The Thirtieth Year Quotes

“No new world without a new language.”
― Ingeborg Bachmann, The Thirtieth Year: Stories

“If I had not immersed myself in books, in stories and legends, in newspapers, in reports, if everything communicable had not grown up in me, I should have been a nonentity, a collection of uncomprehended events. (And that might have been a good thing, then I should have thought of something new.) That I can see, that I can hear, are things I do not deserve; but my feelings, those I truly deserve, these herons over white beaches, these wanderers by night, the hungry vagabonds that take my heart as their highroad. I wish I could call out to all those who believe in their unique brains and the hard currency of their thoughts: be of good faith! But these coins which you clink together have been withdrawn from circulation, only you don't know it yet....Admit that when you really pay, with your lives, you do so only beyond the barrier, when you have said farewell to everything that is so dear to you--to landing-places, flying-bases, and only from there do you embark on your own path and your journey from imagined stop to imagined stop, travellers who must not be concerned with arriving.”
― Ingeborg Bachmann, The Thirtieth Year: Stories

“I can no longer see a path in any path.”
― Ingeborg Bachmann, The Thirtieth Year: Stories

“Never was there so much magic over things as when you spoke, and never were words so powerful. You could make speech flare up, become muddled or mighty. You did everything with words and sentences, came to an understanding with them or transmuted them, gave things a new name; and objects which understand neither the straight nor the crooked words, almost took their being from your words.

Oh, nobody was ever able to play so well, you monsters! You invented all games, number games and word games, dream games and love games.

Never did anyone speak of himself like that. Almost truthfully. Almost murderously truthfully. Bent over the water, almost abandoned. The world is already dark and I cannot put on the necklace of shells. There will be no clearing. You different from all the others. I am under water. Am under water.

And now someone is walking up above and hates water and hates green and does not understand, will never understand. As I have never understood.

Almost mute,
almost still
hearing
the call.

Come. Just once.
Come.”
― Ingeborg Bachmann, The Thirtieth Year: Stories

“He would like to burrow under the earth like a bulb, like a root, to where it is still warm. To hibernate with his thoughts and feelings. To remain silent with a shrivelling mouth. He wishes that all the statements, insults, promises he has uttered would become invalid, forgotten by everyone and he himself forgotten too.

But no sooner is he secured in the silence, no sooner does he fancy that he has wrapped himself up like a chrysalis, than he is no longer right. A wet, cold wind blows his absence of expectations around the corner, over a flower-stall filled with evergreens and flowers for the dead. And suddenly he is holding in his hands the snowdrops that he didn't want to buy--he who wanted to go empty-handed! The bells of the snowdrops begin to ring wildly and soundlessly, and he goes to where his ruin awaits him. Filled with expectation as never before, with the expectation and the desire for salvation accumulated through all the years.”
― Ingeborg Bachmann, The Thirtieth Year: Stories

“The children are in love but do not know with what. They talk in gibberish, muse themselves into an indefinable pallor, and when they are completely at a loss they invent a language that maddens them. My fish. My hook. My fox. My snare. My fire. You my water. You my current. My earth. You my if. And you my but. Either. Or. My everything...my everything...They push one another, go for each other with their fists and scuffle over a counter-word that doesn't exist.”
― Ingeborg Bachmann, The Thirtieth Year: Stories

“The arrogance to insist on her own unhappiness, her own loneliness, had always been in her, but only now did it venture to emerge; it blossomed, ran wild, smothered her. She was unredeemable and nobody should have the effrontery to redeem her…”
― Ingeborg Bachmann, The Thirtieth Year: Stories

“أشعر أن حزننا مثل قوس يصل من إحدى نهايتي العالم إلى النهاية الأخرى”
― Ingeborg Bachmann, The Thirtieth Year: Stories

“I have only one life story to tell, but Gerda must have several, for although by and large I know her past and know enough people who have known her from a child, when she talks about herself there are an infinite number of deviations, indeed not even deviations, because there is no line from which she could deviate, there are simply a large number of versions and interpretations of her life. When she is in a good mood and becomes talkative, she no sooner thinks of a detail than her life story takes a different turn.”
― Ingeborg Bachmann, The Thirtieth Year: Stories

“Her şey kafamın içinde birbirine karışmıştı. Dünyanın yönetimini ele aldık mı, çünkü bir gün bakarsın bizler yönetiriz dünyayı, biz fazlasıyla yetersizler, o zaman fazlasıyla yetersiz olalım istemezdim, bizimle bu dünyada yer alacakların da, bu tığ örgü masa örtülerinin, likörlerin, sağda solda duran bu hırpalanmış ağaçların, evlerdeki bu kokunun, bir kavşağı bir kavşağa güçlükle bağlayan bu caddelerin, bu kötü kâğıt kokan hastalık raporlarının, bu resmî okulların ve KENDİLERİYLE EŞİT OLDUĞUMUZ DÜŞÜNCESİNİ UYANDIRMAK İÇİN YUKARIDAKİLERİN BİZLERİ BUYUR ETTİKLERİ TUVALETLERİN.”
― Ingeborg Bachmann, The Thirtieth Year: Stories

