The Prophet Of Frivolity

Outside Time

noreply@blogger.com (The Prophet Of Frivolity) — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 14:35:00 +0000

"Time, said Austerlitz in the observation room in Greenwich, was by far the most artificial of all our inventions, and in being bound to the planet turning on its own axis was no less arbitrary than would be, say, a calculation based on the growth of trees or the duration required for a piece of limestone to disintegrate, quite apart from the fact that the solar day which we take as our guideline does not provide any precise measurement, so that in order to reckon time we have to devise an imaginary, average sun which has an invariable speed of movement and does not incline towards the equator in its orbit. If Newton thought, said Austerlitz, pointing through the window and down to the curve of the water around the Isle of Dogs glistening in the last light of the daylight, if Newton really thought that the time was a river like the Thames, then where is its source and into what sea does it finally flow? Every river as we know, must have banks on both sides, so where, seen in those terms, where are the banks of time? What would be this river's qualities, qualities perhaps corresponding to those if water, which is fluid, rather heavy, and translucent? In what way do objects immersed in time differ from those left untouched by it? Why do we show the hours of light and darkness in the same circle? Why does time stand eternally still and motionless in one place, and rush headlong by in another? Could we not claim, said Austerlitz, that time itself has been noncuncurrent over the centuries and the millennia? It is not so long ago, after all, that it began spreading out over everything. And is not human life in many parts of the earth governed to this day less by time than by the weather, and thus by unquantifiable dimension which disregards linear regularity, does not progress constantly forward but moves in eddies, is marked by episodes of congestion and irruption, recurs in ever-changing form, and evolves in no one knows in what direction? Even in a metropolis ruled by time like London, said Austerlitz, it is still possible to be outside time, a state of affairs which until recently was almost as common in backward and forgotten areas of our own century as it used to be in the undiscovered continents overseas. The dead are outside time, the dying and all the sick at home or in hospitals, and they are not the only ones, for a certain degree of personal misfortune is enough cut us off from the past and the future."

Flaubert, Borges, and Bouvard and Pecuchet

noreply@blogger.com (The Prophet Of Frivolity) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:43:00 +0000

An article by Borges in defence of Bouvard and Pecuchet, written in 1954 seeks to answer some of the criticisms levelled against that magnificent work. I personally have a feeling that my almost reverent appraisal of that work has got something to do with a faint foreboding I have always carried with in me. It is like, I always tend to repeat to myself in moments solitude - That one either has to be born a genius to change the world or stupid enough to swallow whatever is. I don't belong to the former, so my lot is to swallow, however bitter whatever is.
Borges, citing some of the critics say the presence of two protagonists, Bouvard and Pecuchet, the copy clerks, is nothing more than a verbal artifice. Much more tellingly, another critic has said it is a kind of two-man Faust. But the lamentation of Faust in his study about the invariable vanity of his learning of various fields, is contrasted with the two protagonists in a seminal way - Bouvard and Pecuchet is the story of a Faust who is also an idiot. That is the key for if one can convincingly posit Bouvard and Pecuchet lacked the mental capacity to the enterprise they put themselves to, the whole project of Flaubert would crumble down. The story of two imbeciles reviewing the achievements of all mankind would end up as a fallacy. The problem would lie with them and not the human pursuit to know the world and the fruits of that labour. Borges says, the common line of refutation of this theses is to prove the falsity of it's premise, that is, Bouvard and Pecuchet are imbeciles. He quotes Maupassant as having said Bouvard and Pecuchet are 'two fairly lucid, mediocre, and simple minds' of which Borges himself is not convinced. He writes he wouldn't be convinced even if Flaubert were to make such an assertion because the text itself refutes this.
He venture to suggest an alternate justification for the work, which is, I must say, beautful as anything from Borges. It is the pervasive idea of two elements combining in individuals - simplicity and wisdom. 'That fools teach more than wise men because they dare to speak the truth' is one among the many quotes he invokes in defence of this. Well - Do you feel convinced? The beauty of Borges's mind is as ravishing as ever, but I happen to remain doubtful about this spefic line of argument.
I have always thought that Bouvard and Pecuchet are not imbeciles per se, essentially, but it is the enterprise they involve in, that gives them that appearance. Their actions precede our judgement, and it is the act that defines them, even to the extent of that judgement being recursively valid.

----
Why do I tend to remember the words of another French who wrote years later - "Whether the earth or the sun revolves around the other is a matter of profound indifference. To tell the truth, it is a futile question."?

