remko caprio


home home
home aboutme
home writing
      dull boy jack
      ophelia's love
      the birth of ego
      theombrotus
      the shield of achilles
home music
      bs
      carackus
      blockbuster noise
home other
      drawings
home technology blog

RSS

Philip Roth, American Pastoral (1997)

Philip Roth, American Pastoral (1997) 423p.

comments (0) | category: read |

Knut Hamsun, Hunger (1890)

Knut Hamsun, Hunger (1890) 243p.

I read this book as a literary heritage leading via Strindberg’s Inferno and Alone, Andre Breton’s Nadja, to Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, placed in a context of thought of Nietzsche and Stirner’s The Ego and His Own, and this line of autobiographical fiction is the zenith of the 19th century’s romantic hero turned inward genius, which is one of my favorite genres. But Hunger certainly stands out for its early expression of this type. Where Miller rejects society, the antagonist of Hunger is rejected. The same type of character can be seen in Beckett’s First Love, but never as original and authentic as in Hamsun.

There’s a foreword of Paul Auster in the edition I read from 1970. Auster later wrote Brooklyn Follies in which the antagonist seeks an escape from the anxieties of bourgeois life, ending in Hotel X, but Auster’s escape is a false dreamy rejection of a middle class product to escape his own boredom, Hunger’s rejection is driven by bitterness and pride by experience, and the torture of an artist who is spit out by that middle class, that Auster returns to. There’s nothing soothing about Hunger, but instead is resigned to the artist’s last resort, one self, and the hunger to write.

comments (0) | category: read |

Georges Bataille, Story of the Eye (1928)

Georges Bataille, Story of the Eye (1928) 103p.

comments (0) | category: read |

Marguerite Yourcenar, Coup de Grace (1939)

Marguerite Yourcenar, Coup de Grace (1939) 151p.

comments (0) | category: read |

José Saramago, All the Names (1997)

José Saramago, All the Names (1997)(English: 1999) 238p.

Very Kafkaesk, but the character is underdeveloped, the style is inconsistent and some of the details or plot are simply incredible or too evident. However, you can recognize his outstanding talent and the idea behind the story is very uplifting.

A good example of an incredible and unnecessary detail of plot is the visit by Senor Jose to the apartment of the unknown woman. He receives the key from the mother as he is to leave the parents’ home, after the father has been cynical of Senor Jose. Every development in this part is incredible in my opinion, and more so it is unnecessary.

comments (0) | category: read |

Andre Breton, Nadja (1928)

Andre Breton, Nadja (1928) 160p.

comments (0) | category: read |

August Strindberg, Inferno, Alone, and other writings (1968, 1894-1903),

August Strindberg (1849-1912), Inferno, Alone, and other writings (1968, 1894-1903), 429p.

The New Arts or the Role of Chance in Artistic Creation (1894)
Inferno (1897)
Graveyard Reveries (1896)
Jacob Wrestles (1897)
Alone (1903)

comments (0) | category: read |

The New Arts! Witkacy, Przybyszewski and Strindberg

On Culture.pl you will find background information and articles about among other Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz or Witkacy and Stanislaw Przybyszewski. The latter was an intimate friend of Swedish painter and writer August Strindbergwith whom he formed a circle of friends in Berlin referred to as ‘The Black Pig’ circle, which included Edvard Munch. Przybyszewski was of great influence both on Strindberg and Munch. Strindberg later wrote an essay that was influential in the development of the arts and the role of chance in artistic creation called The New Arts! The Role of Chance in Artistic Creation.

comments (0) | category: read |

George Orwell, Inside the Whale (1940)

George Orwell, Inside the Whale (1940)

comments (0) | category: read |

Henry Miller, The Time of the Assassins (1946/1956)

Henry Miller, The Time of the Assassins: a Study of Rimbaud (1946/1956), 163p.

