here i am again, it's been a long , long time...
my interned connection was down for a while, i moved to another house, and now that everything is settled again i'm going to start posting. let's hope it's a good start

Nietzsche: Night song

Many have heard about Nietzsche, not many have read any of his writing, and fewer still know about his poetry.

This is a crime that demands reparation…

Some might say that, to tell the truth, there seems to be poetry in most of Nietzsche’s writing, and certainly they wouldn’t be wrong, but I’m talking about this:

— What language will such a spirit speak when he speaks to himself? The language of the dithyramb. I am the inventor of the dithyramb. Listen to how Zarathustra speaks to himself before sunrise (3, 18): such emerald happiness, such divine tenderness did not have a tongue before me. Even the deepest melancholy of such a Dionysus still turns into a dithyramb. To give some indication of this, I choose the Night Song, the immortal lament at being condemned by the overabundance of light and power, by his sun-nature, not to love.

It is night: now all fountains speak louder. And my soul also is a fountain.

It is night: only now all songs of lovers awaken. And my soul also is the song of a lover.

Something unstilled, unstillable is within me, it wants to find expression. A craving for love is within me, it speaks the language of love.

Light am I: ah, that I were night! But it is my loneliness that I am girt with light!

Ah, that I were dark and nocturnal! How I would suck at the breasts of light!

And even you yourselves would I bless, you little twinkling stars and glowworms above!—and would be overjoyed with your gifts of light.

But I live in my own light, I drink back into myself the flames that break out of me.

I do not know the happiness of one who receives; and I have often dreamed that even stealing must be more blessed than receiving.

This is my poverty, that my hand never rests from giving; this is my envy, that I see waiting eyes and the illuminated nights of longing.

Oh misery of all givers! Oh darkening of my sun! Oh craving to crave! Oh ravenous hunger in satiation!

They take from me: but do I yet touch their soul? There is a cleft between giving and receiving; and the smallest cleft is the last to be bridged.

A hunger grows out of my beauty: I should like to hurt those for whom I shine, I should like to rob those to whom I give,—thus do I hunger for malice.

Withdrawing my hand when the other hand already reaches out to it; like a waterfall, which lingers even while it plunges: thus do I hunger for malice.

Such revenge my abundance plots, such spite wells up out of my loneliness.

My happiness in giving died in giving; my virtue became weary of itself in its overflow!

The danger of those who always give is that they lose their shame; the heart and hand of those who always dispense become callous from all the dispensing.

My eye no longer wells over at the shame of suppliants; my hand has become too hard for the trembling of filled hands.

Where have the tears of my eye gone and the down of my heart? Oh the loneliness of all givers! Oh the taciturnity of all who shine!

Many suns circle in barren space: to all that is dark they speak with their light—to me they are silent.

Oh this is the enmity of light toward those who shine: merciless it travels in its orbit.

In its innermost heart unjust toward those who shine, cold toward suns—thus travels every sun.

The suns travel like a storm in their orbits, they follow their inexorable will, that is their coldness.

Oh it is only you, you dark ones, you nocturnal ones, who create warmth out of that which shines! Oh only you drink milk and refreshment out of the udders of light!

Alas, ice is around me, my hand is burned by the iciness! Alas, thirst is within me, which languishes after your thirst!

It is night: alas that I must be light! And thirst for the nocturnal! And loneliness!

It is night: now my longing break out of me like a well,—for speech I long.

It is night: now all fountains speak louder. And my soul also is a fountain.

It is night: now all songs of lovers awaken. And my soul also is the song of a lover.—

What you just read is the “night song”, from Thus spoke Zarathustra, with the introduction Nietzsche gives of it in Ecce homo.

He describes the “Zarathustra” as perhaps the greatest gift ever giver to man, and talks about this dithyramb as the most felt, most suffered thing the world has seen: the suffering of a god. The suffering of Dionysus.

Last Words

What better, more honest thoughts can there be than those one has just before his death?

I looked around over the internet, and found that many great people (and many not as great people, I’m sure, but there are no records for them…) used those last seconds to give the world one last fragment of what they lived for.

Often, as for a good quote, a single phrase can tell us much more about someone than a whole book full of technical information.

