathing, Germanic war god.

But our tram needs its overhead wires, and the wires need long, bare, wooden poles, with a couple of china pots flowering at the top end, for purposes of electricity. A caricature of a snowdrop.

I am thankful once again to strip off an old life, as I so often have during these years. I look back upon a soldier, a murderer, a man almost murdered, a man resurrected, a prisoner, a wanderer.

Puedo sentirme en casa en países extraños, pero no en tiempos extraños. Nuestra verdadera patria es el presente. El siglo es nuestra patria. Nuestro contemporáneos son nuestros paisanos y congéneres.

De wolken konden zich elk moment ontladen. Kleiner leek de onmetelijkheid van de atmosfeer en dichter bij de wereld; de hemel hing verlangend boven de aarde, klaar om deze te omarmen en te bevruchten.

Puedo sentirme en casa en países extraños, pero no en tiempos extraños. Nuestra verdadera patria es el presente. El siglo es nuestra patria. Nuestros contemporáneos son nuestros paisanos y congéneres.

Ich glaube, der Krieg hat uns verdorben. Gestehen wir, dass wir zu Unrecht zurückgekommen sind. Wir wissen so viel wie die Toten, wir müssen uns aber dumm stellen, weil wir zufällig am Leben geblieben sind.

Misery crouches beside me, ever larger and ever gentler; pain takes an interest, becomes huge and kind; terror flutters up, and it doesn't even frighten me anymore. And that'a the most desolate thing of all.

Era un año de prosperidad. Y en los huertos los copos de flores formaban una capa tan densa y tan alta que se hubiera podido caminar por encima descalzo, sintiendo la tierra tan sólo como una remota realidad.

Er bemerkte die falsche rötliche Frische im hageren Gesicht des Leutnants, die Schminke der Trinker. Sie lag über der wirklichen Blässe des Angesichts wie der Widerschein einer roten Lampe über einem weißen Tisch.

Count Chojnicki was curious. No other passion than curiosity sent him out into the world, drew him to the tables of the great gaming halls, sequestered him behind the walls of his old hunting pavilion, sat him down on the parliamentarians' benches, determined that he would return home every spring, compelled him to throw his regular parties, and prevented him from cutting his own throat. It was curiosity that kept him alive.

The world to come will be like this triangular railroad junction, raised to some unknown power. The earth has lived through several evolutionary stages - but following always natural laws. It is presently experiencing a new one, which follows constructive, conscious, and no less elemental laws. Regret for the passing of the old forms is like the grief of some antediluvian creature for the disappearance of a prehistoric habitat.

Gradually she got used to seeing men come and go: a race of childish giants, resembling clumsy mammoth insects, fleeting and yet weighty; an army of awkward fools who tried to flutter with leaden wings; warriors who believed that they had conquered when they were despised, that they possessed when they were ridiculed, that they had enjoyed when they had barely tasted; a barbaric horde, for whom she nevertheless waited lifelong.

Er war der älteste Kaiser der Welt. Rings um ihn wandelte der Tod im Kreis, im Kreis und mähte und mähte. Schon war das ganze Feld leer, und nur der Kaiser, wie ein vergessener silberner Halm, stand noch da und wartete.

- J'aurais bien dit encore, déclara le maire, que M. von Trotta ne pouvait pas survivre à l'Empereur. Ne croyez-vous pas, docteur? - Je ne sais pas. Je crois qu'ils ne pouvaient, ni l'un ni l'autre, survivre à l'Autriche.

Er wies auf einen bequemen, ledernen Sessel, wie ein Arzt, bereit, zu horchen und mit jenem freudigen Interesse zu hören, mit der Ärzte eine Krankheitsgeschichte vernehmen, weil es ihr Studium auf jeden Fall fördern kann.

En quoi le naufrage du monde, dont il pouvait à présent distinguer la venue, plus nettement que, jadis, le prophétique Chojnicki le concernait-il? Son fils était mort. Ses fonctions étaient terminés. Son monde avait sombré.

Файтонджията Якоб, мъжествен и як, хъркаше под навеса; хъркането му беше химн – възхвала на природата и здравето. Съвсем не беше смешно хъркането му. Звучеше непринудено и мощно – глас на природата, приглушена гръмотевица, зов на елен.

