The Art of the Novel Quotes
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The Art of the Novel Quotes
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“We are born one time only, we can never start a new life equipped with the experience we've gained from the previous one. We leave childhood without knowing what youth is, we marry without knowing what it is to be married, and even when we enter old age, we don't know what it is we're heading for: the old are innocent children innocent of thier old age. In that sense, man's world is the planet of inexperience.”
― The Art of the Novel
― The Art of the Novel
“All novels . . . are concerned with the enigma of the self. As soon as you create an imaginary being, a character, you are automatically confronted by the question: what is the self? How can it be grasped?”
― The Art of the Novel
― The Art of the Novel
“There would seem to be nothing more obvious, more tangible and palpable than the present moment. And yet it eludes us completely. All the sadness of life lies in that fact. In the course of a single second, our senses of sight, of hearing, of smell, register (knowingly or not) a swarm of events and a parade of sensations and ideas passes through our head. Each instant represents a little universe, irrevocably forgotten in the next instant.”
― The Art of the Novel
― The Art of the Novel
“The novel is a meditation on existence as seen through the medium of imaginary characters.”
― The Art of the Novel
― The Art of the Novel
“The termites of reduction have always gnawed away at life: even the greatest love ends up as a skeleton of feeble memories.”
― The Art of the Novel
― The Art of the Novel
“[Kafka] transformed the profoundly antipoetic material of a highly bureaucratized society into the great poetry of the novel; he transformed a very ordinary story of a man who cannot obtain a promised job . . . into myth, into epic, into a kind of beauty never before seen.”
― The Art of the Novel
― The Art of the Novel
“Once upon a time I too thought that the future was the only competent judge of our works and actions. Later on I understood that chasing after the future is the worst conformism of all, a craven flattery of the mighty. For the future is always mightier than the present. It will pass judgement on us, of course. And without any competence.”
― The Art of the Novel
― The Art of the Novel
“The novel's spirit is the spirit of complexity. . . . The novel's spirit is the spirity of continuity . . . a thing made to last, to connect the past with the future.”
― The Art of the Novel
― The Art of the Novel
“A novel examines not reality but existence. And existence is not what has occurred, existence is the realm of human possibilities, everything that man can become, everything he's capable of. Novelists draw up the map of existence by discovering this or that human possibilit. But again, to exist mean: 'being-in-the-world.' Thus both the character and his world must be understood as possibilities.”
― The Art of the Novel
― The Art of the Novel
“Of course, even before Flaubert, people knew stupidity existed, but they understood it somewhat differently: it was considered a simple absence of knowledge, a defect correctable by education. In Flaubert's novels, stupidity is an inseparable dimension of human existence. It accompanies poor Emma throughout her days, to her bed of love and to her deathbed, over which two deadly agélastes, Homais and Bournisien, go on endlessly trading their inanities like a kind of funeral oration. But the most shocking, the most scandalous thing about Flaubert's vision of stupidity is this: Stupidity does not give way to science, technology, modernity, progress; on the contrary, it progresses right along with progress!”
― The Art of the Novel
― The Art of the Novel
“Adventure, the first great theme of the novel.”
― The Art of the Novel
― The Art of the Novel
“Every true novelist listens for that suprapersonal wisdom, which explains why great novels are always a little more intelligent than their authors. Novelists who are more intelligent than their books should go into another line of work.”
― The Art of the Novel
― The Art of the Novel
“The novel has accompanied man uninterruptedly and faithfully since the beginning of the Modern Era. It was then that the "passion to know," which Husserl considered the essence of European spirituality, seized the novel and led it to scrutinize man's concrete life and protect it against "the forgetting of being"; to hold "the world of life" under a permanent light. That is the sense in which I understand and share Hermann Broch's insistence in repeating: The sole raison d'etre of a novel is to discover what only the novel can discover. A novel that does not discover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality.”
― The Art of the Novel
― The Art of the Novel
“Every novel says to the reader: “Things are not as simple as you think.” That is the novel’s eternal truth, but it grows steadily harder to hear amid the din of easy, quick answers that come faster than the question and block it off. In the spirit of our time, it’s either Anna or Karenin who is right, and the ancient wisdom of Cervantes, telling us about the difficulty of knowing and the elusiveness of truth, seems cumbersome and useless.”
