Henry Miller Zitate

seite 5

„Im Schwarzbrot war die Welt, was sie in ihrem Wesen nach ist - eine primitive, durch Magie gelenkte Welt, in der die Angst die Hauptrolle spielt. Der Junge, der die meiste Angst einfloessen konnte, wurde zum Anfuehrer und so lange geachtet, wie er seine Macht behaupten konnte. Andere Jungen waren Rebellen, und sie wurden bewundert, aber Anfuehrer wurden sie nie. Die Mehrheit war nichts als Ton in den Händen der Furchtlosen. Auf ein paar wenige konnte man sich verlassen, auf die meisten aber nicht. Die Luft war voller Spannung, man konnte nichts für morgen voraussagen. Dieser lockere, primitive Kern einer Gesellschaft brachte heftige Begierden, Gefühle, heftigen WIssensdurst hervor. Nichts wurde als erwiesen hingenommen; jeder Tag verlangte eine neue Kraftprobe, ein neues Gefühl von Kraft oder Versagen. Und so hatten wir bis zum Alter von neun oder zehn Jahren einen echten Geschmack vom Leben - wir waren unsere eigenen Herren. Das heißt diejenigen von uns, die das Glück hatten, nicht durch ihre Eltern verdorben worden zu sein, die abends frei durch die Straßen streunen und die Dinge mit unseren Augen entdecken konnten. Nicht ohne ein gewisses wehmütiges Bedauern denke ich daran, daß dieses streng begrenzte Leben der frühen Knabenjahre wie eine unermeßliche Welt, das Leben, das ihm folgte, das Leben der Erwachsenen, mir als ein ständig schrumpfender Bereich erscheint. Von dem Augenblick an, wo man in die Schule gesteckt wird, ist man verloren: man hat das Gefühl, daß man einen Halfter um den Hals gelegt bekommt. Das Brot verliert seinen Geschmack, wie das Leben ihn verliert. Sein Brot zu verdienen, wird wichtiger, als es zu essen. Alles wird berechnet, und alles hat seinen Preis.“

„Die schönste Gelegenheit, die das Leben bietet, ist menschlich zu sein.“

„Mach alles, aber lass es Freude machen. Mach alles, aber lass es Ekstase hervorrufen.“

„Jeder mit den Klassikern vollgestopfte Mensch ist ein Feind der Menschheit.“

„Mein Suchen nach allen möglich Ausdrucksmitteln ist so etwas wie göttliches Stottern. Ich bin von dem prächtigen Zusammenbruch der Welt geblendet.“

„Vielleicht fehlt uns der Träumer, und wir wissen noch nicht einmal, dass er uns fehlt.“

„Ein Mann, der seine Frau liebt, achtet nicht auf ihr Kleid, sondern auf seine Frau. Fängt er an, auf die Kleidung zu achten, hat seine Liebe schon nachgelassen.“

„Der wahre Anführer muss nicht führen. Er gibt sich damit zufrieden, den Weg zu weisen.“

„Jeder Mensch hat sein eigenes Schicksal: Das einzige Gebot ist, ihm zu folgen, es zu akzeptieren, egal wohin es ihn führt.“

“Every time you come to the limit of what is demanded of you, you are faced with the same problem-to be yourself!”

“He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment.”

“Jump off. You are a protected individual. Do not fear.”

“Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.”

“Your nearness is the nearness of planets. I am the void between you. If I withdraw there will be no void for you to swim in.”

“The essential thing is to WANT to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.”

“We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it means danger, revolution, anarchy.”

“As long as that spark of passion is missing there is no human significance in the performance.”

“Voyages are accomplished inwardly.”

“For the moment I can think of nothing— except that I am a sentient being stabbed by the miracle of these waters that reflect a forgotten world.”

“I am living at the Villa Borghese. There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere, nor a chair misplaced. We are all alone here and we are dead.”