… seine Rede, die immer um zwei, drei Stärken lauter war, als es der Raum erforderte, in dem er gerade sprach. Es war, als wüsste er überhaupt nicht, dass es kleine und größere Räume gibt, ein Zimmer und eine Bahnhofshalle zum Beispiel.

Всичко в живота остарява и се износва: и думи, и ситуации. Всички подходящи моменти веднъж вече са се появявали. Всички думи веднъж вече са били казани. Не мога да повтарям думи и ситуации. Все едно постоянно съм облече в износени дрехи.

The windows in the soup kitchen are never opened, and for that reason the aroma of old meals lingers in corners and rises from the table tops - which are never washed - when the steam from the freshly cooked food brings them back to life.

…мислите ѝ отново се върнаха. Бяха я дебнали в неподозирана близост, като рояк мухи я нападнаха: дребни страхове, скокливи мъчителни грижи, зловещо стрелкащи се беди, заплахите на утрешния и следващите дни, безмилостни образи на безмилостни дни, и ужасът се сключи като стегнат ярем над потрепващата шия. Отлетяла бе сладостната музика на унеса, приятният, приспиващ напев на забравата, помръкна светлата шир на безгрижната пустота, изстина закрилящата топлина на слънчевия ден.

People today would hardly understand me if I started writing about freedom and honour ... Nowadays, silence is the better policy. I am writing purely to obtain clarity for myself, and, so to speak, 'pro nomine dei.' May He forgive me my sin!

Although the noise of the chattering clientele is much more significant than the topics of their chatter, it does finally constitute that type of social and indistinct expression that we refer to as rhubarb. The very particular volume in which people tell each other their news seems to generate all by itself that acoustic chiaroscuro, a sounding murk, in which every communication seems to lose its edges, truth projects the shadow of a lie, and a statement seems to resemble its opposite.

She wasn’t the first, nor the last. These are the women he crosses paths with. He doesn’t become her destiny, nor she his. They are his episodes, and luckily he too is just an episode. He wanders along on the fringes of danger, and nibbles at them.

My former home, the monarchy, was a large house with many doors and many rooms for many different kinds of people. This house has been divided, broken up, ruined. I have no business with what is there now. I am used to living in a house, not in cabins.

There still exists - even today - a yearning, a nostalgia for European solidarity, a solidarity of European culture. Regrettably, solidarity itself no longer exists, except in hearts, in consciences, in the minds of a few great men at the heart of each nation. European consciousness - or what one might call a ‘cultural European awareness’ - had been on the wane for years ever since the awakening of national identity. You could say that patriotism has killed Europe. Patriotism is particularism. ... However, European culture goes back much further than the nations of Europe. Greece, Rome and Israel, Christendom and Renaissance, the French Revolution and Germany’s eighteenth century, the supranational music of Austria and Slavic poetry: these are the forces that have sculpted the face of Europe. All these forces have forged European solidarity and the European cultural consciousness. None of these forces know national boundaries. All are the enemies of that barbarian power: so-called ‘national pride’.

Und Herr von Trotta glich einem Virtuosen, in dem das Feuer erloschen, in dessen Seele es taub und leer geworden ist und dessen Finger nur noch in kalter, seit Jahren erworbener Dienstfertigkeit dank ihrem eigenen, toten Gedächtnis richtige Klänge erzeugen.

Ich will damit sagen, daß man, wenn man genau achtgeben würde, unbedingt zu dem Resultat kommen müßte, daß alle sogenannten großen, historischen Ereignisse in Wahrheit zurückzuführen sind auf irgendein Moment im Privatleben ihrer Urheber oder auf mehrere Momente.

Es ist eines der Geheimnisse der Muetter: sie verzichten niemals, ihre Kinder wiederzusehn, ihre totgeglaubten nicht und auch nicht ihre wirklich toten; und wenn es moeglich waehre dass ein totes Kind wiederauferstuende vor seiner Mutter, wuerde sie es in ihre Arme nehmen, so selbstverstaendlich, als waere es nicht aus dem Jenseits sondern aus einem der fernen Gegenden des Diesseits heimgekehrt. Eine Mutter erwarted die Wiederkehr ihres Kindes immer: ganz gleichgueltig, ob es in ein fernes Land gewandert ist, in ein nahes oder den Tod.

I’ve been reading the seventeen novels of Joseph Roth, the Austrian Jewish novelist, some set in Vienna during the last years of the Hapsburg Empire. It is in the unimpeachable Efrussi Bank – Roth spells it in the Russian manner – that Trotta deposits his wealth in The Radetzky March.

