So many of the aspects that make up our total human experience we did not chose for ourselves. We are bound to this single globe suspended in space. Upon this planet we inhabit only its surface--utilizing only its upper crust. We can only breathe if we remain within the slim 10 miles between the surface of the earth and the lower atmosphere. At an altitude above 62,000 feet, our blood would boil within our veins. On the surface of the planet, we have the elements, hostile temperatures, and rough seas to contend with, confining nearly every living person to continents between 60 degrees north or south latitude.

When it comes to our lives and our health, we have made such strides in medicine, we are lead to believe that an end is coming to all sicknesses and illnesses. It would seem that throughout antiquity researchers are pushing back against death and dying with magnificent wonder and miracle. Let's be reminded, that we still cannot cure the common cold, nor can we add years to one's life. The life expectancy for humans is highest in Japan with an average of 82 years. Here in the USA it is 77. (CIA World Factbook)

We may stand on the coastline or the edge of a cliff, or the edge of our health, but without the assistance of machinery or equipment and a fair bit of technology, we are confined to where we are. Although we believe that we are bigger, stronger, or more transcendent (more independent) that we truly are, the reality of human experience is that we are very small, very fragile, and quite insignificant in our small environment. We may be addicted to stretching beyond ourselves and our limits to reach further than we ever have in human history, but the reality that returns with all of the record-breaking data is that we are tethered here with no where to go, and no business being elsewhere.

So we go as far as we can and imagine. We demand and expect more than we use to. We give ourselves the impression that science will allow us to soon become inhibitors of a new planet, a new reality, an eternal, immortal existence. When we arrive at what seems to be a boundary, perceived or genuine, we aim to discover a new means for pushing ourselves beyond it.

And so it is with knowledge.

When we speak about being confined by space, our answer is technology and astrophysics. When we speak about being confined by water, we engineer and propel. When we speak about limits in human understanding, we respond with science and reason. These are controlled and man-made. There is no room here for mystery--no room for metaphysics.

I say that when we approach a limit to human reason, that would be a perfect place for mystery. That would be uncomfortable for me if I were a believer in what we freely choose. But when it comes to being confined, limited, and when it comes to uncomfortable matters of human existence that I did not choose, the mystery is not only a last resort, it must also be a first resort. I must recognize that so much of who and where I am has nothing to do with science and reason.  Neither does it have anything to do with free will.  Human existence never teaches me that I am free. Why would I turn to these matters as a last resort? Why would I look to them as my only resort?

I must become comfortable in the recognition that I am confined and limited with science and reason.

Secondly, I must become comfortable that I am who and where I am without exercising an ounce of free choice.

From here it is most scientific and most reasonable to express wonder and celebrate mystery. If I am to cross an ocean or planet-hop with my afternoons, (I am speaking metaphorically about breaching the known), then true understanding not only ends with, but also must begin with a mystery--a sea of the infinite--a reality far greater than me or any of my limited ability to understand it. I swim in it, and I am comfortable doing so.

I loved Heidegger's interpretation of Nietzsche and Sloterdijk's reaction to both of them.

I dreamed of writing a great work and proving that there is a new powerful wave emerging in Romanian Culture, a force of young people ready to take over and align everything with Europe and surpass it courtesy of our heightened sense of being alive.

Well, you live and learn... to pick your battles. Still, I posted this to show the amazing artwork i discovered here.

I have a new meditation to sleep to and this one seems to send me to interesting, rather than disturbing places (so less meat eating, being attacked, wars, etc...) I wonder, is it the difference in tone and manner? The man in the disturbing one is rather forceful and instead of music my room is filled with the white noise of tape hiss.

And speaking of tape hiss, how about some dirty, desolate beach imagery. This song inspired by the Camus novel, The Stranger, an exploration of the meaning of truth, fate and justice. Which reminds me of a Krishnamurti quote, "the moment you follow someone you cease to follow truth". It's been many years since I've read The Stranger, so I'm not certain how well that quote sits in this context, but it keeps coming back to me - truth. Finding truth, understanding truth, what is it exactly? Inexactly?