― The Art of the Novel
― The Art of the Novel
“[M]an has always harbored the desire to rewrite his own biography, to change the past, to wipe out tracks, both his own and other's. (p.130)”
― The Art of the Novel
― The Art of the Novel
“No peace is possible between the novelist and the agélaste [those who do not laugh]. Never having heard God's laughter, the agélastes are convinced that the truth is obvious, that all men necessarily think the same thing, and that they themselves are exactly what they think they are. But it is precisely in losing the certainty of truth and the unanimous agreement of others that man becomes an individual. The novel is the imaginary paradise of individuals. It is the territory where no one possesses the truth, neither Anna nor Karenin, but where everyone has the right to be understood, both Anna and Karenin.”
― The Art of the Novel
― The Art of the Novel
“In the presence of Esch, values have hidden their faces. Order, loyalty, sacrifice—he cherishes all these words, but exactly what do they represent? Sacrifice for what? Demand what sort of order? He doesn't know.
If a value has lost its concrete content, what is left of it? A mere empty form; an imperative that goes unheeded and, all the more furious, demands to be heard and obeyed. The less Esch knows what he wants, the more furiously he wants it.
Esch: the fanaticism of the era with no God. Because all values have hidden their faces, anything can be considered a value. Justice, order—Esch seeks them now in the trade union struggle, then in religion; today in police power, tomorrow in the mirage of America, where he dreams of emigrating. He could be a terrorist or a repentant terrorist turning in his comrades, or a party militant or a cult member a kamikaze prepared to sacrifice his life. All the passions rampaging through the bloody history of our time are taken up, unmasked, and terrifyingly displayed in Esch's modest adventure.”
― The Art of the Novel
If a value has lost its concrete content, what is left of it? A mere empty form; an imperative that goes unheeded and, all the more furious, demands to be heard and obeyed. The less Esch knows what he wants, the more furiously he wants it.
Esch: the fanaticism of the era with no God. Because all values have hidden their faces, anything can be considered a value. Justice, order—Esch seeks them now in the trade union struggle, then in religion; today in police power, tomorrow in the mirage of America, where he dreams of emigrating. He could be a terrorist or a repentant terrorist turning in his comrades, or a party militant or a cult member a kamikaze prepared to sacrifice his life. All the passions rampaging through the bloody history of our time are taken up, unmasked, and terrifyingly displayed in Esch's modest adventure.”
― The Art of the Novel
“I thought of the fate of Descartes’ famous formulation: man as ‘master and proprietor of nature.’ Having brought off miracles in science and technology, this ‘master and proprietor’ is suddenly realizing that he owns nothing and is master neither of nature (it is vanishing, little by little, from the planet), nor of History (it has escaped him), nor of himself (he is led by the irrational forces of his soul). But if God is gone and man is no longer master, then who is master? The planet is moving through the void without any master. There it is, the unbearable lightness of being.”
― The Art of the Novel
― The Art of the Novel
“The meaning did not precede the dream; the dream preceded the meaning. So the way to read the tale is to let the imagination carry one along. Not, above all, as a rebus to be decoded.”
― The Art of the Novel
― The Art of the Novel
“Kitsch is the translation of the stupidity of received ideas into the language of beauty and feeling. It moves us to tears of compassion for ourselves, for the banality of what we think and feel.”
― The Art of the Novel
― The Art of the Novel
“I also think of those daily slaughters along the highways, of that death that is as horrible as it is banal and that bears no resemblance to cancer or AIDS because, as the work not of nature but of man, it is an almost voluntary death. How can it be that such a death fails to dumbfound us, to turn our lives upside down, to incite us to vast reforms? No, it does not dumbfound us, because like Pasenow, we have a poor sense of the real, and in the sur-real sphere of symbols, this death in the guise of a handsome car actually represents life; this smiling death is con-fused with modernity, freedom, adventure, just as Elisabeth was con-fused with the Virgin. This death of a man condemned to capital punishment, though infinitely rarer, much more readily draws our attention, rouses passions: confounded with the image of the executioner, it has a symbolic voltage that is far stronger, far darker and more repellent. Et cetera.
Man is a child wandering lost—to cite Baudelaire`s poem again—in the "forests of symbols."
(The criterion of maturity: the ability to resist symbols. But mankind grows younger all the time.)”
