Emma > Recent Status Updates

But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul

These wonderful narrations inspired me with strange feelings. Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous, and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle, and at another as all that can be conceived as noble and godlike.

Everything now was transferred to the surface of her body, which began to avenge itself, and feed unhealthily.

completely forgot about victor's post-partum psychosis / depression - what an icon

oh me? re-reading mary shelley's frankenstein because of guillermo del toro's cinematic masterpiece in the year of our lord 2025? i am so normal about this film, i swear.

Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. The lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glare of the lover's inward eye.

I pretend to wake up, and turn to him, but not opening my legs. I want him to open them for me. He does, and I be soft and wet where his fingers are strong and hard. I be softer than I ever been before. All my strength in his hand.

never knew forster could be this funny

Doch während es ihrem Bruder gelungen war, seine Erinnerungen unschädlich zu machen, so hatte sie die ihren nur noch mehr entfacht.

eating as transformative experience of resonance: "Die Welt wird nicht einfach...angeeignet im Sinne eines einfachen Einverleibens, sondern sie wird im Prozess auch transformiert, und in diesem Vorgang der Weltverwandlung reproduziert und verwandelt sich auch das Subjekt"

Sag ihm, entgegnete der Oberst lächelnd, daß man nicht stirbt, wenn man muß, sondern wenn man kann.

Oberst Gerineldo Marquez war der erste, der die Leere des Krieges wahrnahm.

Auf dem Weg zum Friedhof beobachtete Arcadio in dem beharrlichen Nieselregen, daß am Horizont ein strahlender Mittwoch aufging. Die Sehnsucht schwand mit dem Nebel und gab statt dessen einer gewaltigen Neugier Raum.

Er war in der Tat im Tod gewesen, war jedoch zurückgekehrt, weil er die Einsamkeit nicht ertragen konnte. #mood

These contemporary Orientalist attitudes flood the press and the popular mind...Always there lurks the assumption that although the Western consumer belongs to a numerical minority, he is entitled either to own or to expend (or both) the majority of the world resources. Why? Because he, unlike the Oriental, is a true human being.

[William Morris] regarded the creation of a new society as more important than art-making, his own included..., but he also thought the choice between art and revolution was a false one, because art grew from 'thriving and unanxious life' and so required a great upheaval in the social order if it wasn't to become simply an outgrowth of capitalism, a pretty, pointless excrescence.

The white northern night was ending. Everything was clearly visible, the mountain, the thicket and the ravine, but as if they did not quite believe in themselves and existed only in a fairy tale.

Three years of changes, uncertainties, upheavals; the war, the revolution; scenes of destruction, scenes of death, blown-up bridges, fires, ruins - all this turned suddenly into a huge, empty, waste space. The first real event since the long interruption was this vertiginous home-coming by train, in the knowledge that his home was still safe, still existing somewhere, with every smallest stone in it dear to him.

I was exhausted by the perpetual, agonised now of the news. I didn't just want to journey backwards through the centuries. I wanted to move into a different understanding of time: the kind of time that moves in spirals or cycles, pulsing between rot and fertility, light and darkness.

So far, some really good points have been raised. My favourite one so far, though:

"I don't think it's fair to make someone who's drunk compete against speeches made by people when they were sober. Also,...I hope you don't believe any of what Socrates just said."

Wenn ein starker Wind bliese und den Nebel vertriebe, würden statt der neuen Gebäude des Wiederaufbaus dahinter die Ruinen von vor siebzig Jahren auftauchen. Die in der Nähe versammelten Gespenster stünden mit glühenden Augen aufrecht vor der Wand, an der sie niedergestreckt worden waren.

Bis jetzt unfassbar gut und poetisch geschrieben. Möchte am liebsten die nächsten Stunden mit Kangs Sprache verbringen.

In diesem Augenblick zerbrach etwas in mir, etwas Zartes, von dem ich gar nicht wusste, dass es da gewesen war.

Is it George Eliot who says that if we could pay enough attention to the world to hear the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, we would die of the roar of it - no, I looked it up, she says "die of the roar which lies on the other side of silence." Melodramatic but she's onto something.

The lights shining through the frosted windows turned the houses into precious caskets of smoky topaz. Inside them glowed the Christmas life of Moscow, candles burned on trees, guests milled and fooled about in fancy dress, [...] Christmas in the life of this northern city, Christmas underneath the starry skies of its modern streets and round the lighted trees in its twentieth-century drawing rooms.

this is picking up a liiiittle bit of momentum in the third part. the characters are still bland and unlikable though.

the second part of book two was by far the most interesting part so far. Still, I'm trudging along and can't make myself feel very strongly about this. (It's so dull! I'm sorry!)