Halldór Kiljan Laxness cytaty strona 2

„Miałem nadzieję, że biskup przyjedzie tu osobiście. To wyjątkowo miły człowiek… Rozmowa z nim zawsze sprawia mi prawdziwą przyjemność. Nigdy się nie możemy w niczym zgodzić.”

Duszpasterstwo koło lodowca

„Jeżeli obserwuje się Lodowiec dostatecznie długo, wówczas słowa przestają znaczyć cokolwiek.”

Duszpasterstwo koło lodowca

„Wyrwano mu z serca najdelikatniejsze kwiaty i rzucono na ziemię jak wstrętne trujące grzyby.”

Duszpasterstwo koło lodowca

„Tymczasem postanowił sobie niezbicie, że poprosi ją o przeczytanie mu kilku wierszy, które sama ułożyła, kiedy jednak spoglądał na kobietę, dusza jej była jakby nieobecna. Niekiedy zdawało mu się, jak i dyrektorowi, że ona w ogóle duszy nie posiada, tylko same oczy.”

Światłość świata

„Tu, na tym wybrzeżu pozbawionym portu, pojęcie godności ludzkiej było czymś niewłaściwym, zupełnie jak światło niebiańskie. Głupota, służalczość i bieda – to były jedyne cnoty, trójjedyne bóstwo tej surowej gminy. Ta ciemna potęga osłaniała tu każde dziecko twardym pancerzem, chroniąc je przeciwko niebezpieczeństwu jakichkolwiek ludzkich uczuć, a zwłaszcza przeciw jakiemukolwiek oddziaływaniu piękna.”

Światłość świata

„Olafur obudził się w otchłani nocy jako obcy człowiek w swym własnym życiu, człowiek pełen skruchy z powodu niepopełnionych grzechów, człowiek, którego czyny dawno już utopiły się w litości. Obudził się, bardzo daleki od siebie samego, zabłąkany w pustyni życia, powrotna zaś droga jest zbyt długa na jedno ludzkie życie.”

Światłość świata

Halldór Kiljan Laxness Cytaty o pewności siebie

„Nie boję się nikogo z wyjątkiem tylko siebie samego.”

Światłość świata

„Jak to się często zdarza z większością ludzi, którzy w rzeczywistości nie wiedzą, co z sobą począć i tracą wszelką nadzieję na szczęście, tak było i z nim: wszelkimi siłami wzbraniał się przyznać, że nie wie, co robić i stracił nadzieję. Nie posiadał szorstkiego, nieprzejednanego, zahartowanego i nieustępliwego usposobienia Tippel-Halli, która nie zatrzymywała się, chociaż widziała tylko ciemne strony życia.”

Światłość świata

„Człowieku, dobrowolnie nakładasz na siebie łańcuchy. Zerwij je! (…) Pomyśl o całym życiu przed tobą. Uważasz, że Stwórca nie potrafi rządzić światem bez twojej idiotycznej litości? Ty, ty, który jesteś poetą, zejdź z tego ohydnego krzyża!”

Światłość świata

„(…) I nie poprzestaniemy, dopóki przy pomocy prawa determinacji nie uda nam się pobudzić życia, które nie tylko będzie wieczne, lecz również coraz silniejsze i piękniejsze.
– Nie strasz mnie, drogi przyjacielu.”

Światłość świata

Halldór Kiljan Laxness cytaty

„Historia się powtarza, ale za każdym razem trzeba za nią płacić drożej.”

Duszpasterstwo koło lodowca

„Zahamowanie procesu naukowego w trakcie jego rozwoju z powodów moralnych, na przykład dlatego, że komuś zmarzły nogi, jest w równym stopniu nienaukowe, co nieuczciwe.”

„Tam, gdzie jokell sięga nieba, okolica przestaje należeć do ziemi, a ziemia staje się częścią nieba; tam nie ma trosk, a więc i radość jest niepotrzebna; tam panuje wyłącznie piękno, wolne od wszelkich pragnień.”

Duszpasterstwo koło lodowca

„Te racuchy – rzekł opanowawszy się – są jakby upieczoną aureolą.”

