Victoria Hislop in Thessaloniki

She is the author of the best-seller ‘The Island’. She came yesterday in Thessaloniki, she held a little “conference” at the library of English Litterature. I asked her if she practices “free-writing”, but she didn’t quite understand the question. She said that she writes “not from the brain, but from the heart”..after that she told us that she often uses repetition in her novels (well, that is really weird-when you write from your heart, you don’t need to use such techniques, do you?-the creation should be spontaneous). She answered as if she had known before the questions, and I didn’t find anything shocking, or interesting regarding her thoughts. She said that she was journalist..and my Creative Writing instructor asked her if it helped her to write in the way she does..of course, the answer was “yes”.

I didn’t see authenticity…I’m sorry, but she looked like a common one (rich woman who knows when and how to talk, when and how to write- I don’t say it’s difficult or it’s easy like that, I just don’t like the “genre”). I wish her success!

on “good-looking”

A pure emphasis on what? Emphasis on every corporal aspect pursuits the challenge to open a way to the self. How? It is a little bit complicated…for instance, a girl is focused on a bo(d)y’s body. She likes the way that guy looks. The explanation is biological, I don’t want to spend time with that, is quite boring. To understand why is she attracted by that guy is not to analyse the consequences (that she will, probably, make sex to the guy). To understand the cause is to understand this: it is natural for her to be attracted by that guy (let’s take it as a natural law). But when the girl has a good-looking boyfriend, either she will despise other guys (if she thinks they don’t look good-but if she didn’t have that boyfriend, she would treat them normally), or she will mock everyone, or she will trust herself enough as to maintain only one thought (which form is ” I have a good-looking boyfriend, that means I am someone important “). There’s only one situation in which the girl is not paltry: when she wasn’t persistent in having a relationship, she wasn’t obsessed by the guy’s body, but she liked the boy’s personality (and not in a snob way, just to have something in order to be something-you can as well be something, when you don’t have anything). Where’s the love, if she wants an object? On the other side, love is not only a spiritual matter. Otherwise, I would have had thousands of girlfriends (like any other, let’s say, smiling and communicative guy). So, don’t neglect the material fact: you love him because you appreciate his moral qualities (or imoral), but you like him as a bed-partner also. Here is the contradiction: why do you love him? Does love have any connections with good-looking? Ok…don’t confuse “beauty” with “feeling”. You can feel something for the most ugly things. The next question: isn’t “beautiful” something that moves you? Of course, but an ugly thing can also move you. Not only what is “beautiful” can move you. The feeling is produced by some stimulus, and it carries the positive or negative sign (or both-when you have an intricated feeling, and you don’t know what you feel), because the object determined its sign (and the object is “ugly” or “beautiful”, may it be an abstract or concrete object).

When a woman says “I want to see ‘objectively’ if I care about you”, you have to know that she is really stupid (or she “objectively” doesn’t love you). There are women that love you for money, for body, for social status, and women that don’t know why do they love you (but soon they will realize, and they you will break up with them). Don’t worry if you don’t look good: you have nothing to lose! And if you look good, watch your steps (unless you are an animal).