He had lost his meticulous sense of the passing of time ever since he had given up several old habits. For after all, the hours and the days were meant precisely to maintain those habits, and now the hours and the days resembled empty vessels that could no longer be filled and need not be bothered with anymore.

Menuchim, Mendel's son, will grow healthy. There will not be many of his like in Israel. Pain will make him wise, ugliness kind, bitterness gentle, and illness strong. His eyes will be far and deep, his ears clear and full of echoes. His mouth will be silent, but when he opens his lips, they will herald good things.

Als hätte es noch eines Beweises bedurft, dass wird das geduldigste unter den Völkern der Welt sind – oder boshaft und medizinisch ausgedrückt: ein masochistisches. Wie in der Geschichte Berlins Absolutismus und Korruption, Tyrannei und Spekulation, Prügelstrafe und Bodenwucher, Grausamkeit und Gewinnsucht, Maskerade einer harten Korrektheit und windiger Schacher Schulter an Schulter Fundamente graben und Straßen bauen, und wie also aus Unkenntnis, Geschmacklosigkeit, Unglück, Bosheit und nur in selten günstigem Zufall die Hauptstadt des Deutschen Reiches entsteht, erzählt in fesselnder Weise Werner Hegemanns Buch ‚Das steinerne Berlin’.

This era no longer wants us! This era wants to create independent nations-states! People no longer believe in God. The new religion is nationalism. Nations no longer go to church. They go to national associations. The Monarchy, our Monarchy, is founded on piety, on the faith that God chose the Hapsburgs to rule over so and so many Christian peoples. Our Emperor is a secular brother of the Pope, he is His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty; no other is as apostolic, no other majesty in Europe is as dependent on the Grace of God and on the faith of the peoples in the Grace of God… The Emperor of Austria-Hungary must not be abandoned by God.

Of course the merchandise appears to be cheaper. Because where there are so many things close together, they can hardly help not thinking of themselves as precious. In their own eyes they shrink, and they lower their prices, and they become humble, for humility in good expresses itself as cheapness. And since there are also so many shoppers crowded together, the goods make less of a challenge or an appeal to them; and so they too become humble. If the very large department store looked to begin with like a work of hubris, it comes to seem merely an enormous container for human smalless and modesty; an enormous confession of earthly cheapness.

Er weckt in mir die Sehnsucht, und obwohl er sich nach Feldern seht und ich nach Straßen, steckt er mich an. Es ist so wie mit den Liedern der Heimat: wenn einer sein Volkslied anstimmt, singt der andere sein eigenes, und die verschiedenen Melodien werden ähnlich, und alle sind nur wie verschiedene Instrumente einer Kapelle.

An indescribable sadness emanated from the white splendour of the staircase and balustrade; the blood-red, now almost black splendour of the carpets. The huge palms in their huge pots looked like they had recently arrived from the cemetery. Their dark green leaves also looked blackish, like wizened, perished weapons from olden days.

It was quite obvious, it was, as people say, as clear as day, that Lieutenant Trotta, the grandson of the hero of Solferino, was partly bringing about the doom of others, partly being pulled under by those who were themselves going down, and, in any case, that he was one of those unhappy beings on whom an evil power had cast its evil eye.

… und zeugten von seinem modernen Geschmack, oder genauer: von der Mühe, die er sich gab, einen modernen Geschmack zu beweisen. […] Wenn Carl Enders in die Lage geriet, ein Bild zu kaufen, so achtete er darauf, dass es seinem Verstand und seinen Sinnen widerspreche. Dann war er sicher, ein modernes und wertvolles Kunstwerk gekauft zu haben.

Un demente no es peligroso por el hecho de que pueda suponer una amenaza física para su entorno, sino porque poco a poco destruye la razón de aquellos que lo rodean y que se encuentran en sus cabales. La locura en este mundo es mucho más poderosa que la razón de los hombres que están en su sano juicio. Y el mal, más poderoso que la bondad”.

Sobre los campos, a ambos lados de la carretera, se derramaba la niebla como si fuera plomo derretido, simulando el mar y la inmensidad. Por eso, las sombrereras, las personas, las conversaciones y el coche de punto resultaban tan insustanciales y ridículos. Llegué a creer que en verdad a ambos lados se encontraba el mar y me sorprendió su calma.

