Halldór Kiljan Laxness cytaty strona 3

„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

“Oh, well, I'm leaving here now," he told her. "They're forcing me to sell up."
"And I'm not surprised," she replied. "It's that dirty old devil again, he who haunts Summerhouses and always has. And always will. Kolumkilli has rarely allowed anyone who lived in this croft to escape scot-free. I say for my part that I have never made this place my home. I have been nothing more than a lodger for the night.”

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

Halldór Kiljan Laxness: Cytaty po angielsku

“It may well be that fighting is normal, like having something to eat. Peace, on the other hand, is a luxury.”

:- conversation between Bjartur and Hallbera
Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book Two, Part II: Years of Prosperity

“b>Over us human beings there hangs an awful sword of justice.

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

“One asks and asks and always the answers become more incomprehensible than the question. In the end one becomes an idiot.
- EmBi”

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

“A topic that sometimes succeeds in being fully resolved with the help of long explanations in speech or writing, with arguments and letter, but more often fails the harder it is pursued, can be resolved by dumbness in a single hour.”

Halldór Laxness książka Kristnihald undir Jökli (bók)

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

“When someone from Skagafjörður was settled comfortably against our gable-wall and was launched on to the Úlfar-rímur set to a Skagafjörður chant, with that obligatory opening about King Cyrus, there opened up before us a whole wide world of heroic poetry all the way to the Orient, fitfully lit by strange flashes of illumination.”

Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

“Nothing was said. And on crawled the little procession in the direction of Summerhouses, men and animals, men-animals, five souls. The pale red sun grazed the surface of the moorland bluffs on this northern winter's morning which was really only an evening. And yet it was midday. The light gilded the clouds of snow flying over the moors so that they seemed one unbroken ocean of fire, one radiant fire of gold with streaming flames and glimmering smoke from east to west over the whole frozen expanse. Through this golden fire of frost, comparable in its magic to nothing but the most powerful and elaborate witchcraft of the Ballads, lay their homeward way.”

Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

“He wandered for a long time along the canals and over the bridges... Steam rose from one boat where men were heating their tea water. He shouted to them and asked them to give him some tea. They asked who he was and he said that he was from Iceland, where Hell is. They invited him out to the boat and gave him something to drink and questioned him about Mount Hekla. He said that he was born and raised at the foot of the mountain and for that reason was called van Hekkenfeld. They asked whether a man could see down into Hell from the summit of Hekla, through the swarm of noxious birds that hovers eternally, shrieking and quarreling, over the crater. He said no, but added that he'd once caught one of these birds with a hooked pole that he'd brought with him up onto the mountain; they were similar to ravens, he said, except for their claws and beaks, which were iron. They asked whether such birds could be eaten and he laughed at their foolishness, but said on the other hand that one could use the claws for hooks and the beak for a pick.”

Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book One, Part I: Icelandic Pioneers

“You have fettered yourself of your own free will, man—break the fetters!”

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

“My image will soon be obliterated; it was only an illusion. But even though I may fall, even though my image may be obliterated, there is one thing that will never fall and can never be obliterated, and that is the yearning of those in chains for liberty.”

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

“To explain God would be to have no God, my little one.”

transcript of Örn's speech to the Laborers
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Three: The House of the Poet

“There is no other Úa than the one who has always lived with me and never gone from me for a single moment. She is closer to me than the flower of the field and the light of the glacier, because she is fused with my own breath. The one thing that remains is what lives deepest within yourself, even though you glide from one galaxy to another. Nothing can change that. And now let us have more shark meat.
- Pastor Jón talking with EmBi”

Halldór Laxness książka The Atom Station

Ugla's father
Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

“[T]o anyone who weeps, life has some importance.”

Halldór Laxness książka Kristnihald undir Jökli (bók)

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

“The correct understanding of life, let me tell you, is love despite everything. Love despite everything, that is the aim and object of life. Love, you see, is the only thing that pays in the long run, even though it might seem a dead loss in the short run.”

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

“When I was young and walked along Breiðafjörður I never would have thought that such a wide variety of people inhabited the world. Here were many folk from the numerous city-states and counties of Italy: Milanese, Napolese and Sicilians, Sardinians, Savoyards, Venetians and Tuscans, along with the Romans themselves; here one could see the peoples of the six Spanish kingdoms: the Castilians, Aragonese, Catalans, Valencians, Majorcans, and Navarrans; gathered here were envoys from the different nations of the Empire, even from the nations that had adopted Luther's reforms: Bavarians, Germans and Croatians, Franconians, Westphalians, Rhinelanders, Saxons, Burgundians, Franks, Walloons, Austrians, and Styrians... I saw people from nations I knew nothing about, their countenances, the textures of their clothing, their grimy faces and their eyes filled with passion and tenacity. Most often, however, I found myself thinking about their countless feet, bare or in shoes, mostly certainly tired, yet somehow lively and hopeful; and the old crusade-dance that resounded through their musica: 'Fair are the fields, cloudless God's sky.' And suddenly I realized that Guðríður Þorbjarnardóttir was gone. Not a single Icelander remained.”

