Garden, Ashes Quotes

“Since childhood, I was afflicted with a sick hypersensitivity, and my imagination quickly turned everything into a memory, too quickly: sometimes one day was enough, or an interval of a few hours, or a routine change of place, for an everyday event with a lyrical value that I did not sense at the time, to become suddenly adorned with a radiant echo, the echo ordinarily reserved only for those memories which have been standing for many years in the powerful fixative of lyrical oblivion.”
― Danilo Kiš, Garden, Ashes

“You can't play the role of a victim all your life without becoming one in the end.”
― Danilo Kiš, Garden, Ashes

“I would have liked to catch hold of sleep at least once, just as I had been resolved to catch hold of death one day, to catch hold of the wings of the angel of sleep when it came for me, to grab it with two fingers like a butterfly after sneaking up on it from behind. [...] My sleep game was practice for the grand struggle with death.”
― Danilo Kiš, Garden, Ashes

“I assigned myself the role of Lot’s wife, because her behavior seemed the most human, the most sinful, and therefore closest to mine. Consumed by curiosity, I was drawn to the magnificent, horrible sight of fire and disaster as houses collapsed and towers folded like dominoes amidst human wailing that rose to the sky. My curiosity, brought to an explosive point by the divine warning, was suddenly transformed into my sole trait, overwhelming reason and the feeling of fear, turning me into a weakling of a woman, unable to resist my inquisitiveness, and I would turn around abruptly with my whole body as if rotated by the centrifugal force of my curiosity, which had passed through me like a sword.”
― Danilo Kiš, Garden, Ashes

“There are people," my father continued, "who are born to be unhappy and to make others unhappy, who are the victims of celestial intrigues incomprehensible to us, guinea pigs for the celestial machinery, rebels allotted the part of a rebel yet born - by the cruel logic of the celestial comedy - with their wings clipped. They are titans without the power of titans, dwarf-titans whose only greatness was given them in the form of a rigid dose of sensitivity that dissolves their trifling strength like alcohol. They follow their star, their sick sensibility, borne along by titanic plans and intentions, but then break like waves against the rocky banks of triviality. The height of the cruelty allotted them in lucidity, that awareness of their own limitations, that sick capacity for dissociation. I look at myself in the role forced on me by the heavens and by fate, conscious of my role at all times yet at the same time unable to resist it with the force of logic or will.”
― Danilo Kiš, Garden, Ashes

“Since childhood, I was afflicted with a sick hypersensitivity, and my imagination quickly turned everything into a memory, too quickly: sometimes one day was enough, or an interval of a few hours, or a routine change of place, for an everyday event with a lyrical value that I did not sense at the time, to become suddenly adorned with a radiant echo, the echo ordinarily reserved only for those memories which have been standing for many years in the powerful fixative of lyrical oblivion. In my case, as I said, this process of galvanic overlaying would proceed with a kind of sick intensity as things and persons took on a thin coating of gilt and a noble patina, and yesterday's outing, if some objective circumstance was suggestive of its finality, of the fact that it would not and could not be repeated, would become for me the very next day a cause for melancholic and still indeterminate contemplation. In my case, two days were enough for things to take on the preciousness of a memory.”
― Danilo Kiš, Garden, Ashes

“Terribly thwarted in the autumn and winter, deadened in summer, in the spring his egoism would awaken his once inadequately defined revolt against world order and people, and this rebelliousness, this surplus energy, this restlessness of mind and blood would bring him back to life.”
― Danilo Kiš, Garden, Ashes

