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Halldór Laxness citations
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Halldór Kiljan Laxness , né à Reykjavik le 23 avril 1902 et décédé dans la même ville le 8 février 1998, est un écrivain islandais du XXe siècle. À trois années d'intervalle, il reçoit le prix international de la paix en 1952 et le prix Nobel de littérature en 1955. Wikipedia  

✵ 23. avril 1902 – 8. février 1998   •   Autres noms هالدور لاکسنس, Հալդոր Լաքսնես
Halldór Laxness photo
Halldór Laxness: 216   citations 0   J'aime

Halldór Laxness: Citations en anglais

“I came to you a crossbearer on a stretcher and an outcast from humanity, and I went from you a conqueror of life.”

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Ólafur talking to Þórunn
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Two: The Palace of the Summerland

“Postscript: It's a dangerous mission for Lapps, said Ingimundur the Old's Finns in Vatnsdœla Saga, when he sent them on a magic journey to explore Iceland. One poor little part-time tutor from the south has no motorway to guide him when he finds himself in the footsteps of the extraordinary Otto Lidenbrock, who years ago went looking for the Icelander Árni Saknússemm. Professor Lidenbrock followed the trail of this philosopher and alchemist down the crater on Snæfellsjökull all the way to the center of the earth... Perhaps the poor part-time tutor who writes this has yet to go through the center of the earth before Christianity at Glacier is fully explored. But where shall I come up?</b”

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Halldór Laxness livre Kristnihald undir Jökli (bók)

Kristnihald undir Jökli (Under the Glacier/Christianity at Glacier) (1968)

“They were allowed a little touch at each of the books, but only with their fingertips tonight, literature cannot bear dirty hands; first we'll have to back each volume with paper, the covers must not get dirty, nor the spines slit, books are the nation's most precious possession, books have preserved the nation's life through monopoly, pestilence, and volcanic eruption, not to mention the tons of snow that have lain over the country's widely scattered homesteads for the major part of every one of its thousand years.”

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Halldór Laxness

Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book Two, Part I: Hard Times

“A married man has only one duty towards his wife in order to make her happy, and that is to ensure that she is constantly pregnant, and with a child in her arms.”

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Halldór Laxness

Reimar Vagnsson
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Four: The Beauty of the Heavens

“My name is Steinar Steinsson, from Hlíðar in Steinahlíðar. I bid the king welcome to Iceland. We are of the same kin, according to the genealogy which Bjarni Guðmundsson of Fuglavík prepared for my grandfather. I am of Jutland origin, descended from King Harald Hilditönn, who fought the battle of Brávellir.”

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Steinar addressing King Kristian
Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

“Misdeeds that are repented no longer exist.”

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Halldór Laxness

Reverend Sigurður
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part III: Fire in Copenhagen

“When I was in Bessastaðir I had a jug of water—and an ax. A well-sharpened ax is a fine tool. On the other hand I've never been fond of the gallows, and never less than when I wrestled a hanged man.”

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Jón Hreggviðsson
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part II: The Fair Maiden

“These people, who have since antiqui possessed the most distinguished litteras in the northern part of the world, choose now to walk upon calfskin or to eat calfskin rather than to read the old words written upon calfskin.”

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Arnas Arnæus
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part I: Iceland's Bell

“b>One of the loveliest and most magnificent events that can happen in the country is when ponies take fright, particularly in a herd. A meadow-pippit has flown past. The ponies' fear is at first blended with play, even with mockery, amusement touched with a shudder, not unlike the behavior of the mentally ill. They trot as if they were retreating from a slow-moving stream of fire, but with lightning in every action, storm in every nerve; swinging their heads everywhere as if the front of their necks were made of elastic, gracefully flirting their tails. They can even pause for a moment, and start biting and boxing, with those romantic mating cries of theirs. Then all at once it is as if the fire has started flowing right under these strange creatures, they charge away like a storm incarnate over scree and bogs and landslides, dipping the tips of their toes for a fractional moment into the furnace that blazes beneath their hooves, cutting across waterfalls, gullys, and boulders, galloping steeply for a while until they stand trapped at last on some ledge high in the mountaintops, there to die and be eaten by birds.”

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Halldór Laxness livre The Atom Station

Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

“Ólafur Kárason had always kept to himself and did not interfere in other people's affairs; it sometimes also happened that he was not very familiar with his own affairs.”

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Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Four: The Beauty of the Heavens

“The Voice began to echo at once. It was the same Voice of old. The difference was that when he was a child he thought he knew what it was, and that he understood it, and he gave it a name; but the older and wiser he became, the more difficult he found it to say what it was, or to understand it, except that he felt it called him away from other people and the responsibilities of life to the place where it alone reigned... Ah, sweet Voice, he said, and filled his lungs with the cool evening breeze of the north, but he did not dare open his arms to it for fear that people might think he was mad.”

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Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Three: The House of the Poet

“Thereafter, when he himself was dead, he imagined that his poems would be published in some mysterious way, and the nation would read them for comfort in adversity, as it had read the poems of other poets before him; it was his highest wish that his poems could help those as unfortunate as himself to have patience to endure.</b”

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Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book One: The Revelation of the Deity

“How wonderful it can be, and what nobility it proves in young men, when they pledge one another a friendship that can never be shadowed by selfishness, envy, or jealousy.”

