The Seventh Seal Quotes

Block They say you've had commerce with the devil.

Witch Why do you ask?

Block Not out of curiosity, but for very personal reasons. I, too, want to meet him.

Witch Why?

Block I want to ask him about God. He must know, he if anyone.

Witch You can see him any time you want.

Block How?

Witch You must do as I say. Look into my eyes.

Witch Well, what do you see? Do you see him?

Block I see a stiff terror in your eyes. Nothing else.

Witch No one? Nothing? No one?

Block No.

Witch Is he not standing behind your back either?

Block No. There is nothing there.

Witch But he is with me everywhere. If I stretch out my hand, I feel him. He is with me even now. The fire won't hurt me.

Block Has he said so?

Witch I know it.

Block Has he said so?!

Witch I know it! I know it! You must see him somewhere, you must! The priests had no difficulty seeing him, nor the soldiers either. They are so afraid of him that they dare not even touch me.

Block Why have you broken her hands?

Soldier It is not us.

Block Who?

Soldier Ask the monk there.

Block What have you done to the girl?

Death Will you never stop asking questions?

Block No. I will never stop.

Death But you get no answer.

Death When next we meet, the hour will strike for you and your friends.

Block And you will reveal your secrets?

Death I have no secrets.

Block So you know nothing?

Death I am unknowing.

Jof I've written a song about the spring! Would you like to hear it?

Mia Our guest may not care for your songs.

Jöns Oh, yes. I write songs myself.

Jof You see!

Jöns There's one about an enormous fish which you haven't heard.

Jöns And you're not going to hear it, either.

Block We worry about so much.

Mia It's better to be two.

Block To believe is to suffer. It is like loving someone in the dark who never answers.

Block I shall remember this hour of peace: the strawberries, the bowl of milk, your faces in the dusk. Mikael asleep, Jof with his lute. I shall remember our words, and shall bear this memory between my hands as carefully as a bowl of fresh milk.

Block And this will be a sign, and a great content.

Block Did he show you the way?

Jöns Not exactly.

Block What did he say?

Jöns Nothing really.

Block Was he mute?

Jöns No, milord. He was most eloquent.

Block Indeed.

Jöns Yes, eloquent. But the speech he held was gloomy. One has to say that.

Jöns Who will look after that child? The angels? God? Satan? Emptiness? No, emptiness, milord!

Block It cannot be!

Jöns Look at her eyes. Her poor mind is making a discovery. Emptiness!

Block No!

Jöns We are helpless. We see what she sees, and her terror is ours.

Jof Mia! I see them, Mia! I see them! Over there against the stormy sky. They are all there. The smith and Lisa, the knight, Raval, Jöns, and Skat. And the strict master Death bids them dance. He wants them to hold hands and to tread the dance in a long line. At the head goes the strict master with the scythe and hourglass. But the Fool brings up the rear with his lute. They move away from the dawn in a solemn dance away towards the dark lands while the rain cleanses their cheeks of the salt from their bitter tears.

Mia You with your visions!

Jof Going to play Death?

Jonas Skat Scaring decent folk out of their wits. … They say the plague stalks the land. The priests speculate in sudden death and moral bellyache.

Quotes about The Seventh Seal The Seventh Seal was always my favourite film, and I remember seeing it with a small audience at the old New Yorker Theatre. Who would have thought that the subject matter could yield such a pleasurable experience? If I described the story and tried to persuade a friend to watch it with me, how far would I get? Well, I'd say, it takes place in a plague-ridden medieval Sweden and explores the limits of faith and reason based on Danish — and some German — philosophical concepts. Now this is hardly anyone idea of a good time, and yet it's all dealt off with such stupendous imagination, suspense, and flair that one sits riveted like a child at a harrowing fairy tale. Suddenly the black figure of Death appears on the seashore to claim his victim, and the Knight of Reason challenges him to a chess game, trying to stall for time and discover some meaning to life. The tale engages and stalks forward with sinister inevitability. Again, the images are breathtaking! The flagellants, the burning of the witch (worthy of Carl Dreyer), and the finale, as Death dances off with all the doomed people to the nether lands in one of the most memorable shots in all movies. ] is prolific, and the films that followed these early works were rich and varied, as his obsession moved from God's silence to the tortured relations between anguished souls trying to make sense of their feelings.

Block Is Mikael going to be an acrobat?

Mia Jof wants him to be.

Block But not you?

Mia No. Perhaps he will be a knight!

Block That's not such fun, either.

Mia No, you don't look happy.

Block No.

Mia Are you tired?

Block Yes.

Mia Why?

Block I'm in boring company.

Mia You mean your squire?

Block No, not him.

Mia Who, then?

Block Myself.

Narrator And when the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour... And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound.

Block Who are you?

Death I am Death.

Block Have you come for me?

Death I have walked at your side for a long time now.

Block That I know.

Death Are you prepared?

Block My body is afraid, but I am not.

Block Wait a moment.

Death You all say that. But I give no respite.

Block You play chess, do you not?

Death How do you know that?

Block I've seen it in paintings, heard it in the songs.

Death I really am a rather skilful chess player.

Block Even so, you can't be more skilful than me.

Death Why do you want to play chess with me?

Block That is my business.

Death You are right about that.

Block My condition is that I may live as long as I resist you. If I checkmate you, you set me free.

