books

it so appears that a certain mister n has got his poems published on the university quarterly magazine and while it does play on the three most famous elements in this meager town i take it that i cannot for the life of me, understand anything inspired from places or events. like whitman and all that. everything just bursts with optimism and beauty of the surrounds devoid of any personal stuff. yes, i cannot digest anything except confessional poetry (or so it seems). meh. give me plath any day, not mekong rivers but life’s decay.

so it seems the only thing equivalent of ‘i am the soul in limbo’ (why does anyone not read nadja?), that i have produced or said, so far at this particular point in time, is, the lame ‘i have no self’. boohoo. 

hesse, it seems to me, aims different things with each of his novel. while all somewhat tackles the problem of life and its meaning, each has a different angle or things or rather, philosophies. 

-siddartha dwells on buddhism and rivers and lettings things go and be rid of the world.

-demian was about trying to discover the self in mythologies and animus/anima, the conscious/subconscious within an individual that finally gives rise to an understanding of the self and henceforth – meaning and aim. jung stuff. all psychological blabber, the thing. 

-steppenwolf, the one i am reading, somewhat deals with the sickness of the soul, the divided self, torn between the animal and the divine in man (and further, more multiplicities of the soul, but essentially these two), and how these highly developed man (the steppenwolves, or one conscious of these divides), are unfit for the world. and that happiness on earth (no matter how much high the peak of happiness you might attain) can only last temporarily (and thus plunges you to even more despair because you know nothing lasts), and thus that is why you must aim for the eternal, (therefore the yearning towards death, or to die at the right time – ugh nietzsche – at the absolute moment of joy), and so life after death must exist to explain all the irrational. and the usual philistine vs the refined aesthete boring babble. the only part i hate is the treatise because it says too much that amounts to the same thing; the battle of the lower senses and the higher senses. this somewhat reminds me of alghazali of course, so i got bored. adler is right. 

ateis, some indonesian book. hm, not sure what to comment on the content itself, same old arguments on god’s existence, but ah, i understand the anguish of the father. maybe one has to delve in sin first in order to achieve saintliness. 

goodbye.