So I thought I’d make my search useful and post the most interesting last words I found around, plus a few links to the websites I found them on…

"Good night." Lord Byron

"What an irreparable loss!" Auguste Comte

"It's been a long time since I've had champagne." Anton Chekhov

"My dear Schur, you remember our first talk. You promised to help me when I could no longer carry on. It is only torture now, and it has no longer any sense." Sigmund Freud

"Open the second shutter so that more light may come in." Goethe

"Only one man ever understood me. And he really didn't understand me." Hegel

"LSD, 100 micrograms I.M." Aldous Huxley

"Kill me, or else you are a murderer!" Franz Kafka

"Go on, get out! Last words are for fools who haven't said enough!" Karl Marx

"Lord help my poor soul." Edgar Allan Poe

"Bring down the curtain, the farce is played out." Rabelais

"If it had not been for these things I might live out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have died unmarked, a failure, unknown. Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice and for man's understanding of man." Nicola Sacco

"Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six." Tolstoj

Now, now, my good man, this is no time for making enemies. Voltaire when asked by a priest to renounce Satan.

I can’t swear all these “last words” are original or last…, but there seem to be a certain consensus on most of them and many are quite probable, so I’ll leave it to the reader to believe or not.

Here are the links, have fun:

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Last_words

http://www.sanftleben.com/Last%20Words/lastwords-r-index.html

introducing maps

The sensation i often get while browsing the internet, is of loneliness, sue to a certain lack of easily accessible "maps" to help guide the E-xplorer in his trip into information.

Like any journey, also a virtual one needs maps and guides on where to go and on the best way to get there.

The difference is that in a virtual exploration won't make you end up dead, but it might be harder to explore, given the huge amount of "maps", hints, links,... that might end up confusing you or bringing you back to the same wikipedia page over and over again.

So i thought that every now and then, it might be a good idea to post some links on specific topics, in the hope they can be of help to any virtual explorer who may need them, so here goes the first link map:

Book forums:

http://www.bookandreader.com/

http://forums.onlinebookclub.org/

http://www.readerville.com/WebX?14@250.1GePalTUbF8^0@/

http://jollyrogerwest.com/

That's it for now, i realize it's not much of a map, but i'm sure i'll find some new links to post as time goes by, and i hope if anyone knows about other good book forums they will let us know about them. Feel free to add them in your comments

Foucault and the panopticon

Basically the panopticon is a prison. Not any prison though, it’s a deeply thought concept.

The idea comes from the philosopher Jeremy Bentham and was developed in 1785, and consists in a circular structure with its internal perimeter full of cells facing the centre.

At the centre of this structure is a tower, a “control post” with windows open on all sides, so as to permit one guard to virtually control all inmates constantly. In an even more radical view, the central control tower should be publicly accessible, allowing a “democratic” form of control and an exemplary lesson to citizens…

The concept of the panopticon is studied and analyzed very well in Michel Foucault’s Discipline and punish, a book that describes the passages that brought to our actual conception about prison, discipline and illegality. Its importance lies in the historical period that saw its birth.

The disciplinary structure of the time was still based on the one that was in use in the middle-ages, with exemplary punishments, as cruel as they were rare and publicly attended by hundreds of people, cheering and screaming. A ceremony with a strict ritual displaying the power of the king, and the fate of those who attempted to his power by defying his law, but also a surprisingly common reaction of sympathy toward the criminal and against the king’s display of power.

Reformers like Bentham and Beccaria ride the winds of change; a world who can control the population much better than a medieval king, like the one they live in, has no necessity for an exemplar punishment.

For the first time cruel and inhuman tortures start being considered unworthy of progressive and modern countries, and a reform of justice begins.

Foucault describes how this reform brought the hands of the “disciplinary power” to go deep into the flesh of our society, aiming at a form of total control, mutual control, everyone is guard and inmate at the same time, and the more the structure is diffused and has no centre, the more it’s power on the people grows.

The panoptical concept is the first attempt in this direction, it is possible to build any kind of disciplinary structure in this way: prisons, hospitals, schools, …

There’s no need to be inhuman or violent, if people know they are potentially always being controlled they will never think of acting against a power that is so invisible yet capillary. (can you smell a hint of Orwell here?)

There seems to be no alternative to this kind of phenomenon, especially since it brings control without violence, and that’s a thing many people seem to want.

