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South of the Border, West of the Sun

Book by Haruki Murakami · 43 quotes · Haruki Murakami, Haruki Murakami World, Japanese Literature

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South of the Border, West of the Sun Quotes

“I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity demanded, I could become completely self-centered, even cruel. I was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse, inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal. College transported me to a new town, where I tried, one more time, to reinvent myself. Becoming someone new, I could correct the errors of my past. At first I was optimistic: I could pull it off. But in the end, no matter where I went, I could never change. Over and over I made the same mistake, hurt other people, and hurt myself in the bargain. Just after I turned twenty, this thought hit me: Maybe I've lost the chance to ever be a decent human being. The mistakes I'd committed—maybe they were part of my very makeup, an inescapable part of my being. I'd hit rock bottom, and I knew it.”

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Book:South of the Border, West of the Sun
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“I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity demanded, I could become completely self-centered, even cruel. I was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse, inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal.”

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“Have you heard of the illness hysteria siberiana? Try to imagine this: You're a farmer, living all alone on the Siberian tundra. Day after day you plow your fields. As far as the eye can see, nothing. To the north, the horizon, to the east, the horizon, to the south, to the west, more of the same. Every morning, when the sun rises in the east, you go out to work in your fields. When it's directly overhead, you take a break for lunch. When it sinks in the west, you go home to sleep. And then one day, something inside you dies. Day after day you watch the sun rise in the east, pass across the sky, then sink in the west, and something breaks inside you and dies. You toss your plow aside and, your head completely empty of thought, begin walking toward the west. Heading toward a land that lies west of the sun. Like someone, possessed, you walk on, day after day, not eating or drinking, until you collapse on the ground and die. That's hysteria siberiana.”

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“I seriously believed I could escape myself–as long as I made the effort. But I always hit a dead end. No matter where I go, I still end up me. What’s missing never changes. The scenery may change, but I’m still the same old incomplete person. The same missing elements torture me with a hunger that I can never satisfy. I guess that lack itself is as close as I’ll come to defining myself.”

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“Once she called to invite me to a concert of Liszt piano concertos. The soloist was a famous South American pianist. I cleared my schedule and went with her to the concert hall at Ueno Park. The performance was brilliant. The soloist's technique was outstanding, the music both delicate and deep, and the pianist's heated emotions were there for all to feel. Still, even with my eyes closed, the music didn't sweep me away. A thin curtain stood between myself and pianist, and no matter how much I might try, I couldn't get to the other side. When I told Shimamoto this after the concert, she agreed. "But what was wrong with the performance?" she asked. "I thought it was wonderful." "Don't you remember?" I said. "The record we used to listen to, at the end of the second movement there was this tiny scratch you could hear. Putchi! Putchi! Somehow, without that scratch, I can't get into the music!" Shimamoto laughed. "I wouldn't exactly call that art appreciation." "This has nothing to do with art. Let a bald vulture eat that up, for all I care. I don't care what anybody says; I like that scratch!" "Maybe you're right," she admitted. "But what's this about a bald vulture? Regular vultures I know about--they eat corpses. But bald vultures?" In the train on the way home, I explained the difference in great detail.The difference in where they are born, their call, their mating periods. "The bald vulture lives by devouring art. The regular vulture lives by devouring the corpses of unknown people. They're completely different." "You're a strange one!" She laughed. And there in the train seat, ever so slightly, she moved her shoulder to touch mine. The one and only time in the past two months our bodies touched.”

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“- Чувал ли си за болестта сибирска треска? - Не. - Чела съм за нея преди доста време.. Но не помня заглавието на книгата. От сибирска треска боледуват предимно селяните в Сибир. Опитай се да си представиш следното: ти си селянин и живееш съвсем сам в дивата сибирска тайга. Ден след ден превиваш гръб над ралото, разораваш нивите си с пот на челото. Наоколо, докъдето ти стига погледът, няма нищо. Накъдето и да се обърнеш, виждаш само хоризонта - на север, на изток, на юг, на запад - все същото. И нищо друго. Сутрин слънцето изгрява и ти отиваш да работиш на полето. Когато застане над главата ти, значи е дошло време за обяд. Щом започне да клони към залез, се връщаш у дома да спиш..И това се повтаря ден след ден, година след година..Та, представи си, че ти си такъв селянин..Идва ден, когато нещо в теб умира..Нещо..Всеки ден виждаш как слънцето изгрява от изток, изминава своя път по небето, после залязва на запад и нещо в теб се прекършва и умира. Захвърляш плуга и с празна от мисли глава тръгваш на запад. На запад от слънцето. Вървиш ден след ден като луд - не ядеш, не пиеш, докато не паднеш мъртъв на земята. Това е сибирската треска - hysteria siberiana. Опитах се да си представя сибирски селянин, лежащ мъртъв на земята и попитах: - Но какво има там, на запад от слънцето? - Не знам. Може би нищо. А може и да има нещо. Във всеки случай е различно от онова, което е на юг от границата.”

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“Shimamoto was in charge of the records. She'd take one from its jacket, place it carefully on the turntable without touching the grooves with her fingers, and, after making sure to brush the cartridge free of any dust with a tiny brush, lower the needle ever so gently onto the record. When the record was finished, she'd spray it and wipe it with a felt cloth. Finally she'd return the record to its jacket and its proper place on the shelf. Her father had taught her this procedure, and she followed his instructions with a terribly serious look on her face, her eyes narrowed, her breath held in check. Meanwhile, I was on the sofa, watching her every move. Only when the record was safely back on the shelf did she turn to me and give a little smile. And every time, this thought hit me: It wasn't a record she was handling. It was a fragile soul inside a glass bottle.”

