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- Ramon was approaching the museum at the edge of the Luxembourg Gardens, where for the past month Chagall paintings were on exhibit. He would have liked to see them, but he knew in advance that he would never have the stomach to willingly become part of that endless queue shuffling slowly toward the entrance. He looked at the people in line, their faces paralyzed by boredom, he pictured the galleries where their bodies and their chatter would obscure the paintings, and after a moment he turned away and started down a path that crossed the park. (4-5)
- For several years past, he had come to detest birthdays. Because of the numbers affixed to them. Still, he did not quite reject them, for the pleasure of the attention paid him mattered more than the shame of aging. (6)
- No, he was not ashamed of having lied. What intrigued him was his inability to understand the reason for the lie. Normally, if a person lies, the point is to deceive someone and draw an advantage from that. But what could he possibly gain from inventing a case of cancer? (10)
- Speaking without drawing attention -- that's not easy! Being ever-present by your voice and yet keeping unheard -- that takes virtuosity. (13)
- Silence draws attention. It can be disturbing. Make you seem enigmatic, or suspect. And that's precisely what Quaquelique wants to avoid. (14)
- With D'Ardelo, what you have is not an insignificant fellow but a Narcissus. And think about the precise meaning of that term: a Narcissus is not proud. A proud man has disdain for other people, he undervalues him. The Narcissus overvalues them, because in every person's eyes he sees his own image, and wants to embellish it. So he takes nice care of all his mirrors. And in the end that is what matters for the two of you: He is nice. (15)
- Madeleine was waiting for him in the street on a motorbike. It was Alain's bike, but they shared it. (25)
- To suffer to keep from soiling your shorts... To be a martyr to your personal hygiene... To struggle against urine as it stirs, as it swells, threatens, attacks, kills... Is there any heroism that's more prosaic, more human? To hell with the so-called great men whose names adorn our streets. They all became famous through their ambitions, their vanity, their lies, their cruelty. Kalinin is the only one whose name will live on in memory of an ordeal that every human being has experienced, in memory of a desperate battle that brought misery on no one but himself. (30-31)
- She lifts a leg over the railing and flings herself into the void. At the end of her fall, she slams brutally against the hardness of the water's surface and is paralyzed by the cold, but after a few long seconds she lifts her face, and, since she is a good swimmer, all her automatic responses surge forward against her will to die. She plunges her head under again, forces herself to inhale water, block her breathing. Suddenly she hears a shout. A shout from the far bank. Someone has seen her. She understands that dying will not be easy and that her greatest enemy will not be her good-swimmer's impressible reflex but a person she had not figured on. She will have to fight. Fight to rescue her death. (38)
- The rediscovered world has an inhospitable appearance, and suddenly anxiety seizes her. (40)
- Heading for your death, you don't worry about what you've dropped along the way. When she left the car, the future no longer existed. She had nothing to hide. Whereas now, suddenly, she has to hide everything. Leave no trace. Her anxiety grows stronger and stronger... (41)
- Feeling guilty or not feeling guilty -- I think that's the whole issue. Life is a struggle of all against all. It's a known fact. But how does that struggle work in a society that's more or less civilized? People can't just attack each other the minute they see them. So instead they try to cast the same of culpability on the other. The only who manages to make the other one guilty will win. The one who confesses his crime will lose. You're walking along the street, lost in though. Along comes a girl, walking straight ahead as if she were the only person in the world, looking neither left nor right. You jostle one another. And there it is, the moment of truth: Who's going to bawl out out the other person, and who's going to apologize? It's a classic situation: Actually, each of them are the jostled and the jostler. And yet some people always -- immediately, spontaneously -- consider themselves the jostlers, thus in the wrong. And others always -- immediately, spontaneously -- consider themselves the jostled, therefore in the right, quick to accuse the other and get him punished. What about you -- in that situation, would you apologize or accuse? (43)
- "The person who apologizes is declaring himself guilty. And if you declare yourself guilty, you encourage the other to go on insulting you, blaming you, publicly, unto death. Such are the inevitable consequences of the first apology." (-) "That's true. One should not apologize. And yet I prefer a world where all people would apologize -- everybody, without exception, pointlessly, excessively, for nothing at all, where they'd load themselves down with apologies--" (-) "you say that in such a sad voice," said Alain in surprise. (44)
- She spoke to Caliban several times, and when she came to understand that he knew only his own language, she was at first disconcerted and then strangely relaxed. For she was Portuguese. Since Caliban spoke to her in Pakistani, she had a rare chance to drop French, a language she disliked, and to use only her own native tongue, like him. Their communication in two languages neither understood brought them close. (54)