But after reading Discipline and punish you can’t help feeling somewhat unsettled. The birth and growth of disciplinary power is all there…

Here are a few links to more information on this topic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon

http://foucault.info/documents/disciplineAndPunish/foucault.disciplineAndPunish.panOpticism.html

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/rant/panopticon-essay.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault

http://www.csun.edu/~hfspc002/foucault.home.html

another free book database

i just found this very interesting website:

http://www.fullbooks.com/

Thousands of free books to read, great books.
You don't need to download them, just open the files from the website and start reading.
The only defect (at least from my point of view), is that they are ordered alphabetically by title, making it quite hard to look for books from the same author. But apart from that a very nice website

an essay on the past and the future of publishing

A few posts ago I wrote about the website http://www.gutenberg.org and it’s huge list of free e books.
The name of the website is obviously inspired by the inventor of the modern press.

Looking around internet, I happened to stumble upon a short but very interesting essay by E.R. Beardsley entitled ”digital Gutenberg, everyperson as publisher”.
The essay is divided in two main parts.
The first is a short history of publishing techniques and the influences they (especially Gutenberg’s movable type printing) had on culture and it’s diffusion throughout the world, while the second part focuses instead on how the massive diffusion of computers, internet and professional publishing tools are influencing, and have only just begun, the way culture and information are acquired and created.
The power to generate and diffuse any information is always more in the hands of potentially everyone, or as Beardsley would probably prefer, everyperson.
According to the author, the potential effects of this new “democratic power” on the world could be just as important (or more), as Gutenberg’s revolution and I’m pretty sure, for the better and for the worse, that he’s right.
Debate on this topic should be able to make its voice be heard, as it is probably one of the current events that will have most influence on future generations, so why not start out by getting some information on it?
Here’s the link to the essay:

http://www.intangible.org/DigiGut/GutHome.html

The essay is published on:

http://www.intangible.org

htey describe themselves as "a nonprofit web publisher devoted tothe arts and humanities", i haven't got to look at it too well, i only read the essay i just wrote about, but it looks like an interesting resource for information.

Try looking at it and you might find more interesting things to read

Gilles Deleuze: Nietzsche

A fundamental piece of literature for those who are interested in understanding one of the greatest philosophers the world has ever given birth to.

It’s a very short book, just a bit more than 100 pages, most of which consisting in excerpta from Nietzsche’s works.

Deleuze’s contribution is small but very important, he clears the horizon of the reader from four big mistakes people might make when attempting to study Nietzsche.

These four mistakes are:

1.

considering the “will to power” as a desire to dominate, or a desire for power.

2.

confusing the strong and the weak, by identifying those who have the power in a social regime as those who are strong.

3.

thinking the principle of eternal return is a concept already thought by the antiques an by some oriental philosophies, it is instead a totally new concept.

4.

underestimating Nietzsche’s last productions by considering them excessive or influenced by his collapsing mental health.

Deleuze explains, in a very brief and direct way, why these common thoughts are actually misconceptions that can potentially disorient the reader, and how correcting a wrong point of view on this author makes his ideas extremely coherent and strong.

A part from this section of the book, and a short biography of the philosopher, the rest is a collection of writings from many of Nietzsche’s works, a series of chapters on some of his main concepts.

I found this to be one of the most enlightening books on Nietzsche, a helpful map to find your way in an often disorienting and complex world.

After the selection of quotes on reading and books, it seems appropriate to list a few words from the other side of the book, the side of the writer…

Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.

Hannah Arendt

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Ray Bradbury

If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad.

Lord Byron

The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.

Elias Canetti

There are men that will make you books, and turn them loose into the world, with as much dispatch as they would do a dish of fritters.

Miguel de Cervantes

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

Anton Chekhov

Most editors are failed writers - but so are most writers.

T.S. Eliot

The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight. Ralph Waldo Emerson

An incurable itch for scribbling takes possession of many, and grows inveterate in their insane breasts.

Juvenal

Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.

Franz Kafka

It is impossible to discourage the real writers - they don't give a damn what you say, they're going to write.

Sinclair Lewis

Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen?

Friedrich Nietzsche

When we see a natural style we are quite amazed and delighted, because we expected to see an author and find a man.

Blaise Pascal

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

William Wordsworth

My hope is that some of these words might interest you to find out more about who wrote them. Obviously a quote can not tell us much about a person, but it can be a little window to things we might have never discovered otherwise.

and since this isn't a very specific post, i'll use it for this link to a selection of book blogs chosen by "the Guardian":

http://books.guardian.co.uk/links/areas_of_interest/general/links/0,6135,1406190,00.html

Are you willing to take a look into the depths of the universe?

