“Caravaggio sits there in silence, thoughts lost among the floating notes. War has unbalanced him and he can return to no other world as he is, wearing these false limbs that morphine promises. He is a man of middle age who has never become accustomed to families. All his life he has avoided permanent intimacy.Continue reading “RKS Literature: Unbalanced by War (Michael Ondaatje)”
Category Archives: literature
RKS CANADIAN Literature: What a Love Story is Not About (Michael Ondaatje)
“A love story is not about those who lose their heart but about those who, when it is stumbled upon, means the body can fool no one, can fool nothing-not the wisdom of sleep or the habit of social graces. It is a consuming of oneself and the past.” Michael Ondaatje, “The English Patient”, 1969.
RKS CANADIAN Literature: (Michael Ondaatje)Thermometer of Blood
“She never looked at herself in mirrors again. As the war got darker she received reports about how certain people she had known died. She feared the day she would remove blood from a patient’s face and discover her father or someone who had served her food across a counter on Danforth Avenue. She grewContinue reading “RKS CANADIAN Literature: (Michael Ondaatje)Thermometer of Blood”
RKS CANADIAN Literature: Shell Shocked Nurses (Michael Ondaatje)
“Nurses too became shell-shocked from the dying around them. Or from something as small as a letter. They would carry a severed arm down the hall, or swab at blood that never stopped, as if the wound were a well, and they began to believe in nothing, trusted nothing. They broke the way a manContinue reading “RKS CANADIAN Literature: Shell Shocked Nurses (Michael Ondaatje)”
RKS Literature: Yugoslavia’s Tito: One Day a Hero of the USSR The Next Its Perfidious Enemy
“The class laughed just as unanimously when the geography teacher talked about Yugoslavia. Today Tito is a “sinister and perfidious enemy”; but it was only two weeks ago that we were shown the film: “In the Mountains of Yugoslavia”, in which Marshal Tito was awarded the Order of Victory as our best friend and faithfulContinue reading “RKS Literature: Yugoslavia’s Tito: One Day a Hero of the USSR The Next Its Perfidious Enemy”
RKS Literature: The Necessity of Slave Labour in the USSR and the Future of Socialism (Vladimir Rott)
“The abolition of private property killed people’ s desire to create, to take care of themselves, to seek paths to survival and progress. The most essential part of any country’s gross national product-the contribution of each individual’s enthusiasm-was lost. By sending hundreds of thousands of Soviet people to the labour camps, the state tried toContinue reading “RKS Literature: The Necessity of Slave Labour in the USSR and the Future of Socialism (Vladimir Rott)”
RKS Literature: The Never-Ending Soviet Gulag Sentence (Vladimir Rott)
“Of course this is a very important year 1948. In this year, in the middle of it, I’ll also become a free man. And here, there are two points, listen carefully. Those who are released after their terms inside the USSR can go home on the next train. But here, in the Far East, theContinue reading “RKS Literature: The Never-Ending Soviet Gulag Sentence (Vladimir Rott)”
RKS Literature: Treacherous at the Top with Stalin (Vladimir Rott)
“The men who surrounded Stalin quickly figured out the rules of the chief’s game and started playing up to him in every way they could, sniffing out suitable “enemies” in their own midst and helping destroy them. Under such arrangement, those who witnessed and participated in the “purges” at the top could not stay aliveContinue reading “RKS Literature: Treacherous at the Top with Stalin (Vladimir Rott)”
RKS Literature: The Bolsheviks Desperation to Maintain Power (Vladimir Rott)
“Once they had seized power in Russia, the Bolsheviks began to direct all of their energy and all of the country’s wealth toward a single goal: to stay in power, to keep power in their hands. Hence the instant rise of the Great Terror, the suppression and destruction of not only actual but even potential,Continue reading “RKS Literature: The Bolsheviks Desperation to Maintain Power (Vladimir Rott)”
RKS Literature: Ignorant, Greedy and Brutal Bolsheviks (Vladimir Rott)
Russia-a wealthy country with a highly educated population, a country that had peacefully gotten rid of serfdom and was on a path of rapid, successful industrial development-was handed over to the Bolsheviks without a real struggle. The Russian intelligentsia, the nation’s brain, underestimated the danger and allowed a great country which had been drawn intoContinue reading “RKS Literature: Ignorant, Greedy and Brutal Bolsheviks (Vladimir Rott)”