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“Maybe I had had an illusion, I thought. I stood there a long time, gazing at the rainswept streets. Once again, I was a twelve-year-old boy staring for hours at the rain. Look at the rain long enough, with no thoughts in your head, and you gradually feel your body falling loose, shaking free of the world of reality. Rain has the power to hypnotize. But this had been no illusion. When I went back into the bar, a glass and an ashtray remained where she had been. A couple of lightly crushed cigarette butts were lined up in the ashtray, a faint trace of lipstick on each. I sat down and closed my eyes. Echoes of music faded away, leaving me alone. In that gentle darkness, the rain continued to fall without a sound.”

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“As the dawn approached, I gave up trying to sleep. I threw a cardigan over my pajamas, padded out to the kitchen, and made some coffee. I sat at the kitchen table and watched the sky grow lighter by the minute. It had been a long time since I’d seen the dawn. At one end of the sky a line of blue appeared, and like blue ink on a piece of paper, it spread slowly across the horizon. If you gathered together all the shades of blue in the world and picked the bluest, the epitome of blue, this was the color you would choose. I rested my elbows on the table and looked at that scene, my mind blank. When the sun showed itself over the horizon, that blue was swallowed up by ordinary sunlight A single cloud floated above the cemetery, a pure white cloud, its edges distinct A cloud so sharply etched you could write on it A new day had begun. But what this day would bring, I had no idea.”

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“Yo lo sabía, sabía que ella me había cogido la mano de una manera espontánea, pero que, en realidad, lo había hecho porque deseaba hacerlo. Aún hoy recuerdo el tacto de su mano aquel día. Es un tacto diferente a cualquier otro que haya experimentado después. Era simplemente la mano pequeña y cálida de una niña de doce años. Pero en aquellos cinco dedos y en aquella palma se concentraban, como en un catálogo, todas las cosas que yo quería saber, todas las cosas que tenía que saber. Y ella, al tomarme de la mano, me las enseñó. Me enseñó que en el mundo real existía un lugar como aquél. Durante diez segundos tuve la sensación de haberme convertido en un pajarillo perfecto. Surcaba el aire, sentía el viento. Desde las alturas, podía ver paisajes lejanos. Tan remotos que no era capaz de vislumbrar con claridad lo que había. Pero supe que existían. Y que algún día iba a visitarlos. Esa certeza me dejó sin aliento, me hizo estremecer.”

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“Because memory and sensations are so uncertain, so biased, we always rely on a certain reality-call it an alternate reality-to prove the reality of events. To what extent facts we recognize as such really are as they seem, and to what extent these are facts merely because we label them as such, is an impossible distinction to draw. Therefore, in order to pin down reality as reality, we need another reality to relativize the first. Yet that other reality requires a third reality to serve as its grounding. An endless chain is created within our consciousness, and it is the very maintenance of this chain that produces the sensation that we are actually here, that we ourselves exist.”

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“Whenever I heard that languid, beautiful melody, those days came back to me. It wasn’t what I’d characterize as a happy part of my life, living as I was, a balled-up mass of unfulfilled desires. I was much younger, much hungrier, much more alone. But I was myself, pared down to the essentials. I could feel each single note of music, each line I read, seep down deep inside me. My nerves were sharp as a blade, my eyes shining with a piercing light. And every time I heard that music, I recalled my eyes then, glaring back at me from a mirror.”

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“I hurt myself deeply, though at the time I had no idea how deeply. I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity demanded, I could become completely self-centred, even cruel. I was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse, inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal.”

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“Hay una realidad que demuestra la verdad de un hecho. Porque nuestra memoria y nuestros sentidos son demasiado inseguros, demasiado parciales. Incluso podemos afirmar que muchas veces es imposible discernir hasta qué punto un hecho que creemos percibir es real y a partir de qué punto sólo creemos que lo es. Así que para preservar la realidad como tal, necesitamos otra realidad -una realidad colindante- que la relativice. Pero, a su vez, esta realidad colindante necesita una base para relativizarse a sí misma. Es decir, que hay otra realidad colindante que demuestra, a su vez, que ésta es real. Y esta cadena se extiende indefinidamente dentro de nuestra conciencia y, en un cierto sentido, puede afirmarse que es a través de esta sucesión, a través de la conservación de esta cadena, como adquirimos conciencia de nuestra existencia misma. Pero si esta cadena, casualmente, se rompe, quedamos desconcertados. ¿La realidad está al otro lado del eslabón roto? ¿Está a este lado?”

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“Because memory and feeling are so uncertain, so subjective, we always rely on some reality - let's call it an alternate reality - to prove events to be true. To what extent the facts we take to be true really are, and to what extent they are facts merely because we call them so, such a distinction cannot be made. Therefore, in order to recognize a reality as reality, we need another reality to relativize the former. But this second reality requires a third as a basis. An infinite chain is created in our consciousness, and maintaining it creates the impression that we exist. However, something may happen that breaks this chain and then we feel lost. What's real? Is reality on this side of the broken chain or on the other?”

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