Fazil Iskander about Stalin, Russia, women and his own death
He was born in Abkhazia mothers abhazca and father is a Persian. From infancy accustomed to hearing around the Abkhaz, Russian, Georgian, Mingrelian, Armenian, Turkish speech. Myself always said: “I am Russian writer.” And the history of Russian literature can not imagine myself without Fazil Iskander, “Russian Marquez”. And in “Sandro from Chegem” is already a generation of readers dive in “one Hundred years of solitude”. The works of Iskander translated into all European languages and also into Chinese and Japanese. Fazil Iskander was not only a great writer, but also a wise and original thinking person. .<url>” gathered some of his witty sayings on different occasions.
About childhood
“It is in childhood life is seen most simply and naturally, in childhood’s beliefs, which then accompany us through life… Take the novel “Sandro from Chegem”. It is based on my childhood experience.”
“Sandro” is a work about the present, and the childhood of humanity. I think this link gives a sense of truth and a sense of harmonic completeness, which yearns for every man”.
“For many years I lived in Sukhumi, which at that time was a city of very distinctive. The peculiarity of it consisted in its exclusive multi-ethnicity, multilingualism motley. Here you can hear Abkhaz, Russian, Georgian, Mingrelian, Armenian, Turkish speech. Sounded Persian… And all this multilingual haze merged for me in one is not just sound, but also the semantic Symphony…”
“I studied German, English, but really only know two languages – Russian and Abkhaz.”
About literature
“I think the writer need to be away from alcohol. I always wrote sober”.
“The will to goodness and reason should rule over any life absurd. We must not forget the aphorism Schopenhauer: who thinks clearly, he clearly States”.
“Modern prose headed by women writers and detectives. It is not serious. They behave with the readers, as with men, it is important not to understand him, and set him in the mood.”
“Humor is the residual joy of life after deduction of stupidity. We rejoice in humor, realizing the stupidity, even if after the deduction of stupidity in my life there’s nothing left but the mind. But in the divine sense this is the main thing.”
Writer Fazil Iskander, 1994
Photo: Gennady Prokhorov / TASS
About women
“Most women appreciate shyness. It’s beautiful. The basis of femininity is not an appearance, and a heightened sense of shame and sympathy for others”.
“Some women, ill, be gentle. After a few days suddenly begin to shout from the bed. Oh! Mean, recover.”
“A woman should overly be afraid of the dark, rats, thunderstorms, bad dreams, bad feeling about this. It excites a man attracted to her courage, sense of responsibility. Men bold women are always confused person.”
“To write is to edit your life so that you can live. What I’m doing”.
“The ultimate goal of art as of religion, — the humanization of man”.
About the social life
“Public figure — nesmirivshimisya loser. Unfortunate country will know by the number of public figures”.
“Politics and conscience are incompatible.”
“A perfect society is impossible because people are inherently imperfect”.
“Collective responsibility does not exist, liability is only personal. Blush only personally. The team may not blush with shame.”
“The enormity of change or catastrophe makes it to the untrained mind the more convincing. For example, the man who burned a house is perceived as crazy, but a man who burned a lot of houses, creates in us the idea that maybe he’s going to build in their place a better one?”
“Stupidity is ridiculed not in order to destroy nonsense — it is indestructible. This is done in order to maintain the spirit of sound”.
“Man is an unfinished being positive. He always thinks with a strong desire can take and reinterpret all the better. But it’s a matter of many generations. You have to be patient”.
“We followed Marx lost, considering that the economy is the basis, and everything else – the superstructure. The millennial experience of mankind, all religions of the world claim that on the contrary, it is the conscience — the basis and economy is one of the most important add-ons.
“The conditions of life engendered by Stalinism, scary not only because they led to the deaths of many thousands of people. This atmosphere contributed to the emergence of a new type of man — human evil… Not giving anything neither the country nor the people, this deceit has created the conditions under which the least talented part of the nation received the greatest chance to move up the social ladder”.
Writer Fazil Iskander (right) at the exhibition of children’s drawings in the House of writers, 1980
Photo: Alexander Ustinov / RIA Novosti
“People can’t burn everything worships, can not give up yourself to become the other. Become this other, he cannot because he is not enough strength, strength to build a new house of his life. To abandon what is, for him, means to lose everything.”
“Today, class struggle has turned into a cash fight. From the Declaration of human rights we came to the scenery of human rights”.
“In the USSR be honest it was much easier in those years, evil had clearly defined boundaries. If someone violated them against their conscience, he at least was aware of what he was doing. The current evil is vague and uncertain and therefore much worse.”
“Krestonostsy occupied Russia”
“If the shortcomings of the country want to laugh, then the country could still recover. If you laugh at the shortcomings of the country do not want to, so she had died. Over the dead don’t laugh.”
“All Russia is drinking hamlet”
“Patriotism is the theater, where the entrance without tickets. And every viewer has a chance to become an actor. Some for these reasons, they run to others for these reasons hesitate and pass by”.
About the Abkhaz-Georgian conflict
“If Abkhazians and Georgians in the future to live peacefully next? Why not? It’s up to them. But better still, I think they will not be in the same state, and do as good neighbors. You should be able to forgive the wrongs”.
“The village my uncle was friends with Mingrelian, who lived near him. They were very close friends, the closest. Uncle knew Mingrelian language, he knew their language, so they have no obstacles. I guess now, they were the most intelligent of men, and so found each other.”
About the main
“When you are coming close to his own death, the idea that you spend all your life working, relaxing.”