On recommendation by my compact government friend, I have been reading Camus. Though we (he!) called it quits on 'us' romantically, we remained 'friends', a kind of electronic pen pals, in that we email each other daily. He has become a good literary duelling partner, and we debate constantly, he demeans me on literature, philosophy, government and all things academic, I respond by taking the deceptive self deprecating route and consistently calling him short (in both the vertical and terse sense). I am reading Camus because apparently the fact that I was reading Nietzsche was just abhorrent, as my abbreviated friend pointed out - 'He is the worst writer of all times, which is a shame, as he has quite interesting things to say.' The same could not be said for Martin Amis (another of my current selections), who was just described as a 'pretensious knob'. I deferred that argument to another day, because I had to read Camus, so that I did not go into battle unarmed!

So, frustrated, I popped into Foyles (I love this place!) and bought the shortest edition I could find, 'The Outsider', I read it over a couple days (stopping for tennis, champagne, meetings with my new director and the Olympic opening ceremony) and have remained frustrated ever since. So much so, that I have immediately started rereading the volume as soon as I cast my eye over the final period and that arrogant afterword in which Camus politely explains for the unenlightened amongst us that Mersault (the protagonist) 'represents the only Christ that we deserve'.  He says it is meant paradoxically. I think he is just smug.

Now it must be pointed out here that I know nothing of Philosophy. I will not enter into discussion or dispute about it because I just cannot be bothered sometimes to explain to people what I mean (I suppose in a way that makes me much like Mersault). I like the way Philosophy makes me feel, and I like to turn it over quietly in my mind. When people bombard me with their opinions on one thing or another, I politely concede, but only insomuch as I believe that we are all entitled to our opinions, and to hold them as our absolute truths, and to convince others otherwise is to try to stem the flow of what should be a rushing of ideas in ones own life-stream, which propels our life and experience onward into waves of discovery and learning. I know we should be influenced at times and through that influence we shape and remake our 'Truths'. I just sometimes want to feel that influence gently and would rather do my influencing more delicately. (None of the preceding is true...those that know me would know that I live in a constant state of strongly felt opinions and firmly held beliefs. I can be forthright and overpowering, and though I hold individuality and freedom of thought and opinion to be the utmost Truth, I will still firmly and unshakably speak my own mind, always with the proviso 'Now this is what I believe and does not make it absolute Truth but...' But some days, I cannot be arsed!)

The writing in The Outsider is frustrating. It is a simple story of a man who moves from indifference to desperation when he realises his own ass is on the line because in a moment of apathy (and some unexplained or unexplored effect of the sun) he commits a murder. It is described as a random act of violence (though I think otherwise) and he is prosecuted on the fact that he feels no remorse...he did not even cry at his mother's funeral (tenuous...yes). Camus describes him as a man 'with a passion for an absolute and for truth'. His aloof truths certainly change in the second half of the book when he realises fully that his head and his body were to become two completely separate truths...his sentences, short and lacking interest or depth in the first, become longer, more flowery, more insightful, more critical. He certainly feels more, the closer to death he becomes. In that way, he is ordinary to me. An ordinary man, without interest in anything, who lacks that interest because he feels entitled to this life...and at the moment that living is threatened, then he wants to examine his existence...or at least to rage against those who would end it or even to question it. Though Camus disguises the depiction of emotion through purely biological descriptions (the rushing of blood, the hearing of the beating of the heart in the head), they are still, nonetheless, emotions and those emotions only arise when his freedom is confiscated. I am provoked by Mersault and by Camus, in fact I am so angry that I cried at the end of the book. And so I have to read it again...to understand why.

Camus (this one in particular and I'm not sure my delicate sensibilities (!) could handle another) does give me insight into my miniature friend (but that is another discussion). It gives me a strange insight into myself as well and my love of the dramatic and all things experienced at full throttle and in its largest sense possible. It makes me look at the past 6 weeks or so of my life, since I've finished my contract and before I start my new one, and at how (or if) I have filled the time. It brings to mind the way that I undergo each new happening as if it is the most important thing that can ever happen to me (though it may hold no significance to any onlooker, and may in fact be utter banality).

