I walked around the city, copying down signboards, the names of goods in stores, words overheard at bus stops. In movie theaters I scribbled blindly, in darkness, the words on the screen, and noted the slogans on banners carried by demonstrators in the streets. I approached India not through images, sounds, and smells, but through words; furthermore, words not of the indigenous Hindi, but of a foreign, imposed tongue, which by then had so fully taken root here that it was for me an indispensable key to this country, almost identical with it. I understood that every distinct geographic universe has its own mystery and that one can decipher it only by learning the local language. Without it, this universe will remain impenetrable and unknowable, even if one were to spend entire years in it. I noticed, too, the relationship between naming and being, because I realized upon my return to the hotel that in town I had seen only that which I was able to name: for example, I remembered the acacia tree, but not the tree standing next to it, whose name I did not know. I understood, in short, that the more words I knew, the richer, fuller, and more variegated would be the world that opened before me, and which I could capture.
quotations
from The Tales of Nasrettin Hoca by Aziz Nesin: You Can’t Close Anybody’s Mouth Tight Like A Bag
Hoca is on his way to the village. His son is riding the donkey and Hoca is walking. Passerbys object: “Poor old man has to walk while the lad goes on the donkey. For shame! What’s the world coming to?”
Overhearing this, Hoca tells his son to get down and he mounts the donkey. Further ahead, some people sitting by the road complain:
“Look at that big hunk of a man. He has no shame. He is riding the donkey and making that poor boy walk. People these days have no pity.”
This time, Hoca asks his son to jump on the donkey. As the donkey is trudging on with the two riders, some villagers say to each other:
“For goodness sake! Two men are riding that poor donkey. How cruel! The animal is a bag of bones, anyway. They’re going to break its back.”
When Hoca hears this, he dismounts and tells his son to get down. They go on their way, walking behind the donkey. As they approach the village, some people on the road make fun of them:
“Look at those stupid fools. Their donkey is trotting and those two are trudging along. They got no brains.”
When he hears this last comment, Hoca says to his son:
“Did you hear that? It’s best to go your own way. No matter what you do, people won’t be satisfied. You can’t close anybody’s mouth tight like a bag.”
translated by Talat Halman
from The Tales of Nasrettin Hoca by Aziz Nesin: the same direction
“Why,” someone asks Hoca, “do some people go in one direction and some go another way?”
“Because,” replies Hoca, “if we all went in the same direction, the world would lose its balance and topple.”
translated by Talat Halman
from The Tales of Nasrettin Hoca by Aziz Nesin: Eat, My Fur-coat, Eat
Hoca is invited to a banquet. He goes there in his everyday clothes: No one pays attention to him. He is taken aback. He rushes home, puts his luxurious fur-coat on, and returns to the banquet. This time, he is met at the entrance and led to the dais where he is given the choicest seat. When the soup is served, Hoca dunks the lapel in the bowl saying “Please have some! Eat, my fur-coat, eat! Eat, my fur-coat, eat!”
In amazement, some people ask him why he is doing this. Hoca answers: “The fur-coat gets the best treat; so, the fur-coat should eat.”
translated by Talat Halman
Philip Larkin answering a question about what the genesis of a poem is
If I could answer this sort of question, I’d be a professor rather than a librarian. And in any case, I shouldn’t want to. It’s a thing you don’t want to think about. It happens, or happened, and if it’s some thing to be grateful for, you’re grateful.
I remember saying once, I can’t understand these chaps who go round American universities explaining how they write poems; it’s like going round explaining how you sleep with your wife. Whoever I was talking to said, They’d do that, too, if their agents could fix it.
James Baldwin on being a prophetic writer
I don’t try to be prophetic, as I don’t sit down to write literature. It is simply this: a writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees. No one can tell him about that. No one can control that reality. It reminds me of something Pablo Picasso was supposed to have said to Gertrude Stein while he was painting her portrait. Gertrude said, I don’t look like that. And Picasso replied, You will. And he was right.
James Thurber on the difference between English & American humor
Well someone once wrote a definition of the difference between English and American humor. I wish I could remember his name. I thought his definition very good. He said that the English treat the commonplace as if it were remarkable and the Americans treat the remarkable as if it were commonplace. I believe that’s true of humorous writing. Years ago we did a parody of Punch in which Benchley did a short piece depicting a wife bursting into a room and shouting, “The primroses are in bloom!”–treating the commonplace as remarkable, you see. In “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” I tried to treat the remarkable as commonplace.
again from Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn by Evan S. Connell: on what was a good Indian
Montana Congressman James Cavanaugh spoke for most Americans of that period: “I have never seen in my life a good Indian. . .except when I have seen a dead Indian.”
General Sheridan boiled it down. After listening to the Penateka-Comanche chief Tosawi–Silver Brooch–allude to himself as a good Indian, Little Phil observed: “The only good Indians I ever saw were dead.” And the collective American unconscious gradually reduced Sheridan’s remark to that celebrated epigram: The only good Indian is a dead Indian.
John F. Kennedy on poetry, arrogance and the misuse of power
When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concerns, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses, for art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.
from Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn by Evan S. Connell: burying the dead
While responding to a number of questions posed by Colonel W.A. Graham, Godfrey described his first visit to the Custer battlefield. He seems to have been startled by the colors: “The marble white bodies, the somber brown of the dead horses. . .tufts of reddish brown grass on the almost ashy white soil. . .” He observed that from a distance the stripped men resembled white boulders, and he heard West exclaim: “Oh, how white they look! How white!”
More than two hundred bodies and about seventy animal carcasses had been exposed to the June sun for two or three days when burial parties went to work. Pvts. Berry and Slaper remember being assigned to this duty on the twenty-seventh, Varnum went to work on the twenty-eighth, and there are reports of burials on the twenty-ninth. Soldiers detailed to hide the remains were overcome by nausea, vomiting and retching while they tried to dig graves, so the business was simplified. Bodies thought to be those of officers were nudged into shallow trenches. Each officer’s name was written on a slip of paper which was inserted into an empty cartridge and the cartridge was hammered into the top of a stake or a length of lodge pole set beside the trench.
Those thought to be enlisted men were hastily concealed beneath sagebrush or a few shovels of dirt. Some attempt was made to identify them though not much. Few could be recognized. Very often the features were distorted by fright or anguish.
Leonard Durso 