The Street of Crocodiles QUOTES

21 " Beds unmade for days on end, piled high with bedding crumpled and disordered from the weight of dreams, stood like deep boats waiting to sail into the dank and confusing labyrinths of some dark starless Venice. "

― Bruno Schulz , The Street of Crocodiles

22 " Each of them has only one moment, a moment when it soars screaming like the phoenix, all its pages aflame. For that single moment we love them ever after, although they soon turn to ashes. "

― Bruno Schulz , The Street of Crocodiles

23 " I am sorry," he would say, addressing himself unexpectedly to the astonished onlooker. "I am sorry, I am concerned with that section of space which you are filling. Couldn't you move a little to one side for a minute? "

― Bruno Schulz , The Street of Crocodiles

24 " Can you understand,' asked my father, 'the deep meaning of that weakness, that passion for colored tissue, for papier-mache, for distemper, for oakum and sawdust? This is,' he continued with a pained smile, 'the proof of our love for matter as such, for its fluffiness or porosity, for its unique mystical consistency. Demiurge, that great master and artist, made matter invisible, made it disappear under the surface of life. We, on the contrary, love its creaking, its resistance, its clumsiness. We like to see behind each gesture, behind each move, its inertia, its heavy effort, its bearlike awkwardness. "

― Bruno Schulz , The Street of Crocodiles

25 " Even in the depths of sleep, in which he had to satisfy his need for protection and love by curling himself up into a trembling ball, he could not rid himself of the feeling of loneliness and homelessness. "

― Bruno Schulz , The Street of Crocodiles

26 " ...."the sound of a barrel organ rising from the deepest golden vein of the day; two or three bars of a chorus, played on a distant piano over and over again, melting in the sun on the white pavement, lost in the fire of high noon. "

― Bruno Schulz , The Street of Crocodiles

27 " Man was entering under false pretenses the sphere of incredible facilities, acquired too cheaply, below cost price, almost for nothing, and the disproportion between outlay and gain, the obvious fraud on nature, the excessive payment for a trick of genius, had to be offset by self-parody. "

― Bruno Schulz , The Street of Crocodiles

28 " Matter never makes jokes: it is always full of the tragically serious. Who dares to think that you can play with matter, that you can shape it for a joke, that the joke will not be built in, will not eat into it like fate, like destiny? Can you imagine the pain, the dull imprisoned suffering, hewn into the matter of that dummy which does not know why it must be what it is, why it must remain in that forcibly imposed form which is no more than a parody? Do you understand the power of form, of expression, of pretense, the arbitrary tyranny imposed on a helpless block, and ruling it like its own, tyrannical, despotic soul? "

― Bruno Schulz , The Street of Crocodiles

29 " It is strange how interiors reflect their dark turbulent past, how in their stillness bygone history tries to be reenacted, how the same situations repeat themselves with infinite variations, turned upside down and inside out by fruitless dialectic of wallpapers and hangings. "

― Bruno Schulz , The Street of Crocodiles

30 " The possibility suggests itself that no dreams, however absurd or senseless, are wasted in the universe. Embedded in the dream is a hunger for its own reification, a demand that imposes an obligation on reality and that grows imperceptibly into a bona fide claim, an IOU clamoring for payment. "

― Bruno Schulz , The Street of Crocodiles

31 " Was he happy? One would ask that question in vain. A question like this makes sense only when applied to creatures who are rich in alternative possibilities, so that the actual truth can be contrasted with partly real probabilities and reflect itself in them. "

― Bruno Schulz , The Street of Crocodiles

32 " The crowd laughs at the parody. Weep, ladies, over your own fate, when you see the misery of imprisoned matter, of tortured matter which does not know what it is and why it is, nor where the gesture may lead that has been imposed on it forever.
The crowd laughs. Do you understand the terrible sadism, the exhilarating, demiurgical cruelty of that laughter? Yet we should weep, ladies, at our own fate, when we see that misery of violated matter, against which a terrible wrong had been committed. "

― Bruno Schulz , The Street of Crocodiles

33 " On that night the sky laid bare its internal construction in many sections which, like quasi-anatomical exhibits, showed the spirals and whorls of light, the pale-green solids of darkness, the plasma of space, the tissue of dreams. "

