Reading of the so-called news was cut short by that of Imre Kertész’s Kaddish: les grands livres nous dispensent de ce qui passe pour être nouveau. Commentary on Todesfuge page 73, talking about his writing and more to the point literature in general, and East European literature in particular (and its compromissions and the uncertainties one is in as to aesthetic
judgment, clouded by all sorts of political and other considerations):

insofar as I am and must be at all—oh, what do I have to do with literature, with your golden hair, Margarethe, for a ballpoint pen is my spade, the sepulchre of your ashen hair, Shulamith;

Aqiba being burned and the letters of the torah in flying sparks over the fire (and a sweet smell from inside the acrid, putrefying one, as in Samson’s story?). “… truth is what consumes you, I wrote” (page 84).

That I write only because I have to write, and I have to write because I am whistled up every day to drive the spade deeper, to play death on a darker, sweeter string?

On original sin, or (shall I say) a version of it: el delito mayor del hombre es haber nacido (Calderón, quoted page 93).