got reminded of some nice names, like Arcadia, Magister Ludi, blah blah. and I wonder where are my books!
sometimes i find it sad that even if the book is very nice, i can’t recommend it to everyone. oh well, at least there are some people in the world who like to attempt those books. can’t say i understand half of what they are trying to write.
i guess its like how some ppl watch tennis and marvel at the skills, i’d read and savour the sweet lines.
and guess why Herman Hesse’s steppenwolf is so nice:
[these are paragraphs from neighbouring pages, but not sequential]
There was never a man with a deeper and more passionate craving for independence than he. In his youth when he was poor and had difficulty in earning his bread, he preferred to go hungry and in torn clothes only to preserve a tiny bit of independence. He never sold himself for money or an easy life or to women or to those in power; and had thrown away a hundred times what in the world’s eyes was his advantage and happiness in order to safeguard his liberty. No prospect was more hateful and distasteful to him than that he should have to go to an office and conform to daily and yearly routine and obey others. He hated all kinds of offices, governmental or commercial, as he hated death, and his worst nightmare was confinement in barracks. He contrived, often at great sacrifice, to avoid all such predicaments. On this point he could neither be bent nor bribed. Here his character was firm and indeflectable. Only, through this virtue, he was bound the closer to his destiny of suffering. It happened to him as it does to all; what he strove for with the deepest and stubbornest instinct of of his being fell to his lot, but more than is good for men. In the beginning his dream and his happiness, in the end it was his bitter fate. The man of power is ruined by power, the man of money by money, the submissive man by subservience, the pleasure seeker by pleasure. He achieved his aim. He was ever independent. He took orders from no man and ordered his ways to suit no man. Independently and alone, he decided what to do and to leave undone. For every strong man attains to that which a genuine impulse bids him seek. But in the midst of the freedom he had achieved Harry suddenly became aware that his freedom was a death and that he stood alone. The world in an uncanny fashion left him in peace. Other men concerned him no longer. He was not even concerned about himself. He began to suffocate slowly in the more and more rarefied atmosphere of remoteness and solitude. For now it was his wish no longer, nor his aim, to be alone and independent, but rather his lot and his sentence.
He gained strength through familiarity with the thought that the emergency exit stood always open, and became curious, too, to taste his suffering to the bitter end. If it went too badly with him he could feel sometimes with a grim malicious pleasure:Ï am curious to see all the same just how much a man can endure. If the limit of what is bearable is reached, I have only to open the door to escape.” There are a great many suicides to whom this thought imparts an uncommon strength.
On the other hand, all suicides are familiar with the struggle against the temptation of suicide. Every one of them knows very well in some corner of his soul that suicide, though a way out, is rather a mean and shabby one, and that it is nobler and finer to be felled by life than by one’s own hand.
yeah the first para is a little long. and there arent many chapters. although a small book, it’s packed with this sort of goodness. this takes 1000x more time and energy and neurons and divine-touching-sensations to read than harry potter. though i should like to read a bit of Neil Gamon, for fun.
Herman Hesse just has this fantastic flair for writing high language, grah. but how do you define that? by vocabulary? phrasing? sentence structure? meaning?
zera would have liked this. he might would have liked to be a steppenwolf too. =]