“beautiful” as a magic word

Words keep me company. But not all the words are such as to make me ask questions about them. One word is “beautiful”. It’s a beautiful word, for you say it only when you see something beautiful or when you want to mock an ugly thing. What is “beautiful”? I mean, what’s the reference of “beautiful”? By asking this, you don’t settle the importance of the word (importance is a relative attribute), you only know what can you focus on. If I say “the cat is beautiful”, the reference of my sign is an animal. If I say “my mind is beautiful” (remember the movie!), I posit something about an abstract object. Thus, “beautiful” can refer to a concrete object, but also to an abstract object. It is a complex word, because it is used to define several properties that both abstract and concrete objects possess. It is not like “fat” (which is used in common language for concrete stuff) and not like “infinite” (for instance, when you say about a mathematical set that is “infinite”). Although “fat” and “infinite” can be used as poetical means to describe a special state (you say “my mind is fat” and you refer to some properties of your intelligence, you assert the fact that you’re smart, you have a lot of knowledge-the explanation is that you associate an abstract content with a physical quality, in order to emphasize the quality of the content, to make it “vivid”; or you say “this tree is infinite”-by analogy, you underline the richness of tree’s length, positing an abstract property: the tree is not, of course, infinite, and this may seem an exageration, but in fact your intention is to survey the image of an enormous tree, and at the same time to indicate the fact that your referent is really an unusual phenomenon, a non-average-lengthed-tree), it is obvious that “beautiful” overtakes, by its capacity to be applied to the concrete things as well as to the abstract things, the words that apply only to abstract or only to concrete objects (and here I mean the non-poetical use). The next question is: “beautiful”-what’s its etymology? Why is the etymology important? Because it takes you back to the roots of the sign. The sign has a signified (the concept) and a signifier (the word) (I will consider, for an easy-procedure to be advanced, the saussurian theory). Now, ”beautiful” comes from “voll” (germanic word, means “full”) of “beauty” (defined by Aquinas as “that pleases merely by being perceived”). So, the concept of the sign tells us that the signifier sends your thought to something that it pleases you merely by being perceived. But how is a ”beautiful mind” perceived. Well, it is not “perceived” in the way you think “perception” is. Perception means: either the product, raw result of perception (the “still” uninterpreted object), or the process of perceiving. When you perceive, as Aristotle points out in “De Anima”, you use your specialised senses (and they are means to generate typical sensations) and your common senses (that is to say, the senses that generate form, move, rest..they are the result of common sense’s function). Thus, the process of perceiving can be beautiful, but also the result of perceiving can be beautiful. The perception of the mind means the process and the product of perceiving the mind. A mind is beautiful if it gives you pleasure when and after you perceive it. John Nash’s mind is beautiful because you enjoy that, what his mind yields. But you also enjoy the moments when you perceive its mind (the way he thinks).

“Beautiful” is magic, because it determines you to perceive something in a ”magical” way. And by ”magic” I understand something which has a link with the “supernatural environment”. Beautiful is the way in which you contact the gods (or you can send them a message, if you write within it “beautiful message”). See the Greek Art. Perceive it, can you?

Socrates’ Maxim

I think the most difficult obstacle to learning is when you think you know everything. Consider Socrates’ maxim: “I know that I know nothing”. That’s a lie, because when you say this, you know a thing: you know that you know that you know nothing. But when you know that you know nothing, you know everything. How come? Everything means that everything is to know! Hmm..is not so clear, isn’t it? Well, I will say it again: your purpose is to know, but how can you know if you know everything? That is to say, in order to know something, you mustn’t have the knowledge of that thing. And if you don’t possess the knowledge of that thing, you accept that you don’t know it, and (at least) you are prepared to know it. That’s why to recognize that you don’t know anything means to know everything, because to know something is everything for you. It’s not very transparent..but it’s my interpretation. In general, it is said that these words emphasize the incapacity of human knowledge to grasp the essence of “something”. We don’t have a necessary and sufficient, absolute ground in order to be sure that what we know is true. So, the only authentic knowledge could be possessed by the gods. And we are not gods. So, go back to parties and forget about being smart. It’s not for you, you’re not a god, and you’re not going to become one. It’s too difficult: you have TV, computer games, movies, girls. Why do you need knowledge? Socrates was a degenerate insane man. I have my own life. Hey, where do you live? In which world do you live? Can’t you see? Everybody’s having fun…almost, except the nerds. Maybe you are one of them. Or maybe not. Maybe you refuse the image that all the others have about you, maybe you want to prove that you are not a nerd. Still, they think you are. Or maybe they say, despising you: “He’s a poet…”-and separate: “…the age of poets is gone away”. Anyway, you don’t feel like when you were 18 years old. You are a little bit clumsy, you don’t have enough energy to support your ideas (or that’s what you feel sometimes). And you know you are different: that’s the only little thing you know. You don’t need any ground for this! It’s an axiom.

