View allAll Photos Tagged existentialism
The Philospohy of the Absurd and Existentialism. What a magnificient book. “There is not love of life without despair about life.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger
2011年首獎 2011 First Prize
蔡昌吉 / 台中大安
拍攝動機：
當年過半百之後，人的身心靈總是處於衰退老化狀態。焦慮、不安、空虛、膽怯...隨著時間一一迎面而來，自2010年起興起了參加新光三越國際攝影大賽的念頭。目的：一來活化自我的身心靈，二來考驗攝影技能是否退化。從上網、填表、送件、等待、失落、驚喜...，過程中一切的酸、甜、苦、辣...點滴在心頭，相當慶幸這兩年來的收穫頗豐，讓自己有了「老而不休」的真實體現。
攝影心得：
存在哲學指出“生命是一種不斷被拋入某種現實情境的歷程，而生命一開始即為面向死亡的存在”。因此，海德格爾指出，人必須正視死亡，從恐懼中明白自己活著的重要性。
我以“貼近土地，面對死亡，體現存在”作為攝影表現中影像的核心，藉由影像展現對死亡與生命存在意義的描述。並以時間化為「此在之存有」的寓圖，讓生命中憂心、虛浮、陷落與醒覺...在自我中開顯「存在」的真實。
Tsai Chang-chi / Ta’an Township, Taichung
Why I Took These Pictures :
Once you’ve passed the half-century mark, you tend to go downhill, both physically and mentally. Slowly, feelings of anxiety, restlessness, emptiness or timidity start cropping up. So when in 2010 I heard about the Shin Kong Mitsukoshi International Photo-Taking Contest, the idea of participating soon took hold of my mind. I saw it as a way of revitalizing my body and mind, and also a chance to find out how rusty my photographing skills had become. I downloaded the form online, filled it out and sent it in. The period of waiting and uncertainty was followed by a very pleasant surprise—basically the whole process was an emotional roller coaster for me, but I’m glad I went ahead with it, because the last two years were filled with interesting experiences and have made me realize that in spite of my age, I’m still capable of doing something positive and meaningful.
What I Learned :
Existentialism tells us that to live is to be thrown into the world, and having to deal with reality. From its very beginning, all existence must face its own death. Or, as Heidegger puts it, we all need to look death in the eye, because confronting our worst fears helps us to realize the importance and value of being alive.
At the heart of all my photographs, then, lies the basic principle of staying rooted in my native soil while maintaining a constant awareness of my own mortality. In this way, I can achieve a truthful expression of my own existence, and, through my motifs, offer a personal account of life and death and what they mean to me. Time is distilled into the present moment. The photograph serves as an allegory for all the doubts and uncertainties, the vanity and insubstantiality, the dissipation but also the awakening, the process of becoming aware: I become the medium through which reality manifests itself.
Adventure; 1. An exciting or very unusual experience; 3. A bold, usually risky undertaking; hazardous action of uncertain outcome.
We met each other when we were looking for adventure, in the middle of the month in which nothing use to happen. At some point of our lifes, the circumstances gave us the need of a turnaround. And so we did. Me, wounded, pursuing the solo activity as always. He, wounded too, hunting for fresh air. And there you had the two of us, melt in a kind symbiosis without any further or preconceived interest.
One of the most significant facts about our wonderful encounter it is how our first serious conversation was indeed about the moment in when we better found ourselves in the past, respectively. Irish grass and swedish pines came together creating a world full of pure essences, inspiring nature and a bit of nostalgia.
Since that very first day, the best impression I got from you was your extraordinary way of listening to my words, sometimes wise, sometimes young, but equally important for your breathtaking eyes. At the same time, you were talkative, even after you had said you were apparently not. I felt, and feel, lucky for being the one able to listen to your feelings and thoughts. And, of course, for the learning.
I remember how did you talk about the concept of Sharing. How did you felt like you had the necesity of giving, and you have been surprised about how good you feel when you are given too. Honestly, I haven’t been reflecting about it until you started, and it has take me some time until I have understood the full meaning of such a beautiful word. For me, it feels somehow as if a single person could duplicate itself in other to imbibe life in it maximum exponent for becoming one again at the end of the day.
Because being solitary does not mean to need, want or even like to live life alone. It is much more than that. It is the inteligent exercise of doing things separately in order to gain double experiences to enjoy together. Because the key is about the most sincere, generous and equitable way of sharing. Wolf, we are reinventing the concept of true Love in the century we are here to live, and I can not even put into words how fortunate and happy makes me the sensation of being in the best of the paths ever.
Listening to: Magic, Coldplay.
Dutch postcard, no. 662.
French actress and chanson singer Juliette Gréco (1927) was the muse of the existentialists such as Jean-Paul Sartre. Later she became the protégée of film mogul Darryl F. Zanuck, who cast her in his films.
For more postcards, a bio and clips check out our blog European Film Star Postcards Already over 3 million views! Or follow us at Tumblr or Pinterest.
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Radical Transcendence *
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... Looking into the mirror - Seeing my face in it - And the words and signs on the mirror glass - Looking deep - Long and deep - And ever deeper - Deeper - So deep until I look through my face - Looking into me - Until the thoughts dissolve - Until the face dissolves in its familiar forms - Until the words and signs dissolve - Until I dissolve - And come to me at the same time ... *
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... In den Spiegel blicken - Darin mein Gesicht sehen - Und die Worte und Zeichen auf dem Spiegelglas - Tief hineinblicken - Lang und tief - Und immer tiefer - Tiefer - So tief bis ich durch das Gesicht blicke - In mich hineinblicke - Bis sich die Gedanken auflösen - Das Gesicht in seinen bekannten Formen auflöst - Die Worte und Zeichen sich auflösen - Bis ich mich auflöse - Und gleichzeitig zu mir gelange ... *
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Photo: Patricia Adler
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Wolfgang Sterneck:
In the Cracks of the World *
Photo-Reports: www.flickr.com/sterneck/sets
Articles and Visions: www.sterneck.net
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On a funny note, Shiina Ringo's single Tsumi to Batsu is 'Crime & Punishment' in Japanese... which probably explains all the Cyrillic in the single's promo.
2011年首獎 2011 First Prize
蔡昌吉 / 台中大安
拍攝動機：
當年過半百之後，人的身心靈總是處於衰退老化狀態。焦慮、不安、空虛、膽怯...隨著時間一一迎面而來，自2010年起興起了參加新光三越國際攝影大賽的念頭。目的：一來活化自我的身心靈，二來考驗攝影技能是否退化。從上網、填表、送件、等待、失落、驚喜...，過程中一切的酸、甜、苦、辣...點滴在心頭，相當慶幸這兩年來的收穫頗豐，讓自己有了「老而不休」的真實體現。
攝影心得：
存在哲學指出“生命是一種不斷被拋入某種現實情境的歷程，而生命一開始即為面向死亡的存在”。因此，海德格爾指出，人必須正視死亡，從恐懼中明白自己活著的重要性。
我以“貼近土地，面對死亡，體現存在”作為攝影表現中影像的核心，藉由影像展現對死亡與生命存在意義的描述。並以時間化為「此在之存有」的寓圖，讓生命中憂心、虛浮、陷落與醒覺...在自我中開顯「存在」的真實。
Tsai Chang-chi / Ta’an Township, Taichung
Why I Took These Pictures :
Once you’ve passed the half-century mark, you tend to go downhill, both physically and mentally. Slowly, feelings of anxiety, restlessness, emptiness or timidity start cropping up. So when in 2010 I heard about the Shin Kong Mitsukoshi International Photo-Taking Contest, the idea of participating soon took hold of my mind. I saw it as a way of revitalizing my body and mind, and also a chance to find out how rusty my photographing skills had become. I downloaded the form online, filled it out and sent it in. The period of waiting and uncertainty was followed by a very pleasant surprise—basically the whole process was an emotional roller coaster for me, but I’m glad I went ahead with it, because the last two years were filled with interesting experiences and have made me realize that in spite of my age, I’m still capable of doing something positive and meaningful.
What I Learned :
Existentialism tells us that to live is to be thrown into the world, and having to deal with reality. From its very beginning, all existence must face its own death. Or, as Heidegger puts it, we all need to look death in the eye, because confronting our worst fears helps us to realize the importance and value of being alive.
At the heart of all my photographs, then, lies the basic principle of staying rooted in my native soil while maintaining a constant awareness of my own mortality. In this way, I can achieve a truthful expression of my own existence, and, through my motifs, offer a personal account of life and death and what they mean to me. Time is distilled into the present moment. The photograph serves as an allegory for all the doubts and uncertainties, the vanity and insubstantiality, the dissipation but also the awakening, the process of becoming aware: I become the medium through which reality manifests itself.
olie op doek
140 X 60 cm
In de naoorlogse kunstscène in Vlaanderen was Jan Burssens een invloedrijk figuur. Grote kunstenaars en schrijvers uit zowel Nederland als België, zoals Corneille, Karel Appel, Bertus Aafjes, Hugo Claus en Roger Raveel waren bij hem vriend aan huis. Een heel bijzondere band had hij met zijn oom Gaston Burssens, de belangrijkste literaire geestesverwant van Paul Van Ostaijen. Ook bij het grote publiek genoot Burssens grote bekendheid: in de vroege jaren zeventig was hij dankzij zijn rock-’n-rollgehalte, zijn optredens in de Wies Andersen Show en de alomtegenwoordigheid van zijn karakteristieke zelfportretten dé prototypische kunstenaar.
