On the Fall of Rome [The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization, Bryan Ward-Perkins]
Stunned suprise! Can you belive it?
Sanshirō finds Hegel [Sanshirō, Natsume Sōseki]
Hegel is most definitely one of my favourite philosophers, someone I haven’t spent enough time reading and studying. It was a lovely suprise seeing Sanshirō discover him too! And what an awesome thing for Sōseki to write.
Ugla gives a knife-thrust to modernity, a blade lined by the world-bacterium [The Atom Station, Halldór Laxness]
I most certainly have my doubts about city-life and was happy to see that Laxness had his too. He writes on nature honestly and poetically, driven by his love of Icelandic myth and legends and traditions, and his deep respect for his lands and people. When I first read this, I had to stop and think. Could it be true? I asked myself. Have we really been infected by the world-bacterium? But then I wondered, Is this not an Appeal to Nature? Maybe. But if you go a layer deeper, you might say it was not so much that he mourned the loss of nature, but of the loss of his culture. Perhaps this world-bacterium is the relentlessly encroaching monoculture, fuelled by Globalism and the Western Power’s war-machine. Did Laxness see the future? Maybe he wondered, How can I save my culture? Maybe we should all wonder this.