“At first my father's job was clearing ruins. He had filed a sharp protest, however, justifying his disability over ten pages of closely spaced handwriting, buttressed by statements from witnesses and discharge papers from clinics for nervous diseases. His arguments were irrefutable, particularly if we take into consideration--aside from the actual facts--his polemical tone and his brilliant style. 'I hereby state for the attention of the esteemed Commissarist,' he wrote in his appeal, 'in connection with Item A-2, in which I took the liberty of citing the causes of my total incapacity and proving--if in a very sensible fashion--my abnormality as well as my complete mental and physical worthlessness, the worthlessness of a neurotic and alcoholic incapable of taking care of his family or himself, I hereby state, therefore, with a view to the most specific information possible on this matter, although each and every one of the aforementioned matters is in itself a physical amputation, I am stating that I am also flat-footed, a certificate to which effect I am appending from the draft board at Zalaegerszeg, by which I am exempt from military service by virtue of 100 percent flat-footedness. . .”
― Danilo Kiš, Garden, Ashes

“Naša bi kuhinja, s večeri, kada je moja majka palila uljanicu u kojoj je goreo kolomaz pomešan sa petroleumom, postajala odjednom sasvim legalna teritorija noći, ali uljanica od vojničke konzerve, koja bi počela da trepće i da pišti kao čajnik, da svrdla kao crv tvrdu koru mraka, davala je našoj kuhinji počasno mesto u toj noći sasvim lišenoj zvezda. Ta bi uljanica bila jedina zvezda u tim beznadnim noćima, kada je kiša bez zazora brisala pojmove kao što su gore i dole, sastavljala nebo i zemlju dugim linijama, križajući tako, kao na hartiji, dečji crtež koji je jesenji dan bio naslikao u sivom, okeru i žutom, sa crvenim mrljama po uglovima. Naša se kuhinja za takvih noći pretvarala, velim, u kapelicu, u oltar najistočnijoj tački mraka.”
― Danilo Kiš, Garden, Ashes

“Rummaging through these old, yellowing picture postcards, I find that everything has suddenly become confused, everything is in chaos. Ever since my father vanished from the story, from the novel, everything has come loose, fallen apart. His mighty figure, his authority, even his very name, were sufficient to hold the plot within fixed limits, the story that ferments like grapes in barrels, the story in which fruit slowly rots, trampled underfoot, crushed by the press of memories, weighted down by its own juices and by the sun. And now that the barrel has burst, the wine of the story has spilled out, the soul of the grape, and no divine skill can put it back inside the wineskin, compress it into a short tale, mold it into a glass of crystal. Oh, golden-pink liquid, oh, fairy tale, oh, alcoholic vapor, oh, fate! I don't want to curse God, I don't want to complain about life. So I'll gather together all those picture postcards in a heap, this era full of old-fashioned splendor and romanticism, I'll shuffle my cards, deal them as in a game of solitaire for readers who are fond of solitaire and intoxicating fragrances, of bright colors and vertigo.”
― Danilo Kiš, Garden, Ashes

“But my father had already removed his hand from his pocket, and everyone could see the scrap of newspaper into which he proceeded to blow his nose. Any kind of excitement provoked powerful disturbances in his metabolism and ample secretions of fluids. If he got out of that scramble alive, the first thing he would do would be to go behind a bush and urinate, breaking wind vigorously, I was sure of that.”
― Danilo Kiš, Garden, Ashes

“I was looking through half-open eyes at the sky, like the first man, and thinking about how - there you are - my uncle had died, about how they would now be burying him, about how I would never meet him. I stood petrified, thinking that one day I too would die. At the same time I was horror-stricken to realize that my mother would also die. All of this came rushing upon me in a flash of a peculiar violet color, in a twinkling, and the sudden activity in my intestines and in my heart told me that what had seemed at first just a foreboding was indeed the truth. This experience made me realize, without any circumlocution, that I would die one day, and so would my mother, and my sister Anna. I couldn't imagine how one day my hand would die, how my eyes would die. Looking over my hand, I caught this thought on my palm, connected to my body, indivisible from it.”
― Danilo Kiš, Garden, Ashes

“During that year by the railroad embankment, at the time of my father's complete disaster, distance meant for us not only some faraway lyrical splendor but also the exceedingly utilitarian idea of running away, the deliverance from fear and hunger.”
― Danilo Kiš, Garden, Ashes