“The pygmies are one of the most cultured peoples on the face of the earth. They live a wonderful life, a life of purity. Not only are they busy and productive, they're happy and healthy as well. If we puny Americans had to live under their conditions, we'd perish in a day. Modern man has much to learn from the people he calls 'savages'. Before we are down to the last blade of grass it would be wise to study the life of the Pygmies. The secret of our own survival rests with them, the people who know how to make the most out of very little and find complete happiness with the bare essentials.”

“Many is the mirage I chased. Always I was overreaching myself. The oftener I touched reality, the harder I bounced back to the world of illusion, which is the name for everyday life. 'Experience! More experience!' I clamored. In a frantic effort to arrive at some kind of order, some tentative working program, I would sit down quietly now and then and spend long, long hours mapping out a plan of procedure. Plans, such as architects and engineers sweat over, were never my forte. But I could always visualize my dreams in a cosmogonic pattern. Though I could never formulate a plot I could balance and weigh opposing forces, characters, situations, events, distribute them in a sort of heavenly lay-out, always with plenty of space between, always with the certitude that there is no end, only worlds within worlds ad infinitum, and that wherever one left off one had created a world, a world finite, total, complete.”

“The trouble with Buddhism?-- in order to free oneself of all desire, one has to desire to do so.”

“Vlaminck and Utrillo were very good friends, drinking buddies. One day they attend a funeral. They're walking behind the hearse in a procession, and they're having a great time conversing with one another. They are completely engrossed when suddenly one asks the other, 'Say, don't you smell something funny?' They look up and they're walking behind a garbage truck! They'd lost the hearse in the middle of their enthusiastic conversation.”

“The Battle is endless…we who babble and froth at the mouth have been at it since eternity.”

“The Gnostics thought the planet Earth was a cosmic mistake. I too feel that way — I'm through with this Earth before I've even departed from it.”

“Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.”

“I soon learned that one must give up everything and not do anything else but write, that one must write write write.”

“Political leaders are never leaders. For leaders we have to look to the Awakeners! Lao Tse, Buddha, Socrates, Jesus, Milarepa, Gurdjiev, Krishnamurti.”

“Often, when following the trail which meanders over the hills, I pull myself up in an effort to encompass the glory and the grandeur which envelops the whole horizon. Often, when the clouds pile up in the north and the sea is churned with white caps, I say to myself: "This is the California that men dreamed of years ago, this is the Pacific that Balboa looked out on from the Peak of Darien, this is the face of the earth as the Creator intended it to look."”

“Writing is Crude hieroglyphs chiseled in pain & sorrow to commemorate an event which is intransmissible.”

“We’re creators by permission, by grace as it were. No one creates alone, of and by himself. An artist is an instrument that registers something already existent, something which belongs to the whole world, and which, if he is an artist, he is compelled to give back to the world.”

“To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world, if men were only capable of staying awake long enough to let the idea soak in.”

“Moralities, ethics, laws, customs, beliefs, doctrines — these are of trifling import. All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm.”

“I blush to think of our origins - our hands are steeped in Blood & Crime. And there is no letup to the slaughter and pillage.”

“I tell you, struggle is what is missing in the lives of most young people today. If they think I'm going to support them while they create great works of art, then they've missed the point of my work, of my life! In the process of becoming a writer or an artist one has to be willing to starve. Struggle is the most invaluable experience of all. Suffering seems to be the inevitable fate of the creative sensitive types. Poverty, disease, death, unrequited love affairs, and disappointments of every sort fan the flame of the artistic spirit. The greatest works of art were not created by spoiled brats. They were born for the most part out of a sense of despair, and if not despair then just plain hard work. Somewhere along the line the artist learns the art of transformation.”

“The artist who becomes thoroughly aware consequently ceases to be one.”

“I venerate van Gogh. He was a remarkable human being, a man who knew about love. His work reflects a spirit filled with light, even though his life was a tragedy in many ways.”