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little Steina
Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

“The people with whom I grew up in the Vestmannaeyjar carried heaven within themselves; even if it was sixty fathoms at the end of a rope down a cliff, fowling, they were at home in God's City of Zion.”

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old María
Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

“I have always felt that I was different from others. I felt it when I was small. I felt that there was a soul in me. I saw the world from a height of many thousand meters. Even when I was thrashed it was of no concern to me; I could tuck Reykjavik under my arm and go away with it.”

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Halldór Laxness livre The Atom Station

Brilliantine
Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

“I hope that famous critics will not class me with certain devotees of death and doom if I say here that I think that funerals in our churchyard gave me more entertainment than most other things when I was a little boy.”

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Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

“Jón Hreggviðsson said that he himself never read except when he was forced to do so, though he had learned from his mother all the necessary sagas, ballads, and old genealogies, and he claimed to be descended from Haraldur Hilditönn, the Danish king, on his father's side. He said that he would never forget such excellent ancients as Gunnar of Hlíðarendi, King Pontus, and Örvar-Oddur, who were twelve ells high and could have lived to be three hundred years old if they hadn't run into any trouble, and that if he had such a book he would send it immediately for free to the king and his counts, to prove to them that there had indeed once been real men in Iceland.</b”

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Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part I: Iceland's Bell

“Once upon a time these two men had been in the same situation; now the difference between them was like the difference between a wish and its fulfillment. The one was what the other had dreamed of, and therefore they did not know one another anymore. He who has wishes yearns for a friend; but when the wishes have been fulfilled, the friends are the first thing we forget.”

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Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Four: The Beauty of the Heavens

“It's an honor to be beheaded. Even a little churl becomes a man by being beheaded.”

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Hólmfastur Guðmundsson
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part I: Iceland's Bell

“Mine is a bad doctrine. And, what's more, I cannot substantiate my doctrine. The man who has the best doctrine is the one who can prove that he has the most to eat; and good shoes. I have neither, and live in a dugout.”

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the Lutheran
Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

“A man's conscience is an unsteady judge of right and wrong.”

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Arnas Arnæus
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part II: The Fair Maiden

“Slowly, slowly winter day opens his arctic eye.”

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Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book One, Part II: Free of Debt

“Dear Snæfríður, is it not clear to you how disastrous your words were, when you said just now that you do not fear the eye of God watching over you?”

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Reverend Sigurður
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part II: The Fair Maiden

“Hauling fish from the sea—what endless toil. One could almost say, what an eternal problem.”

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Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Three: The House of the Poet

“Because there are indeed women in Iceland, it will now be proven to you, you ugly wench, that there are also men in Iceland!”

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Jón Hreggviðsson
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part I: Iceland's Bell

“I could best believe that love was some sort of rubbish thought up by the romantic geniuses who were now going to start bellowing like cows, or even dying; at least, there is no mention of love in Njal's Saga, which is nevertheless better than any romantic literature. I had lived for twenty years with the best people in the country, my father and mother, and never heard love mentioned. This couple begat us children, certainly; but not from love; rather, as an element of the simple life of poor people who have no pastimes. On the other hand I had never heard a cross word pass between them all my life—but is that love? I hardly think so. I think love is a pastime amongst sterile folk in towns, and takes the place of the simple life.</b”

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Halldór Laxness livre The Atom Station

Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

“If I have a face that rejoices in God's grace, my brother, it is because I have learned more from those who have lived within these [prison] walls than from those who live outside them. I have learned more from those who have fallen down than those who have remained upright.”

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Halldór Laxness

the cathedral pastor visiting Ólafur
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Four: The Beauty of the Heavens

“My job was to keep the house clean, get the children off to school, help the cook-housekeeper, and serve at table. The house was much more perfect than the sort of gilt-bordered Christmas-card-Heaven that a crooked-nosed woman would sacrifice everything to attain in the next world: it was an all-electric house, with machines being plugged in and started up all day long; there was no such thing as a fire; heat came from hot-springs underground, and the glowing embers in the fireplace were made of glass.”

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Halldór Laxness livre The Atom Station

Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

“He wrote down everything he saw and heard, and most of his thoghts, sometimes in verse, sometimes in prose. It could take him many hours to write in his diary a survey of one full day: everything was an experience, any noteworthy observation which some nameless person might make was a new vista, any insignificant piece of information was a new sunrise, any ordinary poem he read for the first time was the beginning of a new epoch like a flight around the globe; the world was multiform, magnificent and opulent, and he loved it.”

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Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Two: The Palace of the Summerland

“Really," said the poet, without enthusiasm.
"Mm—you say 'Really,' young man?" said the secretary. "That is undeniably a rather peculiar reply. Might I ask what you mean by that word?"
"I mean that I'm such an insignificant poet that it isn't worthwhile getting me to compose a poem," said Ólafur Kárason modestly.
The secretary gave the poet a stern and searching look and finally said, "I no longer understand young people nowadays. It's as if nothing serious or important makes any impression on young people any longer. The modern craze seems to be to squander money needlessly if possible. But luckily it isn't possible. Even you, young man, who are said to have a poetic bent, yes, and some say you even possess a modicum of intelligence, you just say 'Really' when you're invited to take part in a ceremony which is destined to revolutionize the religious, scientific, and moral life of the nation.”

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Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Two: The Palace of the Summerland