Hoewel hij uit een artistiek-intellectuele familie afkomstig was, volgde Burssens nauwelijks een academische opleiding. Hij was een autodidact pur sang, wat hem niet heeft belemmerd de knepen van het schildersvak perfect onder de knie te krijgen, zozeer zelfs dat hij later op de academie van Gent docent is geworden in het modelschilderen, het academische vak bij uitstek.
Na de Tweede Wereldoorlog leek het er aanvankelijk op dat de Vlaamse kunst de draad van de jaren dertig terug zou oppikken en het expressionisme als algemene norm zou omarmen, alsof er helemaal geen oorlog had plaatsgevonden die alle waarden en zekerheden op de helling had geplaatst. Het was Jan Burssens die hier resoluut komaf mee maakte en het existentialisme van Jean-Paul Sartre in de schilderkunst gestalte gaf. In 1952 richt hij samen met andere abstracte Belgische kunstenaars de groep Art Abstrait op.
Hij werd een van de meest gelauwerde kunstenaars van zijn tijd en zijn werk kreeg een vooraanstaande plaats op de Wereldtentoonstelling in Brussel.
Hoe abstract zijn werk ook was, Burssens slaagde er telkens in het een sterke gevoelswaarde mee te geven. Vanaf de tweede helft van de jaren zestig zou hij die gevoelens opnieuw expliciet weergeven in portretten. Hij schilderde mensen die hij bewonderde, zoals JF Kennedy, Che Guevarra, Helder Camara en Marilyn Monroe, maar op zo’n manier dat ze zijn eigen emoties weergaven. Vanaf 1970 portretteerde hij die emoties nog directer in onthullende zelfportretten. Zijn pijnlijke grimassen en verbeten trekken verraadden fysieke pijn (veroorzaakt door een slepende ziekte), een door engagement gevoede woede om sociaal onrecht en een groeiende irritatie over de recente kunstevoluties van dat moment.
De kunstenaar:
Jan Burssens
° Mechelen, 1925
+ Merendree, 2002
Le Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris, France
I headed south to le Cimetière Montparnasse. After the Paris churchyards closed in the 18th century, a full three quarters of a century before the English closed their urban churchyards, four great cemeteries were laid out to the north, east, south and west of the city. Pere Lachaise is the most famous, Montmartre the most aesthetically pleasing, but Montparnasse probably the most interesting. I spent about three hours and three hundred photographs pottering about. Some of the famous graves are easy to find because they are well documented, and visitors have placed tributes on them. For example, the first grave I went in search of, Samuel Beckett's, has metro tickets placed on it by visitors as a mark of having waited for something.
I already knew where Beckett's grave was, but two others in the same section were more difficult, as I did not have exact locations. I eventually found the grave of Phillipe Noiret, an actor I very much admired particularly for his role in my favourite film, Cinema Paradiso, but also for his role in Le Cop, which has criminally never had a DVD release with English subtitles. There were no public tributes on it, merely a plaque from his wife saying 'pour mon Cher Philippe' and a picture of a horse. While I was photographing it, four gendarmes, two men and two women, passed behind me and came across to see why I was photographing it. "Noiret!" exclaimed one of the men, and then "mais pourquoi le cheval?" wondered one of the women. But they didn't stop for me to explain, for I had read an article about Noiret about fifteen years previously in a copy of La Nouvelle Observateur while staying in a hotel in Boulogne, and I knew that he had bred horses in his spare time.
The other grave I had hoped to find in this section was that of Susan Sontag, but I couldn't track it down.
The joint headstone of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir is easily found by the main entrance, and I thought it rather sweet that they were remembered together. Despite all their efforts for existentialism and feminism, it was like a headstone in a quiet English churchyard which might have 'reunited' or 'together in eternity' inscribed on it. I think he wasn't pleasant company, and while she was certainly more intelligent than he was she made intellectual arrogance respectable. I photographed their headstone more out of interest than admiration.
Admiration was at the heart of my search for a gravestone lost in sections 6 and 7 which I think is not found often. It is for the surrealist photographer Man Ray. I was delighted to find it after barely 20 minutes searching. He designed it himself, and in his own handwriting into the cement it says 'unconcerned, but not indifferent', which could be taken as rebuff to Satre and his circle I suppose. Charmingly, beside it like the other half of a book is a photograph of him with his wife and the inscription 'Juliet Man Ray 1911-1991, together again'. Enough to leave De Beauvoir spluttering into her Pernod.
You can read my account of my travels at pariswander.blogspot.co.uk.
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Got to work with my cousin again today; I love taking pictures of her because she is more intelligent than anyone this beautiful has a right to be. As I took this picture, we talked about French philosophy and existentialism - she's just too good to be true, isn't she?
This wasn't exactly what I set out to create, and I have others in the set which are far closer to the image I had in my head, but I chose this because I prefer the composition and then I took the processing in a slightly different direction.
Strobist:
Just one SB600 fired as a rim light on 1/2 power to the camera's right, bare. Triggered with Pocket Wizard Plus IIs.
Silver reflector on the ground.
...But mostly - this is all natural sun!
This appears to outline some of Focault's thoughts, this was on the board in my philosophy class when I came in. However, we're not studying Focault in Existentialism, so it must be left over from some other class.
What's a perfect rock anthem? Here's my criteria:
-- Motion: The beat has to move forward, be contagious. When you hear it, you can't not move.
-- Sloppy: It has to be almost drunk...John Shirley put it best in Eclipse: each chord peacock-tailing off into perfect distortion.
-- Anger: It isn't rock if it doesn't say "Fuck you". Period.
-- Defiance: Raw, guttural, feral: I will not bow down. I will not give up. I will not be what you want me to be. I will never abandon you. I will keep faith.
And I will resist.
You can't defeat me.
I will resist.
And that is the heart of the matter. So let's talk about resistance. Let's talk about Albert Camus.
Camus was part of the French resistance during World War II. He was Algerian. He was wrongly associated with Sartre and existentialism. His death was banal: a car accident.
The Rebel is his most cogent expression of the difference he perceived between revolution and rebellion. His central question: can you justify murder? Not just murder of individuals, but murder on a mass scale. He didn't consider war to be a special case.
Camus' theory goes something like this: the revolutionary is primarily concerned with bringing about a new social order, the rebel with restoring to society something that has been lost, or buried under hypocrisy.
Because the revolutionary is bringing something into the world that is new, his only option is violence. Because the rebel is attempting to restore something that has been lost, he has the option of resisting society any way he chooses.
The revolutionary must enforce this new structure on society; thus all revolutions end in fascism (the French and Russian revolutions are the most obvious cases). The rebel doesn't have to enforce anything; he is restoring something that has been lost.
Revolution tries to make the world a better place by forcing society into the straightjacket of a new set of rules. Rebellion tries to make a world a better place by ensuring the one rule already there is followed, a rule that's pretty fucking simple: love each other.
A revolutionary looks at the face of society and says, "everything is wrong, and everything must be replaced. And the only way to do that is through force. And it must be reinforced and maintained through force."
A rebel looks at the face of society and says, "you are not following your own rules, and have become corrupt. The chasm between what you are saying and what you actually do has become too wide. And I will not submit to this. I will resist. And I will resist until the chasm is gone."
"I will resist."
Resistance does not need to kill.
Resistance takes the place of a Jew on a Nazi firing line.
Resistance takes a picture of a naked girl covered in napalm.
Resistance writes a novel about the price one woman is willing to pay to follow her heart.
Resistance stayed in Rwanda with untrained poorly-equipped soldiers, walking through towns where the entire population had been dismembered with machetes, a thin blue armband the only protection.
Resistance met an entire army in the air with 3 biplanes named Faith, Hope, and Charity. They were never shot down.
Resistance is a single man speaking up.
Resistance finds the clarity and love in insanity.
Resistance has a dream.
So, with me so far?
Or are you wondering what the hell this has to do with a picture of Bono? Let's get to that, too.
Resistance is standing on a stage wearing a London Underground t-shirt the day after it was bombed, and says one thing:
"We will resist. We will love. We can't be defeated."
And that is the perfect rock anthem.
