RKS Literature: The World Through the Eyes of a Child

“For it is good to have seen something of the world with childish eyes, disinterestedly and uncritically, observing not what is useful or beautiful and interesting, but only such things as, to a being less than four feet high and having no knowledge of life or art, seem immediately significant. It is the beggars, itContinue reading “RKS Literature: The World Through the Eyes of a Child”

RKS Literature: Affection and Humour

“Affections are not impaired by being tempered with a touch of benevolent laughter. Indeed, I would almost be prepared to risk a generalization and say that all true affections are tempered with laughter. For affection implies intimacy: and one cannot be intimate with another human being without discovering something to laugh at in his orContinue reading “RKS Literature: Affection and Humour”

RKS Literature: A Desperation for Acquaintances

“And then there was his sociability. It was a passion, a vice; he could not live without the company of his fellow beings. It was agony for him to be alone. He hunted company ferociously, as wild beasts pursue their prey. But the odd thing was that he never seemed to crave for friendship orContinue reading “RKS Literature: A Desperation for Acquaintances”

RKS Literature: Once Out of The Womb

“Out of the womb, we’re in an unfriendly world, in which our wishes aren’t anticipated, where we’re no longer magically omnipotent, where we don’t fit, where we’re not snugly at home. What’s to be done in this world? Either face out the reality, fight with it, resignedly or heroically accept to suffer or struggle. OrContinue reading “RKS Literature: Once Out of The Womb”

RKS Literature: Third and Fourth Rate Intellectuals (Aldous Huxley)

“Do you know what third-and fourth-rate intellectuals are? They’re professors of philology and organic chemistry at the minor universities, they’re founders and honorary presidents of the Nuneaton Poetry Society and the Baron’s Court Debating Society; they’re the people that organize and sedulously attend all those Conferences for promoting international goodwill and the spread of cultureContinue reading “RKS Literature: Third and Fourth Rate Intellectuals (Aldous Huxley)”

RKS Literature: Italian Versus English Women

“What I like about the Italian women is that they don’t seem to matter to be rather ashamed of being women, like so many English girls are, because English girls seem to go about apologizing for their figures, as though they were punctured, the way they hold themselves-it’s really rather abject. But here they’re allContinue reading “RKS Literature: Italian Versus English Women”

RKS Literature: The Search For God

“The search for God: the longing of any hound for a master; give me a boss and I shall kneel at his enormous feet. All this is earthly, father, headmaster, rector, president of the board, tsar, God. Numbers, numbers-and one wants so much to find the biggest number, so that all the rest may meanContinue reading “RKS Literature: The Search For God”

RKS Literature: Politics; The Unpaid and Paid Windbags

“Like many unpaid windbags he thought that he could combine the reports he read in the papers by paid windbags into an orderly scheme, upon following which a logical and sober mind (in this case his mind) could with no effort explain and foresee a multitude of world events. The names of countries and theirContinue reading “RKS Literature: Politics; The Unpaid and Paid Windbags”

RKS Literature: A Russian’s View of Politics

“He, to whom so called politics (that ridiculous sequence of pacts, conflicts, aggravations, frictions, discords, collapses and the transformation of perfectly innocent little towns into the names of international treaties) meant nothing, would sometimes immerse himself into the vast bowels of Vasilev and live for an instant actuated by his, Vasilev’s inner mechanism where nextContinue reading “RKS Literature: A Russian’s View of Politics”

RKS Literature: “Zorba the Greek”: Splendid Ierapetra Wine

“We clinked our glasses and drank. Splendid Ierapetra wine, as black as hare’s blood. When you drank, it was though you were receiving earth-blood as Holy Communion. You flourished. Your veins were filled to the brim with strength, your heart with kindness: if you were a coward, you became brave: if you were already braveContinue reading “RKS Literature: “Zorba the Greek”: Splendid Ierapetra Wine”