“ 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)”
Tag Archives: RKS literature
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)”
RKS Literature: The Misleading Moment (Thomas Mann)
“For a human being tends to believe that the mood of the moment, be it troubled or blithe, peaceful or stormy, is the true, native, and permanent tenor of his existence: and in particular he likes to exalt every happy chance into an inviolable rule and to regard it as the benign order of hisContinue reading “RKS Literature: The Misleading Moment (Thomas Mann)”
RKS Literature: The Northern vs. Southern Temperament (Thomas Mann)
“My father, you know, had the temperament of the north; solid, reflective, puritanically correct, with a tendency to melancholia. My mother, of indeterminate foreign blood, was beautiful, sensuous, naïve, passionate, and careless at once, and, I think, irregular by instinct. The mixture was no doubt extraordinary and bore with it extraordinary dangers. The issue ofContinue reading “RKS Literature: The Northern vs. Southern Temperament (Thomas Mann)”
RKS Literature: A Spirit of the Times? (Thomas Mann/Death in Venice)
“And after all, what kind could be truer to the spirit of the times? Gustave Aschenbach was the poet-spokesman of all those who labour at the edge of exhaustion; of the overburdened, of those who are already worn out but still hold themselves upright; of all our modern moralizers of accomplishment, with stunted growth andContinue reading “RKS Literature: A Spirit of the Times? (Thomas Mann/Death in Venice)”
RKS Literature: The Duel and Manhood
“The duel my friend, is not just any ‘arrangement’. It is the final arrangement, a return to the primal state of nature, only slightly moderated by certain chivalrous, but purely superficial rules. The essence of the situation remains what it has been since the beginning, a physical struggle, and it is each man’s duty, howeverContinue reading “RKS Literature: The Duel and Manhood”
RKS Literature: Individualism a Word for All Seasons
“Individualism was romantically medieval in its belief in the infinite, cosmic importance of each single creature, from which came the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, the theory of geocentrism and astrology. On the other hand, individualism was a matter of liberal humanism, which tended toward anarchy and wanted at all costs to protectContinue reading “RKS Literature: Individualism a Word for All Seasons”
RKS Literature: Both God and Nature Unjust (Thomas Mann)
“God and nature were both unjust, they had their favourites, chose to be gracious at random, adorned one man with precarious honours and the next with an easy, but ordinary fate. And for the man that would act? For him justice was, on the one hand, a paralyzing weakness, the very essence of doubt, andContinue reading “RKS Literature: Both God and Nature Unjust (Thomas Mann)”
RKS Literature: What is Love?
“Love is simply itself, both as a subtle affirmation of life and as the highest passion: love is our sympathy with organic life, the touchingly lustful embrace of what is destined to decay-caritas is assuredly found in the most admirable and most depraved passions. Irresolute? But in God’s good name, leave the meaning of loveContinue reading “RKS Literature: What is Love?”
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