Actors, who relate their woes in many clever sentences and with much waving of hands and rolling of eyes—they should be made to ride in the cars for passengers with heavy loads, to learn that a slightly bent hand can hold in it the misery of all time, and that the quiver of an eyelid can be more moving than a whole evening full of crocodile tears.

Tu vida fue una vida llena de miseria, sin sentido. Cuando éramos jóvenes gocé tu carne. En los últimos años la he desdeñado. Tal vez fuera ése nuestro pecado. Como el calor del amor no estaba en nosotros, sino el hielo de la costumbre, todo a nuestro alrededor ha muerto, todo se atrofió y se echó a perder. Tienes suerte, Deborah. El Señor ha tenido compasión de ti.

Anyone deserves the West who arrives with fresh energy to break up the deadly, antiseptic boredom of its civilization, prepared to undergo the quarantine that we prescribe for immigrants. We do not realize that our whole life has become a quarantine, and that all our countries have become barracks and concentration camps, admittedly with all the modern conveniences.

Амбициозен е плебеят. Истинският аристократ е анонимен. Съществува някаква сила във вродения аристократизъм, която е по-мощна от блясъка на славата и успеха, от величието на победителя. Амбицията, както казах, е качество на плебея. Той няма време. Не може да дочака почестите, властта, признанието, славата. А аристократът има време да изчака, дори да остане на заден план.

Pues bien, vea usted, hay pocas mujeres en el mundo con las que se pueda concertar algo en firme. No es que falten a su palabra o que quieran engañar a propósito. ¡No! Su constitución no soporta llegar a un acuerdo definitivo. Y cuando están decididas a atenerse a lo acordado, su cuerpo, sin que ellas mismas lo quieran, se defiende. Y ellas simplemente se ponen enfermas”.

It’s as though the inhabitants of the cities were outdistanced by the wisdom and the aspirations of the cities themselves. Things have a better feeling for the future than people do. People feel historically, i.e. retrospectively. Walls, streets, wires, chimneys feel prospectively. People get in the way of progress. They hang sentimental weights on the winged feet of time.

Allora, prima della grande guerra, all’epoca in cui ebbero luogo i fatti di cui si narra in queste pagine, non era ancora indifferente se un uomo viveva o moriva. Quando qualcuno spariva dalla schiera terrestre non veniva subito rimpiazzato da un altro affinché il morto venisse dimenticato: restava un vuoto, e i testimoni vicini e lontani del declino ammutolivano alla vista di quel vuoto.

La Crypte des capucins, où mes empereurs gisent dans leurs sarcophages de pierre, était fermée. Un frère vint à ma rencontre, il me demanda: - Que désirez-vous? - Je veux voir le cerceuil de l'empereur François-Joseph. - Dieu vous bénisse, me dit le capucin, en faisant le signe de la croix. - Dieu protège l'empereur! m'écriai-je. - Chut! fit le moine. Où aller à présent? Où aller? Moi, un Trotta?

He took the Captain as he was, and was fond of him, with his cheery heartlessness, his incapacity to think beyond a couple of thoughts, for which his skull was far too roomy, his insignificant love affairs and childish infatuations, and the pointless and unconnected remarks that came out of his mouth, seemingly at random. He was a mediocre officer, who didn't care about his comrades, his men, his career.

Sedeva nel suo vecchio salone, nella sua vecchia casa. Era quasi irriconoscibile perché si era fatto tagliare i baffi. «Perché, a che scopo?» gli chiesi. «Per somigliare al mio domestico. Io sono il lacchè di me stesso. Mi apro da solo la porta. Mi pulisco da me gli stivali. Quando ho bisogno di qualcosa, suono e mi presento io stesso. Signor conte comanda? – Sigarette! – Al che, mi spedisco dal tabaccaio.

Maar de zee is eeuwig, rein en onberoerd door het kinderlijke en akelige spel van de mensen. Men heeft uitzicht in de wijde oneindigheid van hemel en water en vergeet. De wind, die de hakenkruisvlag laat wapperen, heeft geen weet van haar. De golf waarin ze weerspiegeld wordt kan niet helpen dat ze wordt ontwijd. Zo dwaas zijn de mensen dat ze zelfs in het aangezicht van deze eeuwigheden niet tot ontzag worden gedwongen.

