Zitate von Djuna Barnes

„A man is whole only when he takes into account his shadow as well as himself — and what is a man's shadow but his upright astonishment?“

—  Djuna Barnes, buch Nightwood

Quelle: Nightwood (1936), Ch. 6 : Where the Tree Falls

„The unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy.“

—  Djuna Barnes, buch Nightwood

Quelle: Nightwood

„What is a ruin but time easing itself of endurance? Corruption is the Age of Time.“

—  Djuna Barnes, buch Nightwood

Quelle: Nightwood (1936), Ch. 6 : Where the Tree Falls
Kontext: In the acceptance of depravity the sense of the past is most truly captured. What is a ruin but time easing itself of endurance? Corruption is the Age of Time.

„And friends and relatives disperse,
And are not stirred.“

—  Djuna Barnes

From Third Avenue On
The Book of Repulsive Women (1915)
Kontext: Somewhere beneath her hurried curse,
A corpse lies bounding in a hearse;
And friends and relatives disperse,
And are not stirred.

„This life I write and draw and portray is life as it is, and therefore you call it morbid.“

—  Djuna Barnes

When asked why she is "so dreadfully morbid", in an interview with Guido Bruno (December 1919) http://www.case.edu/artsci/engl/VSALM/mod/brandelmcdaniel/index/interviews.htm
Kontext: Morbid? You make me laugh. This life I write and draw and portray is life as it is, and therefore you call it morbid. Look at my life. Look at the life around me. Where is this beauty that I am supposed to miss? The nice episodes that others depict? Is not everything morbid? I mean the life of people stripped of their masks. Where are the relieving features? Often I sit down to work at my drawing board, at my typewriter. All of a sudden my joy is gone. I feel tired of it all because, I think, "What's the use?" Today we are, tomorrow dead. We are born and don't know why. We live and suffer and strive, envious or envied. We love, we hate, we work, we admire, we despise. … Why? And we die, and no one will ever know that we have been born.

„It is the thing you are found doing while the horde looks on that you shall be loved for — or ignored.“

—  Djuna Barnes

What Do You See, Madam? (1932)
Kontext: If Helen of Troy could have been seen eating peppermints out of a paper bag, it is highly probable that her admirers would have been an entirely different class.
It is the thing you are found doing while the horde looks on that you shall be loved for — or ignored.

„The jests that lit our hours by night
And made them gay,
Soiled a sweet and ignorant soul
And fouled its play.“

—  Djuna Barnes

To a Cabaret Dancer
The Book of Repulsive Women (1915)
Kontext: p>We watched her come with subtle fire
And learned feet,
Stumbling among the lustful drunk
Yet somehow sweet. We saw the crimson leave her cheeks
Flame in her eyes;
For when a woman lives in awful haste
A woman dies. The jests that lit our hours by night
And made them gay,
Soiled a sweet and ignorant soul
And fouled its play.</p

„I talk too much because I have been made so miserable by what you are keeping hushed.“

—  Djuna Barnes, buch Nightwood

Quelle: Nightwood

„I have been loved,' she said, 'by something strange, and it has forgotten me.“

—  Djuna Barnes, buch Nightwood

Quelle: Nightwood

„Our bones ache only while the flesh is on them.“

—  Djuna Barnes, buch Nightwood

Quelle: Nightwood

„There's something evil in me that loves evil and degradation--purity's black backside! That loves honesty with a horrid love; or why have I always gone seeking it at the liar's door?“

—  Djuna Barnes, buch Nightwood

Quelle: Nightwood

„We are adhering to life now with our last muscle — the heart.“

—  Djuna Barnes

Quoted in "The Way of Transition : Embracing Life's Most Difficult Moments" (2002) by William Bridges, p. 204

„I was doing well enough until you came along and kicked my stone over, and out I came, all moss and eyes.“

—  Djuna Barnes, buch Nightwood

Quelle: Nightwood

„I like my human experience served up with a little silence and restraint. Silence makes experience go further and, when it does die, gives it that dignity common to a thing one had touched and not ravished.“

—  Djuna Barnes

„You beat the liver out of a goose to get a pâté; you pound the muscles of a man's cardia to get a philosopher.“

—  Djuna Barnes, buch Nightwood

Quelle: Nightwood

„To think is to be sick…“

—  Djuna Barnes, buch Nightwood

Quelle: Nightwood

„We are beginning to wonder whether a servant girl hasn’t the best of it after all. She knows how the salad tastes without the dressing, and she knows how life’s lived before it gets to the parlor door.“

—  Djuna Barnes

The Home Club: For Servants Only, in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (12 October 1913)

„New York is the meeting place of the peoples, the only city where you can hardly find a typical American.“

—  Djuna Barnes

Greenwich Village as It Is, in Pearson’s Magazine (October 1916)

„I’m a fart in a gale of wind, a humble violet, under a cow pat.“

—  Djuna Barnes, buch Nightwood

Quelle: Nightwood (1936), Ch. 5 : Watchman, What of the Night?