2011年首獎 2011 First Prize
蔡昌吉 / 台中大安
拍攝動機：
當年過半百之後，人的身心靈總是處於衰退老化狀態。焦慮、不安、空虛、膽怯...隨著時間一一迎面而來，自2010年起興起了參加新光三越國際攝影大賽的念頭。目的：一來活化自我的身心靈，二來考驗攝影技能是否退化。從上網、填表、送件、等待、失落、驚喜...，過程中一切的酸、甜、苦、辣...點滴在心頭，相當慶幸這兩年來的收穫頗豐，讓自己有了「老而不休」的真實體現。
攝影心得：
存在哲學指出“生命是一種不斷被拋入某種現實情境的歷程，而生命一開始即為面向死亡的存在”。因此，海德格爾指出，人必須正視死亡，從恐懼中明白自己活著的重要性。
我以“貼近土地，面對死亡，體現存在”作為攝影表現中影像的核心，藉由影像展現對死亡與生命存在意義的描述。並以時間化為「此在之存有」的寓圖，讓生命中憂心、虛浮、陷落與醒覺...在自我中開顯「存在」的真實。
Tsai Chang-chi / Ta’an Township, Taichung
Why I Took These Pictures :
Once you’ve passed the half-century mark, you tend to go downhill, both physically and mentally. Slowly, feelings of anxiety, restlessness, emptiness or timidity start cropping up. So when in 2010 I heard about the Shin Kong Mitsukoshi International Photo-Taking Contest, the idea of participating soon took hold of my mind. I saw it as a way of revitalizing my body and mind, and also a chance to find out how rusty my photographing skills had become. I downloaded the form online, filled it out and sent it in. The period of waiting and uncertainty was followed by a very pleasant surprise—basically the whole process was an emotional roller coaster for me, but I’m glad I went ahead with it, because the last two years were filled with interesting experiences and have made me realize that in spite of my age, I’m still capable of doing something positive and meaningful.
What I Learned :
Existentialism tells us that to live is to be thrown into the world, and having to deal with reality. From its very beginning, all existence must face its own death. Or, as Heidegger puts it, we all need to look death in the eye, because confronting our worst fears helps us to realize the importance and value of being alive.
At the heart of all my photographs, then, lies the basic principle of staying rooted in my native soil while maintaining a constant awareness of my own mortality. In this way, I can achieve a truthful expression of my own existence, and, through my motifs, offer a personal account of life and death and what they mean to me. Time is distilled into the present moment. The photograph serves as an allegory for all the doubts and uncertainties, the vanity and insubstantiality, the dissipation but also the awakening, the process of becoming aware: I become the medium through which reality manifests itself.
2011年首獎 2011 First Prize
蔡昌吉 / 台中大安
拍攝動機：
當年過半百之後，人的身心靈總是處於衰退老化狀態。焦慮、不安、空虛、膽怯...隨著時間一一迎面而來，自2010年起興起了參加新光三越國際攝影大賽的念頭。目的：一來活化自我的身心靈，二來考驗攝影技能是否退化。從上網、填表、送件、等待、失落、驚喜...，過程中一切的酸、甜、苦、辣...點滴在心頭，相當慶幸這兩年來的收穫頗豐，讓自己有了「老而不休」的真實體現。
攝影心得：
存在哲學指出“生命是一種不斷被拋入某種現實情境的歷程，而生命一開始即為面向死亡的存在”。因此，海德格爾指出，人必須正視死亡，從恐懼中明白自己活著的重要性。
我以“貼近土地，面對死亡，體現存在”作為攝影表現中影像的核心，藉由影像展現對死亡與生命存在意義的描述。並以時間化為「此在之存有」的寓圖，讓生命中憂心、虛浮、陷落與醒覺...在自我中開顯「存在」的真實。
Tsai Chang-chi / Ta’an Township, Taichung
Why I Took These Pictures :
Once you’ve passed the half-century mark, you tend to go downhill, both physically and mentally. Slowly, feelings of anxiety, restlessness, emptiness or timidity start cropping up. So when in 2010 I heard about the Shin Kong Mitsukoshi International Photo-Taking Contest, the idea of participating soon took hold of my mind. I saw it as a way of revitalizing my body and mind, and also a chance to find out how rusty my photographing skills had become. I downloaded the form online, filled it out and sent it in. The period of waiting and uncertainty was followed by a very pleasant surprise—basically the whole process was an emotional roller coaster for me, but I’m glad I went ahead with it, because the last two years were filled with interesting experiences and have made me realize that in spite of my age, I’m still capable of doing something positive and meaningful.
What I Learned :
Existentialism tells us that to live is to be thrown into the world, and having to deal with reality. From its very beginning, all existence must face its own death. Or, as Heidegger puts it, we all need to look death in the eye, because confronting our worst fears helps us to realize the importance and value of being alive.
At the heart of all my photographs, then, lies the basic principle of staying rooted in my native soil while maintaining a constant awareness of my own mortality. In this way, I can achieve a truthful expression of my own existence, and, through my motifs, offer a personal account of life and death and what they mean to me. Time is distilled into the present moment. The photograph serves as an allegory for all the doubts and uncertainties, the vanity and insubstantiality, the dissipation but also the awakening, the process of becoming aware: I become the medium through which reality manifests itself.
Oh, brothers and sisters! During this most high religious celebration, let me impart this most urgent evangel to you: Death can be beneficial and fun!!
"It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens,” declared the perpetually pessimistic Woody Allen. Views like this give death a bad name. Death has received a lot of bad press and so it is no wonder that it is universally reviled. In the Letters from a Stoic, Seneca wrote: “You want to live—but do you know how to live? You are scared of dying—and, tell me, is the kind of life you lead really any different from being dead?”
It is a crying ignominy that the lighter side of death is never presented. I think dying doesn’t have to be the morose and cheerless event everybody insists on making it. Death can be fun. More: it can also be beneficial.
Stevie Smith said it all: "If there wasn't death, I think you couldn't go on.” With this more optimistic approach, let us proceed to explore how death can be fun and beneficial. Let us not think of death as the end but rather as a beginning. And let us not forget that life is temporary whereas death is everlasting. I think there is something to be said for that.
One of the first benefits that come to mind is one’s reputation. Eulogies are always sweetly sugar-coated and are purposely the complete opposite of the usual vile libel we receive in life. Everybody speaks well of the dead. There is even a hesitation to speak “ill of the dead” from one's sworn enemies. Amazingly, your enemies are able to recall better aspects of your character. You never get that while living. Even when the dead are spoken of in a disapproving manner, it is usually considered poor taste. Let them rest in peace! You get the picture. Alive, you are an asshole. Dead, you are affectionately recalled.
The lives of the dead are retroactively subject to change so that a “difficult woman” can be reconstructed as a “misunderstood perfectionist,” and a “dumb blonde with big boobs and small brains” can be transformed into a “victim of the patriarchy,” and a “psychotic nut” can suddenly be altered into a “sensitive artist.”
Sure, death seems like an inflated price to pay for respect, but remember that until she died, Marilyn Monroe was laughable. She was a luscious Hollywood parfait, her body parts viewed as much greater than her whole. The posthumous “unearthing” of Marilyn’s unacknowledged talent—her revision as feminist icon, as victim of a misogynistic, male dominated system would seem to be a sign of progress indeed.
People who commit suicide possess a wisdom that is lost to those who cling to life. It was the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre who invented Existentialism, a philosophy that articulates life’s nauseating emptiness, this big vacant nothing that all of us fight so hard against. But suicides are the people who have given up the battle. They are tired and they want to go to sleep. And as best as I can recollect, sleep is good for us.
Suicide has the added bonus of having a cult following: the fan club of self-destruction resulted in a Rolling Stone cover of Jim Morrison in one of his famous lizard-king poses with a caption that read, “He’s hot. He’s sexy. And he’s dead.” And let’s not forget the attention that Hendrix, Kurt and Elvis receive. They are more popular dead than alive. In fact, when the word that Elvis had died was received, one showbiz kibitzer said: “Good career move!” Elvis alive was a problem. Who wants an old and fat Elvis Presley? Elvis dead was a property.
Personally, I don’t take death seriously at all. We all have to go sooner or later, so why get all wound up over it. Let’s have fun. I don’t want any irritating weeping and self-serving grief at my funeral. When I shake off this mortal coil, I would prefer to have my life celebrated. I don’t want to be mourned. You knew it was coming. I would want to be recalled as a creative and humorous person. So in the spirit of that, let me tell you how I foresee my funeral:
First of all, I would insist in my will that the assembled are to wear Groucho Marx glasses and mustaches. This would include the individual who is to perform the eulogy. (Of course I would want any flattering acclamation to be followed by a debate as to its truth). I would want my widow to speak fondly of my sexual prowess...now that I’m a “stiff.”
Secondly, I want my body to be left to the care of taxidermy. I read somewhere modern practice of taxidermy incorporates many crafts: carpentry, woodworking, tanning, molding and casting. It also requires artistic talent, including the art of sculpture, painting and drawing. I can see my body being stuffed like a cute little teddy bear. At the funeral, I would want my corpse erected upright in a surfing pose—complete with a swimming suit and sunglasses. (I never did surf in life and I don’t think that a dead man’s last wishes should be denied).
Thirdly, I would prefer to have my wax-like carcass on permanent display at some museum. I prefer that a hand-crafted effigy to be buried in place of my actual cadaver. Most important, let's have some laughs.
Lastly, I would prefer to have Frank Zappa CDs playing at my funeral in place of that awful lame organ music so characteristic of some funerals. That shit bores me to death. In the words of Charles Frohman: "Why fear death? Death is only a beautiful adventure." I say make it a creative and humorous adventure! Death is not to be feared. It is one of the absolutes!
If you don’t find anything humorous about death, think of it as the Big Sleep. Still, everybody has to die. Such is life. Anyway, who wants to live forever? Is that really how you want to be remembered? That prick who just won’t die?
In famous last words, Lord Byron on his death bed was reported to have said: "Now I shall go to sleep. Good night."
