“Man, when reduced to nothing, or in other words a survivor, is not tragic but comic, because he has no fate.”

Liquidation (2003)

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Imre Kertész61

Hungarian writer 1929–2016

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“Tragedy dramatizes human life as potentiality and fulfillment. Its virtual future, or Destiny, is therefore quite different from that created in comedy. Comic Destiny is Fortune—what the world will bring, and the man will take or miss, encounter or escape; tragic Destiny is what the man brings, and the world will demand of him. That is his Fate.”

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“Man is a tragic animal. Not because of his smallness, but because he is too well endowed. Man has longings and spiritual demands that reality cannot fulfill. We have expectations of a just and moral world. Man requires meaning in a meaningless world.”

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“Man doubtless has been made subject to vanity—man here been reduced to nothing—man is nothing. And yet how is he whom God exalts utterly nothing? How is he nothing to whom a divine heart has been given? Let us breathe again, brethren. Although we are nothing in our hearts, perhaps something of us may lurk in the heart of God.”

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“It did not matter, after all. He was only one man. One man’s fate is not important.
“If it is not, what is?”
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“The Socratic demonstration of the ultimate unity of tragic and comic drama is forever lost. But the proof is in the art of Chekhov.”

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Source: The Death of Tragedy (1961), Ch. VIII (p. 302).

“Man, when reduced to nothing, or in other words a survivor, is not tragic but comic, because he has no fate.”

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Imre Kertész61

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