Selen
https://www.goodreads.com/orgonechamber
“But what came easily to Homer (and to Xenophon, in prose) was no longer easily available to the moderns, who introduced the presence of the representing subject into representation itself (Byron being a prime example in the Zibaldone).”
― Zibaldone: The Notebooks of Leopardi
― Zibaldone: The Notebooks of Leopardi
“In studying your basic metabolism, we first listen to your heart's beat, and if your hearts beat anything but diamonds and clubs, it's because your partner is cheating, or your wife.”
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“discussions of the effects of globalization. On the psychological and aesthetic level, Leopardi immediately underscores a crucial point: the ancients do not recognize the notion of the morbid satisfaction in suffering that was introduced by Christianity (Z 2456–57), that is, the withdrawal of the self into the bottomless pit of conscience: that typically modern “vague des passions.”
― Zibaldone: The Notebooks of Leopardi
― Zibaldone: The Notebooks of Leopardi
“His discussion of “the humanity of the ancients” is illuminating (Z 441), especially when he speaks with admiration and nostalgia about the right of exile according to which everyone is guaranteed sanctuary at the hearth of every temple or private home; and the respect for wanderers, enemies, the elderly, the dead—that is, for the most fragile casualties of the human condition.”
― Zibaldone: The Notebooks of Leopardi
― Zibaldone: The Notebooks of Leopardi
“His games have a deeper meaning and fascination that adults can no longer fathom and require nothing more than three pebbles, or a piece of wood with a dandelion helmet, perhaps; but above all they require only the pure, strong, passionate, chaste, still-untroubled fantasy of those happy years when life still hesitates to touch us, when neither duty nor guilt dares lay a hand upon us, when we are allowed to see, hear, laugh, wonder, and dream without the world's demanding anything in return, when the impatience of those whom we want so much to love has not yet begun to torment us for evidence, some early token, that we will diligently fulfill our duties. Ah, it will not be long, and all that will rain down upon us in overwhelming, raw power, will assault us, stretch us, cramp us, drill us, corrupt us.”
― Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family
― Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family
Selen’s 2025 Year in Books
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