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my clay mask project. the prompt was to incorporate symbols to create a mask that represent of god of something that you love. when decker said that, all i could think about was idolatry and paganism lol, and since there's only one god i worship and love, i decided to make a mask of jesus.
this is my representation of what jesus is like to me: he is the one who received all the pain on our behalf, but he's the one who conquered the death. his words and his truth is often suppressed by skepticism, atheism, hedonism, existentialism, etc; and he must take the price of our sins, thus suffering, so we won't have to. i represented this with the snake that's trying to suffocate him and shut his mouth and the thorn crown.
but another part of the gospel is that, through his obedience to death, or evil, he defeated it; and he is crowned king of kings. the snake that was trying to destroy him is now dead and lying on jesus's head, and he has flower halo around him as well as pearls. i perceived jesus's glory as beauty and used nature's beauty to adorn him.
i've been interested in theology, appologetics, etc, these days so my artwork definitely reflects that.
i really enjoyed this project, and i gave it to decker at the end because he's sculpture major and loves 3-d art works. hopefully this will serve as a reminder of me >:]
btw, if you have any opposing view or remarks or whatever, do share! i just love listening to and discussing other ppl's views though i may not be successful or though the discussion may not lead to an answer. i find it very interesting and worth seeking.
Le Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris, France
I headed south to le Cimetière Montparnasse. After the Paris churchyards closed in the 18th century, a full three quarters of a century before the English closed their urban churchyards, four great cemeteries were laid out to the north, east, south and west of the city. Pere Lachaise is the most famous, Montmartre the most aesthetically pleasing, but Montparnasse probably the most interesting. I spent about three hours and three hundred photographs pottering about. Some of the famous graves are easy to find because they are well documented, and visitors have placed tributes on them. For example, the first grave I went in search of, Samuel Beckett's, has metro tickets placed on it by visitors as a mark of having waited for something.
I already knew where Beckett's grave was, but two others in the same section were more difficult, as I did not have exact locations. I eventually found the grave of Phillipe Noiret, an actor I very much admired particularly for his role in my favourite film, Cinema Paradiso, but also for his role in Le Cop, which has criminally never had a DVD release with English subtitles. There were no public tributes on it, merely a plaque from his wife saying 'pour mon Cher Philippe' and a picture of a horse. While I was photographing it, four gendarmes, two men and two women, passed behind me and came across to see why I was photographing it. "Noiret!" exclaimed one of the men, and then "mais pourquoi le cheval?" wondered one of the women. But they didn't stop for me to explain, for I had read an article about Noiret about fifteen years previously in a copy of La Nouvelle Observateur while staying in a hotel in Boulogne, and I knew that he had bred horses in his spare time.
The other grave I had hoped to find in this section was that of Susan Sontag, but I couldn't track it down.
The joint headstone of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir is easily found by the main entrance, and I thought it rather sweet that they were remembered together. Despite all their efforts for existentialism and feminism, it was like a headstone in a quiet English churchyard which might have 'reunited' or 'together in eternity' inscribed on it. I think he wasn't pleasant company, and while she was certainly more intelligent than he was she made intellectual arrogance respectable. I photographed their headstone more out of interest than admiration.
Admiration was at the heart of my search for a gravestone lost in sections 6 and 7 which I think is not found often. It is for the surrealist photographer Man Ray. I was delighted to find it after barely 20 minutes searching. He designed it himself, and in his own handwriting into the cement it says 'unconcerned, but not indifferent', which could be taken as rebuff to Satre and his circle I suppose. Charmingly, beside it like the other half of a book is a photograph of him with his wife and the inscription 'Juliet Man Ray 1911-1991, together again'. Enough to leave De Beauvoir spluttering into her Pernod.
You can read my account of my travels at pariswander.blogspot.co.uk.
Le Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris, France
Jean-Paul Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism, and one of the leading figures in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. His work has also influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies, and continues to influence these disciplines. Sartre has also been noted for his open relationship with the prominent feminist theorist Simone de Beauvoir. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature and refused it, saying that he always declined official honors and that "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution".
Simone de Beauvoir was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist. While she did not consider herself a philosopher, Beauvoir had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory. Beauvoir wrote novels, essays, biographies, an autobiography, monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues. She is best known for her novels, including She Came to Stay and The Mandarins, as well as her 1949 treatise The Second Sex, a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism.
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I headed south to le Cimetière Montparnasse. After the Paris churchyards closed in the 18th century, a full three quarters of a century before the English closed their urban churchyards, four great cemeteries were laid out to the north, east, south and west of the city. Pere Lachaise is the most famous, Montmartre the most aesthetically pleasing, but Montparnasse probably the most interesting. I spent about three hours and three hundred photographs pottering about. Some of the famous graves are easy to find because they are well documented, and visitors have placed tributes on them. For example, the first grave I went in search of, Samuel Beckett's, has metro tickets placed on it by visitors as a mark of having waited for something.
I already knew where Beckett's grave was, but two others in the same section were more difficult, as I did not have exact locations. I eventually found the grave of Phillipe Noiret, an actor I very much admired particularly for his role in my favourite film, Cinema Paradiso, but also for his role in Le Cop, which has criminally never had a DVD release with English subtitles. There were no public tributes on it, merely a plaque from his wife saying 'pour mon Cher Philippe' and a picture of a horse. While I was photographing it, four gendarmes, two men and two women, passed behind me and came across to see why I was photographing it. "Noiret!" exclaimed one of the men, and then "mais pourquoi le cheval?" wondered one of the women. But they didn't stop for me to explain, for I had read an article about Noiret about fifteen years previously in a copy of La Nouvelle Observateur while staying in a hotel in Boulogne, and I knew that he had bred horses in his spare time.
The other grave I had hoped to find in this section was that of Susan Sontag, but I couldn't track it down.
The joint headstone of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir is easily found by the main entrance, and I thought it rather sweet that they were remembered together. Despite all their efforts for existentialism and feminism, it was like a headstone in a quiet English churchyard which might have 'reunited' or 'together in eternity' inscribed on it. I think he wasn't pleasant company, and while she was certainly more intelligent than he was she made intellectual arrogance respectable. I photographed their headstone more out of interest than admiration.
Admiration was at the heart of my search for a gravestone lost in sections 6 and 7 which I think is not found often. It is for the surrealist photographer Man Ray. I was delighted to find it after barely 20 minutes searching. He designed it himself, and in his own handwriting into the cement it says 'unconcerned, but not indifferent', which could be taken as rebuff to Satre and his circle I suppose. Charmingly, beside it like the other half of a book is a photograph of him with his wife and the inscription 'Juliet Man Ray 1911-1991, together again'. Enough to leave De Beauvoir spluttering into her Pernod.
You can read my account of my travels at pariswander.blogspot.co.uk.
Here's my darling Hughie. I took this the night (early morning) before I had to go back to uni. We were watching the Oscars on TV.
He hasn't even been in India for a week but it feels like so much longer! That's probably because so much has been going on here. I'm spending hours in the library - for instance, today I got to the library going up to 2pm, & left at about 7.45pm. That's basically six hours. SIX. & I didn't write a single word of my EuroNovel essay. I was actually working though. I had to reread The Dangeous Age - a book which on first reading I wasn't sure about, a week later I loved, and now (a month later) having had to reread it for my essay, I dislike. I'll probably like it once I've finished the essay. After that I read a chapter in Lucy Scher's essay about writing treatments, wrote my treatment, thought it was awful, sent it to my tutor, and included a panicky message along with it, detailing why it was awful.
I calmed down a bit after that, and started plotting out the shape of this essay. It was quite weird actually - it seemed as if the majority of people from my Euro Theatre seminar were in the library today! Probably doing the Euro Theatre essay, which I finished on Saturday at 3am! So, really, it was Sunday at 3am, but I'm still counting it as Saturday as I had yet to go to bed.
My Benny had to be taken to the vets last night. I was so worried. The last thing I remember before I went to sleep was crying into my pillow. Interestingly enough, I woke up this morning spitting blood. It appears I had a nosebleed, but one where the blood goes down the back and into your mouth, as there wasn't a bit of blood on my pillows. Still, it was disgusting and I spent a large portion of my morning gagging.
Doesn't my brother look sweet here? I think he does.
My Euro Novel essay is philosophical. Kinda. Sort of. This is my title right now: “Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.” With reference to at least two works studied, how far is Sartre’s 20th Century insight prefigured in the work of 19th Century European Novelists? However, seeing as I'm now writing on The Dangerous Age - a book written in the 20th Century - I'm going to have to change my title a little.
I think I'm going to start off my essay with a bit about Sartre & Existentialism, then move onto Anomie & Durkheim, then Marx's Theory of Alienation, and then Schopenhauer and his essay The World as Will and Representation. I'm not sure if they link it - I mean, in my plan they do, but I'm worried that I'm confusing bits of their arguments. Hopefully it'll work. I have between 4500-5500 words for this essay (due next Tuesday!), so I think I can do quite a bit with that.