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

“I have no idea whether my grandfather took notice of everything in it, or nothing. If he believed at all, he was just like those theologians who store their theology somewhere in a locked compartment of the brain, or rather, perhaps, like those travelers who carry a bottle of iodine in their luggage and take care to keep it tightly corked in case it leaks and ruins their belongings. To be honest, I think my grandfather Björn of Brekkukot would not have been significantly different if he had lived here in Iceland in pagan times, or if his home had been somewhere in the world where people never read from Vídalín's Book of Sermons but believed instead in the bull Apis, or the god Ra, or the bird Colibri.... "A Bible that costs half a hen? Pshaw!"”

Arnas describing a procession in Rome
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part II: The Fair Maiden

“You Danes really are a sorry lot if you think that the day will dawn when you'll get hold of Snæfríður, Iceland's sun.”

Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

“Gold is precious because it resembles the sun. Silver has the light of the moon.”

Þórður Narfason
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part II: The Fair Maiden

“When my grandfather was born there were barely two thousand people living in the capital; in my own childhood there were nearly five thousand. In grandfather's childhood the only people who counted were a few government officials and a few foreign merchants, mainly Jews from Schleswig and Holstein who spoke Low German and called themselves Danes... The rest of the town's inhabitants were cottagers who went out to the fishing and sometimes owned a small share in a cow, or had a few sheep. They had little rowing-boats, on which they could sometimes hoist a sail.”

the blind man at the Ölfus River
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part I: Iceland's Bell

“b>It's a common saying that the children of children are fortune's favorites.

Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

“To be a poet is to be a visitor on a distant shore until one dies. In the land where I belong, but which I shall never reach, individuals have no cares, and that is because industry runs by itself without anyone trying to steal from others. My land is a land of plenty; it is the world that Nature has given to mankind, where society is not a thieves' society, where the children aren't sickly but healthy and contented, and young men and women can fulfill their aspirations because it is natural to do so. In my world it is possible to fulfill all aspirations, and therefore all aspirations are in themselves good, quite unlike here, where people's aspirations are called wicked because it isn't possible to fulfill them.”

Halldór Laxness książka The Atom Station

Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

“It's strange that all birds don't fly in the same way... I've heard that the wings of aeroplanes all conform to the same formula, whereas birds each conform to a formula of their own... All birds are perhaps a little wrong, because an absolute once-and-for-all formula for a bird has never been found, just as all novels are bad because the correct formula for a novel has never been found.”

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

“It's an old saying that one still has to know something, despite everything.”

Halldór Laxness książka Kristnihald undir Jökli (bók)

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

“Since when has America with all its hordes of gangsters and beggars become God's Kingdom?”

Halldór Laxness książka Kristnihald undir Jökli (bók)

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

“This is the place' is what the divinely-inspired leader is reported to have said when Salt Lake Valley opened out before the slavering oxen with blood on their hooves and the men who had managed to cross the wilderness even though their children and sweethearts still tarried in the sand. Sometimes I have the feeling that I am dead and have come to the land of eternity. Of such a land it says in a hymn I once knew, that there stood a wondrous palace on pillars, inlaid with gold and brighter than the sun... When I now look back across the ocean to the land whence I came, I glimpse behind me a sparse and barren coast... There stands my family, and looks sorrowing out to sea.”

the heckler at Brennugjá
Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

“I have been told that at school I was the sort of simpleton who suffered from dux-disease. It is reckoned in Iceland that those who are afflicted by this disease can never become anything other than drunkards, journalists, or junior clerks... I was spiritually as well as physically in a state of suspended adolescence. Lessons came welling up out of me as if I were talking in my sleep. I could reel off the bones in a dog at the drop of a hat, any time at all, just as if I had them in my pockets; if I had been woken up at three o'clock in the morning, I would have detailed each and every one of them, just as if I had been lying on them.”

Stone Stanford, Steinar
Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

“The God of the Jews was an absolute God, who believed in other gods himself, to be sure, but forbade me to obey them, contrary to our own beliefs in the North. We have many gods and obey them all, and they us, the god of the sea and the god of the land, the god of thunder and the god of poetry.”

Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

“Work on the one side, the home on the other—they were two walls in the one prison.”

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

“The difference between a novelist and a historian is this: that the former tells lies deliberately and for the fun of it; the historian tells lies in his simplicity and imagines he is telling the truth.”

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

“Three things, according to poets, are considered bliss in Iceland: hot rye-cakes, plump girls, and cold buttermilk.”

Halldór Laxness książka Kristnihald undir Jökli (bók)

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