― The Art of the Novel
Man is a child wandering lost—to cite Baudelaire`s poem again—in the "forests of symbols."
(The criterion of maturity: the ability to resist symbols. But mankind grows younger all the time.)”
― The Art of the Novel
“The uniform is that which we do not choose, that which is assigned to us; it is the certitude of the universal against the precariousness of the individual. When the values that were once so solid come under challenge and withdraw, heads bowed, he who cannot live without them (without fidelity, family, country, discipline, without love) buttons himself up in the universality of his uniform as if that uniform were the last shred of transcendence that could protect him against the cold of a future in which there will be nothing left to respect.”
― The Art of the Novel
― The Art of the Novel
“The novelist destroys the house of his life and uses its stones to build the house of his novel.”
― The Art of the Novel
― The Art of the Novel
“...with Cervantes and his contemporaries, it inquires into the nature of adventure; with Richardson, it begins to examine 'what happens inside' to unmask the secret life of the feelings; with Balzac, it discovers man's rootedness in history; with Flaubert, it explores the terra previously incognita of the everyday; with Tolstoy, it focuses on the intrusion of the irrational in human behavior and decisions. It probes time: the elusive past with Proust, the elusive present with Joyce. With Thomas Mann, it examines the role of the myths from the remote past that control our present actions...”
― The Art of the Novel
― The Art of the Novel
“Лекота. Откривам непосилната лекота на битието още в "Шегата": „крачех по запрашените павета и усещах угнетяващата лекота на празнотата, затиснала живота ми.“
И в "Животът е другаде": „Яромил сънуваше понякога страшни сънища. Сънуваше, че трябва да вдигне изключително лек предмет – чаша за чай, лъжица, перце, и че не успява, че е толкова по-слаб, колкото предметът е по-лек, че изнемогва под лекотата му.“
И във "Валс на раздяла": „Разколников изживява своето убийство като трагедия и рухва под тежестта на извършеното деяние. А Якуб е изумен от това, че неговото деяние не му тежи, не го обременява. И размисля дали в тази лекота не се крие далеч повече ужас, отколкото в истеричните преживявания на руския герой.“
И в "Книга за смеха и забравата": „Празнината в стомаха й идва точно от тази непоносима липса на тежест. И както всяка крайност може да премине в своята противоположност, доведената до максимума си лекота се превръща в тежест – това е ужасяващата тежест на лекотата и Тамина знае, че няма да може да я понесе и секунда повече.“
Едва когато прочетох преводите на книгите ми, изумен забелязах тези повторения! После се утеших – може би всеки романисти развиват една-единствена тема (първия си роман) в вариации.”
― The Art of the Novel
И в "Животът е другаде": „Яромил сънуваше понякога страшни сънища. Сънуваше, че трябва да вдигне изключително лек предмет – чаша за чай, лъжица, перце, и че не успява, че е толкова по-слаб, колкото предметът е по-лек, че изнемогва под лекотата му.“
И във "Валс на раздяла": „Разколников изживява своето убийство като трагедия и рухва под тежестта на извършеното деяние. А Якуб е изумен от това, че неговото деяние не му тежи, не го обременява. И размисля дали в тази лекота не се крие далеч повече ужас, отколкото в истеричните преживявания на руския герой.“
И в "Книга за смеха и забравата": „Празнината в стомаха й идва точно от тази непоносима липса на тежест. И както всяка крайност може да премине в своята противоположност, доведената до максимума си лекота се превръща в тежест – това е ужасяващата тежест на лекотата и Тамина знае, че няма да може да я понесе и секунда повече.“
Едва когато прочетох преводите на книгите ми, изумен забелязах тези повторения! После се утеших – може би всеки романисти развиват една-единствена тема (първия си роман) в вариации.”
― The Art of the Novel
“Повторения. Набоков отбеляза, че в началото на Ана Каренина , в руския текст, думата „къща“ се повтаря осем пъти в шест фрази и че това повторение е умишлен ход от страна на автора. Във френския превод обаче думата „къща“ се появява един-единствен път, в чешкия превод – не повече от два пъти. В същата книга навсякъде, където Толстой пише „сказал“ (каза), в превода откриваме рече, отвърна, подхвана, викна, заключи и т.н. Преводачите са луди по синонимите. (Аз отхвърлям самото понятие синоним – всяка дума има свой собствен смисъл и е семантично незаменима). Паскал: „Когато в един текст открием повторени думи, но опитвайки се да ги коригираме, открием, че са толкова подходящи, че бихме развалили текста, трябва да ги оставим – това е отличителен белег.“ Богатството на речника не е ценност само по себе си – при Хемингуей именно ограничаването на речника, повторението на едни и същи думи в един параграф пораждат мелодията и красотата на стила му.”
