The Drunkard by Emile Zola

The entire book is a scandal. A horrible ending. Written very raw. I do like the way Zola tries to justify each character, when it is plan that they are going farther into ruin. But really, did she have to die?? Why couldn't she end up with Goujet? That would've made a marvelous ending! But I guess the French like tragedies more.

The book was alright. Very intense story.

The Poet's Guide to Life by Rilke

"Be out of sync with your times for just one day, and you will see how much eternity you contain within you."

"How numerous and manifold is everything that is yet to come, and how differently it all surfaces and how differently it all passes the way we expect. How poor we are in imagination, fantasy, and expectation, how lightly and superficially we take ourselves in making plans only for reality then to arrive and play its melodies on us!"

Life is but a masterpiece that only a Genius could create- He is constantly moving His hands, adding unpredictable strokes to our seconds...our leaking seconds. Such spontaneity! Beyond our pathetic minds!

"One may dream while others are saviors if these dreams are more real to oneself than reality and more necessary than bread. In a word: one ought to turn the most extreme possibility inside oneself into the measure of one's life, for our life is vast and can accommodate as much future as we are able to carry."

So stock up your future with dreams?

"The following realization rivals in its significance to religion; that once the background melody has been discovered one is no longer baffled in one's speech and obscure in one's decisions. There is a carefree security in the simple conviction that one is part of a melody, which means that one occupies a significant space, and has a specific duty toward a vast work where the least counts as much as the greatest."

So the realization of your "life calling"

"What do we amount to as long as we can get up and a wind, a gleam, a song wrought of the voices of a few birds in the air can seize us and do whatever it wants with us? It is no good to hear all of this and to see it and to seize it, not to become numb to it but on the contrary: everything is to be felt in countless ways in all its variations yet without losing ourselves to it."

Never before have I come across this concept- that nature takes control of us and it itself has a "spiritual" impact on us. Outside forces into us. I always thought of the emotions coming out and being part of the whole harmony...Extremely interesting. But why not get lost to it? Do we become too much affected, as the opposite extreme of numb and therefore not enjoying it properly? Maybe we must retain something of ourselves to enjoy it to the fullest extent. Something in us connects to it.

"How peculiar, the way life works. If this were not a bit arrogant one would like to a position oneself outside of it all, on the opposite side of everything that happens just in order not to miss anything at all- even there one would still remain rooted in life's true center, maybe there even more than elsewhere, there where all things come together without a proper name. But ultimately we are also quite attracted and taken in by names, by titles, by the pretexts of life, because the whole is too infinite and we recover from it only by naming it for awhile with the name of one love, no matter how much this passionate delimitation then puts us in the wrong, makes us capable, murders us..."

We do love to pinpoint things, categorize them- a feeling, a concept, to somehow lower it, to make it smaller than the infinite- which it is meant to be...

"We make our way through Everything like thread passing through fabric: giving shape to images we ourselves do not know."

I do like the sewing metaphor :) this again shows the Genius - even we ourselves do not know that we are part of a great masterpiece- and with each decision, each breath taken- we transform it into something even more glorious

"For they still held on to the view that it is possible for us to take something into ourselves, draw it in and swallow it, while in fact we are so filled up from the beginning that not the tiniest thing could be added (...)all things can effect a new alignment within us."

The word "alignment" is very nicely put there- as if we truly are a point in space, in eternity, the infinite.

"(...) just as whatever is yet to occur does not fall from the skies at the last moment but resides always already right next to us, around us and within our heart, waiting for the cue that will summon it to visibility."

Beautiful. Absolutely marvelous idea. Everything has already been planned. Our future lives within us, around us. It is in the air we breathe...our thoughts. It is a destiny that is our companion at all times. Marvelously said, "a cue" by the Great Creator Himself.

Goodness how marvelous- everything, absolutely everything, works towards the same purpose. Everything is calculated for that one goal!

