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| QUOTATIONS 1603 - 1628 |
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| 1603. Very often, while reading a book, or listening to music, or watching a movie on television, etc. my thoughts start to drift away, some ideas begin forming in my mind, the ideas which have little or nothing to do with what I've been reading, listening to, or watching. And suddenly, I feel the urge to write down these ideas. But I have to struggle with myself, for at this moment the choice has to be made whether to continue "to consume" the creative works of others or abandon them and do "my own things". And then I realize than I am not a true writer, for I think the real writers never confront such a dilemma, at least not very often. They "know" that what they write is more important to them then anything the others did. A true writer must be a natural egotist putting his writings above anyone else's work. 1604. Since your work (unless you're an idle rich) is going to be your life, with very little left for anything else, try to choose, if possible, the one which is the closest fit for your abilities and ambitions, so that at the end you wouldn't feel it all has been a terrible waste. 1605. It is the people who define and determine the age, the century we are in, not the calendar. There is always a delay, a lag between the two. The 19th Century didn't end at 1900 but actually in 1918, at the end of the First World War, politically, and in 1929, with the beginning of the Great Depression, economically. For the people who defined the first few decades of the 20th Century were born in the 19th and being its products brought with them their ideas, attitudes, world views and behavior well into what chronologically already was the 20th Century. And they also were in charge (not a small matter) during these interim years. The same thing is happening now. For though the calendar says 21th Century, the overwhelming majority of the world population was born in and shaped by the 20th and continue living as if it is still on. Baring some cataclysmic events, it will go on until at some point the demographic change will make those born after the year 2000 the main force in the world affairs politically, economically and culturally. And until that unknown at present moment it would be misleading to say that we live now in the 21th Century. 1606. In praise of nationalism. Many negative and well known aspects of nationalism notwithstanding, it is undeniable fact that it also produces some beneficial psychological effects. For as the true Christian believers are relieved from the death anxiety and guilty conciseness by the promise of "life everlasting" and forgiveness of sins, so the nationalists, especially those of the lower classes, are relived from the inferiority complex and debilitating sense of social insignificance by associating themselves with the best representatives of their nation and by the shared pride of the glorious moments in its history, which every nation possesses, preserves, cultivates and embellishes. Collective pride cures personal shame. 1607. How come the 19th Century which created the divine music, unsurpassable literature, outstanding science is also responsible for so much appallingly stupid social and political writing? Perhaps this field was not respectable enough to attract the best and the brightest of this illustrious century and thus has been usurped by all kind of pseudo-intellectual and self-delusional cranks. 1608. There are books which kill their creators. And there are writers who know that but write them anyway - the book is more valuable to them than life itself. The book is life. There is no life but the book and I am the writer. 1609. A joke which has to be explained ceases to be a joke. Equally, a poem that has to be explained ceases to be a poem. It doesn't mean that it shouldn't engender response, provoke discussion or debate, inspire elaboration on the subject and ideas expressed in it. Far from it. It supposes and is expected to engage the listener. But not grasping the meaning at all and the need for an explanation as opposed to response and comments means simply that a joke is not funny and a poem is not intelligible. 1610. To be perfectly honest I do not enjoy, esthetically or otherwise, the poetry which is not rhymed. And though I wouldn't dare to deny that other kinds of poetry, which are prevalent nowadays, may have numerous and various artistic merits, I have never been able to discern them. And not for a lack of trying. For 10 years, once a week, I went to poetry readings. So, altogether I've been to about 500 of them. Alas, my last week was no more enjoyable than the first. But can an art which doesn't give an aesthetic pleasure call itself Art? Thus, it should come as no surprise that as far as I am concerned the only justification for this type of poetry is in acquiring fundamental writing skills and developing linguistic facility by enriching one's vocabulary and learning the creation and proper usage of metaphors and similes. And as one learning to play piano spends a lot of time practicing scales, developing technical skills which in the future will allow him to play the complete pieces, so "practicing" poetry at the beginning (which most of the writers do)prepares one to become eventually a skillful prose writer. On the other hand I suspect there is a certain danger inherent in a kind of grammar and syntax most poets have been using for more than a century by now and which has a potential to negate the benefits mentioned above. Assuming that a grammar is a mirror of the mind, the reflection of the mental processes, the standard grammatical sentences with subject, predicate, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, etc. arranged in the orderly fashion and producing the affect of complete and unambiguous statements bespeaks of an orderly and logical mind. But such an orderly structure is looked down upon by the poets today as not poetic at all. They labor hard to alter it by constructing sentences in which certain essential parts are missing and those remaining arranged in the most unusual patterns inconvenient for an average orderly brain to handle, to say the least. This equating of distorted with poetic in the sentence structure must be largely responsible for the wide spread rejection of such poetry by the readers. It is not so much them but their brains almost automatically repulse it as something totally alien. It has been discovered recently that our brains are undergoing continual transformation under the influence of perception