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The Rings of Saturn

Book by W. G. Sebald · 14 quotes · Knows, Stills, Cities

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The Rings of Saturn Quotes

“No matter whether one is flying over Newfoundland or the sea of lights that stretches from Boston to Philadelphia after nightfall, over the Arabian deserts which gleam like mother-of-pearl, over the Ruhr or the city of Frankfurt, it is as though there were no people, only the things they have made and in which they are hiding.”

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“Perhaps we all lose our sense of reality to the precise degree to which we are engrossed in our own work, and perhaps that is why we see in the increasing complexity of our mental constructs a means for greater understanding, even while intuitively we know that we shall never be able to fathom the imponderables that govern our course through life.”

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“To set one's name to a work gives no one a title to be remembered, for who knows how many of the best of men have gone without a trace? The iniquity of oblivion blindly scatters her poppyseed and when wretchedness falls upon us one summer's day like snow, all we wish for is to be forgotten.”

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“From the first smouldering taper to the elegant lanterns whose light reverberated around eighteenth-century courtyards and from the mild radiance of those lanterns to the unearthly glow of the sodium lamps that line the Belgian motorways, it has all been combustion. Combustion is the hidden principle behind every artefact we create. The making of a fish-hook, manufacture of a china cup, or production of a television programme, all depend on the same process of combustion. Like our bodies and like our desires, the machines we have devised are possessed of a heart which is slowly reduced to embers.”

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“También es cierto que no soy capaz de preservarme de mis recuerdos, que con tanta asiduidad y tan de improviso me subyugan, si no es escribiendo. Si permanecieran aprisionados en mi memoria, con el paso del tiempo se tornarían más y más pesados, de modo que yo acabaría por desmoronarme bajo su carga en constante aumento. Durante meses y años los recuerdos reposan adormecidos en nuestro interior y siguen proliferando en silencio hasta que son evocados por una frusleria cualquiera, y de una forma extraña nos ciegan para toda la vida. ¡Cuantas veces no habré tenido por un negocio ignominioso mis recuerdos y la trasposición del recuerdo a la escritura, en el fondo reprobable! Y, sin embargo, ¿qué sería de nosotros sin los recuerdos? No seríamos capaces de clasificar los pensamientos más sencillos, el corazón más sensible perdería la capacidad de profesar afecto por otro, nuestro ser sólo se conformaría de una sucesión infinita de momentos sin sentido, y no existiría más la huella de un pasado. ¡Qué mísera es nuestra vida! Está tan colmada de fantasías erróneas, es tan vana, que casi se reduce a la sombra de las quimeras que nuestra memoria deja en libertad.”

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