"For this reason he is in the right who encounters everything as something that will not return. It does not matter whether he then forgets or remembers, as long as he had been fully present only for its duration and been the site, the atmosphere, the world for what happened, as long as it happened within him, in his center, whatever is good and what is bad—then he really has nothing else to fear because something else of renewed significance is always about to happen next. The possibility of intensifying things so that they reveal their essence depends so much on our participation. When things sense our avid interest, they pull themselves together without delay and are all that they can be, and in everything new the old is then whole, only different and vastly heightened."

So that's what he means when he says living life to the "fullest". To live according to life's "intensity". To not worry about the fact that it will pass, but recognize the fact and live the moment accordingly.

"God, how many opportunities and examples that invite us to become something—and in response to those, how much sluggishness, distractedness, and half-will on our side."

What contrast! When God's hands mold us, we become "sluggish". I love how he says- that we are invited to become something all the time. So many opportunities pass us by!

"We have to be committed not to miss or neglect any opportunity to suffer, to have an experience, or to be happy; our soul arises refreshed from all of that. It has a resting place at those heights that are difficult to reach, and it is at home where one can advance no further: up there we have to carry it. But as soon as we put it down for dead at those extreme spots it awakens and takes flight into skies and celestial depths that from now on belong to us."

Magical. Goodness that's beautiful. Our soul wants to live in the experience. Oh, to reach those spots!

"But one lives in the density of one's own body, which imposes its particular measure already in purely physical terms (because after all there is nothing to go on but this physical I) and since one lives, I think, in the awkwardness of this body and confined and imprisoned by the surrounding world in which one moves...one is not always as free, as loving, and as innocent as one should be able to be according to one's proper resources and convictions. And frequently insecurity and distractedness limit us further. What bighearted confidence in oneself would be needed to respond to every voice that reaches us with the truest sense of hearing and the most undistracted reply."

This all seems very theoretical- one cannot reply because that is what makes us human.

"But then these two separate lives should remain without any knowledge of the other for a period and exist as far apart and as detached from the other as possible. This is necessary for each life to base itself firmly on its new requirements and circumstances."

"Ah, if I had a manual craft, a daily task, something closer...instead of this waiting for faraway things."

"(...) that the advances of my life could not be brought about by force but occur silently, and that I prepare for them while working quietly and with concentration on things that on a deep level I recognize to be my tasks."

Yes, they will happen eventually. This time is necessary to bring them about...to get to that certain point. For time cannot skip periods in life, it has to plow through them in order to pass them and get to more important parts.

"We play with dark forces that cannot be recaptured with the names we give them, like children playing with fire and it seems for a moment as if energy has rested dormant in all objects until now, until we arrived to apply it to our fleeting life and its requirements. But, again and again through millennia,those fires shake off their names and rise like an oppressed class against their little masters, or not even against them- they simply rise and the various cultures slide off the shoulders of the earth, which is once again great and expansive and alone with its oceans, trees and stars."

"(...) if we were only to recall even a single hour when nature acted beyond us, beyond our hopes, beyond our lives, with that sublime highness and indifference that fill all of its gestures. It knows nothing of us. And whatever human beings might have accomplished, not one has yet reached such greatness that nature shared in his pan or would have joined in his rejoicing."

Exactly, nature does not pay us any attention, because it is way beyond us- it is in a whole nother realm.

"What we experience as Spring God views as a fleeting tiny smile that passes over the earth. The earth seems to be remembering something, and in the summer time she tells everyone about it until she grows wiser during the great autumnal silence with which she confides in those who are alone. Even when taken together, all the springs that you and I have experienced are not enough to fill even one of God's seconds. The spring that God is supposed to notice must not remain in the trees and meadows but somehow has to assume its force within people, for then it takes place, as it were, not in time but in eternity and in God's presence."

Goodness that's beautiful and it is so true and real. This is the essence of believing in God. That this beautiful purity in nature should be within us! Then it will be eternal in our souls.