Above all there's a lack of personal discipline, manners, decorum, natural discretion. If everyone causes their own individual catastrophes, how can there fail to be more general catastrophes? After all, the passengers on a bus or streetcar make up a community of a kind. But they don't see it that way, not even in a moment of danger. As they see it they are bound always to be the other's enemy: for political, social, all sorts of reasons. Where so much hate has been bottled up, it is vented on inanimate things, and provokes the celebrated perversity of inanimate things. Sending experts into other countries won't help much, so long as each individual refuses to work out his own personal traffic plan. There is a wisdom in the accident of language by which there is a single word, "traffic," for movement in the streets, and for people's dealings with one another.

Mira, Deborah, los vecinos vienen a verme, para consolarme. Pero a pesar de que son muchos y de que todos se estrujan el cerebro, no hallan consuelo para mi situación. Mi corazón aún late. Mis ojos aún ven. Mis miembros aún se mueven. Mis pies aún caminan. Como y bebo, rezo y respiro. Pero mi sangre se paraliza. Mis manos están marchitas. Mi corazón, vacío. Ya no soy Mendel Singer. Soy lo que queda de Mendel Singer. América nos ha matado.

Carl Joseph turned red. It seemed as if his father, the rain, the clocks, people, time, and nature itself were determined to make his trip even more difficult. On those afternoons when he had managed to visit the living Frau Slama, he had also listened for the golden stroke of the bells, as impatient as today, but intent on not finding the sergeant in. Those afternoons seemed buried behind many decades. Death overshadowed and concealed them, Death

The books were all first editions, some autographed by the authors. Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, published in 1961; Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead (1948); John Updike’s Rabbit, Run (1960); Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952); Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer (1961); Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus (1959); William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967); Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon (1929); Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1965); and J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951).

—You know, I’m no patriot, but I love my countrymen. A country, a fatherland, there’s something abstract about that. But a countryman is something concrete. I can’t possibly love every wheat and maize field, every pine forest, every swamp, every Polish lady and gentleman, but show me one field, one copse, one swamp, one individual, well, 'à la bonheur'! That’s something I can see and understand, that speaks to me in a language I am familiar with, that — because of its singularity — can be dear to me. And beyond that, there are persons I term my countrymen, even if they happen to have been born in China or Persia or Africa. Some are dear to me from the moment I first clap eyes on them. A true ‘countryman is immediately identifiable. And if he happens to be someone from my own patch as well, then, as I say, 'à la bonheur'! But there’s an element of chance there, the other is simple providence. He raised his glass, and called out: —Here’s to my countrymen, wherever they happen to hail from!

Mens sana in corpore sano", riefen darauf hastig vier oder fünf Herren auf einmal, und sie riefen es so durcheinander, dass es nur einem gelang, das Zitat zu Ende zu sprechen. Der Herr Lang, dem es leid tat, dass er die klassische Weisheit nicht selbst in der Ursprache vorgebracht hatte, beeilte sich, die Karten auf den Tisch zu werfen und zum ersten Male seit Jahren wieder "Alea iacta est!" zu sagen. Somit war festgestellt, dass alle angelsächsisch orientierten Herren vollkommene Humanisten waren.

Daar is een kerkhof, vol ijzeren kruisen, niet die, die op de borst hangen, maar de echte, die op grafheuvels staan. Dit is het Duitse kerkhof bij Bovincourt. Daar liggen 40.000 onbekende soldaten. Daar komen telkens achtergeblevenen, die weggeblevenen zoeken. Daar loopt de Franse bewaker rond, en drukt iedere Duitser die komt de hand en vraagt aan iedere Duitser: 'Kameraad, waarom hebben we gevochten?' - Eeuwige vraag van alle bewakers van oorlogskerkhoven. Je wordt pacifist te midden van 40.000 onbekende dode soldaten.

En especial, me gustaban las briznas de paja. De entre todos los objetos inanimados eran los que más vida tenían. A veces, cuando llovía, me ponía a mirar por la ventana. En las ondas de uno de los incontables arroyuelos que se formaban bailoteaba, giraba, coqueta y despreocupada, una pajita ajena al sistema de alcantarillado que se la llevaba y en el que acabaría por desaparecer. Yo salía corriendo a la calle. La lluvia, fuerte y rabiosa, me azotaba, pero yo corría a rescatar la brizna de paja y la alcanzaba justo delante de la rejilla del sumidero.