- His nonconformist remarks, which had used to keep him young, now despite his misleading appearance made him an uncontemporary character, a person not of our time, and thus old. (60)
- La Franck, her gaze set emptily head (Ramon could see that she had no idea who this person was), moved a segment of the mass into the middle of her mouth, chewed it, swallowed half of it, and said: "Human existence is nothing but solitude." (-) "A solitude surrounded by other solitudes," La Franck added, then she swallowed down the rest, turned, and moved away. (62-63)
- "You know, boredom -- there's nothing worse." (66)
- "Ah, good moods!" exclaimed Ramon, as if enlightened by those two words. "Yes, you said it! A good mood -- what's what it's all about, exactly!" (67)
- Above La Frenck's left hand, the feather continued to wander, and I imagine some 20 men who, gathered around a long table, focus their own gaze upward, though no feather is floating there; they are all the more uncertain and nervous because the thing they fear stands neither before them (like an enemy that could be killed), nor beneath them (like a snare the secret police could thwart), but somewhere above them, like a threat, an invisible, incorporeal, incomprehensible, ungraspable, unpunishable, mischievously mysterious threat. A few of them rise from their seats without knowing where they mean to go. (72-73)
- And his laugh, at once forlorn and gay, roams the big room for a big while. (73)
- "My dear friend, I lack only one thing -- a good mood." (77)
- "In his essay on the comical, Hegel says that true humor is inconceivable without an infinite good mood(...) Not teasing, not satire, not sarcasm. Only from the heights of an infinite good mood can you observe below you the eternal stupidity of men, and laugh over it." (-) Then, after a moment, glass in hand, he said slowly: "But how can we achieve it, this good mood?" (77)
- ...suddenly without roots, without a base -- (the tree) starts to fall, I saw the infinite spread of its branches come down like gigantic rainfall, and -- understand me -- what I was dreaming of wasn't the end of human history, the abolition of any future; no, no, what I wanted was the total disappearance of mankind altogether with its future and its past, with its beginning and its end, along with the whole span of its existence, with all its memory, with Nero and Napoleon, with Buddha and Jesus; I wanted the total annihilation of the tree that was rooted... (80-81)
- With the last guests gone, Charles and Caliban put the white jackets back in their valises and became ordinary beings. (85)
- Stripped of his white jacket, Caliban looked to the Portuguese woman like a god come down to earth and become a mere man, someone a poor servant girl could easily talk to. (85)
- She listened attentively as if, pronounced at a lesser pace, this language could become more comprehensible to her. (86)
- "Look around you. Of all the people you see, no one is here by his own wish. Of course, what I just said is the most banal truth there is. So banal, and so basic, that we've stopped seeing it and hearing it." (102)
- "Everyone jabbers about human rights. What a joke! Your existence isn't founded on any right. They don't even allow you to end your life by your own choice, these defenders of human rights." (102)
- And the mother went on: "Look at them all! Look! At least half the people you're seeing are ugly. Being ugly--is that one of the human rights too? And do you know what it is to carry your ugliness along through your whole life? With not a moment of relief? Or your sex--you never choose that. Or the color of your eyes. Or your era on earth. Or your country. Or your mother. None of the things that matter. The rights a person can have involve only pointless things, for which there is no reason to fight, or to write great declarations!" (102-03)
- "...as an apologizer, I'm happy. I feel good when we apologize to each other, you and I. Isn't it lovely, apologizing to each other?" (103)
- True, the atmosphere in the park was peaceful. There were people running, there were passersby, on the lawn there were rings of people going through strange, slow motions, there were people eating ice cream; inside the enclosures there were people playing tennis. "I feel better here," said Ramon. "Of course, uniformity rules everywhere. But in this park it has a wider choice of uniforms. So you can hold on to the illusion of your own individuality." (105)
- Insignificance, my friend, is the essence of existence. It is all around us, and everywhere and always. It is present even when no one wants to see it: in horror, in bloody battles, in the worst disasters. It often takes courage to acknowledge it in such dramatic situations, and to call it by name. But it is not only a matter of acknowledging it, we must love insignificance, we must learn to love it. Right here, in this park, before us -- look, my friend, it is present here in all its obviousness, all its innocence, in all its beauty. Yes, its beauty. As you yourself said: the perfect performance... and utterly useless, the children laughing... without knowing why -- isn't that beautiful? Breathe, D'Ardelo, my friend, inhale this insignificance that's all around us, it is the key to wisdom, it is the key to a good mood..." (113)
sep 6 2020 ∞
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