"But then while other human beings continued to be alien to me, I was drawn to things, and from these things there emanated a joy, a joy in being that always stayed consistently calm and strong and in which there was never any hesitation or doubt...Things, however in their way of patiently enduring and lasting, later offered me a new, greater, and more pious love [compared to his Christan faith] a kind of belief with neither fear nor limit. Life also belonged to this belief. Ah, how I believe in it, in life. Not the life constituted by time but this other life, the life of small things, the life of animals and of the great plains. This life that continues through millennnia with no apparent investment in anything, and yet with all of its fores of movement and growth and warmth in complete harmony."

***
"Whether you are surrounded by the singing of a lamp or the sounds of a storm, by the breathing of the evening or the sighing of the sea, there is a vast melody woven of a thousand voices that never leaves you and only occasionally leaves room for your solo To know when you have to join in, that is the secret of your solitude, just as it is in the art of true human interaction"to let yourself take leave of the lofty words to join in with the one shared melody."

Just as communicating- to know when to join in and not speak- to join solitude. To join it completely. This is a marvelous concept! To become part of the whole.

"The individual who could hear the entire melody would be at once the loneliest and the most common, for he would hear what no one else hears and yet only because he would grasp in its perfect completeness that which others strain to hear obscurely and only in parts."

Marvelous. O goodness to be so completely part of the melody, the perfection of nature... What an honor for a human being! Only the "divine race" has the gift of knowing this loneliness...

"(...)we are truly infinitely alone, each one of us, and unreachable with very rare exceptions. We must learn to live with this fact."

What makes us be so alone?

"I consider the following to be the highest task in the relation between two people: for one to stand guard over the other's solitude. IF the essential nature of both indifference and the crowd consists in the nonrecognition of solitude, then love and friendship exist in order to continually furnish new opportunities for solitude. And only those commonalities are true that rhythmically interrupt deep states of loneliness."

"(...)everything that exists is governed by laws that reign over all beings without relinquishing their force but rather rush to prove and test themselves on every stone and every feather dropped by us."

***
"There is a kind of purity and virginality in this looking away from one's self: it is just as when one is drawing with one's eyes locked on and intertwined with an object in nature, and the hand traces its path somewhere down there all alone, moves and moves, grows timid, wavers, regains confidence, moves and moves deep beneath the face which is like a star above it, which does not look but only shines. It seems as if I had always been creative in this way the face caught in contemplation of distant things, the hands alone. And this is surely how it ought to be. This is the way I would gradually like to become again, but in order to do so I have to remain alone as I am now; my loneliness first has to be firm and secure again like a forest where no one ever set foot and which has no fear of steps. It must lose all emphasis, exceptionality, and obligation. It must become routine, completely natural and quotidian. The thoughts that enter, even the most fleeting ones, must find me all alone; then they will decide to trust me again."

The fact that thoughts are something apart from oneself- like Muse's gracing us with their presence of creativity- that is just marvelous and unique. That they don't come to us at our calling, but we have to wait for them, be at peace, in order so that they slowly come crouching near. As if this spirit of imagination, of the mind, is something that has to trust us, so that we do not abuse it, so that we make them grow.

"It is the realization that even this apparently most in intimately shared thing called love can be fully developed and, as it were, perfected only when one is alone, apart from others. For the confidence of strong inclinations results in a current of pleasure that sweeps us along and finally casts us out somewhere else, while an individual enclosed in his feelings will experience love in every task to be performed on himself and as the incessant creation of bold and magnanimous challenges imposed on the other. People who are this in love with each other summon infinite dangers, but they remain safe from the petty perils that have worn out and eroded so many great beginnings of true emotion. Since they continually wish for and challenge each other to achieve something extreme, neither of them can treat the other unjustly by imposing a limit; on the contrary, they incessantly create for one another and expansiveness and freedom, just as the one who loves God has always from his heart and instituted in the depths of the heavens God's boundlessness and reign. That illustrious beloved has had cautious wisdom and even (it cannot be misunderstood when phrased this way) used the noble rose of never revealing himself. This for a few ecstatic souls the love of God could lead to imaginary moments of pleasure- and yet, according to its essence, it has always remained work through and through, a most demanding chore and a most difficult effort."

