Bertrand russell I

Bertrand russell asks a difficult question. What is the answer?

"Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it? This question, which at first sight might not seem difficult, is really one of the most difficult that can be asked. When we have realized the obstacles in the way of a straightforward and confident answer, we shall be well launched on the study of philosophy—for philosophy is merely the attempt to answer such ultimate questions, not carelessly and dogmatically, as we do in ordinary life and even in the sciences, but critically, after exploring all that makes such questions puzzling, and after realizing all the vagueness and confusion that underlie our ordinary ideas."

Bertrand russell -  The Problems of Philosophy 

Translation I

R, how did the constant monotony of your forlorn days pass? When your light faded behind the perplexing fabric of sorrow.

Tell me about your confusing adolescence, the innocent seclusion of your hands.

Did you know that beneath the fire of your woe, your tormenting tears, lay the answer to why silver lakes shine?

R, now, with me by your side, dare to let go. Accord with the essence of light.

Learn to fade in the hermetic serene.

At this moment, my R, you are in efflorescence.

Nostalgia I

The asthenic winter sun shone on the snow crested path that I walked on once a week to get to the mountain. As I walked among the trees, the sleeping giant started to dominate the December sky. The golden field of wild dried grass, randomly uniform, luminous and redolent, reminded me of her skin. Candescent while nature was at It's seasonal halt. As I approached the mountain, the single entity that spawned lucidity for me at those days, frosty swelled rocks became more frequent.

As I climbed the small hill, the frigid city became more visible, just to fade into the nothingness I wanted it to become with a simple turn of my head. patches of green grass amongst the grey rocky background were soothing to the eyes that had teared up in the face of the wild winter wind which froze anything that defied it. As the sun that sat around 5:30 in the afternoon on those days was dying off, the eastern paper moon had gained flight, and I reached the apex.

Mountain after mount, stones frozen in time and space faded into the afternoon sky. My bones ached and my face was numb but I couldn't care. The measly I had reached the mountain top to see the sight of the grand peaks afar, to be reminded of just how trivial he truly was.

S1- III

She's more than a distraction. She's bewildering. I don't know if I need her or not, that shouldn't even matter since she might have a higher purpose. Perhaps her role would be to give meaning. Not that my life is meaningless, but I've equated the meaning of my life to its purpose. If I set romanticism aside then she will not mean anything as I've defined meaning to be. But then why is she important to some twisted part of me? She challenges me. More importantly, she challenges my definition. No, she makes me challenge it with her abstractness, she demurs who I am. She slickly takes my words apart so the fabrics of my intellect are no longer in accord with me.

S1- II

She's more than a distraction. She's bewildering. I don't know if I need her or not, that shouldn't even matter since she might have a higher purpose. Perhaps her role would be to give meaning. Not that my life is meaningless, but I've equated the meaning of my life to its purpose. If I set romanticism aside then she will not mean anything as I've defined meaning to be. But then why is she important to some twisted part of me?
She challenges me. More importantly, she challenges my definition. No, she makes me challenge it with her abstractness, she demurs who I am. She slickly takes my words apart so the fabrics of my intellect are no longer in accord with me.

S1- I

Days turn to months and pass too quickly to be indulged. A trend that has by now become mundane is one of fucking. What started as an exploration into the darkness of coupleation has by now turned into nothing but a straining, adverting task. I shared a bed with a girl who's beauty was one for Nabokov to depict. Likes of her are not frequently found in my bed, though the number of my female companions has grown quite considerably in the past year. As I watched the afternoon sun glare on her swift body as she laid there on her bed while I enjoyed the view from a building I used to live in, she asked me what I was thinking about. A question which was answered dishonestly, since what I was mulling over was why I self indulgently wanted to leave all this subliming beauty and be by my self. But after a few days the urge always returns, And with it a new girl. If I keep this up, I will fuck my way to the end of times. Perhaps to assert to myself a needlessness for love. But some say without love why do we live on. Frankly aside from passing on my genes and leaving a mark on the society i see no other point. Why should I? Those two seem rather compelling to me as I have no need for deeper meaning. I'm not in a state of despondency, I would call it acceptance.

On Absurdity

"The Absurd" is defined as the conflict between the human tendency to seek a meaning for life and his inability to find any. So what is humanly impossible, rather that logically impossible, is absurd.

To resolve one's discomfort with this issue, Camus and Kierkegaard have proposed three ways:

1. Suicide, as a measure of escaping the situation. But ending one's existence in a meaningless universe due to a lack of meaning is absurd in itself.

2. Religion, To believe that there is an alternative reality, or perhaps it's better to say one that is free of the absurd and therefore is burdened with meaning.

3. To accept and embrace the absurd, which does not mean that to accept and believe that everything is meaningless, but according to Camus, that meaning is subjective and developed overtime for one's sake of content. As Camus said: " one's freedom – and the opportunity to give life meaning – lies in the recognition of absurdity. If the absurd experience is truly the realization that the universe is fundamentally devoid of absolutes, then we as individuals are truly free. "To live without appeal, is a philosophical move to define absolutes and universals subjectively, rather than objectively. The freedom of humans is thus established in a human's natural ability and opportunity to create their own meaning and purpose; to decide (or think) for him- or herself."