Would you like to read something that has the power to challenge your mind, and maybe also your sanity?

Are you curious and brave (or stupid) enough to tear the curtains that hide what should not be seen and to continue on a dark road even if you’ve been told, for your own good, to step away and never look back?

Then you might want to pick up a book from H. P. Lovecraft, choose one of the many short stories, and start reading it.

If life hasn’t made you too dry to perceive the beings lurking behind his pages, you’ll probably be reading something that will change you forever.

We live on the border with things that would drive us mad (in the best of cases…) if we could only see them, or sense their presence, and Lovecraft does all he can to give us a glimpse of what those things are.

Ancient gods and spirits, far more powerful than we could ever imagine have lived our earth eons before the human race was created, creatures that lived through the creation of the universe and maybe were already there before that.

They might be floating in the air we breathe; an ancient wall in a collapsing castle might hide a stairway to something worse than hell itself, the bottom of the ocean might be full of the ruins of cities and temples that we should hope never to discover.

Lovecraft opens a door on madness, on bliss and death, the only ways to escape after having opened the wrong door or read the wrong pages.

Man is not more than a small insect in his vision, and his writing makes us feel exactly like that.
Small, weak and powerless, we live because we are too small to be noticed, but may God have mercy of the insect that happens to bother the spirits.

It’s an interesting and scary point of view, especially in a world that has grown to think man capable of anything, a world who can’t understand why sometimes nature is stronger, why sometimes a simple wave or storm can put our certainties in discussion.

We are a world that has lost its sense of proportions, and Lovecraft helps put things back in place.

Here’s some information on his life, from http://www.biography.com:

“Writer, born in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. He was self-educated and lived in Providence all his life, working as a freelance writer, journalist, and ghostwriter. During 1914–18 he was an astronomy columnist for the Providence Evening News and was the publisher of The Conservative magazine (1915–19, 1923). He was also president of the United Amateur Press Association (1917–18, 1923). Using many pen names, he contributed his supernatural/horror and science fiction/fantasy stories to various pulp magazines, but his reputation as a writer rests mainly on the 60 or so stories he published in Weird Tales, starting in 1923. Although not much appreciated in his day, he came to attract a small, sometimes fanatical following both in the USA and abroad, particularly France.”

But for the ones of you that would like to know more about him (and there’s a lot more…), here are some other links:

http://www.hplovecraft.com/

http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/lovecraf.htm

Don’t make the mistake of considering Lovcraft a “horror” author. He isn’t.

Horror is just one of the characteristics of the world Lovecraft creates .

“But more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret lore of ocean.”
H. P. Lovecraft

What would you think if someone told you that there’s a place where you can find over 20,000 free e-books?

And I’m not talking about just any books, or promotional or “how-to” books.

What if I told you it’s a collection of works with expired copyrights, works from authors like Dickens, Verne, Twain, Poe, Carroll, and many, many others?

There are so many others, I’m having difficulty deciding what names to use as examples of what you could find…

And it’s all one click away, right here:

http://www.gutenberg.org

The name couldn’t be more appropriate, what could be better than the name of the man that helped make books an instrument of knowledge accessible to the masses, for a website that could have the same potential for the online world?

If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, or if you would simply like to know more about this extraordinary man, here’s the link to Wikipedia (I’m a bit too lazy today to be writing it all):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Gutenberg

the only minor defect of this incredible website is that you won’t get to feel the paper under your fingers while you read, but that’s a very small price if you think of the millions of words and thoughts that are there, just waiting to be read.

“It is a press, certainly, but a press from which shall flow in inexhaustible streams...Through it, God will spread His Word. A spring of truth shall flow from it: like a new star it shall scatter the darkness of ignorance, and cause a light heretofore unknown to shine amongst men.”

Johannes Gutenberg

Fahrenheit 451. The temperature needed for paper to spontaneously combust. The title of Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel published in 1953.

The title of a book about censorship, a book about the attempt to destroy any form of human creativity, art and expression.

A book about the capacity to not let go of our history, about the need to remember, to not let what made us be destroyed.

A story of awakening, of the spirit that cannot be suppressed, though it might be beaten and wounded and forced to hide in the dark.

A story of love.