I may come back to this, or I may not. Mersault would be proud...

As if this great outburst of anger had purged all my ills, killed all my hopes, I looked up at a mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world. And finding it so much like myself, in fact so fraternal, I realised that I'd been happy, and that I was still happy. For the final consummation and for me to feel less lonely, my last wish was that there should be a crowd of spectators at my execution and that they should greet me with cries of hatred.

Glenn Greenwald's salon.com article on Ivins

and now THIS from Huffpo's fabulous Chris Kelly.

The old atheists maintained that belief in God is not true. The new atheists maintain that belief in God is not good. The atheists' problem, though, is that however much they attack belief in God, their own worldview lacks all appeal. They get hung up on the last remaining absolute: Atheism is not beautiful. It is so depressing.

and it just gets better after that. He talks about Albert Camus (he shared the existential nihilism of the Joker) and Pullman's Golden Compass books. Very good stuff.

Lançamento em breve.

Aguarde.

"Ho risposto che non si cambia mai di vita, che del resto tutte le vite si equivalgono e che la mia, così com'era, non mi dispiaceva affatto"

Le 6 août 1945 au petit matin un bombardier B-59 avec aux commandes le colonel Paul Tibbets.

Il a donné à son appareil le nom de sa mère, Enola Gay.

La bombe est larguée à 8h15 heure locale.

70.000 personnes sont tuées, plusieurs dizaines de milliers sont grièvement brulées et beaucoup d'autres mourront des années plus tard des suites des radiations.

Le 9 août une seconde bombe est larguée par le B-59 de Charles Sweeney sur Nagasaki.

40.000 peronnes sont tuées sur le coup et des dizaines de milliers d'autres gravement brûlées.

Le jeune romancier et philosophe Albert Camus écrit dans Combat, le même jour : "Le monde est ce qu'il est, c'est-à-dire peut de chose. C'est ce que chacun sait depuis hier grâce au formidable concert que la radio, les journaux et les agences d'information viennent de déclencher au sujet de la bombe atomique.

On nous apprend, en effet, au milieu d'une foule de commentaires enthousiastes, que n'importe quelle ville d'importance moyenne peut être totalement rasée par une bombe de la grosseur d'un ballon de football.

Des journaux américains, anglais et français se répandent en dissertations élégantes sur l'avenir, le passé, les inventeurs, le coût, la vocation pacifique et les effets guerriers, les conséquences politiques et même le caractère indépendant de la bombe atomique.

Il est permis de penser qu'il y a quelque indécence à célébrer une découverte qui se met d'abord au service de la plus formidable rage de destruction dont l'homme ait fait preuve depuis des siècles... (Combat, 8 août 1945).

http://herodote.net/histoire/evenement.php?jour=19450806

http://www.dissident-media.org/infonucleaire/edito_60ans.html

my fav section is the upper tenor vocals in the middle. nice harmonies.

i approve.

Boken Sotnikaw handler forresten vel så mye om eksistensielle moralske spørsmål som om krigen i seg selv. De to hovedpersonene, partisanene Sotnikaw og Rybak, blir tatt til fange av polizeiene, det lokale medløperpolitiet. Bykaw var sterkt inspirert av Albert Camus og Jean-Paul Sartre, og alle som har lest sistnevntes Muren, vil kjenne igjen kjellercellen. Bykaws beskrivelse av polizeiene er forøvrig meget interessant. For ved å fokusere på nazistenes lokale lakeier klarer han å vise hvor kompleks konfliktsituasjonen er under en okkupasjon. På denne måten klarer Bykaw å gjøre de eksistensielle dilemmaene ekstra vanskelige. Her er det ikke nasjonalitet eller språk som avgjør hvem som er venn eller fiende, det er evnen til å treffe de riktige moralske valgene når det kreves.