OH, & yesterday my Mum came to visit! We had a long lunch in the afternoon, & then I had to go back to my lecture (on Caryl Churchill's The Skriker) which wasn't very good. Afterwards I went back and met my Mum at the Odeon to go and see The Artist, which I really liked. Of course, Uggie was brilliant. I totally started crying when my Mum had to go. I'm so tired and stressed and I'm exhausted from all the work in the library - I sat for practically three hours straight without getting up - and I want to be home with Benny, and my Mum and Dad.
Also, I got really upset about the lump on my neck today. Sometimes I get pissed off and self-pitying, and get all 'WHY ME?' about things. I think it's been building. I can feel the tears in my eyes. I just get angry that at 11 years old I got freakish sized breasts. I get angry that they pulled and contorted my body out of shape, that I've had agonising bouts of pain. I get angry that people don't realise how hard it is to move with them, and how they get in the way of my arms all the time. I try and correct my posture but I physically can't because they're too heavy. I hate that no matter how hard I try I just can't get my neck to line up with my back anymore. It just makes me so angry, and I think how much easier so many things would be if I didn't have them. I hate that my birthday this year will mark how I've been like this for 10 years. I hate how people have stared at me since I was a little girl, the way I've been treated, the lewd, disgusting things people have thought they could say to me because I was different. I hate how it's affected the way I think and act, the things I can do and the places I can go. It just makes me so angry that some freak of genetic nature could just happen to me. I then I cry about it angrily (like now), and then I get over it and remember that I'm a middle class white girl in Britain, with a loving family, a brilliant education, and a comfortable life, and think that really I don't have any right to complain about anything - I'm very lucky.
OH, & (sidenote!) I was out in the corridor, in the dark, and there was this bang of this door - like someone opening and shutting it - but there was no one there & it wasn't the wind & now I'm majorly paranoid.
Anyway, I better go blow my nose, twist my back about a bit, and try and read something to settle me down. I'll get up tomorrow and read my brother's blog, then I'm off to meet a potential new housemate who is interested in moving in next year. Hopefully she'll like us.
8 JUNE 13
I love the smell of books in the morning! I really hope that libraries don't become obsolete. Am I the only nerd left who still likes roaming through the shelves. I think of the library as this great massive brain with all the worlds knowledge, and each shelf is another dendrite. I really hate to see kids now days reading books on a kindle. It makes me sick. I think of my youthful nights spent flashlight in hand under the covers just itching to turn and get to the next page of whatever I was reading, and now they just don't get that same experience. Half the time they are playing games on their iPAD's anyways. Is this how the world ends...starting with a kindle???
This round I had to make 2 trips from the underground parking to up to the 2nd floor to haul more and more books. This round I had a total of 21! I checked out a few make-up books today because I need to finalize a look for the wedding and I needed some info on contouring and foundation. The rest of my haul was photography, cookbooks, fashion, and some books on existentialism, and two movies.
As far as I know, this is the largest library in the city. It's a total of six massive floors. They host everything here too from getting a passport, to art exhibits, to exercise classes, to mommy and mes, to job and computer literacy classes, teen and kids night, you name it. The only sucky thing is that you have to take the stairs. Well, you don't have to, there are elevators, but they are the slowest in history. They have demon stairs which are straight up. When I was a kid they used to have escalators here, but they broke all the time, so the city got fed up with the cost of fixing them and tore them all out in favor of stairs. It's all good when you go in there at first, but when you have 10 books---cookbook size in your hands and for some reason you decided to wear a long floor length maxi dress that you are one foot fall away from tumbling down the stairs in, yeah, not so much!
In total bummer news, half of me is sick. My tonsil on my right side is swollen and the lymph nodes in my neck on the same side are tender to the touch. I've had tonsillitis and every single possible respiratory illness possible going back to the third grade at least twice, so this is by no means unusual, but it is making swallowing food painful so I'm probably going to go the way of the smoothies soon.
Andrei Platonovich Platonov was a Soviet Russian novelist, short story writer, philosopher, playwright, and poet. Although Platonov regarded himself as a communist, his principal works remained unpublished in his lifetime because of their skeptical attitude toward collectivization of agriculture (1929–1940) and other Stalinist policies, as well as for their experimental, avant-garde form infused with existentialism. His famous works include the novels Chevengur (1928) and The Foundation Pit (1930).
Early life and education
Platonov was born in the settlement of Yamskaya Sloboda on the outskirts of Voronezh in the Chernozem Region of Central Russia. His father was a metal fitter (and amateur inventor) employed in the railroad workshops and his mother was the daughter of a watchmaker. He attended a local parish school and completed his primary education at a four-year city school and began work at age thirteen, with such jobs as an office clerk at a local insurance company, smelter at a pipe factory, assistant machinist, warehouseman, and the railroad. Following the 1917 Revolution, he studied electrical technology at Voronezh Polytechnic Institute. When Civil War broke out in 1918 Platonov assisted his father on trains delivering troops and supplies and clearing snow.
Early career
Meanwhile, Platonov had begun to write poems, submitting them to papers in Moscow and elsewhere. He was also a prolific contributor to local periodicals. These included Zheleznyi put ("Railroad"), the paper of the local railway workers' union; the Voronezh Region Communist Party newspapers Krasnaia derevnia ("Red countryside") and Voronezhskaia kommuna ("Voronezh commune"); and Kuznitsa, the nationwide journal of the "Smithy" group of proletarian writers.
From 1918 through 1921, his most intensive period as a writer, he published dozens of poems (an anthology appeared in 1922), several stories, and hundreds of articles and essays, adopting in 1920 the pen-name Platonov by which he is best-known. With remarkable energy and intellectual precocity, he wrote confidently across a range of topics including literature, art, cultural life, science, philosophy, religion, education, politics, the civil war, foreign relations, economics, technology, famine and land reclamation, and others. It was not unusual around 1920 to see two or three pieces by Platonov, on quite different subjects, appear daily in the press.
He has also been involved with the local Proletcult movement, joined the Union of Communist Journalists in March 1920, and worked as an editor at Krasnaia Derevnia ("Red countryside"), and the paper of the local railway workers' union. in August 1920, Platonov was elected to the interim board of the newly-formed Voronezh Union of Proletarian Writers and attended the First Congress of Proletarian Writers in Moscow in October 1920, organized by the Smithy group. He regularly read his poetry and gave critical talks at various club meetings.
In July 1920, Platonov was admitted to the Communist Party as a candidate member on the recommendation of his friend Litvin (Molotov). He attended Party meetings, but was expelled from the Party on 30 October 1921 as an "unstable element". Later, he said the reason was "juvenile". He may have quit the party in dismay of the New Economic Policy (NEP). like a number of other worker writers (many of whom he had met through Kuznitsa and at the 1920 writers' congress). Troubled by the famine of 1921, he openly and controversially criticized the behaviour (and privileges) of local communists. In spring, 1924 Platonov applied for re-admission to the Party, offering reassurance that he had remained a communist and a Marxist, but he was denied then as on the next two occasions.
In 1921 Platonov married Maria Aleksandrovna Kashintseva (1903–1983); they had a son, Platon, in 1922, and a daughter, Maria, in 1944.
In 1922, in the wake of the devastating drought and famine of 1921, Platonov abandoned writing to work on electrification and land reclamation for the Voronezh Provincial Land Administration and later for the central government. "I could no longer be occupied with a contemplative activity like literature", he recalled later. For the next years, he worked as an engineer and administrator, organizing the digging of ponds and wells, draining of swampland, and building a hydroelectric plant.
Chevengur, The Foundation Pit and For Future Use
When he returned to writing prose in 1926, a number of critics and readers noted the appearance of a major and original literary voice. Moving to Moscow in 1927, he became, for the first time, a professional writer, working with a number of leading magazines.
Between 1926 and 1930, the period from NEP to the first five-year plan (1928–1932), Platonov produced his two major works, the novels Chevengur and The Foundation Pit. With their implicit criticism of the system, neither was then accepted for publication although one section of Chevengur appeared in a magazine. The two novels were only published in the USSR during the late 1980s.
In the 1930s, Platonov worked with the Soviet philosopher Mikhail Lifshitz, who edited The Literary Critic (Literaturny Kritik), a Moscow magazine followed by Marxist philosophers around the world. Another of the magazine's contributors was the theoretician György Lukács and Platonov built upon connections with the two philosophers. A turning point in his life and career as a writer came with the publication in March 1931 of For Future Use (″Vprok″ in Russian), a novella that chronicled the forced collectivisation of agriculture during the First Five Year Plan.
According to archival evidence (OGPU informer's report, 11 July 1931), Stalin read For Future Use carefully after its publication, adding marginal comments about the author ("fool, idiot, scoundrel") and his literary style ("this isn't Russian but some incomprehensible nonsense") to his copy of the magazine. In a note to the publishers, the Krasnaya nov monthly, Stalin described Platonov as "an agent of our enemies" and suggested in a postscript that the author and other "numbskulls" (i.e. the editors) should be punished in such a way that the punishment served them "for future use".
In 1933, an OGPU official Shivarov wrote a special report on Platonov. Attached were versions of The Sea of Youth, the play "14 Red Huts" and the unfinished "Technical Novel". The report described For Future Use as "a satire on the organizing of collective farms," and commented that Platonov's subsequent work revealed the "deepening anti-Soviet attitudes" of the writer.