And the Scheme of Things...

noreply@blogger.com (The Prophet Of Frivolity) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:51:00 +0000

Indian people are inclined to consider the universal seriously in expressing their ideas of things. This can be easily seen in the fact of their verbal usage in which they have so great an inclination to use abstract nouns. In Sanskrit, an abstract noun is formed by adding -ta (f.) or -tva (n.) suffix to the root. These suffixes correspond to th (Greek), -tas (Latin), -tät (German), -té (French), -ty (English), and etymologically they have a close connection. In these European languages, however, abstract nouns are not often used except in scientific essays or formal sentences, while in Sanskrit they are often used even in everyday speeches. For example, "He becomes old," "Er wird alt," is expressed in Sanskrit ''He goes to oldness": vrddhatam (-tvam, -bhavam) gacchati (agacchati, upaiti, etc.); "The fruit becomes soft," "Die Frucht wird weich" is expressed in Sanskrit "The fruit goes to softness": phalam mrdutam(-tvam, -bhavam mardavam) yati; "He goes as a messenger," "Er geht als Bote" is expressed "He goes with the quality of messenger": gacchati dautyena; "A man was seen to be a tree" is expressed "A man was represented by the quality of tree" (puman kascid vrksatvenopavarnitah). The European languages express the individual by its attribute or quality realized concretely by the individual itself, while the Sanskrit expresses the individual only as one of the instances belonging to the abstract universal.

Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples - India-China-Tibet-Japan
- Hajime Nakamura

Tell me, isn't that mightily revealing?

Just so that....

noreply@blogger.com (The Prophet Of Frivolity) — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 17:39:00 +0000

..you don't miss it, there is an insightful article here on The Guardian. Author mulls at length over the eroding barriers of fact and fiction which raises serious concerns. The seminal point is ' entertainment history is now the main source of supposedly historical knowledge for more and more people', and that is reason for far reaching consequences. The example he cites is the best in this regard: the movie 'The Da Vinci Code'. We are on a strange path indeed. Where, alas, is this species heading? Read it.

I have always imagined....

noreply@blogger.com (The Prophet Of Frivolity) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:33:00 +0000

....that Paradise will be a kind of library -- Jorge Luis Borges

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THEODOTUS (on the steps, with uplifted arms). Horror unspeakable! Woe, alas! Help!

RUFIO. What now?

CAESAR (frowning). Who is slain?

THEODOTUS. Slain! Oh, worse than the death of ten thousand men! Loss irreparable to mankind!

RUFIO. What has happened, man?

THEODOTUS (rushing down the hall between them). The fire has spread from your ships. The first of the seven wonders of the world perishes. The library of Alexandria is in flames.

RUFIO. Psha! (Quite relieved, he goes up to the loggia and watches the preparations of the troops on the beach.)

CAESAR. Is that all?

THEODOTUS (unable to believe his senses). All! Caesar: will you go down to posterity as a barbarous soldier too ignorant to know the value of books?

CAESAR. Theodotus: I am an author myself; and I tell you it is better that the Egyptians should live their lives than dream them away with the help of books.

THEODOTUS (kneeling, with genuine literary emotion: the passion of the pedant). Caesar: once in ten generations of men, the world gains an immortal book.

CAESAR (inflexible). If it did not flatter mankind, the common executioner would burn it.

THEODOTUS. Without history, death would lay you beside your meanest soldier.

CAESAR. Death will do that in any case. I ask no better grave.

THEODOTUS. What is burning there is the memory of mankind.

CAESAR. A shameful memory. Let it burn.

THEODOTUS (wildly). Will you destroy the past?

CAESAR. Ay, and build the future with its ruins. (Theodotus, in despair, strikes himself on the temples with his fists.) But harken, Theodotus, teacher of kings: you who valued Pompey's head no more than a shepherd values an onion, and who now kneel to me, with tears in your old eyes, to plead for a few sheepskins scrawled with errors. I cannot spare you a man or a bucket of water just now; but you shall pass freely out of the palace. Now, away with you to Achillas; and borrow his legions to put out the fire. (He hurries him to the steps.)

POTHINUS (significantly). You understand, Theodotus: I remain a prisoner.

THEODOTUS. A prisoner!

CAESAR. Will you stay to talk whilst the memory of mankind is burning? (Calling through the loggia) Ho there! Pass Theodotus out. (To Theodotus) Away with you.

