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Tuesday 28 August 2012

Quotes worth saving (10) Skylark by Dezső Kosztolányi



















Skylark by Dezső Kosztolányi

First published, in Hungarian, in 1924
This edition, translated by Richard Aczel, published by New York Review Books Classics in 2010

"In a state of excitement, things that normally pass unnoticed can seem pregnant with significance. At such times even inanimate objects - a  lamppost, a gravel path, a bush - can take on a life of their own, primordial, reticent and hostile, stinging our hearts with their indifference and making us recoil with a start. And the very sight of people at such times, blindly pursuing their lonely, selfish ends, can suddenly remind us of our own irrevocable solitude, a single word or gesture petrifying in our souls into an eternal symbol of the utter arbitrariness of life." (p.189)