Boken koster over 300 kroner, så jeg bør kanskje tenke meg om før jeg ber folk om å løpe å kjøpe, men det ser iallefall ut til at Bokklubben har det billigste alternativet.

Hier,  lorque  Jean Daniel ,  sur  une radio parlait  de lui,  de nous,  de Camus

" l ' important c'est que nous soyons déchirés"

 (Camus , serrant la main de jean Daniel à propos de leur Algérie);

 le "notre" est compliqué dans cette situation.

Au cœur du centre géographique de la France, je suis plusque jamais au coeur de moi même , non que je me sente ré -enracinée, loin de là, aucun lien de quelque nature qu ' il puisse être ne m 'a encore délivrée de ma terre de naissance , de cette appartenance originelle,avec laquelle je ne peux être ue ligotée Non, je me sens plus que jamais ancrée dans cette Algérie qui m 'est aujourd'hui inconnue mais que personne ne pourra jamais ensevelir dans mon âme .Le temps a fait que venant de la même souche, nous soyons d' une certaine façon tout sauf des étrangers .

para depois resfriá-las na lua?

Que os cavalos flamejantes de Apolo pudessem na carruagem carregar pedras...

Inscrito no tempo segue o homem de Camus:

Fatalista e revoltado.

***

Sísifo

A noite cai no dia
cai em si
é dia

O dia sai da noite
sai de si
é noite

Ronald Polito: SOLO (Rio de Janeiro, Sette Letras, 1996).

Ronald Polito nasceu em Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, em 5 de abril de 1961. Publicou quatro livros de poesia: Solo (Rio de Janeiro, Sette Letras, 1996), Vaga (Mariana, Edição do autor, 1997), Intervalos (Rio de Janeiro, Sette Letras, 1998), De passagem (São Paulo, Nankin Editorial, 2002), além de uma plaquete com poemas gráficos, Objeto (Mariana, Edição do autor, 1997). É historiador e tradutor. Junto com o poeta Sérgio Alcides, traduziu o livro Poemas civis, do poeta catalão Joan Brossa. Mora atualmente em Tóquio.

I'm going to delineate three phases I went through with The Dark Knight. I didn't actually go through three distinct phases--as with everything, these categories and definitions and limitations are mere approximations of the true, gradual, undefinable, limitless experience--but they're useful for what I want to do here, so bear with me.

The first phase, beginning shortly after the film started and continuing for several hours after walking out the theater, was the "holy fuck, that was awesome" phase. I sat in my car with a huge grin on my face, incapable of being distracted or annoyed by anything, completely overcome with joy at the experience of the film. I went straight from the movie to a party with many people who had seen just seen it that day or the night before (this was the Friday it was released) and spent a lot of time discussing the general awesomeness of the film as well as specific moments. (The scene where the Joker makes the pencil disappear seemed to be a favorite. I agree.)

The second phase, in which I first started to really think about what the film actually said, began to some extent also while I was still watching the movie, but it didn't really take hold until the initial high wore off some hours later. In talking with other people about the film--an important part of any real response to anything, I think--I realized that most people found the Joker absolutely terrifying. I agreed that Ledger's performance was amazing, and added that the Joker's writing was as well, but I wasn't terrified by him, exactly. I couldn't quite say it at the time (as in, I literally was unable to say it, not that I wouldn't say it), but the truth was that I liked the Joker. Not as in liked him as a villain, but as in liked him better as a person than Batman or Dent or Gordon.

Yes, the Joker is a monster and a mass-murderer. And as a pacifist I'm even more horrified by that than most people. But what I found much more terrifying than any of the Joker's actions in the movie was the conclusion. Gordon and Batman agree to cover up Dent's transformation into Two-Face, culminating with an official funeral that extolls Dent as a marvelous, God-given hero unfairly taken from the city's people by evil men, even as Batman, the real savior, is forced on the run. Gordon and Batman decide, without any input from anyone else, that to reveal the truth about Dent would destroy the morale of the population and prevent Gotham City from ever being saved. In essence, what they decide is, the people of Gotham City can't handle the truth!