― The Art of the Novel
― The Art of the Novel
“Beauty, the last triumph possible for man who can no longer hope.”
― The Art of the Novel
― The Art of the Novel
“The novel's spirit is the spirit of complexity. . . . the novel's spirit is the spirit of continuity. . . . a thing made to last, to connect the past with the future.”
― The Art of the Novel
― The Art of the Novel
“There comes a moment when the image of our life parts company with the life itself, stands free, and, little by little, begins to rule us. Already in The Joke: “I came to realize that there was no power capable of changing the image of my person lodged somewhere in the supreme court of human destinies; that this image (even though it bore no resemblance to me) was much more real than my actual self; that I was its shadow and not it mine; that I had no right to accuse it of bearing no resemblance to me, but rather that it was I who was guilty of the nonresemblance; and that the nonresemblance was my cross, which I could not unload on anyone else, which was mine alone to bear.”
And in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting: “Destiny has no intention of lifting a finger for Mirek (for his happiness, his security, his good spirits, his health), whereas Mirek is ready to do everything for his destiny (for its grandeur, its clarity, its beauty, its style, its intelligible meaning). He felt responsible for his destiny, but his destiny did not feel responsible for him.”
― The Art of the Novel
And in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting: “Destiny has no intention of lifting a finger for Mirek (for his happiness, his security, his good spirits, his health), whereas Mirek is ready to do everything for his destiny (for its grandeur, its clarity, its beauty, its style, its intelligible meaning). He felt responsible for his destiny, but his destiny did not feel responsible for him.”
― The Art of the Novel
“In 1935, three years before his death, Edmund Husserl gave his celebrated lectures in Vienna and Prague on the crisis of European humanity. For Husserl, the adjective "European" meant the spiritual identity that extends beyond geographical Europe (to America, for instance) and that was born with ancient Greek philosophy. In his view, this philosophy, for the first time in History, apprehended the world (the world as a whole) as a question to be answered. It interrogated the world not in order to satisfy this or that practical need but because "the passion to know had seized mankind."
The crisis Husserl spoke of seemed to him so profound that he wondered whether Europe was still able to survive it. The roots of the crisis lay for him at the beginning of the Modern Era, in Galileo and Descartes, in the one-sided nature of the European sciences, which reduced the world to a mere object of technical and mathematical investigation and put the concrete world of life, die Lebenswelt as he called it, beyond their horizon.
The rise of the sciences propelled man into the tunnels of the specialized disciplines. The more he advanced in knowledge, the less clearly could he see either the world as a whole or his own self, and he plunged further into what Husserl's pupil Heidegger called, in a beautiful and almost magical phrase, "the forgetting of being."
Once elevated by Descartes to "master and proprietor of nature," man has now become a mere thing to the forces (of technology, of politics, of history) that bypass him, surpass him, possess him. To those forces, man's concrete being, his "world of life" (die Lebenswelt), has neither value nor interest: it is eclipsed, forgotten from the start.”
― The Art of the Novel
The crisis Husserl spoke of seemed to him so profound that he wondered whether Europe was still able to survive it. The roots of the crisis lay for him at the beginning of the Modern Era, in Galileo and Descartes, in the one-sided nature of the European sciences, which reduced the world to a mere object of technical and mathematical investigation and put the concrete world of life, die Lebenswelt as he called it, beyond their horizon.
The rise of the sciences propelled man into the tunnels of the specialized disciplines. The more he advanced in knowledge, the less clearly could he see either the world as a whole or his own self, and he plunged further into what Husserl's pupil Heidegger called, in a beautiful and almost magical phrase, "the forgetting of being."
Once elevated by Descartes to "master and proprietor of nature," man has now become a mere thing to the forces (of technology, of politics, of history) that bypass him, surpass him, possess him. To those forces, man's concrete being, his "world of life" (die Lebenswelt), has neither value nor interest: it is eclipsed, forgotten from the start.”
― The Art of the Novel