Światłość świata

„Słuchając, jak przemawiał, zauważyli nagle, że po raz pierwszy rozumieją swoje myśli. Teraz nareszcie wiedzieli, kim są naprawdę i jak wygląda świat, na którym żyją.”

Światłość świata

„Sam poeta mógł znosić obojętnie najgorszy głód. I gdyby był wolnym człowiekiem, położyłby się po prostu, naciągnął koc na głowę i czekałby bez trwogi na wprowadzenie nowego systemu organizacji warunków bytowania ludzkości.”

Światłość świata

„Niekiedy nadchodzi dzień, gdy zapomina się wszystkich, których się kochało – mówi dalej poeta.”

Światłość świata

„Najwspanialszym bogactwem człowieka w Islandii są chmury, które się kłębią i znów rozchodzą.”

Tego dnia można umrzeć spokojnie. Głębokie rany zabliźniają się tak, że ledwo można je zauważyć.
Światłość świata

„Musiał bez przerwy przyglądać się kobiecie: była w niej mieszanina ciekawości, ciągłej czujności, kobiecego sprytu i skamieniałej goryczy, wszystko zdawało się być obojętne; obojętne w jakiś nieuchwytny sposób, fanatycznie i nieosobowo zarazem, po sto milionów razy obojętne. Miała dziwny i precyzyjny sposób dawania odpowiedzi, niezwykły i niecodzienny – prawie jak wiersz!”

Światłość świata

„Można było wprost widzieć na jej twarzy, jak szybko przebiegają myśli na podobieństwo chmur czy hufców rycerzy.”

Światłość świata

„Lodowiec zaczynał się tuż nad zielonym górskim grzbietem, jego bliskość to było doskonała boska czystość, piękno bez skazy i bez wszelkiego miłosierdzia.”

Światłość świata

„Letnie dni nie są nigdzie tak jasne i długie, jak w naszym zapadłym kącie obok lodowca (…). Nawet podczas snu czujemy zapach zieleni.”

Światłość świata

„Jeżeli o mnie chodzi można mi wszystko zabrać – rzekł poeta – z wyjątkiem swobody spoglądania od czasu do czasu w niebo. Pastor, który dotychczas rozwodził się nad sposobami dojścia do bogactwa, porzucił nagle ten temat i skierował swoje mrugające oczy na poetę, przy czym nieco przypominał aktora, który podczas gry zapomniał swojej roli z powodu jakiegoś wypadku na widowni. W oczach jego ukazała się iskra tego czegoś wiecznie ludzkiego, co niewątpliwie chyba najlepiej widać w oczach starej świni, kiedy ukradkiem zezuje na pastucha, dostrzega go i poznaje.”

Światłość świata

„Jej twarz to niezgłębione połączenie oddalenia i bliskości, tęsknoty i rezygnacji, ciekawości i obojętności, nieustanna i czarująca dysharmonia bytu i niebytu – i odkrył nagle, że żadna twarz nie obchodziła go dotąd tak bardzo.”

Światłość świata

„Jak to się dzieje, że się znajduje akurat potrzebne słowa? Próbowałam na przykład przez wiele dni ułożyć wiersz do pewnego mężczyzny. Wiem, że właściwe słowa wiszą poniekąd w powietrzu, ale jak to zrobić, żeby je uchwycić? – Czy nie polega to na tym, że braknie ci właściwie prawdziwego uczucia? – spytał poeta.”

Światłość świata

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

Jeżeli się naprawdę głęboko czuje, to słowa same się znajdą.
Światłość świata

Halldór Kiljan Laxness: Cytaty po angielsku

“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”

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

“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.”

Halldór Laxness książka Kristnihald undir Jökli (bók)

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“Misdeeds that are repented no longer exist.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

Halldór Laxness książka The Atom Station

Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

“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.”

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

“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”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

little Steina
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.”

old María
Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

“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.”

Halldór Laxness książka The Atom Station

Brilliantine
Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

“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”

Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

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

the Lutheran
Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

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

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

“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?”

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

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

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

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

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

“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”

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

“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.”

Halldór Laxness książka The Atom Station

Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

“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.”

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

“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.”

Halldór Laxness książka The Atom Station

Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

“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.”

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