Official support and censure
In 1934, Maksim Gorky arranged for Platonov to be included in a “writers' brigade” sent to Central Asia with the intention of publishing a collective work in celebration of ten years of Soviet Turkmenistan. (Earlier that year, a collective work by over 30 Soviet writers had been published about the construction of the White Sea Canal.) Platonov’s contribution to the Turkmen volume was a short story titled “Takyr” (or “Salt-flats”) about the liberation of a Persian slave girl. Platonov returned to Turkmenistan in 1935 and this was the basis for his novella Soul (or Dzhan). Dzhan is about a “non-Russian” economist from Central Asia, who leaves Moscow to help his lost, nomadic nation called Dzhan, of rejects and outcasts possessing nothing but their souls. A censored text was first published in 1966; a complete, uncensored text only in 1999.
In the mid-1930s Platonov was again invited to contribute to a collective volume, about rail workers. He wrote two stories: "Immortality", which was highly praised, and "Among Animals and Plants", which was severely criticized and eventually published only in a heavily edited and far weaker version.
In August 1936, The Literary Critic published "Immortality" with a note explaining the difficulties the author had faced when proposing the story to other periodicals. The following year, this publication came under criticism in Krasnaya Nov, damaging Platonov's reputation. In 1939, the story was republished in the intended collective volume, Fictional representations of Railway Transport (1939) dedicated to the heroes of the Soviet railroad system.
Platonov published eight more books, fiction and essays, between 1937 and his death in 1951.
Stalin's ambivalence and Platonov's son
Stalin was ambivalent about Platonov's worth as a writer. The same informer's report in July 1931 claimed that he also referred to the writer as "brilliant, a prophet". For his part, Platonov made hostile remarks about Trotsky, Rykov, and Bukharin but not about Stalin, to whom he wrote letters on several occasions. "Is Platonov here?" asked Stalin at the meeting with Soviet writers held in Moscow at Gorky's villa in October 1932 when the Soviet leader first called writers "engineers of the human soul".
In January 1937, Platonov contributed to an issue of Literaturnaya gazeta in which the accused at the second Moscow Show Trial (Radek, Pyatakov and others) were denounced and condemned by 30 well-known writers, including Boris Pasternak. His short text "To overcome evil" is included in his collected works. It has been suggested that it contains coded criticism of the regime.
In May 1938, during the Great Terror, Platonov's son was arrested as a "terrorist" and "spy". Aged 15 years old, Platon was sentenced in September 1938 to ten years imprisonment and was sent to a corrective labour camp, where he contracted tuberculosis. Thanks to efforts by Platonov and his acquaintances (including Mikhail Sholokhov), Platon was released and returned home in October 1940, but he was terminally ill and died in January 1943. Platonov himself contracted the disease while nursing his son.
During the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945), Platonov served as a war correspondent for the military newspaper The Red Star and published a number of short stories about what he witnessed at the front. The war marked a slight upturn in Platonov's literary fortunes: he was again permitted to publish in major literary journals, and some of these war stories, notwithstanding Platonov's typical idiosyncratic language and metaphysics, were well received. However, towards the end of the war, Platonov's health worsened, and in 1944 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. In 1946, his last published short story, "The Return," was slammed in Literaturnaya Gazeta as a "slander" against Soviet culture. His last publications were two collections of folklore. After his death in 1951, Vasily Grossman spoke at his funeral.
Platonov's influence on later Russian writers is considerable. Some - but not all - of his work was published or republished during the 1960s' Khrushchev Thaw.
In journalism, stories, and poetry written during the first post-revolutionary years (1918–1922), Platonov interwove ideas about human mastery over nature with scepticism about triumphant human consciousness and will, and sentimental and even erotic love of physical things with fear and attendant abhorrence of matter. Platonov viewed the world as embodying at the same time the opposing principles of spirit and matter, reason and emotion, nature and machine.
He wrote of factories, machines, and technology as both enticing and dreadful. His aim was to turn industry over to machines, in order to "transfer man from the realm of material production to a higher sphere of life." Thus, in Platonov's vision of the coming "golden age" machines are both enemy and savior. Modern technologies, Platonov asserted paradoxically (though echoing a paradox characteristic of Marxism), would enable humanity to be "freed from the oppression of matter."
Platonov's writing, it has also been argued,[by whom?] has strong ties to the works of earlier Russian authors like Fyodor Dostoevsky. He also uses much Christian symbolism, including a prominent and discernible influence from a wide range of contemporary and ancient philosophers, including the Russian philosopher Nikolai Fedorov.
His Foundation Pit uses a combination of peasant language with ideological and political terms to create a sense of meaninglessness, aided by the abrupt and sometimes fantastic events of the plot. Joseph Brodsky considers the work deeply suspicious of the meaning of language, especially political language. This exploration of meaninglessness is a hallmark of existentialism and absurdism. Brodsky commented, "Woe to the people into whose language Andrei Platonov can be translated."
Elif Batuman ranked Soul as one of her four favorite 20th century Russian works. (Batuman is author of The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them and was Pulitzer Prize finalist for her novel The Idiot.)
Novelist Tatyana Tolstaya wrote, "Andrei Platonov is an extraordinary writer, perhaps the most brilliant Russian writer of the twentieth century".
Each year in Voronezh the literature exhibition is held in honour of Platonov, during which people read from the stage some of his works.
The style and subject matter
One of the most striking distinguishing features of Platonov's work is the original language, which has no analogues in world literature. It is often called "primitive", "ungainly", "homemade".
Platonov actively uses the technique of ostraneny, his prose is replete with lexical and grammatical "errors" characteristic of children's speech.
Yuri Levin highlights Platonov's characteristic techniques:
syntactically incorrect constructions, such as verb+place circumstance. «Think on head», «answered... from his dry mouth», «recognized the desire to live into this fenced-off distance».
redundancy, pleonasm. «Voschev... opened the door to space», «his body was thin inside the clothes».
extremely generalized vocabulary. "Nature", "place", "space" instead of specific landscape descriptions. «Prushevsky looked around the empty area of the nearest nature», «an old tree grew... in bright weather».
active use of subordinate clauses about the cause (“Nastya ... hovered around the rushing men, because she wanted to”), as well as subordinate clauses about purpose (“It's time to eat for the day's work”). Moreover, they are often superfluous or logically unmotivated.
active use of typical Soviet bureaucracies, often in an ironic way (“confiscate her affection”), but rarely.
According to the researcher Levin, with the help of these turns, Platonov forms a "panteleological" space of the text, where "everything is connected with everything", and all events unfold among a single "nature".
In the works of Andrey Platonov, form and content form a single, indissoluble whole, that is, the very language of Platonov's works is their content.
Among the key motives of Platonov's work is the theme of death and its overcoming. Anatoly Ryasov writes about Platonov's " metaphysics of death». Platonov in his youth came under the influence of Nikolai Fedorov and repeatedly refers to the idea of raising the dead. In the minds of his characters, it is associated with the coming arrival of communism.
Tribute
A planet discovered in 1981 by Soviet astronomer L.G. Karachkina was named after Platonov.
Works
Novels
Chevengur – 1928 (1972)
The Foundation Pit – 1930 (1969)
Happy Moscow [de] (unfinished) – 1933–1936 (1991)
Short fiction
"The Motherland of Electricity" – 1926
"The Lunar Bomb" – 1926
The Sluices of Epifany (novella) – 1927
"Meadow Craftsmen" – 1928
"The Innermost Man" – 1928
"Makar the Doubtful" – 1929
For Future Use (novella) – 1930 (1931)
The Sea of Youth (novella) – 1934 (1986)
Soul, or Dzhan (novella) – 1934 (1966)
"The Third Son" – 1936
"Fro" (short story) – 1936
"Among Animals and Plants" (short story) – 1936
"The Fierce and Beautiful World" – 1937
The River Potudan (collection of short stories) – 1937
"Immortality" – 1936, 1939
"The Cow" – 1938 (1965)
"Aphrodite" – 1945
"The Return" or "Homecoming"– 1946
Other
Blue Depths[29] (verse) – 1922
The Barrel Organ (play) – 1930
The Hurdy Gurdy (play) – 1930 (1988)
Fourteen Little Red Huts (play) – 1931 (1988)
Father-Mother (screenplay) – 1936 (1967)
English translations
The short story collection The Fierce and Beautiful World, which includes his most famous story, "The Potudan River" (1937), was published in 1970 with an introduction by Yevgeny Yevtushenko and became Platonov's first book published in English translation. During 1970s, Ardis published translations of his major works, such as The Foundation Pit and Chevengur. In 2000, the New York Review Books Classics series republished The Fierce and Beautiful World with an introduction by Tatyana Tolstaya. In 2007, New York Review Books published a collection of newer translations of some of these stories, including the novella Soul (1934), "The Return" (1946) and "The River Potudan". This was followed by a new translation of The Foundation Pit in 2009, in 2012 by Happy Moscow, an unfinished novel (not published in Platonov's lifetime), and in 2023 a new translation of Chevengur.
