Chris Baterna > Recent Status Updates

Accidents Happen: First short story and introduction to Batacan and holy shit chills...
So much to dissect in what is thought to be predictably tragic

Spontaneity: its Strengths and Weaknesses
"If need be the native can accept a compromise with colonialism, but never a surrender of principle."
"Violence alone... committed by the people..., organized and educated makes it possible for the masses to understand social truths and gives the keys to them."

Maybe the real 'industrialised peasants of individualism, lack of discipline, liking to money, and propensities towards waves of rage and deep discouragement' were the Australians we made along the way

(Part 1: 'Concerning Violence') Did not think I could be further radicalised - but good lord, each new realisation comes with a desperate desire for revolution. Fanon outlines the interconnections between each system and its apparatus, between colonial European governments and the private companies that have us all by our necks, all pointing to a certain necessity of overcoming, rather than simply rebranding.

Thorfinn is so damn cool, ofc the English, Danes and Jomsvikings have a crush on him.

Definitely gonna get into Thomas Hood

On Milman: "He strikes a single key continually, though one of dignity and power"
On Keble: "he does violence to his own sweet nature in dogmatizing to the young..." "the piety, which is the one motive of his verse, is wanting in passion Poetry demands the sacrifice of the privacy of souls"
On Newman: He on his part was as resolved to keep its action subservient to an obligation he regarded as sovereign."

"It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of sin. It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen brood. In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all"

Sartre's Preface is brilliantly packed with confrontational ideas to get a taste of Fanon
"...this irrepressible violence is neither sound and fury, nor the resurrection of savage instincts, nor even the effect of resentment: it is man recreating himself."
"The child of violence, at every moment he draws from it humanity. We were men at his expense, he makes himself man at ours: a different man; of higher quality."

The way I'm enjoying a book about finance is crazy... Also, maybe I need Kohler to narrate more comedy and audiobooks.

God I know how this goes but Thorfinn is just so small and angry; someone please give him a break

Did not expect to tear up so suddenly... but here we are.

Shelley: "He himself had too much to say, and felt too ardently, to care to stop and meditate.""His besetting fault as a poet is excess.""It was a strange universe, paradoxically monstrous, as paradoxically ideal as which spread before the poet's eyes."
Keats: "In defiance he set up the image of Beauty to be worshipped."
Wolfe: "his nature was too much of a poem for his work not to be classed by his personality."

On Moore: 'A poet must be pronounced a failure when he has no power of sowing in his readers the germs of future thoughts or impulses.'
On Hunt: "... one of the poets the world can do without, though I think it a pity it should."
On Byron: The fire which he kindled had inflamed himself first... His egotism may be ridiculous; he is not.

Martin's intro!!!
'It was the labour of amateurs, rather than academics, that paved the way to a new understanding of the Iliad's historicity.'
'Life is a struggle each person will ultimately lose; the question is how one acts with that knowledge.'
'The experience of the Iliad inevitably becomes one of self-exploration and self-definition in the face of such open-ended interpretive options.'

On Wordsworth: "Listen finally to the two emulous spiritual rivals for control of Wordsworth's soul - Thought the profoundest, Imagination at its loveliest..."
On Landor: "Genius owes it to itself, to the world, to show the utmost it can do, to set itself difficult tasks, to climb high peaks which lead nowhere, for the attainment of ends apparently profitless."

Stebbing is delivering banger after banger on Wordsworth and Coleridge.
[On the problem of many poets]: "Often it is preaching instead of singing."
"Imagination itself effloresces into a confusing exuberance - fancy upon fancy - reflection upon reflection."
[On Coleridge]: Nature had bestowed the gift of verse upon him as his proper mode of expression; and he used it as lightly as he came by it.

the summoner's tale has more farty jokes!

I mean... obviously the miller's tale is the best so far. Fart jokes and bum's aplenty.

'River' and "For Grace After a Party.'... ouchie ouchie

I am a Mrs Bennet stan.

lowkey a mrs bennet stan

Dazai wanted to present this as a story of "one unfortunate/unhappy household「一つの不幸な家庭」"so adding the scene between Gertrude and Horatio has really made it feel more intimate and personal. Definitely can see Dazai's own grievances come through in this scene.

Idk what nonsensical sunlit bouncy castle I've just found myself in, but I am so excited.

im dedicated to this idealism but... i hope there's some attainable solutions in the next half

Oh im emotional

Every year... I am struck with the desire to re-read this so suddenly and forcefully, that I find myself opening lectures from years ago, just to fully immerse myself in this party.