THEODOTUS (to Pothinus). I must go to save the library. (He hurries out.)

Bernard Shaw - Caesar and Cleopatra : Act II

Of Other Reasons

noreply@blogger.com (The Prophet Of Frivolity) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 18:04:00 +0000

Phaedr. I should like to know, Socrates, whether the place is not somewhere here at which Boreas is said to have carried off Orithyia from the banks of the Ilissus?

Soc. Such is the tradition.

Phaedr. And is this the exact spot? The little stream is delightfully clear and bright; I can fancy that there might be maidens playing near.

Soc. I believe that the spot is not exactly here, but about a quarter of a mile lower down, where you cross to the temple of Artemis, and there is, I think, some sort of an altar of Boreas at the place.

Phaedr. I have never noticed it; but I beseech you to tell me, Socrates, do you believe this tale?

Soc. The wise are doubtful, and I should not be singular if, like them, I too doubted. I might have a rational explanation that Orithyia was playing with Pharmacia, when a northern gust carried her over the neighbouring rocks; and this being the manner of her death, she was said to have been carried away by Boreas. There is a discrepancy, however, about the locality; according to another version of the story she was taken from Areopagus, and not from this place. Now I quite acknowledge that these allegories are very nice, but he is not to be envied who has to invent them; much labour and ingenuity will be required of him; and when he has once begun, he must go on and rehabilitate Hippocentaurs and chimeras dire. Gorgons and winged steeds flow in apace, and numberless other inconceivable and portentous natures. And if he is sceptical about them, and would fain reduce them one after another to the rules of probability, this sort of crude philosophy will take up a great deal of time. Now I have no leisure for such enquiries; shall I tell you why? I must first know myself, as the Delphian inscription says; to be curious about that which is not my concern, while I am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous. And therefore I bid farewell to all this; the common opinion is enough for me. For, as I was saying, I want to know not about this, but about myself: am I a monster more complicated and swollen with passion than the serpent Typho, or a creature of a gentler and simpler sort, to whom Nature has given a diviner and lowlier destiny? But let me ask you, friend: have we not reached the plane-tree to which you were conducting us?

Plato, Phaedrus - Benjamin Jowett Translation

Title Submerged by the Text that Followed

noreply@blogger.com (The Prophet Of Frivolity) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 12:35:00 +0000

"The dreaming collective knows no history. Events pass before it as always identical and always new. The sensation of the newest and most modern is, in fact, as much a dream formation of events as the "eternal return of the same". The perception of space that corresponds to this perception of time is superposition. Now, as these formations dissolve within the enlightened consciousness, political-theological categories arise to take their place. And it is only within the purview of these categories, which bring the flow of events to a standstill, that history forms, at the interior of this flow, as crystalline constellation.- The economic conditions under which a society exists not only determine that society in its material existence and ideological superstructure; they also come to expression. In the case of one who sleeps, an overfull stomach does not find its ideological superstructure in the contents of the dream-and it is exactly same with economic conditions of life for the collective. It interprets these conditions; it explains them. In the dream, they find their expression; in the awakening, their interpretation."

Walter Benjamin, Early Sketches, Arcades Project, p. 854

Weltschmerz - Possibilities to Dodge?

noreply@blogger.com (The Prophet Of Frivolity) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 07:06:00 +0000

Dawn - Kayhan Kalhor & Shujaat Hussain Khan

But we, when moved by deep feeling, evaporate; we
breathe ourselves out and away; from moment to moment
our emotion grows fainter, like a perfume. Though someone may tell us:
"Yes, you've entered my bloodstream, the room,the whole springtime
is filled with you . . . "--what does it matter? he can't contain us,
we vanish inside him and around him. And those who are beautiful,
oh who can retain them? Appearance ceaselessly rises
in their face, and is gone. Like dew from the morning grass,
what is ours floats into the air, like steam from a dish
of hot food. O smile, where are you going? O upturned glance:
new warm receding wave on the sea of the heart . . .
alas, but that is what we are. Does the infinite space
we dissolve into, taste of us then?

Duino Elegies, The Second Elegy - Rainer Maria Rilke

Notes : Bold face added.