The Fierce and Beautiful World: Stories by Andrei Platonov, introduction by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, E. P. Dutton, 1970 (tr. Joseph Barnes)
The Foundation Pit, a bi-langued edition with preface by Joseph Brodsky, Ardis Publishing, 1973 (tr. Mirra Ginsburg)
Chevengur, Ardis Publishing, 1978 (tr. Anthony Olcott)
Collected Works, Ardis Publishing, 1978 (tr. Thomas P. Whitney, Carl R. Proffer, Alexey A. Kiselev, Marion Jordan and Friederike Snyder)
Fierce, Fine World, Raduga Publishers, 1983 (tr. Laura Beraha and Kathleen Cook)
The River Potudan, Bristol Classical Press, 1998 (tr. Marilyn Minto)
The Foundation Pit, Harvill Press, 1996 (tr. Robert Chandler and Geoffrey Smith)
The Return and Other Stories, Harvill Press, 1999 (tr. Robert Chandler and Angela Livingstone)
The Portable Platonov, New Russian Writing, 1999 (tr. Robert Chandler)
Happy Moscow, introduction by Eric Naiman, Harvill Press, 2001 (tr. Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler)
Happy Moscow, introduction by Robert Chandler, New York Review Books, 2012 (tr. Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler)
Happy Moscow, introduction by Robert Chandler, Vintage Classics, 2013 (tr. Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler)
Soul, Harvill Press, 2003 (tr. Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler)
Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida, Penguin Classics, 2005, (tr. Robert Chandler and others). Includes two important stories by Platonov: "The Third Son" and "The Return"
Soul and Other Stories, New York Review Books, 2007 (tr. Robert Chandler with Katia Grigoruk, Angela Livingstone, Olga Meerson, and Eric Naiman).
The Foundation Pit, New York Review Books 2009 (tr. Robert Chandler, Elizabeth Chandler and Olga Meerson).
Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov, Penguin Classics, 2012 (tr. Robert Chandler and others). Includes Platonov's subtle adaptations of traditional Russian folk tales.
Fourteen Little Red Huts and Other Plays, Columbia University Press, 2016 (The Russian Library) (ed. by Robert Chandler; tr. by Robert Chandler, Jesse Irwin, and Susan Larsen; with notes by Robert Chandler and Natalya Duzhina)
Chevengur, trans. Elizabeth Chandler and Robert Chandler (New York Review Books, 2023)
a mosque near ground zero? America is discussing; in Germany Islamophobia is in discussion too because a new book is published ... - comment by Rita Banerji, Calcutta: organized religion will never be the solution to a just and equal human society. - compare my www.life.com/timeline/6951/islamophobia "Timeline" at LIFE.com
Yaaaaay I love this place! So cheap! Man those people do not have the best social skills. But they sure know books, lol.
Anyway, I got Soseki Natsumi's I Am A Cat & Kokoro, Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep (excited!), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (is that the one to start with? I forget...) & Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamozov AGAIN. Ugh. Anyone want it? I'm going to keep a list of my current book collection in my phone from now on.
BETWEEN REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING
Finiteness & Eternity
Admont abbey – Museum of contemporary art
6 September to 4 November 2012
Curator: Michael Braunsteiner
Birth, life and death, remembering, fading and forgetting: the boundaries and the spaces in between. That is the subject of this exhibition. Some areas of the museum display works from the Abbey’s own holdings, drawing on the wealth of objects available. Others reveal the subject naturally inherent in them in the manner of a zoom. Different genres begin to communicate with each other. Past, present and future interweave:
In the furnishings and books of the baroque library and in the museum of natural history, you can find all of the questions of “Remembering and Forgetting” that interest us – and quite probably several answers, too. In the museum of contemporary art, current art on the topic communicates with historical books. In P. Gabriel Strobl’s museum of natural history, stuffed animals, ethanol-preserved specimens, countless plants and insects appear to be alive – and yet they are all long dead.
Only human intervention has saved the specimens from decay and rot. The fight against the ravages of time is also evident in the museum of art history. We try to preserve the finest art works for as long as possible, in most cases for many years and even centuries. But not for ever. Against the backdrop of the philosophy of existentialism, the paintings and prints of Hannes Schwarz (b. 1926) explore the depths of this important topic.
The baroque columned hall presents the multimedia experience of the Dramatic Poem, generally believed to be unperformable, to the music of Robert Schumann’s “Manfred”. The poem is based on a text by Lord Byron, originally conceived as an Anti-Faust. This work, directed and visualised by media artist Johannes Deutsch in 2010, and only performed three times at the Düsseldorfer Tonhalle, is concerned with a man who believes his life to be at an end, begging to be able to forget and finally dying from grief. Original drafts and storyboards give an insight into the creation of this total work of art.
Everything has an expiry date. Without exception. And in the end? What then?! We human beings are all different. Some believe that it’s all over then. Others say they will be reborn into this transient world. Christians believe and hope – believe in God and hope for eternal life after death. And some believe quite different things. Everyone thinks that they know that they are right. What do you think?
Humankind has pondered these questions from the very beginning. They are focal topics above all in religion, philosophy, science and art. Admont Abbey with its richly varied museum and library is the ideal place to explore the most burning, timeless and topical questions of our human existence.
Le Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris, France
I headed south to le Cimetière Montparnasse. After the Paris churchyards closed in the 18th century, a full three quarters of a century before the English closed their urban churchyards, four great cemeteries were laid out to the north, east, south and west of the city. Pere Lachaise is the most famous, Montmartre the most aesthetically pleasing, but Montparnasse probably the most interesting. I spent about three hours and three hundred photographs pottering about. Some of the famous graves are easy to find because they are well documented, and visitors have placed tributes on them. For example, the first grave I went in search of, Samuel Beckett's, has metro tickets placed on it by visitors as a mark of having waited for something.
I already knew where Beckett's grave was, but two others in the same section were more difficult, as I did not have exact locations. I eventually found the grave of Phillipe Noiret, an actor I very much admired particularly for his role in my favourite film, Cinema Paradiso, but also for his role in Le Cop, which has criminally never had a DVD release with English subtitles. There were no public tributes on it, merely a plaque from his wife saying 'pour mon Cher Philippe' and a picture of a horse. While I was photographing it, four gendarmes, two men and two women, passed behind me and came across to see why I was photographing it. "Noiret!" exclaimed one of the men, and then "mais pourquoi le cheval?" wondered one of the women. But they didn't stop for me to explain, for I had read an article about Noiret about fifteen years previously in a copy of La Nouvelle Observateur while staying in a hotel in Boulogne, and I knew that he had bred horses in his spare time.
The other grave I had hoped to find in this section was that of Susan Sontag, but I couldn't track it down.
The joint headstone of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir is easily found by the main entrance, and I thought it rather sweet that they were remembered together. Despite all their efforts for existentialism and feminism, it was like a headstone in a quiet English churchyard which might have 'reunited' or 'together in eternity' inscribed on it. I think he wasn't pleasant company, and while she was certainly more intelligent than he was she made intellectual arrogance respectable. I photographed their headstone more out of interest than admiration.
Admiration was at the heart of my search for a gravestone lost in sections 6 and 7 which I think is not found often. It is for the surrealist photographer Man Ray. I was delighted to find it after barely 20 minutes searching. He designed it himself, and in his own handwriting into the cement it says 'unconcerned, but not indifferent', which could be taken as rebuff to Satre and his circle I suppose. Charmingly, beside it like the other half of a book is a photograph of him with his wife and the inscription 'Juliet Man Ray 1911-1991, together again'. Enough to leave De Beauvoir spluttering into her Pernod.
You can read my account of my travels at pariswander.blogspot.co.uk.
French postcard by Editions du Globe (EDUG), nr. 191. Photo: Studio Harcourt, Paris.
French actress and chanson singer Juliette Gréco (1927) was the muse of the existentialists such as Jean-Paul Sartre. Later she became the protégée of film mogul Darryl F. Zanuck, who cast her in his films.
For more postcards, a bio and clips check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Le Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris, France
Michèle Arnaud was born Micheline Caréon in 1919 in Toulon, and died in 1998 in Maisons-Laffitte in the suburbs of Paris.
She was a French singer, producer, and director, the mother of the singer Dominique Walter and the photographer Florence Gruère. Arnaud was awarded a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur and Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. She was the first entrant for Luxembourg in the first ever Eurovision Song Contest.
Michele Arnaud and Serge Gainsbourg on YouTube.
I headed south to le Cimetière Montparnasse. After the Paris churchyards closed in the 18th century, a full three quarters of a century before the English closed their urban churchyards, four great cemeteries were laid out to the north, east, south and west of the city. Pere Lachaise is the most famous, Montmartre the most aesthetically pleasing, but Montparnasse probably the most interesting. I spent about three hours and three hundred photographs pottering about. Some of the famous graves are easy to find because they are well documented, and visitors have placed tributes on them. For example, the first grave I went in search of, Samuel Beckett's, has metro tickets placed on it by visitors as a mark of having waited for something.
I already knew where Beckett's grave was, but two others in the same section were more difficult, as I did not have exact locations. I eventually found the grave of Phillipe Noiret, an actor I very much admired particularly for his role in my favourite film, Cinema Paradiso, but also for his role in Le Cop, which has criminally never had a DVD release with English subtitles. There were no public tributes on it, merely a plaque from his wife saying 'pour mon Cher Philippe' and a picture of a horse. While I was photographing it, four gendarmes, two men and two women, passed behind me and came across to see why I was photographing it. "Noiret!" exclaimed one of the men, and then "mais pourquoi le cheval?" wondered one of the women. But they didn't stop for me to explain, for I had read an article about Noiret about fifteen years previously in a copy of La Nouvelle Observateur while staying in a hotel in Boulogne, and I knew that he had bred horses in his spare time.