and learning. It is therefore quite logical to suppose that practicing the certain irregular grammar changes the brain to suit it. If one does it year after year it is bound to effect the brain activity and alter the natural grammar we are born with into something unnatural, thus affecting one's personality and thinking process and in the extreme cases the state of mental health. Now, this seems to contradict that well known phenomenon, mentioned before, of some young poets eventually becoming rather good prose writer, for in the prose unlike in poetry the more or less regular sentence structure is a must. Otherwise, nobody will read it, and the prose writers, again unlike the poets, simply cannot afford not to be read. The only way out of this contradiction is to assume that those poets who became good prose writers stopped writing poetry at relatively young age, let's say 25 (we must trust T.S. Elliot on that, for he should know) before the irreparable damage has been done to their brains , and through assiduous application managed eventually to recover their full mental capacities. And we should all be happy for their lucky escape. 1611. The greatest crime Modernism committed is not by removing the pure and simple joy from the experience of Art, but by bulling and brainwashing generation after generation of its best consumers - the well intentional and earnest members of Western intelligentsia into belief that the spontaneous and unmediated delight one feels encountering a work of art is not a necessary part of it, that one can do without it and that a substitution of this delight, this joy by appreciation and understanding is enough in itself. Thus feeling of being a member of the elect group of connoisseurs replaced the enjoyment of the experience which was declared unnecessary or even lowbrow. 1612. A human life is a continuous satisfaction of curiosity: what is this, what is that, what is here, what is there, what is next and the next after that, and so forth and so on. It stops when there isn't anything new to find out, or when the desire to find anything new has gone. And with it the purpose of life itself has gone as well. From then on whether one's physical existence continues makes no difference. The spirit is no longer there and what is left is a body driven by inertia of habits and instincts to its inevitable end. 1613. Mediterranean Sea instead of providing the bridge between Christian and Muslim worlds is in reality serves as a great divide separating two Civilizations. The Arab nations which have been occupying the southern side of it, from Tangier to Beirut, for the past 1400 years, are in but not of Mediterranean. They never became the people of the sea. They stand on its shore with their back turned to the sea looking into the desert they came from but which they never left. 1614. A simple thought expressed in the accessible language is more effective than a brilliant idea shrouded in the opaque and ambiguous one. 1615. You would be liked by everyone if you have nothing they want, or if you do give it to them. Then they would love you. 1616. Some have thick skin, some thin, and then there are the unfortunate ones who seem have no skin at all. And that's what makes all the difference. All other things being equal, it is the thickness of one's skin that ultimately decides one's fate. 1617. In this era of instantaneous reporting (due to the proliferation of various types of media driven by insatiable appetite for news) the precipitous history writing is followed by the immediate debunking of the history just made. There are too many actual participants and witnesses of the historical events to refute forever bent on myth making historians. Never before history was made so quickly after events, and never before it was so quickly debunked. 1618. Everyone is familiar with Oedipus complex describing a psychological conditions in which a son being in love with his mother is jealous of his father to the point that he wants to kill the father and take his place and become his mother's lover. Needless to say this situation, if judged by the standards of reality (by which all situations have to be judged) does appear at best bizarre and at worst something much uglier. Claiming that this takes place in subconscience doesn't help the case for there is no way of proving it. As it has been shown with "false memory syndrom" in cases of alleged sexual abuse of children, prolong exposure to psychoanalytic treatment can implant all kind of ideas into a patient, the ideas which may tell a lot about the state of subconscience of an analyst but very little of one who is analyzed. Moreover, any young man would vehemently deny harboring such a shameful feelings and intentions and giving the opportunity would try to physically harm the one who suggests that he is a victim of Oedipus complex. But there is another complex many young men afflicted with and would be ready to admit to. We shall call it Hamlet complex and it is quite different from the Oedipus one. As we may recall, Hamlet does want to kill Claudius, but since Claudius is not his father, but stepfather, this does not qualify as a bona fide Oedipus complex. It is a revenge for his father murder by Claudius and punishment for desecration of his mother by marrying her immediately after her husband's death that compels Hamlet to act. In this he is driven by disgust with his mother sexuality and with pure animalistic aspect of sex. And this is a universal phenomena. Sons cannot acknowledge or deal with sexuality of their mothers. Growing up, I remember a lot of boys insisting that their mother is a virgin and were greatly distressed when proved wrong. Most affected were the sons of the single women who slept with different men. It was truly devastating to their idea of purity and decency which young children possess in high degree. It warped their idea of sex forever and caused them to treat women in their lives with contempt and cruelty, paying them back for the suffering their mothers' sexuality caused them. Some of this boys developed aversion to sex altogether or at least to its normal practice. Few would become sexual sadist or mass murderers of women. Coming back to Hamlet complex, what Hamlet felt imagining his mother in bed with Claudius a lot of sons of the single women can relate to. For every man his mother makes love to is a killer of his father and this love making is a denigration of his mother. At the end Hamlet does kill Claudius as some of these boys kill their mothers' lover. 