Arbeit Macht Frei

noreply@blogger.com (The Prophet Of Frivolity) — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 18:12:00 +0000

To move one's fingers, to lift the eye lids, to pick words and to be, in order to write about what is happening in Gaza is an absurdity. Absolutely. To speak about it is to acknowledge to oneself that Gaza as a geographical entity exists, it is populated, populated by human beings, they too eat, sleep, and give birth. No. It's the avalanche of temptation one has to learn to resist. One has to learn to erase. No. One has to learn to stop learning. One has to learn from them, the miraculous way in which they have forgotten EVERYTHING, they who have placed Arbeit macht frei at the door to their conscience. They who have taken up the Philosophy of Erasure. They who keep the Bully that is the God of Old Testament alive and fresh through the generations. Fresh as freshly picked vegetables. Apparently that same old God would not give us amnesia, would not give us hemlock. We who shed bitter tears over the untimely departure of Benjamin, We who vividly recall the murder of Walther Rathenau, We who wake up with a start in the middle of the night and stare into the riddle of Primo Levi's death, we who are doomed to recite the Talmud of cruelty lest we forget . Will not even erase us, we who would without a murmur cease to be. One has to learn to vanish. Vanish.

Mytholgies

noreply@blogger.com (The Prophet Of Frivolity) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 07:29:00 +0000

There are real humane situations,- awkward, impossible, real imbroglios - one can overcome by inventing a phrase and relocating into the comfort of it. So for a time at least one can decisively divest of the uneasy feelings which would otherwise cling as a proverbial limpet, as it were, to the recesses of one's being. Ironically, some such terms, which originally would not have signified anything real, after a time gathers legitimacy, a host of meanings congealing around this figment of unhealthy imagination,and the word, in it's travail through all the infinite realms of discourses ends up as being true. A veritable case of a word in search of meaning, a corresponding reality, a world order for it to denote. External, objective reality is one thing and truly human reality is quite another. The very fact that it is human suggestions that add uniquely human value to reality engenders the possibility that reality cannot escape the whims of imagination including willfully mendacious fabrications.

A quintessential case of the above phenomenon is the term 'Peace Process'. When we come across a term like that we are naturally inclined to link it up with what we already know, for learning is always historical. So we get to ransack the old lessons of Chemistry classes to get an idea of the word process. Then the assumption we reach to will be of something which has a beginning and which would, as a necessary condition, end in something, at a different point in space and/or time. Not really. In this case as it appears the words 'Peace' and 'Process' are stripped of the original meanings for what we witness is an unending process. So the conjured up conjugal bed of peace and process tend to end up in something endless, a process which is never ending. That is to say global politicians and diplomats when faced with questions regarding international disputes can readily board the comfort of this verbal yacht immune to everything.

Black Skin, White Masks: An attempt towards reading Tayeb Salih's 'Season of Migration to The North'

noreply@blogger.com (The Prophet Of Frivolity) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:03:00 +0000

"In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me, an invincible summer." -Albert Camus

"Wandering between two worlds, one dead,
The other powerless to be born
With nowhere yet to rest my head,
Like these, on earth I wait forlorn." - Mathew Arnold.

"...that in Aleppo once,
Where a malignant and a turban'd Turk
Beat a Venetian and traduc'd the state,
I took by the throat the circumcised dog,
And smote him, thus." - Othello, Act V, Scene ii

§ The life of a work of art is a struggle against exegetical accretion. One can vivdly visualize the artist, as the emperor of a realm during the process of creation but once the work leaves his hands, it is invariably left like a virgin in the hands of strangers. Prey to capriciousness of the reader, the course of its life is fraught with unpredictability and chance occurances, not to mention the prejudices of culture industry specialists. It is against this seemingly impregnable facade of assumed meanings that any attempt towards appreciating Tayib Salih's 'Season of Migration to the North' proceeds.
(Those who know absolutely nothing about this book, take quick trip to Wiki. Redundance adds to entropy, digital or otherwise. So no summary here)

§ The word "season" which is from the original Arabic word "mawsam", has above all one telling connotation which must serve as a key to appreciating the book. Mawsam literally season points to an event or occurance which repeats over time and/or space. Season has to be conceived in opposition to that which is linear in nature, events that are isolated and static. What we are reading then is a discourse on a particular season, that of migration to the north. It essentially alludes to other seasons prior to or following the one which is in the novel at hand. It could very well be the season of migration to the south not motived by reasons other than the one that besets the migration to the north. It all follows from the same "germ of contagion oozing from the body of the universe"(104).

