Great Books - Tumblr Posts
{But, all this while, I was giving myself very unnecessary alarm. Providence had mediated better things for me than I could possibly imagine for myself.}
-Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter-
The Diaries of Franz Kafka are a conduit to who he really was as a person and as an artist. They chronicle his life from 1910 to 23, they offer multiplex reflections, meditation and philosophical introspection, accounts of dreams, ideas, book reviews and an honest portrayal of his feelings, emotions and thoughts. While written and given in poetic prose and lyricism, rich in vocabulary and expression, his diaries are a simply an answer to what he understood and what he did not about himself, as a writer, a person, a brother, a friend, an artist and above all as a human being with dark recesses and complexities waiting for love and affection, and light to come by.
#ReadmoreKafka.
"This very heart which is mine will forever remain indefinable to me. Between the certainty I have of my existence and the content I try to give to that assurance, the gap will never be filled. Forever I shall be a stranger to myself."
-Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus.-
(Artwork The Red Cloud by David De Las Hera.)
One of the most influential books I have read in my life. Almost disturbing but thoroughly reassuring as well. Man's struggle between meaning and absurd, between suffering and redemption, between the self and the non-self; what does it take? How is one supposed to carry on living a life of contrast, of contradiction, things working for and against at the same time? On the face of the essential absurdity of life, what should a man do, understand and think? The book is by all means an embodiment of existentiel crisis, an anxiety attack, (a bit tedious) but it also gives the reassurance, the quiet that follows. It tells you things you don't know, things you already know, things you heard of but it's more articulate, eloquent, cohesive, and synchronized. Camus is one of the best.
From A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.
My current read.
It's beautiful when passages from a book seem to speak with you as a person behind your role as a reader. You don't have to necessarily relate to the mood or the feeling it gives, sometimes you strongly do and often times, for me, it's just genuine to experience that fleeing sense of being understood.
"It would be grander, it would be more proper, if I quite simply placed myself at the disposal of fate, making no claims. But I can not; it’s the only thing I can’t do."
-Hermann Hesse, Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair.-
(Artwork by Thomas Alen Kopera.)
"It is better to burn than to disappear."
-The Stranger, Albert Camus-
From A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.
I am once again, smitten by Charles's Dickens distinctive way of description and characterization. So minimalist, exact, and terse but powerful in effect and immediate in creating an impression on a reader. He shoots his words like spiteful arrows but with poetry.
((Artwork by Boris Sveshnikov.)
(Artwork by John Madison.)
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens.
