Zitate von Imre Kertész
Imre Kertész
Geburtstag: 9. November 1929
Todesdatum: 31. März 2016
Imre Kertész [ˈimrɛ ˈkɛrte:s] war ein ungarischer Schriftsteller jüdischer Abstammung. Er erhielt 2002 den Nobelpreis für Literatur.
Zitate Imre Kertész
„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, buch Kaddish for an Unborn Child
Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)
„Anyone who wants something else is Jewish.“
Quelle: 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, buch 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, buch 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.“
Quelle: 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, buch 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.“
Quelle: 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, buch 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.
„Maybe I'm worn out, but it could be that I never truly believed in what I believed.“
Liquidation (2003)
Kontext: The régime was overthrown, and I'm not going to pretend it was me who overthrew it. A general liquidation is in full swing, and I'm not going to join in. I've become a spectator. And I'm not even spectating from the front rows in the stalls but from somewhere up in the gods. Maybe I'm worn out, but it could be that I never truly believed in what I believed. That would be the unseemlier alternative, because then they would have smashed my ear in for no reason at all. That is the assumption I'm inclining to these days. (He breaks off and ponders, book in hand.) I did time for no reason, dragged the millstone of a police record around for no reason, was on probation for years for no reason, and I'm no hero, I merely botched up my life.
„It only has to be accepted temporarily — temporarily, but every day afresh. And every day ever more. Temporarily. Until we have lived to the end of our temporary lives, and one fine day we temporarily die.“
Quelle: Detective Story (2008), p. 66.
Kontext: "You mustn’t forget about your future, Enrique."
"I’m living for the present, Dad."
"Ah!" he waved that aside. "The present is just temporary."
‘ I boiled up. "I know," I burst out. ‘It only has to be accepted temporarily — temporarily, but every day afresh. And every day ever more. Temporarily. Until we have lived to the end of our temporary lives, and one fine day we temporarily die.
„For Kingbitter the Hamlet question did not run “To be or not to be?” but “Am I or am I not?”“
Liquidation (2003)
Kontext: For Kingbitter the Hamlet question did not run “To be or not to be?” but “Am I or am I not?”.
„Logos, the invisible spider’s thread that holds our lives together.“
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.