...It takes place in an unspecified future time in a hedonistic and rabidly anti-intellectual America that has completely abandoned self-control and bans the reading of books. Anyone caught owning them is, at the minimum, confined in a mental hospital and has the books confiscated and burned. At the maximum, the penalty is a sentence to immediate death. People are now only entertained by in-ear radio and an interactive form of television. The protagonist, Guy Montag, is a fireman, certain that his job—burning books, and the houses that hold them, and persecuting those who own them—is the right thing to do…

The rest will be up to you to read.

What’s funny, or maybe scary, is the fact that if you take the time to look around the internet for keywords like: banned books, censored books, …, you get lists of masterpieces, books that are columns of concepts we are usually proud of, like freedom of thought and speech.

The funny, or scary, or sad part of these lists is that they don’t come from Iran, Northern Korea or the Third Reich, they are often from the United States, and many other free countries.

Not that there’s an official censorship organ (not that we know of at least...), but the simple fact that a school would think of banning books from a library, for any reason, is revolting.

And when the banned books are ones like the one I’m talking about it’s hard not to smell burning paper, and not to remember the piles of books set on fire by men in brown shirts just over half a century ago. Take a look at the links:

http://www.banned-books.com/bbarticle-miss.html

http://www.georgesuttle.com/censorship/censors-all.shtml

A mature and free society deals with dangerous thoughts by discussing them, by finding ways to deal with them, not by hiding and banning. Those are methods we should never even dream of using.

Read Fahrenheit 451, and you’ll be doing your little share in keeping culture free.

thoughts on books and reading

As the idea guiding this blog is to give advice on books, I thought it might be a good thing to give some advice on the art of reading as well.

Obviously it will not be me giving it, i’m not in the position to give advice on such a complex issue, but I’ll let some “friends” do it instead…

And reading what they say, you might find something that strikes you, and maybe brings you to follow new reading paths…

…and who knows where they might take you.

This is only a very brief selection, but there will be more .

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture.
Just get people to stop reading them.
Ray Bradbury

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
Joseph Brodsky

The strongest memory is weaker than the palest ink.
Chines proverb

Force yourself to reflect on what you read, paragraph by paragraph.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.
Rene Descartes

Read in order to live.
Gustave Flaubert

The dear good people don’t know how long it takes to learn to read. I’ve been at it eighty years, and can’t say yet that I’ve reached the goal.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The proper study of mankind is books.
Aldous Huxley

Every man who knows how to read has it in him power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant, and interesting.
Aldous Huxley

A book ought to be an icepick to break up the frozen sea within us.
Franz Kafka

I have good reason to be content,
for thank God I can read and
perhaps understand Shakespeare to his depths.
John Keats

I am a part of everything that I have read.
John Kieran

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials for knowledge;
it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
John Locke

The world exists to be put in a book.
Stephane Mallarme

He who destroys a good book kills reason itself.
John Milton

I’ve never known any trouble that an hour's reading didn't assuage.
Montesquieu

Until one has some kind of professional relationship with books, one does not discover how bad the majority of them are.
George Orwell

Desultory reading is delightful, but to be beneficial, our reading must be carefully directed.
Seneca

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writing so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.
Socrates

Book love, my friends, is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures.
Anthony Trollope

Classic. A book which people praise and don't read.
Mark Twain

The multitude of books is making us ignorant.

Voltaire

What harm can a book do that costs a hundred crowns?
Twenty volumes folio will never cause a revolution;
it is the little portable volumes of thirty sous that are to be feared.
Voltaire

Sophocles' Antigone

Sophocles’ Antigone (442 B.C.) is one of the most important Greek tragedies, and if you get interested and decide to read it you’ll understand why.

As usual, I won’t go much into detail. Internet already provides more details than one could read in a lifetime, so I’ll limit myself to describing this tragedy’s main themes.

Antigone is about the fight between the law of the heart and the law of the state; in the Antigone these two codes come to face each other in a challenge that will leave death and destruction on their path.

The reason that brings to this clash is a dead body; the body of Polynices, one of the sons of Oedipus, who died in the fight for the throne of Thebes against his brother Eteocles. They killed each other outside of the city walls, but while Eteocles had the consent of Thebes’ authorities and was buried with all honors, Polynices was left where he fell, and the new king, Kreon, ruled that nobody is to touch or bury the body, the punishment for who does being death.