The character famous for stating that line is the villain of that film and rightly so. I don't mean to say that Batman and Gordon are villains, or that the Joker is a hero (far from either). However, to me, what they do is nonetheless profoundly wrong. Batman and Gordon, without input from anyone else, decide the fate of the entire population of Gotham City--originally a pastiche of New York City, in the new films based on Chicago, but either way a population of millions. Of course, as a vigilante, this is not a new idea to Batman. The essence of a vigilante is a person who takes the fates of others into their own hands without anyone giving their consent to do so. (Which is why I find superhero stories fascinating: they're always about vigilantes, which makes everything they do, to my eyes, wrong. And yet they're worshipped not just as heroes, but as beyond normal heroes, as superheroes.)

The Joker does worse things, of course. He kills people, which affects a person's fate a great deal more than lying to them does (although to believe that in all the fighting he does Batman never kills anyone is something of a stretch, and perhaps the one great lie of superheroes that this movie maintains. I suppose we'll have to wait for Watchmen to see that torn down.) And Batman never pretends that he's trying to protect anything other than people's lives: the film's emphasis that Batman is not a hero is not a joke or modesty or irony or anything other than simple truth.

But in the Joker's speeches there is, to my ears, more truth than in the entire rest of the film combined. When the Joker speaks of people's reliance on "the plan", their calm composure even in the face of absolute destruction as long as it has been foretold in advance, their stubborn insistence on loyalty to institutionalized structures even when those structures are blatantly corrupt and damaging, there are no lies that come from his mouth. When he speaks of himself as "an agent of chaos", he is absolutely honest about what his purpose in life is--to destroy and bring about change. (I think that destruction is in fact the opposite of change, because everything is always changing, no matter how much we try to stop them, except in death, but that's a digression I won't get into.) During his interrogation the Joker comes across as positively Nietzschean when he explains that he's not insane, just "ahead of the curve", having already realized the futility of conventional life; and to an extent the Joker could be compared to Nietzsche's oft-demonized Übermensch, in the sense of the man who destroys the rules of conventional society so that he can build anew from the ashes.

The Joker, of course, never makes it to the rebuilding part and has no interest in doing so. But the lie of the Übermensch is the idea that the new order he creates is any better, any more true or real or right than the old. And to be honest, there is a philosophical archetype the Joker embodies even more: Sisyphus, Camus's Absurdist hero. "I'm like a dog chasing a car," the Joker explains at one point: "If I ever caught one, I wouldn't know what to do with it!" Does this analogy sound closer to anything other than Sisyphus, the man who spends eternity attempting to roll a boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back to the bottom each time he nears the summit? And if Camus was right that all of us are Sisyphus, all our lives are rolling boulders (and I think he is right, more or less), then this Joker is one of the most honest characters in fiction. He's not insane--just ahead of the curve.

Then, when I sat down to write my review for The Dark Knight on my Facebook Flixter application (I have an unhealthy obsession with writing such reviews), the third phase of my thinking coalesced. I was troubled by my apparent siding with a mass-murderer over the do-gooding hero. And I fixated on one reference, another line by the Joker, describing his relationship with Batman: "It's like an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object." I was familiar with the paradox, and I realized that was the problem with the conflict in this film, and the reason I was so profoundly disturbed by its resolution.

The Dark Knight is a film about absolutes. The Joker, as demonstrated, represents absolute chaos--he has no purpose, no goals, no reason, no structure, no system to anything he does; he is undefinable and uncategorizable; he is simply a force, an existence, and nothing more can be said beyond that. And Batman, the key, is the opposite. He's not just a force for justice--and he really isn't a force for justice, to my mind--but the representation of absolute order. Such a classification may seem odd at first--he's a vigilante, isn't he? How can he represent order?--but I think the imposition of order is always to some degree unwanted and arbitrary. Order, structure, systems, "the plan": these are things that we are not born into but find forced onto us by others.