Block Black for you!

Death It becomes me well.

Block I want to confess as best I can, but my heart is empty, and the emptiness a mirror facing me. I see myself and am filled with loathing and horror. My indifference to men has shut me out from their company. I live now in a world of ghosts, a prisoner of my dreams and fantasies.

Priest Yet you do not want to die.

Block Yes, I do.

Priest/Death What are you waiting for?

Block I want knowledge.

Priest/Death You want guarantees.

Block Call it what you will.

Block Is it so awfully unthinkable to conceive of God with one's senses? Why should He conceal Himself in a fog of half-spoken promises and unseen miracles? How are we to believe the believers when we don't believe ourselves? What will become of us who want to believe but cannot? And what of those who neither will nor can believe? Why can I not kill God within me? Why does He go on living within me in a painful, humiliating way, though I curse Him and want to tear Him out of my heart? Why does He remain a treacherous reality of which I cannot rid myself? Do you hear me?

Priest/Death I hear you.

Block I want knowledge. Not belief. Not supposition. But knowledge. I want God to reach out to me, unveil His face, speak to me.

Priest/Death But He is silent.

Block I cry to Him in the darkness, but sometimes it is as if there is no one there.

Priest/Death Perhaps there is no one there.

Block Then life is a senseless horror. No man can live with Death before his eyes and the knowledge that all is nothing.

Priest/Death Most people reflect neither upon Death nor nothingness.

Block Yet they must one day stand at the last shore of life and look into the Darkness.

Priest/Death Yes, that day.

Block I see what you mean. We must make an idol of our fear, and that idol we shall call God.

Priest/Death You are uneasy.

Block Death visited me this morning. We are playing chess. This respite enables me to perform a vital errand.

Priest/Death What errand?

Block My whole life has been coming and going and talking without point or consequence. It has been nothing. I say it without bitterness or self-reproach, for I know that almost all men's lives are made up just like that. But I want to use my respite for one meaningful deed.

Priest/Death Ah. So this is why you play chess with Death.

Block He is a dangerous and skillful tactician, but I have not yet lost one piece.

Priest/Death How will you outwit Death?

Block I am playing a a combination of bishop and knight that he has not yet detected. On my next move, I'll shatter his flank.

Death I shall remember that.

Block You are a traitor and you have tricked me! But we shall meet again, and I'll find a way out.

Death We shall meet at the inn and continue our game.

Quotes about The Seventh Seal *] in "Through a Life Darkly" a review of The Magic Lantern : An Autobiography as translated by Joan Tate (1988) in The New York Times (18 September 1988).

Jöns For ten years we sat in the Holy Land, bitten by snakes, mosquitoes, and wild beasts, slaughtered by the heathens, poisoned by the wine, given crabs by the women, bled by the crabs, rotted by fevers, all for the glory of God!

Jöns and the Painter For the glory of God!

Jöns I tell you, our crusade was so stupid that only a true idealist could have thought it up.

Jöns Why all this daubing?

Painter To remind people of death.

Jöns That won't make them any happier.

Painter Why make them happy? Why not scare them?

Jöns Then they won't look at your picture.

Painter Yes, they will. A skull is more interesting than a naked woman.

Jöns If you scare them—

Painter They think—

Jöns Then they think.

Painter And are still more scared.

Jöns And fall into the arms of the priests.

Jöns What's that rubbish there?

Painter People think the plague is a punishment from God. Crowds wander the land lashing each other to please the Lord.

Jöns Lashing each other?

Painter Yes, it's a horrible sight. You feel like hiding when they pass.

Jöns Give me a gin. I've had nothing but water. I feel as thirsty as a desert camel.

Painter Scared after all?

Death Have you lost interest?

Block Lost interest? On the contrary!

Death You look worried. Are you hiding something?

Block Nothing escapes you!

Death Nothing escapes me. No one escapes me.

Skat Hey, you scurvy knave, what are you up to?

Skat You might at least answer. Who are you?

Death I'm felling your tree. Your time is up.

Skat You can't. I haven't time.

Death Huh. You haven't time?

Skat No. I have my performance!

Death Cancelled, owing to Death.

Skat My contract?

Death Annulled.

Skat My family…

Death For shame, Skat!

Skat Yes, I'm ashamed, I'm ashamed. Is there no exemption for actors?

Death Not in your case.

Skat No loopholes?

Jöns Love is the blackest of all plagues, but you don't even die of it, and usually it passes.

Jöns If everything is imperfect in this world, love is perfect in its imperfection.

Plog You're lucky. You believe in your own twaddle.

Jöns Who says I believe it? But I like giving advice.

Block Out of the darkness we call to thee, O Lord! Oh, God, have mercy on us! For we are small and afraid and without knowledge!

Jöns In the darkness where you claim to be, where we all probably are, in that darkness you shall find no one to listen to your laments or to be moved by your suffering. Wipe your tears and regard yourself reflected in your own insignificance.

Block God, you who are somewhere, who must be somewhere, have mercy on us!

Jöns I could have given you a herb to purge your worries about eternity, but it seems to be too late. But in any case, feel, to the last instant, the immense triumph in rolling your eyes and wriggling your toes!

Karin Quiet! Quiet!

Jöns I will be quiet, but under protest.

Girl It is finished.