Like the comparison.
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Rilke has taught me a lot- about the enjoyment of life, about it's essence. These things I have pondered after I've read them, and they have come up in life, which aroused more questions. Very thought provoking, and extremely unique ideas. The fact that he uses nature as something that could be achieved and completely understood is really marvelous. I do like him, he seems(ed) to be very wise.

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Pub by Modern Library

Droll Stories Vol I by Balzac

The Fair Imperia

"(...) but speaking that sweet language which the ladies so well understand, that has neither stops, commas, accents, letters, figures, characters, notes, nor images."

The King's Sweetheart

"Then she began to weep, like all young maidens will before they become experienced, for afterward they never cry with their eyes."

The change in a woman, as a sort of revenge upon her "fate". As if she became more mature, and only cries through actions.

The High Constable's Wife

"His pale face was softly melancholy. His physiognomy gave proof of a fine heart, one of those which nourish ardent passions and plunge delightedly into the despair of love without hope. Of these people there are few, because ordinarily one likes more a certain thing than the unknown felicities lying and flourishing at the bottomest depths of the soul!"

Yes, most people want a sort of security for their love- that it would be returned. But these marvelous beings, these poets of the heart are so few, so few has passed their lives (miserable and short as they've mostly been)on this earth- gracing us with their divine presence for a fleeting moment- and then they disappear. Like phantoms momentarily wandering the barren earth of the human intellect, to bring us a flower from heaven... How they suffered for love! They, who were her most ardent worshipers- they were cursed by it! Oh, what a horrible irony!

"Who does not love the warm attack of life when it flows thus round the heart and engulfs everything?"

I love how he puts in the word "attack"- as if it were violent...

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Pub by Gebbie Publishing Company

Candle in the Wind by Solzhenitsyn

"...our entire human intellect down to the last fraction is devoted to the production of material goods!"

The definition of modern "progress"

"
SINBAR: Don't try to be obstinate! There is no absolute morality! Nor is there nay internal moral law! And even if one did exist, there would be no force which could make us pay attention to it!

ALEX: There is such a force!

SINBAR: Name it!

ALEX: Death!! The eternal mystery of death! The eternal barrier in our way- death! You can study cybernetics or the blue galaxies but all the same you can't overcome death!"

It's interesting what a huge part and "barrier" death is. It is the ultimate barrier to humanity- to our intellect, our technology, our achievements. It is always there to remind us what mere short-living creatures we are.

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I do like Solzhenitsyn, I Have some respect for him when he said "Torf Produkt? Ah, Turgenev never knew what such an expression could include." Tight there he acknowledges the difference between modern and "classic" Russia or the world in general, and how those two worlds will never coincide.

The play Candle in the Wind was alright. It didn't include any traces of the "folk" that are to be found in the Russian classics. Might as well have been British. Maybe the translation?

Jealousies of a Country Town by Balzac

"He was to pass through successive phases of emotion, hidden from ordinary eyes, to one of hose sudden resolves which bring the chapter to a close and set fools declaring that the man is mad."

"We cannot explain it; some strong-minded persons deny that it exists, but many a woman and many a man has felt that shock of sympathy. It is a flash, lightning up the darkness of the future, and at the same time a presentiment of the pure joy of love shared by two souls, and a certainty that the other too understands. It is more like the strong, sure touch of a master hand upon the clavier of the senses than anything else. Eyes are riveted by an irresistible fascination, hearts are troubled, the music of joy rings in the ears and thrills the soul,; a voice cries, 'It is he!'"

"If the daily round, the daily pacing of the same track in the footsteps of many yesterdays, is not exactly happiness, it is so much like it that others, driven by dint of storm- tossed days to reflect on the blessings of calm, will say that it is happiness indeed."

It is easy to please some.

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I don't think I finished this one...

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Pub by Gebbie Publishing Company