§ Germ of contagion oozing from the body of the universe: One should recall two telling images from the book when mulling over this construct of germ of contagion. The tree and the narrator's grand father. The narrator says about his grandfather that, 'he had been like this for I don't know how many years, as though he were something immutable in a dynamic world.' Those two images vividly depicts that which has as their being the immunity against this contagion. en soi is what makes a tree a tree. So we reach to a revelation: The root of a sickness, the cause which propels it. The pathology of a specific human condition. Mustafa saeed cannot be at home. His mind which was 'like a sharp knife, cutting with cold effectiveness'(22) was the instrument he had at his disposal. This cold effectiveness is one seminal element which distinguishes him from being Othello. Mustafa is immune to 'the green-ey'd monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on' to which Othello was an easy prey. Mustafa's statement to Isabella Seymour "I'm like Othello - Arab-African" is physical at the most and the statement is Iago-like in it's intention. The fact that he kisses Jean before he stabs her wouldn't suffice to make him Othello, and Othello is what he is trying not to be, neither can Jean be Desdamona. The completely overturned kerchief motif explains this well. His statement in the court that 'I am no Othello. I am a lie' is his real self resisting him from being turned by the court into Othello.

§ The relocation as a necessary symptom of contagion is the next revelation we reach to. 'Mysterious things in my soul and in my blood impel me towards faraway parts that loom up before me and cannot be igonored', says Mustafa. Any relocation of human being, be it in time or space, involves a power struggle. The change in space demands a change in the person being relocated or the space to which he is relocated, from where ensues a crisis. A crisis in which the subject is torn between disparities, has to rebel, reconcile, adapt, conquer the space in which s/he finds himself. Then we have an epic of a subject attempting to means to modify. This encounter is, as can be expected, fraught with his vivid memory of being subjugated by the ones with
whom he is dealing now. The endless wooing and subsequent subjection of women by Mustafa has to be read in this light. His acts of predation has absolutely no element of any of the tender human nature. It is all as cold as his icy intellect. The episode of his first encounter with Ann Hammond is marked for the height a farce can go, as when he says, "At last I have found you, Susan. I searched everywhere for you and was afraid I would never find you. Do you remember?" She replies, "How can I forget our house in Karkh in Baghdad on the banks of the river Tigris in the days of El-Ma'moun?" This colonising through subjugation leads us to another disturbing insight: The attribution of gender to geography. The act of conquering women who inhabit a land is the instrument at Mustafa's disposal. An earstwhile student of Mustafa is quoted by the narrator as saying that Mustafa used to say, "I'll leberate Africa with my penis." To complete the irony, Mustafa's widow liberated her second husband, who married her against her strong opposition, by stabbing between his thighs, presumably his penis.

His endeavours, ironically enough, lacks one seminal element necessary to lend fullness to the act. The mastery of anything which is languid and lacking in an understanding of being conquered is empty. It ends up as taking hold of a stone for that matter. That act is not human in the essentially human sense of experience. This is an unavoidable paradox in any act of subjugation, to hold under command requires that the colonised be obejectified, and objectification drains the rupture the the conquerer is running behind. A land devoid of people can be owned but not subjugated. It is this situation that leads Mustafa to Jean Morris, the prey he has been looking for. If Nile is eventually destined to flow Northward to the Northern sea, though the impeding mountains manage to turn it's course for a while, Mustafa is fated to reach Jean. What
follows is a dangerous cat and mouse game, in which both is well cognizant of what the other is upto. Knwoing his moves she delivers herself upto him, conscientiously letting herself be objectified, which besieges Mustafa's plans. A forceful mastery is what he is attempting, and that is what he can never hope for from her. Jean morris happens to be tearing apart the masks Mustafa Saeed has been wearing, his ramparts of 'lies on top of lies' comes to a collapse in front of her. Allowing him and actually encouraging him to kill her, the game ends at the most in stalemate.

§ We see the narrator, during his journey to Khartoum, recounting the words Isabella Seymour uttered caressingly to Mustafa,"Ravish me you African demon. Burn me in the fire of your temple, black god. Let me twist and turn in your wild and impassioned rites." The stark contrast is revealed when, in the middle of the desert as he was, the narrator sees only, 'Nothing. The sun, the desert, desicated plants and emaciated animals' and he exclaims, 'such lands brings forth nothing but prophets.' So who then is manufacturing this lies of binaries, this Other, this exotic fantasies founded on nothing, that we are doomed to spend our life fighting demons?