The Terminal

   Two minutes to midnight, according to the numbers that dwelled beneath the cracked screen of my phone. At this point I had waited for the bus, that clearly was not coming, for about twenty minutes.
Having been possessed and ensnared by cheap demons who did not allow me to spend forty bucks for a cab ride, I was left with only one choice. 
   I gazed at the gigantic building that was reflecting the full moon's light, masterfully so, as the building's white arched edges were intertwined with the clouds above. I took the lift and entered the Terminal. The appearance of a terminal at midnight is quite predictable. A single person stretched on a row of seats that were intended to accommodate four. Children running around their weary parents. Luggage everywhere. Waiting. Just waiting. This is how people get old, I thought to my self.
   I sat down at a corner table in the only cafe open in the whole terminal. The white clock that was hanging above the sleeping African showed 12:10. I knew that the first bus in the morning comes at 7. I ordered a cup of coffee and opened my book (Trauma by Patrick McGrath).
   By 3:00 I have had another cup of coffee, finished my book and was observing the night life of the terminal. The children had fallen beside their dozing parents. The few Europeans present were head-deep in their tablets. The cleaning crew had decided to take a rather long smoke break. The moon was at the opposing side of where it was when I came in. As my non existing audience has by now came to expect from me, what I was looking for, and as usual, did not find, was meaning. At least nothing more grand than waiting. Waiting as the meaning of a scenario, since it was all this whole night represented.
   By 5:00, to scape the mind-numbing monotony of a terminal at halt, I sat next to the east window and watched the sky for the first bright spear of sunlight to appear. To laugh at the sunrise since you've been up all night is a paroxysm that I think is the manifestation of something that one can call pride.
   Two hours later, as I boarded the surprisingly crowded bus I thought to myself, perhaps waiting is necessary. Perhaps for our mind to out-run our body. Or maybe so a bad writer can have something to write about.

On "A Hanging" by George Orwell

  In "A Hanging", Orwell shows us how the prisoners are regarded as none-humans. Their cells, are as cages of animals. How they are considered dead before their execution and any attempt to prolong their lives is questioned and is found surprising by the guards who look at it as an attempt to tamper with their predetermined fate.

  Orwell shows us that this regard for the prisoners is not racial as it may occur to some, but an effect of power, As the Burmese royalist laughs the loudest at the humorous remarks made about the dead prisoner.

  The translucent moment experienced by the narrator brings him this meaning: "It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working - bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming - all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned - reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone - one mind less, one world less."

On "Why I Write" By George Orwell

  I wish I had read Why I Write before I attempted to read any of Orwell's books, because as he said himself, we can not know a writer's intention without being familiar with his earlier work and his background in general.

  In this essay he answered a couple of questions that I had queried while reading his books.
One of which was his intention for the structure chosen for his books. In his own words :"I will only say that of late years I have tried to write less picturesquely and more exactly. In any case I find that by the time you have perfected any style of writing, you have always outgrown it. ANIMAL FARM was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole."

  An other question will surely be his motives to write and how he came to acquire them:"What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, 'I am going to produce a work of art'. I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience. Anyone who cares to examine my work will see that even when it is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time politician would consider irrelevant."
   He also talks about his childhood habits, which most of us I think can relate to easily.
Also He listed the four motives that he believed drive each prose writer and are present in all but in different fractions. these four are:

 1. Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc.

 2. Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. 

 3. Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.

 4. Political purpose. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples' idea of the kind of society that they should strive after.

On "Spike" By George Orwell

George Orwell spent a night in a workhouse (spike) near London and this short essay is based on his real-life experience as a vagrant.
 He talked about dealing with confinement. "It is a silly piece of cruelty to confine an ignorant man all day with nothing to do; it is like chaining a dog in a barrel, only an educated man, who has consolations within himself, can endure confinement." I derive from this a comment on the nonproductive system of the spike, not necessarily a cry about the unfair state of treatment that tramps receive, aside from Orwell's view on living within limits.
The dialog with the young carpenter marks an interesting point in the essay. "It was interesting to see how subtly he disassociated himself from his fellow tramps. He has been on the road six months, but in the sight of God, he seemed to imply, he was not a tramp. His body might be in the spike, but his spirit soared far away, in the pure aether of the middle classes."
Keeping in mind the earlier conversation between them that included the carpenter's opinions on why the spike is in this condition and that a tramp (a true tramp) is lazy and unproductive by nature, I think Orwell is portraying the character of the carpenter to further emphasize this simple point. Hence justifying the judgmental tone that is sensed throughout the essay.
The ending:"he put four sodden, debauched, loathly cigarette ends into my hand." a tramp is displaying kindheartedness while also shoving the expected and explained uselessness. A delicate touch.

