QOTD

 

Mario wrote very seldom; in fact, for a long time past, the only signs of a writer about him were the pen and blank sheets of paper always lying ready on his desk. Those were the happiest days of his life, given up to dreams, and free from teasing practical problems; a sort of second childhood, more desirable even than the maturity of  a successful writer, whose words flow too glibly and with too little effort to the paper, leaving an empty husk which mistakes itself for ripe fruit.  Italo Svevo, The Hoax. (1929)

 

You see? You see? This is why E@L keeps loads and loads of books. Boxes and boxes of them. He picks up a volume at random and this gem of a paragraph unfolds before his eyes. How can one not relish that contradictory idea: the happiest days of his writing life were when he wasn't writing, even though he still thought of himself as a writer. So self-depricating in its contrariness, so freshly thought, so pretentiously unpretentious, so oxymoronical, so... so Svevoesque (new word, first in a long time!). 

This volume also contains The Story of The Nice Old Man and The Pretty Girl - a classic...

Sigh. E@L doesn't write anymore, but, unlike Mario, he doesn't kid himself/others that he's a writer either. 

Happy days for 

E@L

In the current oeconomic climate...

Two thousand, three hundred and fifty years ago, trickle-down economics [sorta] was deemed bad and a progressive tax was imposed in Athens.   

"I saw, men of Athens, that your navy was decaying, and that, while the rich were getting off with small payments, citizens of moderate or small fortunes were losing their substance, and the state, by reason thereof, missing her opportunity of action. I therefore proposed a law, by which I compelled the one class (the rich) to perform their duty, and stopped the oppression of the poor; and --what was most useful to the country-- I caused her preparations to be made on time.

[On being offered bribes by the rich class to drop the law] "And no wonder they did so; for under the former laws they might divide the charge by sixteen, spending little or nothing themselves, and grinding down the needy citizens; whereas under my law everyone had to pay a sum proportioned to his means ..."  Demosthenes: On The Crown (330 BC).

 

Reagan, Thatcher and that lot: don't listen to them!!

And as for that Macedonian upstart, Philip, and his pisqueak son Alex... Don't listen to them either, listen to 

E@L

On Forgetting Everything.

Quote of The Day For The Aging (like E@L):

"Everything I've lived through I've forgotten as if it were something I had only vaguely overheard." Fernando Pessoa: The Book Of Disquiet.

~~~~~
For example -

Visiting Friend: That's near where you took me last time I visited.
E@L: You've been to Singapore before?
Visiting Friend (confused): About three months ago. We watched the footy with your mates. I was with my girlfriend. Same as the time before.
E@L (even more confused - no memory of this whatsoever): Oh, that's, um, right.
~~~~~

It's time E@L was put down. Seriously.

He did recall eventually, about 30secs late. How can anyone have conversation with this person?

~~~~~

E@L tries to read a snippet of Pessoa before he goes to sleep. His mordant pessimism makes your shitty day seem like brilliant success and you sleep easy.


E@L

The Topography Of Knowledge

"What we want are topographers who would make detailed accounts of the places which they had actually been to. But because they have the advantage of visiting Palestine, they want to enjoy the right of telling us tales about the rest of the world! I wish everyone would write only what he knows - not in this matter only but in all others. A man may well have detailed knowledge or experience of the nature of one particular river or stream, yet about all the others ho knows only what everyone else does; but in order to trot out his little scrap of knowledge he will write a book on the whole of physics. From this vice many great inconveniences arrive.

Now to get back to the subject..." Michael de Montaigne. On The Cannibals.

~~~~~~~

Now, to get back to the subject...

E@L

Noted

Everything that isn't autobiographical is plagiarism.


Paco Umbral* (usually, and mistakenly, attributed to Pedro Almódovar)

That's Pedro on the left for sure, maybe Paco on the right?

E@L

* whoever the fuck he/she is.

True Words

An awkward, unscientific lie is often as ineffectual as the truth. Mark Twain

... who has just published his autobiography to much controversy, seeing as how 'e's dead an' all.

E@L

Quotes Of The Day

The Sage of Göttingen

Physicist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799) is not widely remembered outside Germany — which is a great pity, as his notebooks contain some of history’s most trenchant aphorisms:

* If countries were named after the words you first hear when you go there, England would have to be called Damn It.

* What they call “heart” lies much lower than the fourth waistcoat button.

* What a pity it isn’t a sin to drink water, cried an Italian, how good it would taste.

* A book is a mirror: If an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.

* The often unreflected respect for old laws, old customs, and old religion we have to thank for all mischief in the world.

* It is we who are the measure of what is strange and miraculous: If we sought a universal measure the strange and miraculous would not occur and all things would be equal.

* Just as there are polysyllabic words that say very little, so there are also monosyllabic words of infinite meaning.

* If walking on two legs is not natural to man it is certainly an invention that does him credit.

* It is almost impossible to carry the torch of wisdom through a crowd without singeing someone’s beard.

* Now that education is so easy, men are drilled for greatness, just as dogs are trained to retrieve. In this way we’ve discovered a new sort of genius, those great at being drilled. These are the people who are mainly spoiling the market.

* Can it be that the evil in the world is in general of more use than the good?

* Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinions at all.

The “waste books” were admired by Wittgenstein, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Freud, and even Tolstoy wondered “why the Germans of the present day neglect this writer so much.” He never got an answer.

(This post entirely lifted from the remarkable Futility Closet).

~~~~~~~~

Love the last one.

E@L