I am looking for a quote about a horrific human tragedy.

July 7, 2006 10:11 AM

I am looking for a quote about a horrific human tragedy.

I believe the quote was pertaining to the Halocaust or the Rwanda genocide. The person speaking could of been a politician, author, or poet. I cannot remember. I believe I read it in a magazine.

The idea of the quote is, how can the world go on after a tragedy of this magnitude? How can millions of people die in such a violent way, and we keep living? One would think that the world would instantly end, and human beings would cease to exist.

Does this ring a bell? The quote is just one sentence, and much more eloquent and moving than my explanation.

posted by LoriFLA to religion & philosophy (10 comments total)

Are you thinking about Adorno's comment about writing poetry after Auschwitz being barbaric? It's quite often cited.
posted by sagwalla at 10:27 AM on July 7, 2006

sagwalla, I know what you are speaking of. Unfortunately, I don't think that is it.
posted by LoriFLA at 10:37 AM on July 7, 2006

I immediately thought of Adorno too, but yeah, I don't think that's it...
posted by ob at 11:05 AM on July 7, 2006

can you remember how it starts at all?
posted by grex at 11:14 AM on July 7, 2006

Do you recall any specific words at all? If so, you can try searching Wikiquote
posted by Robot Johnny at 11:25 AM on July 7, 2006

I know I've read your mysterious quote before; it sounds like something by Annie Dillard. Google isn't giving me anything exact, but this speech quotes her book For the Time Being in reference to tragedies like Darfur, and the inability of numbers and statistics to adequately convey the magnitude of a tragedy.

Later, Dillard ponders the day, April 30, 1991, when 138,000 people drowned in Bangladesh. At dinner, she mentions to her daughter—7 years old—that it is hard to imagine 138,000 people drowning. "No, it's easy," says her daughter. "Lots and lots of dots in the blue water." Again we are confronted with the impoverished meanings conveyed by numbers.

It's a beautiful, book-length exploration of the quote you just described.
posted by junkbox at 12:09 PM on July 7, 2006 [1 favorite]

It sounds to me like Primo Levi or Elie Wiesel, though without more direct quoting, hard to verify.
posted by jessamyn at 12:26 PM on July 7, 2006

I had a flip through Levi's Survival in Auschwitz and didn't find a close comparison, though I agree with Jessamyn that he's a very likely source. I also wondered if it might go to Celan or Arendt. Google's Arendt quote favourite runs to 44 quotes with no sign of what we're looking for.

I had a copy of Levi's Periodic Table and I think that might be a place to look; that or the more lengthy Philip Roth interview which is excerpted in my copy of Survival.
posted by sagwalla at 1:30 PM on July 8, 2006

Thanks so much everybody.

My memory is terrible, and I only know a couple words for sure in the sentence.

I tried Wikiquote without any luck. You never know, more words could come to me, and hopefully I can find it.

Next time I will write it down when I come across something this meaningful to me. It was a beautiful and moving quote, and hopefully I will come across it again in the future.

Thank you again. Your time and suggestions are greatly appreciated. Metafilter and its members are awesome!
posted by LoriFLA at 2:00 PM on July 8, 2006

Elie Wiesel's Nobel lecture contains some remarks similar in tone to the one you referenced:

The next question had to be, why go on? If memory continually brought us back to this, why build a home? Why bring children into a world in which God and man betrayed their trust in one another?

Not exactly the remark, but set in that questioning tone. I had a look at Imre Kertesz as well; not there.
posted by sagwalla at 10:19 AM on July 11, 2006