Me, I got the classic, madly violent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struwwelpeter to read as an over-sensitive kid (grandma sent it in a christmas package from the late GDR where they had no problem whatsoever with its teachings for the young) and learnt from it´s illustrations that not wanting one´s nails cut by mom might mean the barber would come and cut off one´s fingertips. This was shown the child reader in a picture with blood streaming from the barber´s scissors and the tiny tips in midair showering down to the floor; which is forever imprinted in my mind. Also, my mother used to refer to Struwwelpeter when saying: "Krause Haare krauser Sinn, sitzt der Teufel mittendrin" (curly hair curly mind, the devil inside) to my hair starting to curl as an early teen. I omitted to ask, why she was willing to perm hers for money. I was an altruistic child, outwardly. I just thought it. And found it worse, since deliberate. Am glad we talked about hairdoes:
He stops on something of a shark analogy - we keep moving or we die, we don't ever both stop and live - but I wonder if he believed it. At the very least what you find on your travels (in this case another reader) helps you travel better, makes where you are a good place to keep returning to. The whole passage reminded me of this quote (even if in danger of being slightly off topic):
"Nothing sweeter than to drag oneself along behind events; and nothing more reasonable. But without a strong dose of madness, no initiative, no enterprise, no gesture. Reason: the rust of our vitality. It is the madman in us who forces us to adventure; once he abandons us, we are lost; everything depends on him, even our vegetative life; it is he who invites us, who obliges us to breathe, and it is also he who forces our blood to venture through our veins. Once he withdraws, we are alone indeed! We cannot be normal and alive at the same time. If I keep myself in a vertical position and prepare to fulfill the coming moment - if, in short, I conceive the future, a fortunate dislocation of my mind is involved. I subsist and act insofar as I am a raving maniac, insofar as I carry my lunacies to their conclusion. Once I become reasonable, everything intimidates me: I slide toward absence, toward springs which do not deign to flow, toward that prostration which life must have known before conceiving movement. I accede, by dint of cowardice, to the heart of all things, clinging to an abyss I would not dream of relinquishing, since it isolates me from becoming. An individual, like a people, like a continent, dies out when he shrinks from both rash plans and rash acts, when, instead of taking risks and hurling himself toward being, he cowers within it, takes refuge there: a metaphysics of regression, a retreat to the primordial!"
(all emphases by the author)
E. M. Cioran, "On a Winded Civilization" from The Temptation to Exist, translated by Richard Howard, pp. 62-3
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2011-03-01 09:21 am (UTC)Am glad we talked about hairdoes:
He stops on something of a shark analogy - we keep moving or we die, we don't ever both stop and live - but I wonder if he believed it. At the very least what you find on your travels (in this case another reader) helps you travel better, makes where you are a good place to keep returning to.
The whole passage reminded me of this quote (even if in danger of being slightly off topic):
"Nothing sweeter than to drag oneself along behind events; and nothing more reasonable. But without a strong dose of madness, no initiative, no enterprise, no gesture. Reason: the rust of our vitality. It is the madman in us who forces us to adventure; once he abandons us, we are lost; everything depends on him, even our vegetative life; it is he who invites us, who obliges us to breathe, and it is also he who forces our blood to venture through our veins. Once he withdraws, we are alone indeed! We cannot be normal and alive at the same time. If I keep myself in a vertical position and prepare to fulfill the coming moment - if, in short, I conceive the future, a fortunate dislocation of my mind is involved. I subsist and act insofar as I am a raving maniac, insofar as I carry my lunacies to their conclusion. Once I become reasonable, everything intimidates me: I slide toward absence, toward springs which do not deign to flow, toward that prostration which life must have known before conceiving movement. I accede, by dint of cowardice, to the heart of all things, clinging to an abyss I would not dream of relinquishing, since it isolates me from becoming. An individual, like a people, like a continent, dies out when he shrinks from both rash plans and rash acts, when, instead of taking risks and hurling himself toward being, he cowers within it, takes refuge there: a metaphysics of regression, a retreat to the primordial!"
(all emphases by the author)
E. M. Cioran, "On a Winded Civilization"
from The Temptation to Exist,
translated by Richard Howard, pp. 62-3
that I lately quoted to another well-read LJ-friend (warmly recommended, btw) on a not too similar topic here: http://pomposa.livejournal.com/36913.html