I don't mean to say that order, society, civilization is some entirely foreign entity or that we'd be better off without them; I think the only reason order, society, civilization, structure, systems, "the plan" has any meaning, any power over us is because we give it power. (We construct our own prisons.) What I mean to say is that, we begin without order. We begin with space and existence. For some unknown reason, we search for order, meaning, purpose, structure, a "plan"; and in searching for it, we construct it. We create what we want. It's an illusion, it's not real, it's just a fairy tale (maybe, sort-of). But to perpetuate the illusion, to maintain it, we have to impose the order everywhere. The structure has to apply to everything or it applies to nothing; if it doesn't work in one place, or one situation, we have to explain why it doesn't, with more order, more structure, another "plan".

Bruce Wayne declares in The Dark Knight that Batman "has no limits". He can't, because he is Order personified, the ultimate embodiment of the structure Bruce Wayne desires to impose on criminals, the people of Gotham City, and reality itself. He knows that reality doesn't work that way--he admits that Bruce Wayne has limits--but also understands that order is not based on reality. It's above reality and beyond it. It is what he wants it to be. And so Batman has no limits. Batman will not kill--ever. Batman will not stop--ever. And when reality threatens the Order that Batman has constructed, Batman changes reality. Harvey Dent did not murder six people including two police officers. He was not broken by the Joker. He was a hero. This is what is necessary for Order to survive. The people can't handle the truth.

The Joker is not a hero. He murders dozens of people throughout The Dark Knight, and he is dedicated to an absolute that cannot be maintained. Even if, as Alfred says, some men can't be reasoned with, some men "just want to watch the world burn", it can't be maintained. Eventually the Joker would have faltered, because all men have limits. Batman is not a hero. He is dedicated to an absolute that cannot be maintained. Eventually Bruce Wayne will falter, because all men have limits. I don't think they're villains, either; the labels "hero" and "villain" are just another false order. But I do believe that people are people, and not absolutes, not personifications, not embodiments, not anything other than simple men and women trying to make their way. ("Nothing here is what it seems. The Alliance is not some evil empire, he isn't the plucky hero, this is not the grand arena." Name that film, my favorite of all time.) And that's the real conflict at the core of The Dark Knight. That's where both Batman and the Joker go wrong. They try to be more than men, and they're not.

The resolution of a story is meant to bring about some change in the conflict. Not necessarily the good guys win, or even the bad guys win, but some kind of change in the status quo. At the end of The Dark Knight, is Bruce Wayne any more cognizant of the wrongness of what he does? I'm not sure. The recognition of his own limits and the separation of that from Batman suggests that he is, but the cover-up surrounding Dent and the concluding narration suggests otherwise. And that's what terrified me about The Dark Knight. Not the Joker, but Batman, who is just as wrong, and still free.

"Medan Rieux lyssnade till glammet som steg från staden, påminde han sig om att denna glädje alltid var hotad. Ty han visste det som den jublande skaran var okkunig om och som man kan läsa om i böcker, nämligen att pestens bacill aldrig vare sig dör eller försvinner, att den i decenier kan slumra i möbler och källare, koffertar, näsdukar och pappersluntor och att den dag måhända skulle komma, då pesten, människorna till olycka och varnagel, ånyo skulle väcka sina råttor och sända dem ut att dö i en lycklig stad.

Det finns alltid risk att ondska drabbar mänskligheten och om den gör det hjälper inga botemedel utom solidariteten, mänskligheten och kärleken, ungefär så läser jag Pesten.

Pesten får 4 av 5 M

MMMM

21/06/2008, São Paulo - Thomaz Ianelli: Pintura Absoluta

21/07/2008, São Paulo - Viagens e deslocamentos pela literatura

Curso com Ricardo Lísias.

Uma abordagem da literatura a partir do momento em que se apropriou do movimento como um fator decisivo para sua constituição. Serão analisados relatos de viagens, internas ou imaginárias, de grandes escritores do século XX ou contemporâneos, relacionando-os  com suas respectivas obras. Dentre eles estão: Joyce, Kafka, Camus, Proust e Virginia Wolf.

