Lying Pessimists

When they say there are no certainties in life,

they are being pessimistic

(or they are lying).

You can always depend on the permanence

of the fissures in the plastered wall,

or the deep-blue of the impassive ocean,

where matter slides into the irredeemable.

2009

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What is Freedom?: Jean-Paul Sartre’s “The Age of Reason” (Part 1)

The first instalment of Jean-Paul Sartre’s trilogy Roads to Freedom , The Age of Reason ( L’ Â ge de Raison , 1945), compels the modern reader to re-define the idea of freedom, conventionally worded as “the condition of being free of restraints” (The Free Dictionary). “Free of restraints” is murky waters when it comes to Mathieu and Daniel, the two main characters of Sartre’s soul-searching work. Sartre’s characters are primarily “for-itself beings,” existentially free persons who act according to the choices that have moulded them. The words “existentially free” are oxymoronic, and the phrase “free persons who act according to the choices that have moulded them” is painfully paradoxical. This is classic Sartrean paradox: it tells you that as an individual you are “free” to make choices, but these choices are pre-determined by a whole other set of choices beyond your control or manipulation. Mathieu Delarue has made the mistake of impregnating his mistress of seven ...

Approaching Haruki Murakami’s “Kafka on the Shore” the Jungian Way

“The world of gods and spirits is truly nothing but the collective unconscious inside me.” – Carl Jung, On the Tibetan Book of the Dead What appears to be supernatural and surrealistic in Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore does not have to remain that way once we accept that in Murakami’s fictional world, the natural and the supernatural often cross paths and become one single unity. In the previous three entries on the novel, I have extensively discussed its relation to Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex . But here I intend to explain why the supernatural should in fact be deemed natural, and how this reasoning is a direct reference to the theories of Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung and German philosopher G.W. F. Hegel, both of whom are mentioned in the novel. Carl Jung’s psychological theory on the “collective unconscious” (the notion positing that all humans – regardless of race and culture – share a psyche containing “latent predispositions towards identical reactions” [1...

The Sound of Alienation: Rainer Maria Rilke’s “The Voices”

In the nine “Voices” poems (“Die Stemmen,” 1902), we find Rilke speaking out for those who have suffered pain and injustice. He insists that in order for them to be heard, they need to “advertise” themselves, and this should be done through singing, or songs – like the castrati (referred to as “these cut ones”) who sing to God and compel him to stay and listen. This message is found in the “Title Leaf” – an introduction of sorts to the nine songs. It is tempting to read the nine songs (“Beggar’s,” “Blind Man’s,” “Drunkard’s,” “Suicide’s,” “Widow’s,” “Idiot’s,” “Orphan Girl’s,” “Dwarf’s,” “Leper’s”) as a collection of poetic pleas for social awareness. This is due to Rilke’s “casting choices”; he has selected society’s most conspicuous outcasts as the main speakers of his poems. When, for instance, the beggar in “The Beggar’s Song” says, “I go always from door to door/rain-soaked and sun-scorched,” we are induced to sympathise with his downtrodden fate. The same can be said for...

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