“What is this raging lunacy that makes you pounce on another human being who has done nothing to you and bite him, cut off his nose, help yourself to his ear, and tear open his belly while calling upon God to come down and help you, which means for him, too, to slice away nosesContinue reading “RKS Literature: Young Men as Wild Animals (Zorba the Greek)”
Category Archives: literature
RKS Literature: Kafka on Bureaucracy: “The Castle” (“Das Schloss”)
“He ought long ago to have had, not a uniform, for there aren’t many in the Castle, but a suit provided by the department, and he has been promised one, but in things of that kind the Castle moves slowly, and the worst of it is that one never knows what this slowness means; itContinue reading “RKS Literature: Kafka on Bureaucracy: “The Castle” (“Das Schloss”)”
RKS Literature: Doctors as Empty Headed? (Thomas Mann)
“Indeed, the doctor’s calling is not different from any other: its practitioners are for the most part ordinary empty-headed folk, ready to see what is not there and to deny the obvious. Any untrained person, if he loves and has knowledge of the flesh, is their superior and in the mysteries of art can leadContinue reading “RKS Literature: Doctors as Empty Headed? (Thomas Mann)”
RKS Literature: School as Prison (Thomas Mann)
“I am only able to live when my mind and my fancy are completely free; and this it is that memory of my years in prison actually less hateful to me than those of the ostensibly more honourable bond of slavery and fear which chafed my sensitive boyish soul when I was forced to attendContinue reading “RKS Literature: School as Prison (Thomas Mann)”
RKS Literature: The Essence of Zorba the Greek
“If today I were to choose a spiritual guide from the whole wide world- a “guru” as they say in India, a venerable father as the monks say in Mount Athos-the one that I would choose without fail would be Zorba. He possessed precisely what a pen pusher needs for deliverance: the primitive glance thatContinue reading “RKS Literature: The Essence of Zorba the Greek”
RKS Literature: Making a Proper Toilette (Thomas Mann)
“The preparation, the lavish equipment for what should have been the serious business of life used up all his energy. How much mental effort had been expended simply in making the proper toilette. How much time and attention went to his supplies of cigarettes, soaps, and perfumes; how much occasion for making up his mindContinue reading “RKS Literature: Making a Proper Toilette (Thomas Mann)”
RKS Literature: Dog on the Hunt (Thomas Mann)
“The racking out, the driving up, the chasing-these are ends in themselves to the sporting spirit, and are plainly so to him, as anybody would see who watched him at his brilliant performance. How beautiful he becomes, how consummate, how ideal. Like a clumsy peasant lad, who would look perfect and statuesque as a huntsmanContinue reading “RKS Literature: Dog on the Hunt (Thomas Mann)”
RKS Literature: The Tribal Laws of Dogs; (Thomas Mann)
“ My old familiar Bashan was a stranger to me, I found it impossible to enter his feelings or behaviour or understand the tribal laws that governed them. Certainly, the meeting in the open of two dogs, strangers to each other, is one of the most painful, thrilling, and pregnant of all conceivable encounters: itContinue reading “RKS Literature: The Tribal Laws of Dogs; (Thomas Mann)”
RKS Literature: A Dog and His Absolute Master: (Thomas Mann)
It is a deep-lying patriarchal instinct in the dog that leads him-at least in the more manly, outdoor breeds-to recognize and honour in the man of then house and the head of the family his absolute master and overlord, protector of the hearth: and to find in relation of vassalage to him the basis andContinue reading “RKS Literature: A Dog and His Absolute Master: (Thomas Mann)”
RKS Literature: History Professors Not Liking History! (Thomas Mann)
“He knows that history professors do not love history because it is something that comes to pass, but only because it is something that has come to pass: that they hate a revolution like the present one because they feel it lawless, incoherent, irrelevant- in a word unhistoric: that their hearts belong to the coherent,Continue reading “RKS Literature: History Professors Not Liking History! (Thomas Mann)”
A Bird's Eye View of Fashion, Food, Travel, Culture, Beverage and Curiosity 