The book starts uninspired but by the epiphany that the life of Rimbeaud contains the blueprint for genius, emphasizing the parallels between Miller and Rimbeaud. Did I mention Miller is a pretentious prick? Only after he made that first point of life and the formation of exceptional psychologies, does he enter the waters where the streams of Miller’s lyrical poetry grasp you and pull you under. It is when he talks about the end of the world, about the assassin of youth, the escapes and boredom, the venomous poison of a poet’s visions that entered the unknown, that Miller’s study becomes inspiring.

comments (0) | category: read |
 
   « back forward »   
 

The Death of Literature
Death in literature is an elementary metaphor, as the fear of death is one of our Id’s primal impulses, together with the sexual urge to reproduce and overcome it. The resurrection of our mind is the symbol for the cycle of life, the seasons, birth and death, crucifixion and resurrection, destruction and creation, night and day, there’s probably nothing more universal, nothing more primal than death and life. The article in the Guardian In theory: the death of literature is a great short essay that analyzes the perspective of the Romantics on death in literature as an elementary original perspective that lays at the root of the birth of the modern novel. It’s a very original view with lots of references in high overview, which makes it easy to make any argument, but it’s convincing until midway when the argument becomes an old man’s lamentation on modern times. Here is where the author Andrew Gallix the other essence of the Romantics in my opinion, namely the overcoming of the fear of death in favor of a naive and blind will for creation, this resurrection of the conscious mind is what represents the true power of the Romantic era. In the face of death we are not afraid to throw ourselves in the abyss and love.

Der Zauberberg (1982)
An international production of Thomas Mann’s 20th century classic about the first world war, Der Zauberberg (1982).

Divine Mathematics: George Cantor and Infinity
In Dangerous Knowledge – BBC, Georg Cantor’s Continuum Hypothesis and Georg Cantor‘s life is described. Cantor was obsessed with the problem of infinity. Cantor reminds me Pythagoras, who founded a religious school of Pythagoreans who searched the divine truth by revealing the mathematical formulas that described nature. Boltzmann defined a breakthrough in the field of probability, which is crucial for the theory of entropy and chaos.

Solve Puzzles for Science - Fold.it
Solve puzzles for science with Fold.it. Crowd-sourcing scientific problems.

The Master and Margarita - Russia TV
The Master and Margarita – Russia TV Russia’s first television production of The Master and Margarita, the novel by Mikhail Bulgakov. Vladimir Bortko is the director and screenwriter of the new adaptation. The mini-series of ten 52-minute episodes was first screened on the state television channel “Россия” (“Russia”) on December, 2005. The Master and Margarita is a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, woven about the premise of a visit by the Devil to the fervently atheistic Soviet Union. Many critics consider the book to be one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, as well as one of the foremost Soviet satires, directed against a suffocatingly bureaucratic social order.

Hunting the Hidden Dimension
Hunting the Hidden Dimension Pt. 1 This film is about looking at the world around us in a completely different way. If you pay attention, you can see that fractals appear throughout nature. But until Benoit Mandelbrot came along, no one really understood what was there all along. more...

Benoit Mandelbrot, Father of Eternity, Coined the Term 'Fractal'
Benoit Mandelbrot, Mathematician, Dies at 85 Dr. Mandelbrot coined the term “fractal” to refer to a new class of mathematical shapes whose uneven contours could mimic the irregularities found in nature.

Comparative Democracy
Originally, I was playing with the idea that representatives should have to pass an exam to become eligable to run for political office. While listening to C-SPAN broadcasts of Congress committees, or members of Congress giving interviews to NPR, where on some shows they are allowed more speaking time than the 20 or 30 seconds, I am too often shocked by the lack of depth and the absence of fact in their statements. more...

The Tree of Life
The Tree of Life Project (ToL) is a collaborative effort of biologists from around the world. The project provides information about the diversity of organisms on Earth, their evolutionary history (phylogeny), and characteristics. Another project that visualizes the phylogeny of life for the plants phylum is Deep Green by the Green Plant Phylogeny Research Coordination Group of Berkeley University.

Litarary Word Comparison
Introduction This is one of the small research projects that I am currently conducting. I am not pretending to offer or accomplish any scientific added value to the research community in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) but humbly submit my efforts to gain further personal learning. While the research remains unfinished and until I publish it formally, I will keep this post as a mini-post. As a Universal Man, a Humanist, a Renaissance Man each individual man has an obligation to question and further his or her knowledge and understanding, as it lies within our capacities. Learning is a tool to humble our heart, and most of all we should mistrust brave hearts. Matt Ridley in his book Nature via Nurture says (says Richard Dawkins in his The Ancestor’s Tale in The Mouse Tale chapter) that “the list of words in David Copperfield is almost the same as the list of words in The Catcher in the Rye.” Springing from this saying, I concluded that it would be an interesting project to create a plotter diagram in which the major works in literature (written, translated or edited into modern English for reasons of ease of comparison) are set out as number of total words versus the number of different words used and another network graph that displays the relative closeness of literary works by words used. The first diagram is the easiest to create of course, so I will start with this first, then moving on to the next network diagram. more...