Night

Karl Kraus
Translated by Peter Winslow[1]

 

The true truths are the ones you can invent. (F 360-362: 6)

 

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Knowledge of my material compounds any understanding of my work. They don’t realize that things existent have yet to be invented and that it is worth inventing them. Nor do they get that a satirist who invents existent people needs more strength than someone who invents people as if they existed. (F 360-362: 6)

 

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Explaining the unconscious is a good task for consciousness. The former won’t go to any trouble at all and shall do nothing more than confuse the latter. (F 360-362: 7)

 

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I don’t want to smell any flower that doesn’t wilt when a free thinker breaths on it. (F 360-362: 10)

 

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Whenever I cross the street I see lots of nitwits, but I stay serious. And the more nitwits I see, the more serious I get. By contrast, however, the nitwits smile at me whenever they cross the street, and—because I see just as many nitwits as nitwits see me—lots of nitwits are smiling when they cross the street. They stand there, call my name, and point at me, so that I notice them, so that I know what my name is, and so that I know that I’m me. And there’s nothing I can do because this all takes place in a country which is of the opinion that only your character is capable of being defamed and which leaves nitwits unpunished, but punishes me whenever I call them nitwits, so that they know what their names are and so that they know that they’re them. (F 360-362: 13)

 

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Only after you have gazed upon the city from Kahlenberg shall you understand what I am and what I wrote. (F 360-362: 15)

 

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At most, only one meaning can be hidden between the lines. Between the words, there is room for more: for thought. (F 360-362: 16)

 

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After all, the critique of the newspapers manages to express where the person criticized stands with regard to the critic. (F 360-362: 17)

 

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Authors who first experience and then write about it are reporters you can rely on. Poets just experiwrite it. (F 360-362: 17)

 

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A certain X. made a disdainful remark that nothing of mine shall be left for posterity except a few good jokes. That would still be something, but it is an unfortunate fact that not even those shall be left for posterity: and for no other reason than that they were stolen long ago—by X. (F 360-362: 20)

 

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The ingratitude is often disproportionate to the benefaction received. (F 360-362: 21)

 

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The people who accuse me of earthly occasions may just believe that astronomy is a cosmic matter. (F 360-362: 21)

 

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Mediocrity is revolting against expediency. (F 360-362: 22)

 

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Scientists beget nothing of any novelty. They invent only what’s needed. Artists discover what’s not needed. They beget the novelties. (F 360-362: 22)

 

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Morality winks wherever we stare. (F 360-362: 23)

 

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I often scratch my hand with my pen and know only then that I have experienced what is written. (F 360-362: 23)

 

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Whoever exaggerates now can easily be suspected of telling the truth. Whoever invents, of being informed. (F 360-362: 25)

 

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Distorting reality in a report constitutes veraciously reporting on reality. (F 360-362: 25)

 

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According to the latest research, the subconscious seems to be a kind of ghetto of thoughts. Many are now homesick. (F 376-377: 20)

 

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Psychoanalysis: a rabbit swallowed by a boa constrictor, just wanted to see what it looks like on the inside. (F 376-377: 20)

 

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Psychoanalysis is the very mental illness whose therapy it believes itself to be. (F 376-377: 21)

 

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They’re picking our dreams as if they were our pockets. (F 376-377: 22)

 

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Beards don’t fool me any more. I know which sex is wearing the pants in this house (F 376-377: 22)

 

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Telling the truth contrary to your better judgment ought to be deemed dishonorable. (F 376-377: 25)

 

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Historians aren’t always prophets turned backward, but journalists are always the ones who, after the fact, had known everything before it happened. (F 381-383: 71)

 

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There are people who behave worse than is necessary so that I get all put off and nauseous before I attack them. But they are abandoning themselves to false hope because they are capable of effecting the former, but incapable of preventing the latter. No one can be so unsavory that I won’t attack him. (F 381-383: 71)

 

*

 

Logic is art’s enemy. But art may not be logic’s enemy. Logic must have but tasted of art and have been digested by it in its entirety. To claim that two times two is five, you have to know that two times two is four. But whoever knows the latter will say that the former is false. (F 381-383: 72)

 

*

 

The slave! She did with him what he wanted. (F 381-383: 73)

 

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After having given it due consideration—after, that is, having thought about it like an adult—I would rather re-trace the path to childhood with Jean Paul than with S. Freud. (F 381-383: 73)

 

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Nothing is more hideous than my ego in the mirror of hysteria. Nothing more ignoble and base than my style in the hands of someone wishing to write in it. Imitating me means punishing me. (F 389-390: 33)

 

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Analysts turn man to dust. (F 389-390: 33)

 

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Adolf Loos and I—he literally and I linguistically—have done nothing more than show that there is a distinction between an urn and a chamber pot and that it is in this distinction that culture has any latitude in the first place. But the others, the positive ones, fall into two groups: those who use the urn as a chamber pot and those who use the chamber pot as an urn. (F 389-390: 37)

 

*

 

A professor of literature has said that my aphorisms are but the mechanical inversion of colloquialisms. That is entirely true. He has just not hit upon the thought which drives the mechanism: that more comes of mechanically inverting colloquialisms than does of mechanically repeating them. That is the secret of the day, and you have to have experienced it. Yet, colloquialisms—and this is ever in their favor—are different from a professor of literature: nothing comes of him whether I leave him to his own devices or mechanically invert him. (F 389-390: 38)

 

*

 