Totally Biased List of Tookie’s Favorite Books Ghost-Managing Book List The Uninvited Guests, by Sadie Jones Ceremonies of the Damned, by Adrian C. Louis Moon of the Crusted Snow, by Waubgeshig Rice Father of Lies, by Brian Evenson The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead Asleep, by Banana Yoshimoto The Hatak Witches, by Devon A. Mihesuah Beloved, by Toni Morrison The Through, by A. Rafael Johnson Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders Savage Conversations, by LeAnne Howe The Regeneration Trilogy, by Pat Barker Exit Ghost, by Philip Roth Songs for Discharming, by Denise Sweet Hiroshima Bugi: Atomu 57, by Gerald Vizenor Short Perfect Novels Too Loud a Solitude, by Bohumil Hrabel Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson Sula, by Toni Morrison The Shadow-Line, by Joseph Conrad The All of It, by Jeannette Haine Winter in the Blood, by James Welch Swimmer in the Secret Sea, by William Kotzwinkle The Blue Flower, by Penelope Fitzgerald First Love, by Ivan Turgenev Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf Waiting for the Barbarians, by J. M. Coetzee Fire on the Mountain, by Anita Desai

Era como un segundo matrimonio, un matrimonio repetido, esta vez con la fealdad, con la amargura, con el envejecimiento progresivo de su mujer. Y, sin embargo, la sentía más cerca, casi asimilada a su cuerpo, inseparable y para siempre, pero insoportable, atormentadora y también un poco odiada. De ser una mujer con la que uno sólo se una en la penumbra, se había convertido como quien dice en una enfermedad, a la que está uno ligado día y noche, que le pertenece a uno del todo, que uno no tiene ya que compartir con nadie bajo cuya fiel hostilidad sucumbe”.

From time to time I think of describing the “German”, or defining his “typical” existence. Probably that isn’t possible. Even when I sense the presence of such a thing, I am unable to define it. What can I do, apart from writing about individuals I meet by chance, setting down what greets my eyes and ears, and selecting from them as I see fit? The describing of singularities within this profusion may be the least deceptive; the chance thing, plucked from a tangle of others, may most easily make for order. I have seen this and that; I have tried to write about what stuck in my senses and my memory.

The officers went about like the baffling followers of some remote and cruel godhead, which simultaneously cast them as its colourfully disguised and magnificently decked sacrificial animals. People looked at them and shook their heads. They even felt sorry for them. They have many advantages, so people said. They can walk around with swords, women fall in love with them, and the Emperor looks after them in person, as if they were his own sons. But then, in a trice, before you've noticed anything, one of them has managed to offend another, and the offence needs to be washed away with red blood!...

Professionals who've spent their energy teaching masterpieces, the few of us still engrossed by literature's scrutiny of things, have no excuse for finding betrayal anywhere but at the heart of history. History from top to bottom. World history, family history, personal history. It's a very big subject, betrayal. Just think of the Bible. What's that book about? The master story situation of the Bible is betrayal. Adam—betrayed. Esau—betrayed. The Shechemite—betrayed. Judah—betrayed. Joseph—betrayed. Moses—betrayed. Samson—betrayed. Samuel—betrayed. David—betrayed. Uriah—betrayed. Job—betrayed. Job betrayed by whom? By none other than God himself. And don't forget the betrayal of God. God betrayed. Betrayed by our ancestors at every turn.

Cet empire sombrera fatalement. Dès que notre Empereur fermera les yeux, nous nous disloquerons en cent morceaux. Les Balkans seront plus puissants que nous. Toutes les nations organiseront leurs sales petits États et les Juifs eux-mêmes proclameront un roi en Palestine. Vienne sent déjà la sueur des démocrates, et je ne supporte plus la Ringstrasse. Les ouvriers ont des drapeaux rouges et ne veulent plus travailler. Le bourgemestre de Vienne est un pieux gardien d'immeuble. Les curés suivent déjà le peuple, on joue des saloperies juives et il ne se passe pas une semaine sans qu'un Hongrois, fabricant de W.C., ne devienne baron. Je vous le dis, messieurs, si les fusils ne partent pas dès maintenant, c'en est fait. Nous le verrons encore.

