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The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats: The Second Coming



There’s a short story by Shalamov, entitled In the snow. Prisoners are trudging in single file through deep snow in Siberia, tramping, stamping their way through the snow. “The first in line has the hardest task, and when his strength fails, one of the first five will take his place. Of all those following in his wake, even the smallest, even the weakest will have to tramp through virgin snow at some point, because they cannot always step precisely into his tracks. It is the readers, not the writers who make their way on tractors and on horseback.”

György Spiró: What does one write if one is Hungarian?
Translated by Eszter Molnár



It may be that you will consider all this utopian, and you will say you see no traces of it in real life (...) But important events do not always find a reflection concurrently in immediate rea- lity. And anyway I am speaking about a process of which, whilst considering that I discern its broad design, I naturally cannot know its outcome.

Imre Kertész: The Holocaust as Culture
Translated by Tim Wilkinson


Which meant that I am once again.

Péter Nádas: My Own Death
Translated by János Salamon