Teacher’s Attitudes

There are more attitudes, I will emphasize only two: either the teacher will try to “help” you, to give you all the books that you need, or he won’t give books, except for the cheapest and unvaluable. In the first case, he has more than two suppositions: “I’ll help him, it’s impossible for him to overtake me” or “I’ll help him, I don’t give a shit about my books” or “I’ll do my best for this kid, he really has a future, he is a genius” or “I’ll help him, for they’ll give me a lot of money whether I do this” or “I’ll help him, after she/he returns the books, I will ask for his opinion regarding what he read, and either I will have fun because he/she is very very naive, or I will steel his/her ideas and improve my knowledge” or “I’ll help him, after he/she finishes the lecture, I will ask for his/her opinion and I will be grateful that somebody understood what I’ve just said, I’m a genius anyway”. The second case is not so difficult. The teacher will think: “I won’t give him the books, he’s an idiot” or “…he’s too smart, if he reads, he overtakes me, he’ll be more clever than me, he will write better, and me? What will I be? A stupid teacher…the fame will belong to him, not to me..that’s not fair!” or “I won’t give him the books, I’ve paid a lot for them, what would happen if he copied them? That’s not fair!!!” or “I won’t give him the books, I care about them, if he’ll lose them, I  will be lost”.  You,  liebe  geizige Lehrer, in which category are you?

Anti-Reflection

Nowadays, what you say it’s very very probable to be a truism. How come? We are in the century of information, they say, but that doesn’t mean that we have to be old. Although you don’t know a lot of things, you can be original. How? Find out!

And…again…why the simple words look so trivial? For whom? Tell me, Hem-in-gway.

And…why when you listen to The Cure you get cured? Read Plato’s Cratylos.

Oskar Pastior: Wer ist er?

Ich weiss nicht…aber das gefaellt mir:

Ungewiß

Aus dem Leben
bin ich
in die Gedichte gegangen

Aus den Gedichten
bin ich
ins Leben gegangen

Welcher Weg
wird am Ende
besser gewesen sein?

Uncertainly

From life I went in the poems

From poems I went in the life

Which way would have been better in the end?

Incert

Din viata am plecat in poezii

Din poezii am plecat in viata

Care drum va fi fost mai bun la sfarsit?

Nothing/Nichts

Nothing is old, except the thought that nothing is old.

Nichts is alt, ausser dem Gedanken, dass nichts alt ist.

Das ist mein Gedanke. Dann, mein Gedanke alt ist.

Schiller und die Ubersetzung

I want to translate some fragments from “Xenien”, written by “Schiller zusammen mit Goethe”. Goethe said about Schiller that he was a “great big man”. I would say that he was one of the most important finger of the German Esprit. So, enjoy a piece of his “werk”!

209. Das Motto.

Wahrheit sag’ ich euch, Wahrheit und immer Wahrheit, versteht sich:
    Meine Wahrheit; denn sonst ist mir auch keine bekannt.

209. The Motto

The truth I tell you, truth and only truth, it’s understood: My truth; because other is to me unknown.

209. Motto

Va spun adevarul, adevarul si numai adevarul, se-ntelege: adevarul meu; caci altul mi-e necunoscut.

224. Mottos.

Setze nur immer Mottos auf deine Journale, sie zeigen
    Alle die Tugenden an, die man an dir nicht bemerkt.

224. Mottos.

If you put only mottos on your diary, they would show you all your virtues, that one doesn’t notice.

224. Motto-uri

De-ai pune-n al tau jurnal numai motto-uri, ti-ar arata toate virtutile pe care ceilalti le-au ignorat.  

408. Ich.

Das sind Grillen! Uns selbst und unsre guten Bekannten,
    Unsern Jammer und Not suchen und finden wir hier.

408. I.

These are crickets! We seek and find here ourselves and our good knowledge, our sorrow and misery.

408. Eu.

Acestia sunt greierii! Aici ne cautam si ne gasim pe noi insine, cunostintele noastre cele bune, durerea si necazul nostru.

385. David Hume.

Rede nicht mit dem Volk, der Kant hat sie alle verwirret,
    Mich frag, ich bin mir selbst auch in der Hölle noch gleich.

385. David Hume.

Don’t talk with the people, Kant has confused them all. Ask me, for in the abyss also I am still the same for myself.  

385. David Hume.

Nu vorbiti cu poporul, Kant i-a derutat pe toti,/ Pe mine intrebati-ma, eu imi sunt mie acelasi si-n abis.

Understanding possibility

That’s why when you understand possibility you see that you don’t have to be angry at all. What does it happen if you don’t succeed? If you are aware that you may fail, when you fail it won’t hurt.

But people don’t seem to understand. For instance, when in a bus you carry a large bag on your back, people become very angry because you push them. But if you were a fat guy, what did they tell you?