― Bruno Schulz , The Street of Crocodiles

34 " I did not have enough courage to go round to the back of the villa. I should certainly have been noticed by someone. Why in spite of this, did I have the feeling of having been there already–a long time ago? Don't we infact know in advance all the landscapes we see in our life? Can anything occur that is entirely new, that in depths of our being, we have not anticipated for a long time? "

― Bruno Schulz , The Street of Crocodiles

35 " On a small square, wood is being cut for the city school. Cords of healthy, crisp timber are piled high and melt slowly, one log after another, under the saws and axes of workmen. Ah, timber, trustworthy, honest, true matter of reality, bright and completely decent, the embodiment of the decency and prose of life! However deep you look into its core, you cannot find anything that is not apparent on its evenly smiling surface, shining with that warm, assured glow of its fibrous pulp woven in a likeness of the human body. In each fresh section of a cut log a new face og the human body. In each fresh section of a cut log a new face appears, always smiling and golden. Oh, the strange complexion of timber, warm eithout exaltation, completely sound, fragrant, and pleasant! "

― Bruno Schulz , The Street of Crocodiles

36 " For us old-age pensioners, autumn is on the whole a dangerous season. He who knows how difficult it is for us to achieve any stability at all, how difficult it is to avoid distraction or destruction by one's own hand, will understant tha autumn, its winds, disturbances, and atmospheric confusions, does not favour our existence, which is precarious anyway. "

― Bruno Schulz , The Street of Crocodiles

37 " One imagined these barrel organs, beautifully painted, carried on the backs of little grey old men, whose indistinct faces, corroded by life, seemed covered by cobwebs – faces with watery, immobile eyes slowly leaking away, emaciated faces as discoloured and innocent as the cracked and weathered bark of trees, and now like bark smelling only of rain and sky. "

― Bruno Schulz , The Street of Crocodiles

38 " If, forgetting the respect due to the Creator, I were to attempt a criticism of creation, I would say ‘Less matter, more form! "

― Bruno Schulz , The Street of Crocodiles

39 " Ei, tämä ei ollut eskatologinen, profeettojen jo kauan sitten ennustama traaginen finaali, jumalallisen näytelmän viimeinen näytös. Ei, tämä oli pikemminkin pyöräilyakrobaattinen sirkusfinaali, taikurimainen hupsis-loppu, jota säesti kaikkien edistyksen henkien kättentaputus. Melkein kaikki uskoivat siihen hetkeäkään epäröimättä. Tyrmistyneet ja vastalauseita huutavat karjuttiin heti paikalla mataliksi. Miksi he eivät ymmärtäneet, että tämä oli yksinkertaisesti ennen kuulumaton tilaisuus, äärimmäisen edistyksellinen maailmanloppu, vapaamielinen päätös, ajan huipulla oleva, korkeinta viisautta syvästi kunnioitava ja suojeleva tapahtuma? Sitä tulkittiin haltiokkaasti, sitä kuvattiin irti reväistyille muistikirjan lehdille, selitettiin, että se oli kumoamaton; vastustajille ja epäilijöille jaettiin korvapuusteja. Kuvalehdissä ilmestyi kokosivun piirroksia, kuvitelmia katastrofista, vaikuttavia näyttämösovituksia. Näimme väkirikkaita kaupunkeja yöllisen pakokauhun vallassa, valomerkkejä ja valoilmiöitä kipunoivan taivaan alla. Etäisen meteorin hämmästyttävät vaikutukset olivat jo kaikkien nähtävissä. Pyrstötähti, jonka vertauskuvallinen kärki tähtäsi heltiämättä maapalloa, leijali liikkumattomana taivaalla ja lähestyi maata niin ja niin monen kilometrin nopeudella sekunnissa. Lakit ja hatut lentelivät ilmaan kuin sirkusilveilyssä, hiukset nousivat pystyyn, sateenvarjot aukenivat itsestään ja kaljut paljastuivat lentoon lehahtavien peruukkien alta - ja yllä oli musta, jättimäinen taivas, jonka laella välkkyi kakkien tähtien yhtäaikainen hälytys. "

― Bruno Schulz , The Street of Crocodiles

40 " The horse was panting, hanging its head. I hugged its head to my breast and saw that there were tears in its large eyes. I noticed a round black wound on its belly. "Why did not you tell me?" I whispered, crying. "My dearest, I did it for you," the horse said and became very small, like a wooden toy. I left him and felt wonderfully light and happy. "

― Bruno Schulz , The Street of Crocodiles