Je ne sentais pas d'aise, j'étais rentré dans mes foyers. Nous avions tous perdu notre position, notre rang, notre maison, notre argent, notre valeur, notre passé, notre présent, notre avenir. Chaque matin en nous levant, chaque nuit en nous couchant, nous maudissions la mort qui nous avait invités en vain à son énorme fête. Et chacun de nous enviait ceux qui étaient tombés au champ d'honneur. Ils reposaient sous la terre. Au printemps prochain, leus dépouilles donneraient naissance aux violettes. Mais nous, c'ést à jamais inféconds que nous étions revenus de la guerre, les reins paralysés, race vouée à la mort, que la mort avait dedaignée. La décision irrévocable de son conseil de révision macabre se formulait ainsi: impropre à la mort.

One rainy day in summer the children dragged Menuchim out of the house and stuck him in a tub in which rainwater had been collecting for half a year, worms were floating around, fruit scraps and mouldy bread crusts. They held him by his crooked legs and plunged his broad gray head a dozen times into the water. Then they pulled him out, with pounding hearts, red cheeks, in the joyful and horrible expectation of holding up a corpse. But Menuchim lived. His breath rattled, he spat up the water, the worms, the mouldy bread, the fruit scraps and lived. Nothing happened to him. Then the children carried him silently and anxiously back into the house. A great fear before God's little finger, which had just waved very softly, seized the two boys and the girl.

Perquè tal com l'amor i la justícia provenen de l'absència de temor, en canvi, l'odi neix del temor, i la injustícia neix del temor. Ara bé, el temor és el fill de l'Anticrist. Ens referim al temor de l'ésser humà envers els seus iguals. El lleó no tem el lleó, el tigre no tem el tigre, el xai no tem el xai, el bou no tem el bou, el corb no tem el corb, el barb no tem el barb, si no és que l'un amenaça l'altre. Per tal que regni el temor entre un ésser i un altre de la mateixa mena, cal que existeixi una enemistat entre tots dos per un motiu determinat. En canvi, l'ésser humà tem l'ésser humà sense que hi hagi cap motiu, sinó que el temor de l'ésser humà cap al seu igual no és pas la conseqüència de les seves enemistats i les seves guerres, sinó que n'és la causa.

I have come to know one or two apartments near certain stations really quite well. It’s as if I’d often been to visit there, and I have a feeling I know how the people who live there talk and move. They all have a certain amount of noise in their souls from the constant din of passing trains, and they’re quite incurious, because they’ve gotten used to the fact that every minute countless other lives will glide by them, leaving no trace. There is always an invisible, impenetrable strangeness between them and the world alongside. They are no longer even aware of the fact that their days and their doings, their nights and their dreams, are all filled with noise. The sounds seem to have come to rest on the bottom of their consciousness, and without them no impression, no experience the people might have, feels complete.

I have come to know one or two apartments near certain stations really quite well. It’s as if I’d often been to visit there, and I have a feeling I know how the people who live there talk and move. They all have a certain amount of noise in their souls from the constant din of passing trains, and they’re quite incurious, because they’ve gotten used to the fact that every minute countless other lives will glide by them, leaving no trace. There is always an invisible, impenetrable strangeness between them and the world alongside. They are no longer even aware of the fact that their days and their doings, their nights and their dreams, are all filled with noise. The sounds seem to have come to rest on the bottom of their consciousness, and without them no impression, no experience the people might have, feels complete.

Through the lofty arched windows the Kaiser saw God's sun rising. He crossed himself and genuflected. Since time immemorial he had seen the sun come up every morning. Most of his life he had gotten up first, just as a soldier gets up earlier than his superior. He knew all sunrises, the fiery and cheery ones in summer and the late, dreary, foggy ones in winter. And while he no longer recalled the dates, or the names of the days, the months, the years when disaster or good fortune had overtaken him, he did remember every morning that had ushered in an important day in his life. And he knew that a certain morning had been dismal and another cheerful. And every morning, he had crossed himself and genuflected, the way some trees open their leaves to the sun every morning, whether on a day of storm or a felling ax or deadly frost in spring or else days of peace and warmth and life.

Month on month, week on week, day by day, hour by hour, it becomes ever more impossible to give expression to the inexpressible nature of this world. The circle of lies that the miscreants draw around their crimes paralyses the word and the writers who employ it. Yet a common obligation makes you persist to the last moment: that is to say to the last drop of ink; it impels you to seize the word, in the truest sense, to take possession of the word threatened with paralysis. One must give apology today when one writes... and yet one must write on... One must write, even when one realises that the printed word can no longer improve anything. To the optimists, it might seem an easy thing to write. To the sceptics - not to say: the hopeless - it’s more difficult, and this is why their word weighs so much heavier. These are, so to speak, voices coming from the beyond, haloed by the radiance of futility. (For even futility has its radiance!)