Programação:
- 21 de julho:  Os pequenos passeios que mudaram a literatura: James Joyce e Franz Kafka

- 22 de: julho: Os escritores viajantes do século XX: Albert Camus e Elias Canetti

- 23 de julho: As viagens forçadas: Primo Levi e J.M. Coetzee

- 24 de julho: Viagens interiores: Marcel Proust e Virginia Woolf

The author traces the pessimistic tradition through the Dionysian pre-Socratics, Rousseau, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Camus (as well as some lesser known philosophers). He suggests that the pessimistic tradition has led to two chief responses (an active one, embodied by people like Nietzsche and Camus, and a passive one, embodied by misanthropic quietists like Schopenhauer).

I especially like the way the book meditates, not just on philosophy, but on theatre, art, and literature. The author, for example, spends time addressing some key aspects of Camus' novels, and Camus' ideas about the nature of theatre. The author also devotes time to Nietzsche's "Birth of Tragedy," which is a reflection on Greek theatre. There is also a chapter on Don Quixote, and aphorism as a literary genre. The book, in short, is a nutritious and wide-ranging meditation on the "pessimistic" philosophical tradition.

Pessimism, as characterized by the author, is simply looking at the world in an unblinkered fashion. That is, it is a place where life and consciousness is subject to time and chance, and without apparent purpose or direction. I think it is fair to say that Ecclesiastes might be another starting point for this perspective. In other words, our wishes frequently do not match what a world in flux can give us. By acknowledging this state of affairs, and not denying it with false optimism, we are free to engage in certain gestures of our own meaning-making (Camus) or withdrawal (Schopenhauer).

I thus think that this book is a good primer, not just to pessimism, but to existentialist and nihilistic philosophical traditions. It's difficult (in my mind) to neatly untangle them. It's hard to know what the cluster of "nihilistic," "Camus existentialist," and "pessimistic" impulses in western philosophy should be called.

The author of this book has chosen to call it "pessimism."

Here's the link to the book at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Pessimism-Philosophy-Joshua-Foa-Dienstag/dp/069112552X/ref=cm_cr-mr-title

Brassaï, taller de Picasso, 16 junio de 1944.

 De pie, de izquierda a derecha: J. Lacan, Cécile Eluard, P. Reverdy, Louise Leiris, Picasso, Zanie de Campan, Valentine Hugo, Simone de Beauvoir, Brassaï. Sentados, de izquierda a derecha: Sartre, Camus, Michel Leiris, Jean Aubier. 

Pablo Ruiz Picasso además de pintor, escultor, dibujante, grabador e ilustrador, fue escritor. (...)

Extractos del Prólogo a la traducción que Lorenzo Pareja y Patricia Venti realizan  de la obra teatral El deseo atrapado por la cola,  publicado en la bitácora El lugar que ocupo, de Patricia Venti.   

Fue el padre, con Mérope,

del dios marino Glauco. Se decía que había fundado los Juegos Ístmicos en honor a Melicertes, cuyo cuerpo había encontrado tendido en la playa del istmo de Corinto.

Fue promotor de la navegación y el comercio, pero también avaro y mentiroso. Recurrió a medios ilícitos, entre los que se contaba el asesinato de viajeros y caminantes, para incrementar su riqueza. Desde los tiempos de Homero, Sísifo tuvo fama de ser el más astuto de los hombres. Cuando Tánatos (la muerte) fue a buscarle, Sísifo le puso grilletes, por lo que nadie murió hasta que Ares vino, liberó a Tánatos, y puso a Sísifo bajo su custodia.

Pero Sísifo aún no había agotado todos sus recursos: antes de morir le dijo a su esposa que cuando él se marchase no ofreciera el sacrificio habitual a los muertos, así que en el infierno se quejó de que su esposa no estaba cumpliendo con sus deberes, y convenció a Hades para que le permitiese volver al mundo superior y así disuadirla. Pero cuando estuvo de nuevo en Corinto, rehusó volver de forma alguna al inframundo, hasta que allí fue devuelto a la fuerza por Hermes.