The other grave I had hoped to find in this section was that of Susan Sontag, but I couldn't track it down.
The joint headstone of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir is easily found by the main entrance, and I thought it rather sweet that they were remembered together. Despite all their efforts for existentialism and feminism, it was like a headstone in a quiet English churchyard which might have 'reunited' or 'together in eternity' inscribed on it. I think he wasn't pleasant company, and while she was certainly more intelligent than he was she made intellectual arrogance respectable. I photographed their headstone more out of interest than admiration.
Admiration was at the heart of my search for a gravestone lost in sections 6 and 7 which I think is not found often. It is for the surrealist photographer Man Ray. I was delighted to find it after barely 20 minutes searching. He designed it himself, and in his own handwriting into the cement it says 'unconcerned, but not indifferent', which could be taken as rebuff to Satre and his circle I suppose. Charmingly, beside it like the other half of a book is a photograph of him with his wife and the inscription 'Juliet Man Ray 1911-1991, together again'. Enough to leave De Beauvoir spluttering into her Pernod.
You can read my account of my travels at pariswander.blogspot.co.uk.
Le Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris, France
I headed south to le Cimetière Montparnasse. After the Paris churchyards closed in the 18th century, a full three quarters of a century before the English closed their urban churchyards, four great cemeteries were laid out to the north, east, south and west of the city. Pere Lachaise is the most famous, Montmartre the most aesthetically pleasing, but Montparnasse probably the most interesting. I spent about three hours and three hundred photographs pottering about. Some of the famous graves are easy to find because they are well documented, and visitors have placed tributes on them. For example, the first grave I went in search of, Samuel Beckett's, has metro tickets placed on it by visitors as a mark of having waited for something.
I already knew where Beckett's grave was, but two others in the same section were more difficult, as I did not have exact locations. I eventually found the grave of Phillipe Noiret, an actor I very much admired particularly for his role in my favourite film, Cinema Paradiso, but also for his role in Le Cop, which has criminally never had a DVD release with English subtitles. There were no public tributes on it, merely a plaque from his wife saying 'pour mon Cher Philippe' and a picture of a horse. While I was photographing it, four gendarmes, two men and two women, passed behind me and came across to see why I was photographing it. "Noiret!" exclaimed one of the men, and then "mais pourquoi le cheval?" wondered one of the women. But they didn't stop for me to explain, for I had read an article about Noiret about fifteen years previously in a copy of La Nouvelle Observateur while staying in a hotel in Boulogne, and I knew that he had bred horses in his spare time.
The other grave I had hoped to find in this section was that of Susan Sontag, but I couldn't track it down.
The joint headstone of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir is easily found by the main entrance, and I thought it rather sweet that they were remembered together. Despite all their efforts for existentialism and feminism, it was like a headstone in a quiet English churchyard which might have 'reunited' or 'together in eternity' inscribed on it. I think he wasn't pleasant company, and while she was certainly more intelligent than he was she made intellectual arrogance respectable. I photographed their headstone more out of interest than admiration.
Admiration was at the heart of my search for a gravestone lost in sections 6 and 7 which I think is not found often. It is for the surrealist photographer Man Ray. I was delighted to find it after barely 20 minutes searching. He designed it himself, and in his own handwriting into the cement it says 'unconcerned, but not indifferent', which could be taken as rebuff to Satre and his circle I suppose. Charmingly, beside it like the other half of a book is a photograph of him with his wife and the inscription 'Juliet Man Ray 1911-1991, together again'. Enough to leave De Beauvoir spluttering into her Pernod.
Scott McClure, scottmcclure, Argyle Project, argyle, www.argyleproject.org, Facebook, @argyleproject, Twitter, tweets, charity, charities, foundation, charitable, charitable foundation, @scott___mcclure, fear, philosophy, philosopher, Kant, Camus, Albert Camus, existential, Existentialism, existentialist, Pribram, Bohm, Einstein, Albert Einstein, relativity, general relativity, special relativity, quantum, quantum physics, quantum mechanics, quantum apocalypse, holographic universe, reality, Michio Kaku, Deepak Chopra, control, psychology, space-time, continuum, space-time continuum, space time, space time continuum, mind-body, mind body, schroedinger, schroedinger's cat, Heisenberg, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, uncertainty principle, Matrix, Vanilla Sky, Inception, Dead In The Water, deadinthewater.wordpress.com, superninjaspy.com,1988 Princeton, 952-486-3970, quantitative easing, bernanke, ben bernanke, aig, JP Morgan, chase, citi, citigroup, fx, foreign exchange, stocks, stock market, ETF, trade, day trade, 8, dollars, milestone, mind fuck, zen, zen master, risk, ideal, strategy, paper trading, risk tolerance, capital, unemployment, unemployed, support, career, profit, family, exotic, exotic derivative, binary, options, binary options, patience, greed, philanthropy, philanthropist, custody, child custody, Minnesota, economy, economic, economic crisis, crisis, Thailand, Phuket, education, education system, school, schools, college, colleges, university, universities, Bernie madoff, bernard madoff, science, scientist, intelligence, reggio Emilia, Howard, Gardner, theory, waldorf, Montessori, triarchic theory of intelligence, early childhood, early childhood education, ece, early childhood development, intellectual giftedness, intellectually gifted, gifted, talented, gifted talented, gifted & talented, gifted and talented, genius, iq, intelligence quotient, Mensa, determination, depression, depressed, new years resolution, freelance, freelance writing, freelance writer, to thine own self be true, philosophy of fear, there is no spoon, Chaucer, Sartre, Jean Paul Sartre, mind over matter, discovery, discovery channel, PBS, Michael talbot, theoretical physics, David Bohm, Bohm diffusion, aharonov Bohm effect, manhattan project, McCarthyism, Karl Pribram, holonomic brain theory, Alain Aspect, my god can beat up your god, belief, faith, god, religion, loyalty, fidelity, Christian theology, scriptures, Buddhism, truth, Abrahamic religions, golden rule, Muslim conquests, French wars of religion, crusades, reconquista, Salem witch, Richard Dawkins, mpr, NPR, midmorning, control yourself, civilized society, anger, pessimism, negativity, anxiety, paranoia, insecurity, jealousy, selfishness, despair, loneliness, self esteem, self confidence, bad faith, Eleanor Roosevelt, the only thing we have to fear, writer's block, Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky, Being and Nothingness! Tim Ferriss, 4HWW
Le Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris, France
I headed south to le Cimetière Montparnasse. After the Paris churchyards closed in the 18th century, a full three quarters of a century before the English closed their urban churchyards, four great cemeteries were laid out to the north, east, south and west of the city. Pere Lachaise is the most famous, Montmartre the most aesthetically pleasing, but Montparnasse probably the most interesting. I spent about three hours and three hundred photographs pottering about. Some of the famous graves are easy to find because they are well documented, and visitors have placed tributes on them. For example, the first grave I went in search of, Samuel Beckett's, has metro tickets placed on it by visitors as a mark of having waited for something.
I already knew where Beckett's grave was, but two others in the same section were more difficult, as I did not have exact locations. I eventually found the grave of Phillipe Noiret, an actor I very much admired particularly for his role in my favourite film, Cinema Paradiso, but also for his role in Le Cop, which has criminally never had a DVD release with English subtitles. There were no public tributes on it, merely a plaque from his wife saying 'pour mon Cher Philippe' and a picture of a horse. While I was photographing it, four gendarmes, two men and two women, passed behind me and came across to see why I was photographing it. "Noiret!" exclaimed one of the men, and then "mais pourquoi le cheval?" wondered one of the women. But they didn't stop for me to explain, for I had read an article about Noiret about fifteen years previously in a copy of La Nouvelle Observateur while staying in a hotel in Boulogne, and I knew that he had bred horses in his spare time.
The other grave I had hoped to find in this section was that of Susan Sontag, but I couldn't track it down.
The joint headstone of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir is easily found by the main entrance, and I thought it rather sweet that they were remembered together. Despite all their efforts for existentialism and feminism, it was like a headstone in a quiet English churchyard which might have 'reunited' or 'together in eternity' inscribed on it. I think he wasn't pleasant company, and while she was certainly more intelligent than he was she made intellectual arrogance respectable. I photographed their headstone more out of interest than admiration.
Admiration was at the heart of my search for a gravestone lost in sections 6 and 7 which I think is not found often. It is for the surrealist photographer Man Ray. I was delighted to find it after barely 20 minutes searching. He designed it himself, and in his own handwriting into the cement it says 'unconcerned, but not indifferent', which could be taken as rebuff to Satre and his circle I suppose. Charmingly, beside it like the other half of a book is a photograph of him with his wife and the inscription 'Juliet Man Ray 1911-1991, together again'. Enough to leave De Beauvoir spluttering into her Pernod.
You can read my account of my travels at pariswander.blogspot.co.uk.