Against this decision stands Antigone, sister of the dead and niece of Kreon.

The whole tragedy is the description of the inner path that brings Antigone to decide that although the law is sacred, there are things that are more sacred still, like the bond of blood, and giving rest to a soul through burial (in ancient Greece the soul of un unburied body was thought to roam forever without peace…).

Antigone buries her brother.

Compassion for a dead human being is stronger than fear of death, and she follows her heart.

Kreon is therefore put in front of the same decision Antigone took. In his heart he knows that Antigone has no fault, and loves her as future bride of his son, but the same law he decided hoping to help Thebes forget the blood shed in such a recent past, turns against him, commanding that he apply it against someone he knows innocent.

Kreon’s decision, though very tormented, is opposite from the one Antigone chose. He follows the law of the state, and Antigone is buried alive.

After hearing from a prophet that he took the wrong decision, Kreon decides to let Antigone live, but it’s too late. When the grave she’s buried in is opened she is found hanged, and Kreon’s son, desperate, takes his own life.

This is the price Kreon pays for his decision.

In this masterpiece the tragic choice is “doubled”, two figures have to deal with similar choices, and all options of these choices will have negative consequences. Both have strong values, both follow what they believe to be the law, both feel uncertain about how to act, but in the end they make opposite decisions, allowing the reader to experience the consequences of both sides of the tragedy.

Like I said before, this is only meant to be a brief and certainly incomplete description of a fraction of what I consider to be among the highest creations in our history, ancient Greek tragedy.

There would be much more to say, but I hope sooner or later a discussion will start here, making it possible to say more.

Etienne de La Boetie and Voluntary Servitude

Today, i'll take the liberty to give some more advice. not that i could do much more since there doesn't seem to be much of a discussion here... hehe

The book, or more properly, the pamphlet, is Etienne de La Boetie's "Discourse on voluntary servitude".
La Boetie was born on the first of november 1530 in Sarlat, a small french town. He graduated in law at the university of Orleans, and was active in the Bordeaux parliament, where he met, Michel de Montaigne, with whom he would later create a very close friendship.
Very criticaltowards the the catholic repressions of the huguenots, his spoke out loud against them, gaining attention and consideration, but just when he was reaching the climax of his career, at the age of 33, he got seriously ill and died shortly after, in the arms of his friend Montaigne, that was given the duty to publish La Boetie's works.

this is, a very short and incomplete biography, but it's purpouse is just to give an idea of who i'm talking about.

The book i'm advising is, as a matter of fact, the "Discourse", an analysis of why, according to the author, the majority of people is usually eagerly willing to give up freedom in exchange for a generic sense of safety.

I won't go into any details, because this is advice not a review, and because the pleasure of discovering new thoughts page after page should be left to the reader, but what makes this work very interesting, is the fact that La Boetie consideres those who let themselves be oppressed greatly responsible for the state of oppression they live in, for all it takes to be free is the will to be, through actions like civil disobedience. He is not a justifier of violence.

Although this booklet (it's very short...), never really got to be noticed by mainstream political and social literature, it had a great deal of influence on political thoughts and actions throughout european history, from the French Revolution, to opposition to the Restauration, to Anarchism...

"...I should like merely to understand how it happens that so many men, so many villages, so many cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a single tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him; who is able to harm them only to the extent to which they have the willingness to bear with him; who could do them absolutely no injury unless they preferred to put up with him rather than contradict him...."

Oooops, i just re-read my first post, and i must have been really tired to not notice so many mistakes in a few lines.
But as the saying goes, "scripta manent", so there isn't much i'll do about it if not apologize to any reader.
The advice on Crime and Punishment still stands strong though, so i guess my post wasn't all that bad.

My idea for this blog would be to help gather readers and people interested in reading, or discussing books and authors.

And i think a good idea to lay the first stone in this project could be to start from a quote, so here it is:

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be
chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts,
others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly,
and with diligence and attention.
~ Francis Bacon ~

hello, this is my firs t post, and finding myself with a brand new blog at five a.m. in the morning, my thoughts happen to go to anyone who might be stubling over this post in the late hours of the night, or, more realistically the early hours of the morning...

So to anyone to whom this might concern, you might want to foolw my advice and pick up crime and punishment one of dostoevskji's masterpieces (as if most of his writing wasn't...).

you'll find the night will become too short for your need to go on reading it.