“Kendi yasama ihanet etmeden bu tasaları nasıl haklı görebilirdim? Girdiğiniz çıkmazların önemine nasıl inanabilirdim? Size gerçekten inandıkça, o güçsüz ve kendini beğenmiş sözlerinizden, o miskin davranışlarınızdan, o budalaca kuşkularınızdan daha fazla bir şey olduğunuza tamamen inandıkça, size nasıl inanabilirdim?”
― Ingeborg Bachmann, The Thirtieth Year: Stories

“Evet, nedir kendimle ilgili doğru, herhangi bir kimseyle ilgili doğru? Noktalar halinde alabildiğince küçük eylemsel öğeler, duygusal adımlar, düşünce ırmağından damlayan alabildiğine küçük adımlar olduğu söylenebilir bunun. Ama o vakit bir kimsenin ‘tutumlu’, ‘iyi yürekli’, ‘korkak’, ‘düşüncesiz’ gibi ağırlıkla özelliklere sahip olduğu sonucu nasıl çıkarılabilir bundan? Bir kimsenin yaşadığı ve saniyenin milyonda biri kadar süren hoşnutluk, korku, tutku, nefret, huzur, heyecandan hangi sonuç çıkabilir! Ve bir sonuç çıkarılması gerekir mi bunlardan? Çıkarılacak tek sonuç vardır: o kimsenin bütün bu özelliklere sahip olduğu ve hepsinin çilesini çektiği…”
― Ingeborg Bachmann, The Thirtieth Year: Stories

“Etimin konuk ettiği ruhum, ikiyüzlü ev sahibinden daha da büyük bir düzenbazdır. Her şeyden önce onunla karşılaşmaktan çekinmeyelim. Çünkü düşündüğüm hiçbir şeyin benimle ilişkisi yok. Her düşünce, yabancı tohumların yeşermesinden başka bir şey değil. Beni ilgilendiren hiçbir şeyi düşünecek gücüm yok, hep beni ilgilendirmeyen şeyleri düşünüyorum.

-Ingeborg Bachmann, Otuzuncu Yaş”
― Ingeborg Bachmann, Otuzuncu Yaş - Bütün Öyküler

“ثمة برد في الروح، يجعل الأقرب والأبعد بعيدين عنا”
― Ingeborg Bachmann, The Thirtieth Year: Stories

“لا شيء يساوي الذي فيك ولا شيء يساوي العالم فيك”
― Ingeborg Bachmann, The Thirtieth Year: Stories

“The arrogance to insist on her own unhappiness, her own loneliness, had always been in her, but only now did it venture to emerge; it blossomed, ran wild, smothered her. She was unredeemable and nobody should have the effrontery to redeem her, to know the millennium in which the red-blossoming rods that had grown inseparably entangled would spring apart and leave the path open. Come, sleep, come, thousand years, that I may be awoken by another hand.”
― Ingeborg Bachmann, The Thirtieth Year: Stories

“Ich aber konnte überhaupt keine Schuld in dem Kind entdecken, seit es nicht mehr so wehrlos und stumm wie in den ersten Wochen war. Und damals war es wohl nicht unschuldig, sondern nur unfähig zu einer Äußerung gewesen, ein Bündel auf feinem Fleisch und Flachs, mit dünnem Atem, mit einem riesigen dumpfen Kopf, der wie ein Blitzableiter die Botschaften der Welt entschärfte.”
― Ingeborg Bachmann, The Thirtieth Year: Stories

“بالحقيقة يبلغ المرء الأبعد، ابق دائمًا مع الحقيقة ولا تخف أحدًا”
― Ingeborg Bachmann, The Thirtieth Year: Stories

“لو صعد ذلك كله، لو استطاع المرء أن يتقيأ كل شيء، كل شيء!”
― Ingeborg Bachmann, The Thirtieth Year: Stories

“لا يكون المرء ضحية مدى الحياة، هذا لا يصح”
― Ingeborg Bachmann, The Thirtieth Year: Stories

“أراد أن ينكفيء تمامًا على نفسه، ولكن لم يلاحظ ذلك أحد أو لم يرغب أحد في ملاحظته”
― Ingeborg Bachmann, The Thirtieth Year: Stories

“بدا له العالم قابلًا للإلغاء، هو نفسه قابلًا للإلغاء”
― Ingeborg Bachmann, The Thirtieth Year: Stories

“ليس للأطفال مستقبل. إنهم يخافون العالم بأجمع”
― Ingeborg Bachmann, The Thirtieth Year: Stories

“As it was all was lost. He was alive, yes, he was alive, he felt this for the first time. But he knew now that he was living in a prison, that he had to make the best of it in there and would soon rage and would have to speak this thieves' cant, the only language at his disposal, in order not to be so abandoned.”
― Ingeborg Bachmann, The Thirtieth Year: Stories