On "Mary" by Vladimir Nabokov

Once again I am taken by Nabokov's stimulating and profound understanding of the human condition.
In Mary, his debut novel, we can clearly see the genius of Nabokov's style. Characters carefully chosen, to play a certain part in the story. To reminisce about pre-revolutionary Russia (Podtyagin) , which is Ganin's hope and home, where Mary had been captured by his mind. Where Mary had waited for him when he was late. Where Mary had held his hands through the woods that Nabokov describes in such a rousing way. Mary is not as melodramatic as Lolita, though still poignant at times.
An interesting point suggested by a review I read, that in this book we get a stark sense of Nabokov's Russian origin, Compared to his quite American Lolita.
The train, shaking the Pansion by each passing, is Mary's recollection. As Nabokov said:" Memories and shadows. Images of the past that roll through the mind like smoke escaping the bellies of locomotives. A photo. A certain scent. Mary. Mary is coming."
I have to admit, in spite of foreseeing that Mary will never enter the story as her present self, her telegrams aside, I did not expect Nabokov to end this novel with a translucent moment of despair. A defining synchrony.

On "Door bell" by Vladimir Nabokov

Just read Naboko's "The Door Bell". In contrast with a review I read which strongly suggested that the son is self centered or arrogant, also, that he's dismissive or somewhat indifferent to the obvious signs that her mother's age and her experiences in the years they spent apart combined with the shock of their unforeseen reunion had little effect on him. I think Nabokov refrained from going deeper into the son's mind when he was examining the room in order to allow the reader to engage, as he always does. So this is not a sign that the son is not concerned about the mother, he did ask how she was.
But he talked about himself and his travels instead, Perhaps knowing that he wasn't going to like what she had to say and she wasn't going to tell him the truth anyways, simply a comment on the mother and son relationship. But I admit, in the end after the incident at the doorway with the lover, again another conclusion Nabokov left to the reader, the son was laughing while talking about his future plans which seems apathetic, but maybe he was trying to divert the situation for the sake of his tearful mother.
The ending, a recurrent theme of subtle pain and abandonment in Nabokov's work resurrected, with the son walking out with a promise and the mother running to the phone to call her young lover.

On "Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov

   Nabokov's prose style allows us to become self aware about the way we respond to the plot by letting us see the mask of literature.It makes Us question how we acquired this understanding. Also the questions purposed directly or indirectly throughout the book and the way we choose to answer them.

    Humbert's style: Enchanting, Love trumps morality? Like an MRI's  magnetic field applied over our body that aligns the nuclei of hydrogen atoms, (dont expect a science student not to brag when they can), Humbert's style aligns our minds in order for us to share his extremely sensuous experience, to whisper Lo.Li.Ta! to physically respond. In a way, to precess. To draw us in at least.
Then come the questions he assumes we will ask, rightfully so. But the order he chose is designed to make us analyze and understand him the way he wants us to. We were seduced my Humbert, not Loita. Humbert, from whom the rhetoric of this love story rose, but built on the logical ground of Nabokov's thought process, as Humbert's problem ( I chose "problem" because Humbert referred to aches and pain not because of any judgement on his character on my part.) needs a solution and we are the solvers of his puzzling feelings and thoughts.

   We never did scape out of the head of Humbert Humbert, never detach from his subjectivity in the course of the novel. Perhaps only accessing the subjectivity of Lolita when shades of Nabokov himself blends into Humbert.

   Is the tissue between imagination and reality so light that it can be pierced? can one tamper with the other? This is one question from the book I found difficult in the sense that I see no way of even thinking about how to find the answer to this question.

   the word "Throb", used in different contexts in multiple occasions in the book. One being reference to the rising desire in HH, one being the romantic throbbing of one's heart. The word having appeared with increasing frequency in Nabokov's work before Lolita, specially in his memoir can shed some light on Nabokov's character's personification through parts of Lolita.

   Did Nabokov dislike cliches? Is that why we sense a dismissal of morality? In his style we see him talking about cliches just for the sake of averting from it to a surprise. 

   One point I did not pick on while reading the book, and an obvious one, was the repeating phrase "ladies and gentlemen of the jury". A reference to us, silent readers who are judging Humbert, who are answering his questions and those we asked ourselves. Also, us who are present when Nabokov courts this question of morality. Another take from the book, Nabokov's intolerance and detest for the simplified black and white.

 And at last, Humbert's defense: It was the poetry! The poetry made me do it! reference to Poe's Annabel by the sea.

Thank you Yale university's open course and Proff. Amy Hungerford.

The Last Day

The clock stroke 2:00. having finished the paper I put my pen down. 15 more minutes until my last exam was done. I glimpsed at the hill through the class window. A small black bird challenged my depth perception that had worsened with my astigmatism, the distorted glass wasn't much of a help. Meanwhile my sense of time was shaken by a simple question, how did it pass so quickly?

In that 15 minutes i found my self looking for meaning. Expecting a moment to have a certain meaning just because it marks the end of something drastic. Having trouble finding any I realized that lack of meaning in moments we wish were defining but pass like any other, might make us think about ourselves as irredeemable. Perhaps that's why many detest change. Also, why those who don't need meaning embrace this trend of instability. As one of my friends says: Don't be a warm comfy sheep!