The Church of Rome is the only brace in this rotten world. The only giver and retainer of form. By enshrining the traditional element "handed down" in its dogmas, as in an icy palace, it abstains and bestows upon its children the license to play round this icy palace, which has spacious grounds, to indulge irresponsibility, even to pardon the forbidden, or to enact it. By instituting sin, it forgives sins. It sees that there is no man without flaw: that is the wonderfully humane thing about it. Its flawless children become saints. By that alone, it concedes the flawed nature of mankind. It concedes sinfulness to such a degree even that it refuses to see beings as human if they are not sinful: they will be sainted or holy. In so doing the Church of Rome shows its most exalted tendacy, namely to forgive. There is no more nobler tendency than forgiveness. And by the same token, there is none more vulgar than to seek revenge. There is no nobility without generosity, just as there is no vengefulness without vulgarity.

- Je ne comprends pas... comment la monarchie n'existerait-elle plus? - Si on prends les choses à la lettre, elle dure toujours, naturellement. Nous avons encore une armée - le compte désigna le sous-lieutenant - et des fonctionnaires - le compte désigna le préfet. Mais son corps vivant se désagrège. Elle se désagrège, elle est dèjà désagrégée. C'est un vieillard voué à la mort, dont le moindre rhume de cerveau met la vie en danger, qui mantient l'ancien trône pour la simple et miraculeuse raison qu'il peut encore s'y tenir assis. Pour combien de temps encore, pour combien de temps? Cette époque veut d'abord se créer des états nationaux indépendants. On ne croit plus en Dieu. La nouvelle réligion, c'est le nationalisme. Les peuples ne vont plus à l'église. Ils fréquentent des groupement nationaux. La monarchie, notre monarchie, est fondée sur la pitié; sur la croyance que Dieu a choisi les Habsbourg pour régner sur tant et tant de nations chrétiennes. Notre Empereur est un frère séculier du pape, il est Sa Majesté apostolique, impériale et royale, aucune autre Majesté n'est "apostolique", aucune autre Majesté d'Europe ne dépend, comme lui, de la grâce divine et de la foi des peuples en la grâce divine. L'empereur de l'Allemagne continuera toujours de régner, même si Dieu l'abandonne, il régnera, le cas écheant, par la grâce de la nation. L'empereur d'Autriche, lui, ne peut régner sans Dieu. Mais maintenant, Dieu l'a abandonné!

Между другото: невинаги цялата тази благотворителност се раждаше от доброта на сърцето, тя беше един от неписаните закони на някои благороднически семейства. Възможно е преди векове техните прадеди да са правили благодеяния, да са оказвали помощ и подкрепа само от любов към народа. Но постепенно със смяната на поколенията тази доброта бе застинала и се бе превърнала в един вид дълг и традиция. Впрочем пламенната отзивчивост на граф Морстин бе единствената му дейност и забавление. Тази отзивчивост внасяше целенасоченост и смисъл в доста безделния му живот; той, за разлика от съседите и останалите дворяни, не се интересуваше дори от лов, а освен това тя бе и неизменно , приятно доказателство за неговата власт. Когато успяваше да осигури на този будка за цигари, на онзи някое разрешително, на трети някакъв пост, на четвърти някаква аудиенция - и съвестта му, но и гордостта му бяха удовлетворени. Ако обаче не сполучеше с посредничеството за някое от протежетата си, съвестта му беше неспокойна, а гордостта му - накърнена. И той не се отказваше от начинанието, а се обръщаше към всички инстанции, докато наложеше волята си, тоест волята на протежето си. Затова населението го обичаше и почиташе. Защото народът няма никаква представа за причините, които карат един могъщ господар да помага на дребните и безсилните. Народът иска просто да вижда "добър господар" - и в детинското си доверие към могъщия народът често е по-благороден от онзи, в чието благородство наивно вярва. Най-съкровеното и благородно желание на народа е господарят му да бъде справедлив и доблестен. И той жестоко си отмъщава, ако господарите го разочароват - като дете, което строшава примерно локомотивчето си, защото то веднъж е отказало да действа. Затова на народа трябва да се дават стабилни играчки, като на децата, и справедливи господари.