§ So where do the narrator belong, if at all he belongs anywhere? The idea of water wheels co-existing harmonously with water pumps is the dream one can hanker for. His soliloquy finds expression in such meanderings as '...the breeze that issues from the Nile Valley carries a perfume whose smell will not fade from my mind as long as I live'. Mustafa is the apparition he has to fight, and his open call for help on the verge of being drowned in the Nile is his grand affirmation to life, to what is real.

§ Lastly it would be an enormous error if I do not mention the intensely lyrical nature of some passages in the book. The book is, as such episodic in style, and the language is at times richly evocative and moving. This book, it would seem, could not have been written in any other way!

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Endnotes:

1. I don't ascribe to writing reviews normally. But in this case I actually had no choice, the turmoil of reading this book had to be let out, and as a loner I had no other way at my disposal.

2. To write anything about Tayeb requires one read 'Tayeb Salih: A case study'. I haven't even seen it.

3. There are innumerable scholarly articles on the various themes which finds expression in this book. Look around and read them.

4. If you, the reader, by any chance goes onto think that this write-up of mine touches the myriads of themes that appears in the book, I must say you are mistaken. Even if I attempt to write a review running ten times the length of the book, I wont touch anything. Be warned!

5. This forum thread by Sudanese people has an interesting discussion on the identity of Jean Morris. It appears the person who started the thread mistook Jean morris for Jane morris, and the entirety of discussion was revolving around that. I could not make out half of what is written there because I don't know Arabic. Nevertheless as far as I can understand, they haven't resolved the possibility that Jean morris may actually be an allusion to Jane morris.

Critique of Gravity : Impediments to Laughter

noreply@blogger.com (The Prophet Of Frivolity) — Wed, 14 May 2008 16:00:00 +0000

The knowledge of a force which every object experience from every other object, just for the simple reason that the object is there, lingers as a source of deep distress. The force is there: inexorable, given, foreordained. It revealed something, a piece of information, which I would, had there been a choice, not have opted to know. It goes counter to my prerogative to dream, a dream I would have loved to cherish, that at some point of time, I might be able to fly. The fact that I have no information of a known incident of a human being flying, contrary to common logic,would have made the dream much more splendid. That I am linked by a thread to every object around me, albeit unseen, leaves me with an inconsolable anguish.

♦ ♦ ♦

I have started seeing everything around me involved in a cabalistic conspiracy to thwart my plan to step above this land, this piece of earth. Along with the collapse of my dream is the collapse of many other visions I carried along. To ascend and see the world in a panoramic perspective, to drop off this linear vision, this terribly crippled horizontal vision. Well...That is just one among a series of jolts. Am I beginning to learn?

Reading Masnavi in Esfahan

noreply@blogger.com (The Prophet Of Frivolity) — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 07:58:00 +0000

That was a dream. To do anything in Esfahan is impossible. Esfahan is not Nasf Jahan anymore. The death, I gather, did not come about in a grand manner. Circumstances which led to the demise is not even worthy to be investigated by a private detective. Evoked in this context, word detective could engender a curiosity in the reader as to whether it was a normal death or a murder. Murder, a term which is generally considered synonymous with homicide,has to be stretched far too much if it is to be used in the context of civilizations. That misgiving apart,the pertinent point would rather be, whether finding the death actually was murder, would some how lent it an element of grandeur. Sipping herbal tea,and tracking the devious paths that lie over the vacuum left over by Esfahans, one would, perhaps, chance to glance on a reason why someone has to read Lolita in Tehran. Unexpected and almost bitter revelations are unavoidable collateral damage of thought process.

Postlude: "Out beyond ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing there is a field. I'll meet you there"

Villa of the Mysteries

noreply@blogger.com (The Prophet Of Frivolity) — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 15:41:00 +0000

I am chased by headings of possible write ups. At the most unexpected of moments, they rise before my eyes, take form, and present in all vividity. Then the almost terrible phase of hunting begins, the titles following me day in and day out, persistent,unyielding. Headings in all forms one can conjure up. For instance there is this "Symposium, Immortality, and Homosexuality: Foetal Ruminations". But when I begin to examine them closely, they tend to become slippery, my eyes get clouded. I struggle to chase them to their roots, following the trails. I walk behind them, speeds up, starts running. Then in some dimly lit alleys the trails vanish, leaving only the title behind. In the middle of the night I wake up with a start. I have this feeling that they at last is beginning to compromise. But they vanish again, to the realms where universe end. Where there is not even darkness.