People today are living second hand to mouth. (F 389-390: 42)

 

*

 

What can be decided by a world war? Nothing more than that Christianity was too weak to prevent it from ever happening. (F 406-412: 97)

 

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I can prove that it’s still the land of poets and thinkers. I have a roll of toilet paper edited by a publisher, and each sheet has a quote from some classic befitting of the situation. (F 406-412: 100)

 

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The Germans even call themselves Schopenhauer’s people, whereas Schopenhauer was so modest as not to believe that he was the Germans’ thinker. (F 406-412: 101)

 

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How does the world get governed and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe it when they see it in print. (F 406-412: 106)

 

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What kind of mythological confusion is this? Since when is Mars the god of commerce and Mercury the god of war? (F 406-412: 109)

 

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Quantity is not a thought. But that the former ate or corroded the latter is. (F 406-412: 111)

 

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“Are you not moved by how many people are dying now?” “I weep for the survivors, and there’s more of them.” (F 406-412: 111)

 

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I get that someone would sacrifice cotton for his life. But the other way around? (F 406-412: 112)

 

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Those peoples still worshiping the fetish shall never sink to such depths as to suspect a soul in commodities. (F 406-412: 112)

 

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I have gathered from the utterances of the German poets’ that they have nothing to say and have flattered myself with the expectation that they would have a different interpretation of my silence. (F 406-412: 117)

 

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German poets have the talent of not being able to shut up. (F 406-412: 117)

 

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German lyricists are a versatile bunch. (F 406-412: 118)

 

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The falsest of arguments are capable of evincing true and proper hate. (F 406-412: 125)

 

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Anything undertaken for the good of the nation will often end bad for the world. (F 406-412: 125)

 

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Of course, war is better than peace. But peace lasts longer. (F 406-412: 126)

 

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An artist is only someone who is capable of turning solutions into riddles. (F 406-412: 138)

 

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I can remember much of what I am just now experiencing. (F 406-412: 138)

 

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Love and art do not embrace what’s beautiful, but what shall become beautiful through their embrace. (F 406-412: 138)

 

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The esthete’s relationship to beauty is like that of the pornographer’s to love and the politician’s to life. (F 406-412: 138)

 

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I hear noises that others don’t—and that disturb the music of the spheres, which others don’t hear either. (F 406-412: 138)

 

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When animals yawn, they have a human face. (F 406-412: 139)

 

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To a young nurse: “No, I’m not for that.” “Why?” “Because I’m not allowed to tell you why I’m against it.” (F 406-412: 146)

 

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If bookkeepers are going to wage war, they ought to be capable of calculating the chances too. (F 406-412: 151)

 

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How someone is lying can sometimes be more valuable than that someone else is telling the truth. (F 406-412: 152)

 

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We here shall first have to become what we’re not supposed to be. (F 406-412: 154)

 

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These great times are confirming everything that was once paradoxical. (F 406-412: 154)

 

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War would be a sufferable tribunal, if it weren’t a perpetuation of the crime. (F 406-412: 160)

 

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Nothing’s changed—at most, that we’re not allowed to say it. (F 406-412: 164)

 

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Today having no head is either a requirement for or a consequence of speaking. (F 406-412: 164)

 

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I’m for prohibiting people from using my thoughts as their opinions. (F 406-412: 164)

 

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My subconscious knows its way around a psychologist’s conscious far better than his conscious does my subconscious. (F 445-453: 1)

 

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No, the soul won’t be left with any scars. With mankind, the bullet shall have went in one ear and out the other. (F 445-453: 2)

 

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A poet’s language, a woman’s love—they are and always will be first-time occurrences. (F 445-453: 6)

 

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Music is but a quiet allusion to thoughts I’ve already had and would like to have again. (F 445-453: 6)

 

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In a country waging war, the requirement for obtaining a border-crossing permit is that you have “cause” to do so. I would be in a quandary, if I couldn’t find any. (F 445-453: 11)

 

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“Still no end in sight.” “Oh, but it is.” (F 445-453: 19)

 

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What now matters most is no matter now: blood and money. (F 462-471: 172)

 

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What good are the flamethrowers when we’ve got no matches! (F 462-471: 174)

 

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“You’re doing him an injustice. His views are your views!” “Save but one: that I believe he’s an ass.” (F 508-513: 78)

 

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Soldiers who don’t know what they are fighting for certainly know what they are not fighting for. (F 508-513: 80)

 

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A fly flying is and shall always remain a greater miracle to me than a human being doing so. (F 508-513: 80)

 

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Word and essence—that’s the only connection I’ve ever sought in life. (F 508-513: 80)

 


 

Endnote

 

[1] Three things. (1) The title given here, “Night,” is somewhat misleading. Karl Kraus not only published a book of aphorisms under that title, he also published selections of aphorisms in Die Fackel under that title (see F 360: 1-25, F 376-377: 18-25, and F 381-383: 69-76, for instance). The selection of aphorisms presented here all originate from Die Fackel—be it the aforementioned “Nachts” pieces or other selections of aphorisms published in Die Fackel in the time period between 1912 and 1919. And this selection makes no claim to being a complete translation of either Nachts, Kraus’s book of aphorisms, or any other selection of aphorisms published in Die Fackel. The title is intended only as an indication of both the context of these aphorisms and the time period in which they were written and published. (2) I will be adding to this selection translations of Kraus’s aphorisms from the aforementioned time period in irregular intervals. (3) All aphorisms included here are in chronological order.