Polish short fiction spruces up a weekend of ennui !
Let's see how long this latest resolution lasts: "I must blog more often."
The weekend was absolutely soporific. The only useful thing that I managed to do was to finish a RD collection of short stories. A pretty eclectic mix. But there was one called the "The LightHouse Keeper of Aspin Wall" , that stood out from the rest. It's by this ultra-patriotic Polish Nobel Laureate Henryk Sienkiewicz , who's reputed to have been awarded the Nobel for the sheer volume of his works, about 60 of them; a contribution when combined with fine technical finesse in writing, can hardly be ignored for Literature's top prize. The story, in many ways, elucidates similar, if not the same concepts as in Hesse's Siddhartha, where the unity of consciousness, nature, material and living entities is portrayed elegantly. It is the story of a man who has been a nomad all his life,a life that has been ravaged by many failures in his endeavors; of a man who has been relentlessly pursuing dreams, a man with a benign and noble heart, a man endowed with infinite patience, most importantly a man who has almost lost his Polish roots as a result of his traveling and finally embraces solitude as a lighthouse keeper. There are many philosophical undercurrents in this story, which is written in a lucid style. I found the online text version at http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/1447/ . This is peppered with a few mistakes, but that can be ignored, I guess. <'Embracing Solitude', by the way, was one of my earliest poems!>
Meanwhile, life continues to move on at a pretty sluggish pace. Last week, we went out to Tangerine at Alwarpet on a friend's app treat. The place is classy, the food's classier. Had a Mexican sizzler and a chocolate dessert. We also laughed our hearts out at Sathyam where 'National Treasure' is playing. An eminently laughable movie. 50 bucks down the gutters. Diane Kruger looks much better than she did in Troy, where she was hardly anywhere close to being as beautiful as the Helen of Troy.
Let me see how "The Lord of the Flies" is going to treat me. I hope it won't be a waste of time!
The weekend was absolutely soporific. The only useful thing that I managed to do was to finish a RD collection of short stories. A pretty eclectic mix. But there was one called the "The LightHouse Keeper of Aspin Wall" , that stood out from the rest. It's by this ultra-patriotic Polish Nobel Laureate Henryk Sienkiewicz , who's reputed to have been awarded the Nobel for the sheer volume of his works, about 60 of them; a contribution when combined with fine technical finesse in writing, can hardly be ignored for Literature's top prize. The story, in many ways, elucidates similar, if not the same concepts as in Hesse's Siddhartha, where the unity of consciousness, nature, material and living entities is portrayed elegantly. It is the story of a man who has been a nomad all his life,a life that has been ravaged by many failures in his endeavors; of a man who has been relentlessly pursuing dreams, a man with a benign and noble heart, a man endowed with infinite patience, most importantly a man who has almost lost his Polish roots as a result of his traveling and finally embraces solitude as a lighthouse keeper. There are many philosophical undercurrents in this story, which is written in a lucid style. I found the online text version at http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/1447/ . This is peppered with a few mistakes, but that can be ignored, I guess. <'Embracing Solitude', by the way, was one of my earliest poems!>
Meanwhile, life continues to move on at a pretty sluggish pace. Last week, we went out to Tangerine at Alwarpet on a friend's app treat. The place is classy, the food's classier. Had a Mexican sizzler and a chocolate dessert. We also laughed our hearts out at Sathyam where 'National Treasure' is playing. An eminently laughable movie
posted by indolentcreature @ Sunday, February 06, 2005
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