En el infierno Sísifo fue obligado a empujar una piedra enorme cuesta arriba por una ladera empinada, pero antes de que alcanzase la cima de la colina la piedra siempre rodaba hacia abajo, y Sísifo tenía que empezar de nuevo desde el principio (La Odisea, xi. 593). El motivo de este castigo no es mencionado por Homero, y resulta oscuro (algunos sugieren que es un castigo irónico de parte de Minos: Sísifo no quería morir y nunca morirá pero a cambio de un alto precio y no descansará en paz hasta pagarlo). Según algunos, había revelado los designios de los dioses a los mortales. De acuerdo con otros, se debió a su hábito de atacar y asesinar viajeros. También se dice aun después de viejo y ciego seguiría con su castigo. Este asunto fue un tópico frecuente en los escritores antiguos, y fue representado por el pintor Polignoto en sus frescos de Lesche en Delfos (Pausanias x. 31).

De acuerdo con la teoría solar, Sísifo es el disco del sol que sale cada mañana y después se hunde bajo el horizonte. Otros ven en él una personificación de las olas subiendo hasta cierta altura y entonces cayendo bruscamente, o del traicionero mar. Welcker ha sugerido que la leyenda es un símbolo de la vana lucha del hombre por alcanzar la sabiduría. S. Reinach (Revue archéologique, 1904) sitúa el origen de la historia en una pintura, en la que Sísifo era representado subiendo una enorme piedra por el Acrocorinto, símbolo del trabajo y el talento involucrado en la construcción del Sisypheum. Cuando se hizo una distinción entre la almas del infierno, se supuso que Sísifo estaba empujando perpetuamente la piedra cuesta arriba como castigo por alguna ofensa cometida en la Tierra, y se inventaron varias razones para explicarla.

Puedes leer más sobre Sísifo, la Filosofía, y Albert Camus, en: Filosofía/Mito de Sísifo, Albert Camus

Es bleibt etwas wie Verantwortung, aber die Frage nach dem was man Schuld nennt, hat sich aufgelöst. Und dennoch, oder gerade deswegen, trifft man immer wieder auf eine positive Färbung des Kampfes, des Aufbegehrens, trotz der Vorläufigkeit allen Tuns, das die Handelnden und der Leser zu erkennen meinen:

Denn man läßt in diesem Fall vermuten, daß diese guten Taten nur deshalb so viel Wert haben, weil sie selten vorkommen, und daß Bosheit und Gleichgültigkeit bedeutend häufiger die Beweggründe der menschlichen Handlungen sind. [..] Das Böse in der Welt rührt fast immer von der Unwissenheit her, und der gute Wille kann so viel Schaden anrichten wie die Bosheit, wenn er nicht aufgeklärt ist. Die Menschen sind eher gut als böse, und in Wahrheit dreht es sich gar nicht um diese Frage. Aber sie sind mehr oder weniger unwissend, und das nennt man dann Tugend oder Laster. Das trostloseste Laster ist die Unwissenheit, die alles zu wissen glaubt und sich deshalb das Recht anmaßt zu töten. Die Seele des Mörders ist blind, und es gibt keine wahre Güte noch Liebe ohne die größtmögliche Hellsichtigkeit. *

Und ein paar Seiten weiter, Tarrou im Gespräch mit dem Arzt Rieux:

"Eben habe ich Paneloux aufgefordert, sich uns anzuschließen."
"Und?" fragte der Arzt.
"Er hat überlegt und dann ja gesagt."
"Das freut mich", sagte Rieux. "Ich bin froh, daß er besser ist als seine Predigt."
"Alle Leute sind so", antwortete Tarrou lächelnd und zwinckerte Rieux zu, "sie müssen nur die Gelegenheit dazu haben." **

* * *

* Albert Camus, "Die Pest", Deutsche Übersetzung, 1962, Seite 78
** Ebenda, Seite 90