1619. The ostensible liberalism and so-called open-mindedness of the today's Church is a virtue of necessity. Being powerless to impose (as it did in the past) the strict adherence to faith and threatened with dwindling membership the Church has to be content just with the filled pews. For as long as "they" are coming, no matter what "they" actually believe in, there is no cause for alarm. Even the atheists are welcome if they are willing to come to take part in formal, though meaningless to them, services. The survival of the Church no longer depends on faith but on numbers. 1620. I don't mind getting (and occasionally following) a practical advice. After all, we all have limited experience and can benefit from someone else's. But what i do resent is the suggestions that I should change my world's views or to feel and react differently in this or that situation, which implies that something wrong with me, that my reactions and feelings are inappropriate, that I would be happier, or at least more content if I "correct" myself. My response (which usually annoys the "adviser") is that first it is impractical to expect a grown man to change his personality and second that a suggestion like this, no matter how well intentioned it is, is nevertheless constitute a negation of who I am and as such is tantamount to psychological violence. 1621. It became fashionable for politicians to lament the voters' apathy. But people are not born apathetic, they are made so by life. The just born babies are certainly not apathetic. They are very and loudly demanding. They would not take "no" for the answer. But as we grow up we are listened to less and less. Most of our wishes are denied, most of our opinions are rejected or ignored. As a result, by the time one reaches adulthood this accumulated experience of being denied, rejected and ignored makes one decide that there is no point in public (or in some cases even private) expressions of either one's wishes or opinions. One withdraws, one turns silent, one becomes apathetic. 1622. Recently I've begun to notice that there is a certain connection between my knowledge of a country and a situation this country is in. This connection resembles an inverse proportion, namely, the less I know about this or that country the better it is off. If I was a paranoid egomaniac I would think that the state of my knowledge about a country causing it to experience the good or bad times. But since I don't believe I'm in charge of the world there must be some other explanation for this puzzling phenomena. I suspect it has something to do with the ways media, which today is our main source of knowledge, operates. For example, I know, thanks to the various media, a lot about Israel and the situation there is undeniably terrible. Every day I learn more and more about Afghanistan and Iraq and things are getting from bad to worse over there. On the other hand, I don't remember the last time I've read in a newspaper, seen on TV, or heard on the radio about New Zealand or Bulgaria for that matter. My assumption is that they must be doing well. And for this simple reason. Since the media operates according to a principle "if it bleeds, it leads", the reverse must bi true as well, i.e. "If it doesn't lead, it probably doesn't bleed". 1623. A LONELY GRAVE A lonely, unattended Jewish grave, a stele's lying on the ground broken, the fading ancient Hebrew script betoken the names washed out by the time's waves. Who were they, my grandparents' parents? And theirs? Memory is but a vast black hole, I know they were Jews, like me, that's all, the rest is silence, impenetrable wall. The Jewish bones are scattered everywhere, left by the fleeing for their lives behind, The dead will have to take care of the dead, The quick to carry guilt, like luggage, on their minds. 1624. He whose death would affect the others is not free to dispense with his life at will. 1625. American vast, intricate and seemingly endless highway system serves not only the obvious economical needs but the hidden psychological ones as well by giving the average American the illusion of possibility of escape. 1626. Pettiness can be the effect of two contradictory causes. First, craving for high drama by one bored with everyday trivia may be quenched by exaggeration, by making the big deal of nothing. Second, the inability to deal with the really big problems, may lead one to concentrate on the small but manageable thing as the means of distraction. 1627. If the joy of life is possession and consumption as many not only believe but do their utmost to practice, than I who have a misfortune to belong to the tiny minority of those who are not interested in either must be and probably am very unhappy. For driven by universal human yearning for happiness I am compelled to search for other sources of joy, and this is much harder than to walk by the well trodden by the majority of humanity road. 1628. I think, I discovered the cause of so prevalent among the male ballet dancers homosexuality. The dancers' sexual impulse like of the rest of us, but even more so because they are the artists engaged in one of the most exquisite art - classical ballet, is driven by the attraction to the physical beauty. Now, compare the male and female ballet dancers using their relative physical appearance as the criteria and you will see where I'm leading. An average male ballet dancer is an epitome of the masculine perfection. He is a man in the prime of his life, tall, well proportioned, strong limbed, fully developed physically, the veritable Greek statue made flesh. In addition the gracefulness of his powerful body is enhanced by the lyricism of music which shapes his personality. And now take a look at your average ballerina. I mean an honest, objective look, unobscured by the gorgeous apparel meant to conceal rather then reveal her body, which is far from female ideal. She is short and slight. The most prominent part of her body is the disproportionately, almost grotesquely oversized calves. She is flat -chested, with wiry arms and skeletal torso with protruding ribs and bones, all crowned by the gaunt, starved face. She is an emaciated, dried anorexic, devoid of any feminine softness and voluptuousness of curvatures. Faced with these two counterparts anyone would be naturally attracted to the male ballet dancers rather than the female. Which exactly what happens - the men in ballet are attracted to me, and who can blame them. By the way, another proof of my theory is the fact that nobody ever talks about the cases of lesbianism among ballerinas. They clearly, and understandably, don't look appetizing to each other. |
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