Musings Of The Übermensch In The Age Of Decadence

noreply@blogger.com (The Prophet Of Frivolity) — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 05:17:00 +0000

Monotony of catastrophe. Who said so? Someone. I feel like meeting Antoine Roquentin. On the Boulevard Noir perhaps..?. But I am not sure whether he would have gone to that garden. How he would look at me? With his wonted indifference? Still not sure. The monotony of doubts! Doubts mark our ways. We are such stuff. I wish I were in India. India of diversity. People united by pangs of unfulfilled dreams. I would have gone to some library. A big library with innumerable racks studded with books. I don’t want to read. I just like to sit there. Among books; sit and stare at the racks..Look at books. Leaning over one another. Why do books lean against each other? The humility of wisdom. Why don’t they stand on their own legs? Do they have legs? Even when they are alone, they like to take a lying posture. They lie down. I just want to sit there. In the library. Stare. I would feel a curious kind of insouciance there. Just sitting there. There at least lies the answer to all the questions jostling in my perturbed brain. I would like to remove my brain. Why not medical science develop a technique to remove brain? Oh! Let them do their lot. Books are staring at me. Point blank. Hey. Do you have all answers in truth? I give a start. I take a book. I love to go through the short note at the back of the book from the publisher. Young, naïve and impressionable, Hans Castorp arrives at a sanatorium high in the Alps. I stop. A book read is a hope obliterated. Better the hope. I take back my seat. After sometime I would perhaps go down and have a cup of coffee. Coffea Arabica; brewed extract. It contains caffeine. Then I would light a cigarette- Wills, ITC Ltd. Coffee and cigarette. Made for each other blend. Stephen Dedalus, where are you? Oh..again the footsteps of uneasiness in the heart. Man sans heart. Great proposition. Oh..Library. I must get back to library. Get back to library of my dreams. Hey mind..why are you trying to assume the air of a man of letters which you are not? Mind goes before body. No matter, never mind. Joke! Joke in the ivory tower philosophy. The meaning of life is love, not German metaphysics. The meta-truth..not metaphysics in any case! What is this season? Monsoon! But the rain! Rain, rain go away, come again another day….Aawara Hain Galiyon Mein Main Aur Meri Tanhai. I would avoid light. Freed from the company of my own shadow. Insouciance. The insouciance of stone, of saints. Saints. Why should saints be alive? Absurdity of absolute reality. Jab Nahi Aaye The Tum, Tab Bhi To Tum Aaye The,Aakh Mein Nur Ki Aur Dil Mein Lahu Ki Surat,Yaad Ki Tarha Dhadakte Hue Dil Ki Surat. Love! Un-culminating human associations. Subho Ke Haath Me Khursheed Ke Sagar Ki Tarha. Yet another. Where is the packet of Wills? Wills from the house of ITC India Ltd. Appropriation of the world. Love. The single cause of the cancer of heart. A cyst formation. In the heart. A gargantuan increase in feeling and passion. Raahen Bhee Tamashyee Raahen Bhee Tamashaee . Get back to library I must. Autodidact. Ki Mere Paas Siva Mehron Wafa Kucch Bhi Naheen. Ek Dil Ek Thamanna Ke Siva. Love! Hug your pillows and lean on to walls. They won’t change. A heart without change ceases to be a heart. Heart of the matter. Love is the single cause of the cancer of heart. Larry Darrel. In pursuit of Absolute. Poor guy. The will-o-wisp. Absolute. Kshurasya dhara nishidha duratyaya. Joke. One should have enough jokes lifelong. The relief of a laugh is moksha. Saints must be given a class on that. The moksha of laugh. Gayatri…where are you? The cancer of heart. Ek Dil Ek Thamannah Ke Siva- come to me. Cling on to me. Where do women learn this gracious clinging? Tadpole need not be taught swimming. Then…cling. Let the veneers be shattered. Your soul need not be undressed. Cling to Caesar and dream of Antony, Antony of round arms. Or else cling to Bhima and dream of the destructive power of Ghandeevah. Let it be. Ephemeral. Sex. Fleeting but elating. Cling. Oh..! I have got to get back to library. Library of hopes. Un-culminating human associations. Tum Nahi Aaye Abhi, Phi Bhi To Tum Aaye Ho. Darkness of your hair; the depth of your eyes. I would light a Wills. Yet another intoxication. One intoxication to another. Not bad. But what we badly need is bed; bed to make each other objects. Objectification of partner, devouring of body. Electrification. Pieces of flesh playing over each other. No. don’t undress your soul. One cannot stare at the nudity of soul. Lift me my beloved. Like a flower. Tab Bhi To Tum Aaye The.. Yaad Ki Tarha Dhadakte Hue Dil Ki Surat. Gayathri of my consummate dreams. Cling on to me. Objectify me. Obliterate me. But I have to get back to library. Why don’t Govt. introduce a law that women should wear a tag? Health warning: love is the single cause of heart cancer. My wills has got it. Women must have it. Forewarned forearmed. Gayatri. Cling on to me. Put your gorgeous arms around my neck. Kiss. Kiss stays at a border; border between spirit and flesh. The books: I must get back to library. But Gayatri. Mere Hathon Mein Lakheeron Ke Siva Kuch Bhee Naheen. Even then. Cling. Aim the soul and reach the flesh. Monologue of conditions. Not dialogue between man and conditions. A strange combination of elements. Quintessence of dust. Death. Ultimate cheating. Reincarnation. Dream of dreams. Insouciance. Put off not for tomorrow but for next janma. The Mephistophilean smile of books. Joke. What about public distribution system for jokes? Gayatri..where has thou been? Mulaqaat. Incomplete meetings. Cling. Unrequited in any case? Oh..love must be unrequited. The nirveda of achieving. Cling. Look not into my eyes lest you might find yourself. Man: the rope between man and superman? A monkey perhaps, trying to jump to infinity. In vein.

