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Life is Elsewhere

Book by Milan Kundera · 12 quotes · Poetry, Literary Criticism, Literature

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Life is Elsewhere Quotes

“Someone interrupted him: "Modern art was a movement directed against the bourgeoisie and against its world." "Yes," said Jaromil, "but if it had really been logical in its negation of the contemporary world, it would have had to reckon with its own disappearance. It would have had to know—and it would have had to wish—that the revolution would create a totally new kind of art, an art in its own image." "So you approve," said the woman with the alto voice, "of pulping Baudelaire's poetry, prohibiting all modern literature, and shoving the cubist paintings in the National Gallery into the cellar?" "A revolution is an act of violence," said Jaromil, "that's well known, and surrealism itself knew very well that old-timers have to be brutally kicked off the stage, but it didn't suspect that it was one of them.”

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“But it was not only a feeling of guilt which drove him into danger. He detested the pettiness that made life semilife and men semimen. He wished to put his life on one of a pair of scales and death on the other. He wished each of his acts, indeed each day, each hour, each second of his life to be measured against the supreme criterion, which is death. That was why he wanted to march at the head of the column, to walk on a tightrope over an abyss, to have a halo of bullets around his head and thus to grow in everyone's eyes and become unlimited as death is unlimited. . .”

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“The engineer’s ready capitulation, however, did not hide from the poet’s mother the sad realization that the adventure into which she had plunged so impulsively--and which had seemed so intoxicatingly beautiful--had no turned out to be the great, mutually fulfilling love she was convinced she had a full right to expect. Her father was the owner of two prosperous Prague pharmacies, and her morality was based on strict give-and-take. For her part, she had invested everything in love (she had even been willing to sacrifice her parents and their peaceful existence); in turn, she had expected her partner to invest an equal amount of capital of feelings in the common account. To redress the imbalance, she gradually withdrew her emotional deposit and after the wedding presented a proud, severe face to her husband.”

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“Ništa nije proučavao tako kao to lice i ni u što nije polagao takve nade (iako je to zahtijevalo priličan napor) kao u to lice. Bilo je slično majčinu ali, kako je Jaromil bio muškarac, finoća crta bila je mnogo upadljivija - imao je lijepo oblikovan malen nos i sitnu, neznatno uvučenu bradu. Ta ga je brada mučila najviše jer je pročitao poznatu Schopenhauerovu tvrdnju da je unazad povučena brada odvratna, jer se čovjek razlikuje od majmuna upravo po izbačenoj bradi. Onda je negdje pronašao Rilkeovu sliku i ustanovio da je i on imao uvučenu bradu; to mu je pružilo utjehu i poticaj. Dugo je promatrao svoju sliku u ogledalu očajnički se koprcajući u golemu prostranstvu između majmuna i Rilkea.”

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