Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants Quotes

“Night does not communicate with the day. It burns up in it. Night is carried to the stake at dawn. And its people along with it—the drinkers, the poets, the lovers. We are a people of the banished, of the condemned.”
― Mathias Énard, Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants

“Beauty comes from abandoning the refuge of the old forms for the uncertainty of the present.”
― Mathias Énard, Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants

“A pošto su to deca, pričaj im o bitkama
i kraljevima, đavolima, slonovima i
anđelima, ali ne zaboravi da im pričaš
o ljubavi i sličnim stvarima.

(epigraf, Radjard Kipling - Životna smetnja)”
― Mathias Énard, Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants

“I know that men are children who chase away their despair with anger, their fear with love; they respond to the void by building castles and temples. They cling to stories, they shove them in front of them like banners; everyone makes some story his own so as to attach himself to the crowd that shares it.”
― Mathias Énard, Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants

“I’m not looking for love. I’m looking for consolation. Comfort for all these countries we have lost since we left our mother’s womb, which we replace with stories, like greedy children, our eyes wide open to the storyteller. The truth is that there is nothing but suffering: we try to forget, in the arms of strangers, that we will soon vanish.”
― Mathias Énard, Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants

“There is nothing more majestic than a bridge. No poem or story can ever have that strength.”
― Mathias Énard, Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants

“Since the dawn of time people have had to humiliate themselves before the Caesars.”
― Mathias Énard, Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants

“He hears Saint Paul’s phrase in his head: “To learn how to pray, you must go to sea,” and he understands. The immensity of the watery plain frightens him.”
― Mathias Énard, Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants

“Noć se ne obraća danu. Ona u njemu sagoreva. U zoru se prinosi na lomaču. A sa njom i njeni ljudi, pijanci, pesnici, ljubavnici.”
― Mathias Énard, Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants

“Often one wishes for things to repeat; you want to relive a moment that escaped, return to a gesture that didn’t take place or a word that wasn’t uttered; you try to find again the sounds that were left in your throat, the caress you didn’t dare give, the tightening of the chest that is gone forever.”
― Mathias Énard, Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants

“He begins to recite some verses. A Persian poem. I don’t stop desiring when my desire Is fulfilled, when my mouth wins The red lips of my beloved, When my soul expires in the sweetness of her breath. Arslan smiles, he has recognized the inimitable Hafez of Shiraz, which is confirmed by the last couplet: And you will always invoke the name of Hafez In the company of the sad and the brokenhearted.”
― Mathias Énard, Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants

“Night does not communicate with the day. it burns up in it. Night is carried to the stake at dawn. And its people along with it — the drinkers, the poets, the lovers. We are a people of the banished, of the condemned. I do not know you. You want to join us. Your fear and confusion propel you into our arms; you want to nestle in there, but your tough body keeps clinging to its certainties; it pushes desire away, refuses to surrender. I don’t blame you. You live in another prison, a world of strength and bravery where you think you can be carried aloft in triumph; you think you can win the goodwill of the powerful, you seek glory and wealth. But when night falls, you tremble. You don’t drink, for you are afraid; you know that the burning sensation of alcohol plunges you into weakness, into an irresistible need to find caresses, a vanished tenderness, the lost world of childhood, gratification, the need to find peace when faced with the glistering uncertainty of darkness. You think you desire my beauty, the softness of my skin, the brilliance of my smile, the delicacy of my limbs, the crimson of my lips, but actually, what you want without realizing it is for your fears to disappear, for healing, union, return, oblivion. This power inside you devours you in solitude. So you suffer, lost in an infinite twilight, one foot in day and the other in night.”
― Mathias Énard, Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants

“Il leur faudra parler longtemps de batailles perdues, de rois oubliés, d'animaux disparus. De ce qui fut, de ce qui aurait pu être pour que cela soit de nouveau.”
― Mathias Énard, Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants

“La nuit ne communique pas avec le jour. Elle y brûle. On la porte au bûcher à l'aube. Et avec elle ses gens, les buveurs, les poètes, les amants. Nous sommes un peuple de relégués, de condamnés à mort.”
― Mathias Énard, Vorbește-le despre bătălii, regi și elefanți

