Imre Kertész citáty
Imre Kertész
Datum narození: 9. listopad 1929
Datum úmrtí: 31. březen 2016
Imre Kertész, maďarsky Kertész Imre , byl židovsko-maďarský spisovatel a nositel Nobelovy ceny za literaturu za rok 2002. Hlavním tématem jeho románů je pronásledování Židů během holocaustu.
Citáty Imre Kertész
„V koncentračním táboře jsem zažil nejsilnější pocit štěstí. Neumíte si představit jaké to je ležet v táborové nemocnici nebo zažít desetiminutovou pauzu během nepopsatelné práce. Být velmi blízko smrti je také druh štěstí. A pouhé přežití představuje největší myslitelnou svobodu.“
Zdroj: [Zemřel jediný maďarský nositel Nobelovy ceny za literaturu Imre Kertész, rozhlas.cz, 2016-03-31, 2016-04-04, http://www.rozhlas.cz/zpravy/literatura/_zprava/1598755]
„Jsem produkt evropské kultury, dekadent, pokud chcete, vykořeněný. Neoznačujte mě za Maďara.“
Zdroj: [Je Imre Kertész dostatečně maďarský pro státní vyznamenání?, ceskatelevize.cz, 2014-08-22, 2015-06-11, http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/ct24/kultura/283865-je-imre-kertesz-dostatecne-madarsky-pro-statni-vyznamenani/]
„Auschwitz, I told her, appears to me in the image of a father; yes, the two terms, Auschwitz, and father, resonate the same echoes in me, and if the observation is that God is an exalted father, then God, too is revealed to me in the image of Auschwitz.“
— Imre Kertész, kniha Kaddish for an Unborn Child
Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)
„Anyone who wants something else is Jewish.“
Zdroj: Detective Story (2008), p. 13.
„I live and occasionally I look up at the glorious air or the clouds into which I keep digging my grave with my pen, diligently, like a forced laborer, whom they order every day to dig deeper with his spade…“
— Imre Kertész, kniha Kaddish for an Unborn Child
Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)
„I have felt that some sort of awful shame is attached to my name and that I have somehow brought this shame along from somewhere I have never been, and that I have carried this sin as my sin even though I have never committed it; this sin pursues me all my life, which life is undoubtedly not my own even thought I live it, I suffer from it die of it.“
— Imre Kertész, kniha Kaddish for an Unborn Child
Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)
„Survivors represent a separate species, just like an animal species.“
Liquidation (2003)
Kontext: Survivors represent a separate species, just like an animal species. We are all survivors, that is what determines our perverse and degenerate mental world. Auschwitz.
„Once you have started, the only way back is to go forward.“
Zdroj: Detective Story (2008), p. 91.
Kontext: There was truth in Diaz’s logic, yes: our line of work is like that. Once you have started, the only way back is to go forward.
„A person’s true means of expression is his life.“
Liquidation (2003)
Kontext: A person’s true means of expression is his life. Living the shame of life and maintaining silence, that was the greatest accomplishment of all.
„Man may live like a worm, but he writes like a god. There was a time when that secret was known, but now it has been forgotten; the world is composed of disintegrating fragments, an incoherent dark chaos, sustained by writing alone.“
Liquidation (2003)
Kontext: But I believe in writing — nothing else; just writing. Man may live like a worm, but he writes like a god. There was a time when that secret was known, but now it has been forgotten; the world is composed of disintegrating fragments, an incoherent dark chaos, sustained by writing alone. If you have a concept of the world, if you have not yet forgotten all that has happened, that you have a world at all, it is writing that has created that for you, and ceaselessly goes on creating it; Logos, the invisible spider’s thread that holds our lives together.
„What we usually mean by fate is what we least understand, that is to say, ourselves“
— Imre Kertész, kniha Kaddish for an Unborn Child
Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)
Kontext: What we usually mean by fate is what we least understand, that is to say, ourselves, that subversive, unknown individual constantly plotting against us, whom, estranged and alienated but still bowing with disgust before his might, we call, for the of simplicity, fate.
„It seems that only one philosophy can succeed the philosophy of existentialism: nonexistentialism, the philosophy of nonexistent existence.“
Zdroj: Detective Story (2008), p. 30.
Kontext: I exist. Is this a life still? No, just vegetating. It seems that only one philosophy can succeed the philosophy of existentialism: nonexistentialism, the philosophy of nonexistent existence.
„To live and to write, it's all the same, both together, for the pen is my spade“
— Imre Kertész, kniha Kaddish for an Unborn Child
Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)
Kontext: To live and to write, it's all the same, both together, for the pen is my spade; when I look ahead I only look back, when I stare at the paper I only see the past: she crossed that bluish green carpet as if she were crossing the sea because she wanted to talk to me, for she found out that I was "B.", author and literary translator, one of whose "works" had read, and which she definitely wanted to discuss with me, she said, and we talked and talked until we talked ourselves into bed — Good God! — and continued to talk even then, uninterrupted.
„Giving state support to literature is the state's sneaky way for the state liquidation of literature.“
Liquidation (2003)
Kontext: The state is always the same. The only reason it financed literature up till now was in order to liquidate it. Giving state support to literature is the state's sneaky way for the state liquidation of literature.
„If people had understood the greatness of those works, they would have destroyed them long ago.“
Liquidation (2003)
Kontext: That evening he talked about Leonardo and Michelangelo. It is impossible to place them in the human world, he said. It is impossible to comprehend how anything that attests to greatness has survived; it is obviously a result of innumerable chance events and of human incomprehension, he said. If people had understood the greatness of those works, they would have destroyed them long ago. Fortunately, people have lost their flair for greatness and only their flair for murder has persisted, though undoubtedly they have refined the latter, their flair for murder, to an art, almost to point of greatness, he said.