Prufrockian conundrum and Graphomania: The Great Reversal

noreply@blogger.com (The Prophet Of Frivolity) — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 08:52:00 +0000

The pain of impossibility to express, when the whole being is overflowing with what has to be conveyed, is a deep one. The way in which Prufrock says “That is not what I meant at all./That is not it, at all.”, has absolutely no note of calmness we find in the classic Upanishadic negation of "nethi,nethi". The pain is unbearably acute and the constantly alive feeling of passing time renders it an urgency which the protagonist finds hard to overcome. The expression of this pain is, interestingly intermingled with the realization and challenging of, his capacity to express itself. Eliot published Prufrock in 1915. The world has changed infinitely hence. Perhaps, if one can shed off the common way of approaching the Waste Land and read it as a piece of poetry rather than German metaphysics, it is not hard to hear the flapping of the wings of being against the walls of the mode and medium of expression. His life was a struggle against what is meaning there are times in history when the medium of expression finds itself stretched to the limit and yet fails miserably in the avalanche of experiences. As exepmlified in,

'Words strain,Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish...'

One cannot convince oneself of the idea that by breaking off decisively from the tradition of romanticism, Eliot could give vent to his being in its fullest form.

It is in this context that the expounding of the concept "Graphomania" by Kundera becomes extremely revealing. Kundera is a writer who introduces interesting concepts in the midst of story telling. We still vividly remember his concepts like 'Kitsch' and 'Litost'. Actually he is not really inventing the terms but he is giving them meanings which becomes handy in exploring the dynamics of life as we know it in our times. His attempt is essentially one of stretching the meaning. He goes on with a detailed explanation of what 'Graphomania' means in the novel The Book Of Laughter And Forgetting. Graphomania has at it's roots the tendency to make oneself heard, to present oneself before an audience to the extend of being forceful. He goes on to state that Graphomania takes on the proportions of a mass epidemic when a society engenders an environment giving ample free time to devote to useless activities, an atmosphere of isolation caused by increasing atomisation and a radical absence of significant social changes. Are we not witnessing all these in our society? And what of the results from this mania of 'writing'? Am I ,or for that matter anyone, being heard? We just go on speaking...speaking and speaking...Endlessly but the person sitting next to me as well is doing..what? There are as many universes as there are men in this world. The journey from Prufrock to Graphomaniac is one of catastrophic proportions..'And we drown..'

Musings:Without Punctuation.

noreply@blogger.com (The Prophet Of Frivolity) — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 09:41:00 +0000

How ravishing it would be to be lead on by a rapturous idea..the whole being following like one possessed.You just have to remain idle,absolutely indifferent,like a log caught in the current.But it is a situation which happens very rarely. Beauty lies in things and
situations that are rare and uncommon.Sometimes when you sit idle and alone,hours on end into late night you have the feeling that a truly genuine insight is hovering around you.A clue to the infinity of life,a code to the mystery that is universe.But it circles around you and just won't yield.That exactly is the beauty of universe.Plays like a naughty young girl.Always enticing,beckoning.So i am sitting here..truly idle,fingers crossed.