“To learn how to pray, you must go to sea,”
― Mathias Énard, Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants

“Entscheide dich für mich und meine erloschenen Geschichten.”
― Mathias Énard, Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants

“Someday you too will yield to the present, even if only in death.”
― Mathias Énard, Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants

“How many works of art will there have to be to put beauty into the world?”
― Mathias Énard, Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants

“Michelangelo dreams of a banquet from long ago, when you could discuss Eros without your speech being slurred by wine, without your elocution being impaired by it, when beauty was only contemplation of beauty, far from these ugly moments prefiguring death, when bodies fought no longer against their fluids, their moods, their desires. He dreams of an ideal banquet, where table companions wouldn’t reel from fatigue or alcohol, when all vulgarity would be banished for the sake of art.”
― Mathias Énard, Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants

“We all ape God in His absence.”
― Mathias Énard, Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants

“He will express his suffering more clearly; he will compose two ghazals on the burning of jealousy, a sweet burning, for it fortifies love by consuming it.”
― Mathias Énard, Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants

“The beverage is sweet, with a taste of herbs; the first two glasses are drunk quickly, to reach a state one will prolong by slowing down the rhythm. He lets himself give in to the sweet derangement of all his senses.”
― Mathias Énard, Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants

“Michelangelo is searching for love. Michelangelo is afraid of love just as he’s afraid of Hell.”
― Mathias Énard, Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants

“Michelangelo was not very handsome, with a forehead that was too broad, a crooked nose — broken during a brawl in his youth — bushy eyebrows, ears that stuck out a little. He couldn’t stand his own face, it was said. It was often said that if he sought perfection of features, beauty in faces, it’s because he himself lacked them completely. Only old age and fame would give him an unparalleled aura, like a kind of patina on an object that started out ugly. Perhaps it’s in this frustration that we can find the energy of his art; in the violence of the era, in the humiliation of artists, in rebellion against nature, in the lure of money, the inextinguishable thirst for advancement and glory that is the most powerful of motivators.”
― Mathias Énard, Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants

“I know that men are children who chase away their despair with anger, their fear with love; they respond to the void by building castles and temples. They cling to stories, they shove them in front of them like banners; everyone makes some story his own so as to attach himself to the crowd that shares it. You conquer people by telling them of battles, kings, elephants, and marvelous beings; by speaking to them about the happiness they will find beyond death, the bright light that presided over their birth, the angels wheeling around them, the demons menacing them, and love, love, that promise of oblivion and satiety. Tell them about all of that, and they will love you; they will make you the equal of a god. But you will know, since you are here pressed against me, you ill-smelling Frank whom chance has brought to my hands, you will know that all this is nothing but a perfumed veil hiding the eternal suffering of night.”
― Mathias Énard, Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants

“Your drunkenness is so sweet to me that it intoxicates me. You are breathing gently. You are alive. I would like to move over to your side of the world, see into your dreams.”
― Mathias Énard, Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants

“And, more than anything, he loved drawing, the black wound of the ink, that caress scraping the grain of the paper.”
― Mathias Énard, Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants

“At first sight Mesihi’s is a very different art: the height of the letter, the thickness of the line that gives movement, the disposition of the consonants, space stretching out according to sounds. Clinging to his reed pen, the calligrapher-poet gives a face to words, to phrases, to lines or verses.”
― Mathias Énard, Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants

“Decidedly these Ottomans are masters of light. Bayezid’s library, like his mosque, on a hill, is bathed in an omnipresent but discreet sunlight, whose rays never fall directly on the readers. You need all the attention of a Michelangelo to discover, in the knowledgeable game of placement and orientation of windows, the secret of the miraculous harmony of this simple space whose majesty, instead of crushing the visitor, places him at the center of the arrangement, flatters him, exalts and reassures him.”
― Mathias Énard, Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants

“It begins with the proportions. Architecture is the art of equilibrium; just as the body is ruled by precise laws — length of arms, of legs, position of muscles — a building obeys rules that guarantee its harmony. The arrangement of things is the key to a façade, the beauty of a temple stems from the order, the articulation of the elements with respect to one another.”
― Mathias Énard, Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants