'read all about it! read all about it!'

'read all about it! read all about it!' Death is not the one who wastes lives, we are the ones who waste ourselves and for what precisely? All anxieties, presures, depressions, tensions, too much attention towards silly possessions, too many questions and only intentions which get us nowhere on the grand scale. Why so many preoccupations? No reasons. Simply foolish obsessions and a frail attempt to draw attention towards a ridiculous existence which feeds on aggression and paradoxically on compassion too. And what is hope then in this meaningless context? The fuel which keeps our rusty wheels continuously moving and moving and moving, yet going nowhere. No plans or direction, nor maps or ancient affections and certainly no connections with the future, our future, a future or any future at all...and the exceptions? What are the exceptions? Who are the exceptions? The fuel which oozes on the path and leaves a gleaming stain...the stain is the exception... the stains are exceptions which re-enact hope...hope is hope...hope creates hope...hope reifies hope and so the peculiar cyrcle goes on and on and on. The Hope factory is on the Death Boulevard, Purgatory Avenue. Let's hope the bureaucrats are not gonna close down the factory. On Death Boulevard, once Eden Avenue. 'read all about it! read all about it!'

A Letter from a letter to the letter by a letter ...

Running down the stairs whilst putting my watch on, trying to fit my left hand into my left sleeve, which appears to be trickier than one could think and trying extremely hard to fit books and a copybook into my bag and most importantly not to get killed whilst doing all these dangerous mannouveres whilst running like a demented lunatic down the stairs just cause our elevator hit menapause and decided not to work. So among this energy consuming and engagging process i still, hard to believe, i know, was visited by the pestering thought of checking my little shy and damaged mailbox or whatever is left of it.No, wait, i might be lieing there since i left home for the first time,since then, everytime i did come back home, since then i had been iniciated in the beautiful tradition of checking the mailbox for post and not just dully checking it but checking it with the eyes of a child who is expecting to receive a panda bear for Christmas,by the way mom i'm still waiting for that panda and due to the missunderstanding u gave me a toy one ehhhh... oh, well i digress, getting back to the story, i stopped all the chaos i have created around just for a couple of seconds and in perfect stillness i raised on my toes and i peeked into the crack between the wall and the mailbox, i gazed into the darkness of the metal mailbox and i was abssorbed by that momentary darkness,it felt like home,it felt like peace and anxiously my eyes swept the content of the shy metal mailbox. when i started to think that exercise was useless and tedious my eyes accidentally found the thin envelope hidden under the wall of the mailbox leanning towards the crack but trying hard not to fall out from it's home. It joys me to state that the fight of the envelope did not last long and tadaaam i came to its rescue! Getting back to my usual state of creative chaos i snatched the letter from the shy metal mailbox, looked curiously at it though long before i knew who was it from and so i looked at it just to have it confirmed. I did put it carefully in my 'un philosophe...' book which i bought in Paris for 3 euros only and which i planned to read with great enthusiasm ever sine the day i bought it, and then i ran outside to hopefully get on time to the inspiring friday event. In the minibuss i decided to open the letter and when i saw the card i laughed...because the card had an eiffel tower on it...a pretty parisian card which i took out of my parisian book and guess what the card said made in the uk,so did the envelope, the writing said loud and clear written by a bulgarian who probably was an englishman passionate and active in the literal world in the victorian era, i grant you that! So i guess i just wanted to say thank you for the lovely card and yes it amussed me greatly and yes you did ruin my childhood fairytale stories and yes i do regret showing the Freud book to you that day in the library and i miss you crazy person who punches walls and constantly tries to ruin other people's childhood!

The Broken Ballerina

The Broken Ballerina

Pearl tears elapse from the ceramic skies
The velvet cheek is in it’s crimson sighs
Revealing now and then no reason why
Should such a caramel sculpture be alive.

No flash of hope,
No scent of life,
No phosphorous truth
Would unconstrain
This turquoise dragonfly

The salty liquids of her bitterness
Just slough away as years do slip
She executes her happiness
The memory once impregnated on her lip.

In trying to escape the guillotine
Her veins are drunk with cherry liquor
Her head is lost in the pure muslin
As her thoughts go much deeper…

A little story I came up with during my sleepless nights. Warning! Warning! Not the typical Jane Austen Love Story one would like to read...

One Peculiar Encounter

                                  

After my friend got out at her station, after a day of laughter and planning our trip to the uk, I suddenly became silent and the joy which filled me like some old forgotten elixir of live which would perfectly fill the content of an old French perfume vessel, all the bottled up magic , all the dreams and aspirations and all the  childish joy perished in the wind of an autumn evening and no such odor of  recent memories was to be sensed by my spirit again. As my eyes wondered through the glass at the so well known road  a thought sprang up in my mind, this road  that I have known since I gained consciousness was an ancient route for my brain, however few did I know that it was always a refreshing one for my spirit, never have I grown tired of observing the same buildings which were  a constant reminder of the communist era my country went through, the same trees amongst which our ancestors fought for a language, a culture, a belief, freedom and hope and the same old dusty road, sprinkled with reminiscences of all sorts, however the one which prevailed was the earliest one, the one in which I was walking home with my grandfather and telling him in minute detail what adventures did I live and what dangers and joys await for me tomorrow in school, wishing profoundly not to be attacked with a math’s test whilst being only in  preparatory grade. And, of course, my poor grandfather had to listen to all the oozing excitement of a 7 year old girl. But even though the buildings, the trees and the road seem almost to be left intact, the people are the only ones subjected to change. Yet, paradoxically we never change, do we?

Whilst mentally feeling somewhere far away so far  even my own self would not have been able to give me an answer whereabouts ‘I’ wondered, my body was still in the minibus gazing at the typical scenery. When the vehicle suddenly stopped stupefied I thought about what I have read this morning, pertaining to “Nausea” Sartre’s masterpiece … “ Is it I who have changed? If it isn’t I, then it’s this room, this town, this nature; I must choose.” Then I meditated on how right and wrong he was at the same time whilst remembering that “I think it’s I who changed: that’s the simplest solution” hmm he went for Occam’s Razor “also the most unpleasant. But I have to admit that I am subject to these transformations.” And whilst being on the verge of embarking upon a new debate with my own self I noticed a man came in. I was very much intrigued by him, as he seemed to have this peculiarity and mistery which tempted me to go and speak to him and ask him to tell me the story of his life. I was wrapped tightly by this veil of mist and mistery by this breath of fresh air which however still seemed to appear essentially as an antique soul of  a wonderer. He was dressed with good taste, hence that seemed peculiar for my country and he had a backpack which appeared to hide a lifetime history of an extremely interesting personality and I felt drawn to him, as if some magnetic force had conquered my body soul and mind, I was entirely captivated by him. He spoke a literary Romanian language with a peculiar accent it wasn’t a gross Moldovan accent, neither it was a posh Romanian one, the one which they speak in the capital, it appeared to be something in the middle and that aspect captivated me even more. He asked the driver to explain to him whereabouts was Korolenco street and I felt that a laugh wanted to burst out of me for no rational reason at all, Korolenco was the street I was living on . However tempting it was to laugh and blame hap for it’s twisted ways of torturing me I refrained myself from doing so and shared with the audience of the minibus only a timid smile, no more. Afterwards I got up and got closer to the door and made sure I asked loudly enough the minibus driver to stop at my station, which was now our station. The minibus stopped. Everyone went out and after making a couple of steps in the opposite direction, the peculiar man caught up with me and some woman who exited the minibus just after me and he asked if anyone knew where the local hospital for children was. The woman started to explain to him where to go and I just intervened abruptly and told him that I was going in that direction and I could show him where it is. He accepted straight away with a kind smile  and we discussed some minor details about the hospital and where it was situated just to make sure I knew which one was it. It was dark, certainly it did not feel like a darkness associated with a black pressuring feeling of a Chopin’s musical piece, no melodramatic exaltations involved. It was a darkness which emerged more like a cozy dark blue sky, a long and narrow street like the one you can experience only in Paris and the street lamps’ apricot light illuminating our way but keeping us still veiled in obscurity, in the eternal unknown of learned things and known places. However I did not indulge myself with some kind of cheap illusion of walking down romantic Paris with my prince charming or that sort of typical nonsense which is usually uttered by young girls ‘in love’, whatever love might signify to them and however they would define such a complex feelingthought* a made up word by me right now as I believe love is not only a feeling but  a product of the mind as well, hence I shall unite these words together as I also have no certainty whatsoever which one comes first, thought or feeling ?

Whilst only starting upon our journey I suddenly felt like a little girl walking alone, strolling down the streets at nights as if to keep fear out, to conquer the fear of darkness and he walked beside me. He got out his pack of cigarettes, took out a cigarette and lit it, he was smoking and my thoughts on what to say evaporated like the fumes from it’s cigarette and vanished into thin air due to my indecisiveness. For a couple of moments I was not paying much attention to him due to the cruel fact that I was desperately trying to focus on some subject which would be appropriate to be discussed by two absolute strangers which at some supernatural level felt drawn to walk down the same narrow street and utter at least something, nothing of great value or polemic, yet he must had observed my tortured and absent look and invaded by this peculiar feeling that one acquires when speechless in the presence of a stranger, he probably decided to spare me and asked the most banal question ever, which I do not know of course how come did it slip my mind, he asked me how did I find the autumn evening and I, I meaning definitely not my rational part but my I don’t know what part , started to speak abundantly. Of course the nearest topic we could have jumped to after the coming of autumn was school/university. I alluded to the fact that my studies will start in October and he inquired how come and I replied I was studying in the UK at university, then followed the logical question what was I reading and I answered with some sense of great achievement that I was privileged to read English Literature and Modern Languages. He smiled at my reply and stated in a warm and kind manner that I must be then acquainted with Shakespeare’s plays. I confirmed his assumption and said that I know the damn Romeo and Juliet by heart; however I made sure he knew I preferred Hamlet and did not think exceedingly much of Measure for Measure. He laughed and accepted my preferences as if they were his own. Then after gaining more courage I confessed that his accent confused me and I asked him if he was not from here. He smiled as if in a reassuring way and confirmed that indeed he wasn’t from here however he wasn’t from Romania, he was from somewhere in the middle, I had the same timid smile but which in a split second metamorphosed into a conceited one. I complemented him on his Romanian and he added instantly that one speaks Romanian as one pleases and he chose to do so and also mentioned in a rather laconic way  that he must because of his job. I was intrigued to find out more about his life, however my mobile phone rang, and of course it was my mom, who always calls me at the most inappropriate and worst moments of all. I answered really fast and told her straight away that I was close to our house and of course she had to ask some superfluous details about some presents for my cousins and I thought I was talking with the speed of light as the road ahead now seemed so short and too narrow, I ended skillfully the conversation, he slowly moved nearer to me due to the fast cars approaching and the narrow street which during two decades never did it seem that narrow and sweetly suffocating me as it did during that autumn evening. I was infected by this recurrent desire of putting my arms around his neck and remaining like that forever, as an ephemeral marble statue which would dissipate in the wind’s presence and at the same time I simply could not find any rational explanation to the sharp flow of emotions cascading upon my frail soul. Straight away he resumed the conversation, seeming keen to continue it no matter what course it would follow and then I asked him insistently what did he work as and he answered again in a sort of modest and laconic way that he was an actor and a drama teacher. That stroke me as an interesting fact which of course came as a surprise, as I was certain actors do not present symptoms of shyness, however he did seem to be a good psychologist and certainly a man who belonged to the world of arts, a riddle, a mystery to be unveiled which needs no unveiling as it would lose its charms upon the human specie. And here it was the crucial point where we had to turn on a dark alley where nothing could be seen and I felt a shiver crossing my whole body and the absolute dark triggered in my mind a series of horrid images, which one is bound to experience and I thought hmmm what if he turned out to be some criminal who actually knew the most obscure and not habited places. A state of tension was prevailing the previous cheerful and warm conversation, he also did not feel at ease and we both knew why, as the same ideas have been projected on the canvas of our absent minds, in those moments I felt anguish, yet after a minute of consideration I resumed the conversation and the anguish returned even stronger whilst going downhill to embrace the absolute darkness of an abandoned piece of sleeping land. Nervously he started playing with his lighter switching it on and off and on and off again, then he resumed the conversation and asked me how was England. The first thing which departed from my mouth was a speech I did not rationally prepare beforehand and did not even give it a though as one should before uttering something utterly silly. I told him the atmosphere in England is nicer the people are extremely different in manner and most important in thought, and that they are not as judgmental as our society is. He turned his head towards me, he got closer and the road was wide now. His smile suggested that he was pleasantly surprised and absolutely agreed with me, the way he spoke seemed to suggest that we thought alike and we were alike in thought. Now animated he told me a joke about Moldovan people on the same theme we have previously discussed. Whilst he was in the process of telling me the anecdote in a somewhat ecstatic manner I was trying to slow down in order to prolong the time spent together, as he seemed to have forgotten that we were approaching the gates of the hospital already. He finished his joke and I observed that he turned his head round and gazed at me as if waiting to see my reaction, I found the joke funny, a perfect pun on the typical self preoccupied Moldovan people who care more about their reputation rather than about the qualities which really matter and are unfortunately for them not made of matter, but linked with the spirit and not reified by the mind which steals substance from the soul sometimes. He did not stop walking; he continued and expected me to do the same. Yet I had to stop and return on my initial preplanned path-return home. I went as further as I could but suddenly in an abrupt manner I stopped and told him I cannot go in with him. He then realized our journey came to an end and enthusiastically with a kind of lost expression he regained speech and said goodbye adding at the end, with a gleaming hope in his eyes, that we shall see each other around. I said goodbye and went off. I did not turn to look back. On my way back home I rewound all that has happened and wanted to burst again into laughter, the same laughter I felt the urge to exteriorize before, I felt hopeless in front of hap, fate was teasing me, or maybe it was actually being kind to me… today I do not know what it meant, tomorrow I might or might not know, but some day I shall know the meaning of this universal scheming, or forget about it all, yet for the moment I shall learn my lesson…whatever there is to be learned!

My Personal Statement or the Manifesto of an Insomniac

What Literature and Language means to ME...
For me language and literature were always rooted in my soul, not merely school subjects but a light which guides one through life, the supremely civilizing pursuit, the spiritual essence of the social and cultural formation. At the age of four I developed an avid interest in literature: it was then that I learned to read and discovered mythological realms and alternative realities. As Jorge Louis Borges said 'Literature is a form of happiness' and nothing fills my heart like the ecstatic feeling of devouring the everlasting works compounded by the ardent alchemists of the word. I feel that a knowledge of languages greatly enhances the pleasure and relevance of literature to the individual and society. Only beautiful minds can inspire and lead a nation to beautify the world, and it is words which both shape the mind and allow it expression. Terrible wars and numerous atrocities have been triggered by ideas which metamorphosed into words and many have died defending them. The individual can fail, can be caught, killed and forgotten but even 1000 years later the idea, preserved in words, can revive, gain flesh again and still change the world. What enkindles me is that words can be reified and as Keats says 'Axioms are axioms only when proven on our veins' hence language and literature are the ones which intertwine the realm of reality and fiction. Most writers are inspired by the lives of the proletariat and focus on social issues and the relations between human beings, not on vague, abstract illusions but on a humanistic point of view that hope is buried inside us and it is only hope which can ultimately save humanity. Literature for me is not simply a matter of expressing one's creative urge; on the contrary it encapsulates a larger social, political and economic system. It should not be seen as an abstract universal label for an activity which was always the same in every culture and age. 'In literature, and perhaps in literature alone, a vital feel for the creative uses of language is still manifest, in contrast to the philistine devaluing of language and traditional culture apparent in mass society'. In my opinion the quality of a society's language and literature is the most telling index of the quality of its cultural and social life. A society which has ceased to value literature is one threatened to become extinct, as it secludes itself from the impulses which have sustained the best of human civilization. As I have tried to express above, my interest in literature and language is more than purely academic. I believe that merely the tongue of a country can unveil the psychology of people and their real nature. Language can account for a nation's comportment throughout the ages and vice-versa. Mihai Eminescu says that 'the most beautiful part of literature is the one you cannot translate' and I passionately pursue the idea of not just limiting one's study of a language to its grammar, but to seek and obtain a feeling for it. The languages' texture, tincture, taste and tune inspired me to develop more thoroughly my skills whilst analysing the written word. Especially after reading Hardy, Milton, de la Barca, Machado, Sartre and Gogol I could observe the marvellous result of the congenial amalgamation of profound thoughts and luxurious language. ...as it is precisely language and literature which is concerned with the finer feelings and it implies the contemplation of eternal truths and myriad beauties.

English Literature Yes or No ?

Thought people nowadays struggle a lot when they have to make the crucial decision- what course to read at Uni? So hopefully this post shall be useful for those who just can't make up their mind yet! Enjoy!

But... Why Study English Literature?

By PROF. RICK RYLANCE

So maybe you like like the idea of doing English at uni: reading great books and learning about language. You might still wonder what the point is of studying literature as an academic—what do English studies give to us, and what’s the goal of all that work? In this essay, Prof. Rylance talks about what the discipline of English studies means for him—and how you can decide what it means for you, too…

Rick Rylance is a former Professor of English at the University of Exeter and now Chief Executive of the Arts and Humanities Research Council.. He specializes in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and intellectual history, particularly in the Victorian and post-war periods.

The usual narrative of the development of English as a discipline is big on grand designs. In the 1860s Matthew Arnold thought that the appreciation of literature should supplant religion in providing spiritual nourishment in industrial life. F.R. Leavis, from the 1930s, continued this argument. He claimed that utilitarian values had so throttled the life force of twentieth-century culture, that it was only in reading really great literature that our moral and spiritual bearings could be recovered. More recently, the more politicised side of ‘literary theory’ (though in itself a beast with many shapes) proposed cultural criticism as a way of resisting ideological incorporation into the same social norms.

All of these views have had their impact across the education system. Arnold was an inspector of schools. Many Leavisites took their crusade from the varsity to the secondary school, where they worked as influential teachers or teacher trainers. Lately literary theory has made a slightly shy entry into the ‘A’ level curriculum.

Grand designs make good historical copy, and, at a personal level, can turn a career into a vocation. However, as an account of the discipline, they are aspirational rather than descriptive. Bringing purpose, direction, energy and commitment, they established a rationale for ‘doing English’ that many have found motivating and persuasive. But, alongside these strong, crusading narratives, English has always included a good deal of more mundane activity, a functional pedagogy of communication for instance, towards which some cultural missionaries have paid scant regard. There is something un-heroic about this aspect of English, a petty business that might detain preparations for the crusade.

In this piece I want to try to get away from heroic tales because I don’t believe them. Not being religious, I don’t need a substitute. And I do not believe that cultural criticism, any more than Leavisite habits of ‘feeling life’, brings salvation. Being a pragmatist (in the philosophical as well as the practical sense) I do not believe that there are any theories exempt from ideology or the claims of context and contingency. But I do believe that English is important and I want to go on working in it. Why?

I think this because I hold a cluster of beliefs about which I am prepared to argue – though not here in their entirety perhaps. I think, for instance, that great literary writing is important (though I don’t believe in a canon of ‘great works’ or authors), because aesthetic pleasure is an important resource in human culture and for human achievement. I think that the style of intensely dialectical, often unresolved exploration that characterises the intellectual achievement of major literary texts is a style of thinking appropriate to our times and human situation in which, as far as I can see, values are mainly provisional and consensual. I believe that the mode of knowledge with which we engage when we discuss literature – open, discursive, provisional, revisable, intersubjective – is emblematic of the way values should operate in societies like our own. I also believe in the importance of clear, successful communication and, in a rather Orwellian way, that it is a political and ethical imperative to spread this as widely as possible.

“I want people who enjoy reading in all of its shapes and sizes, and who take pleasure in appreciating or performing acts of language.”

In my humdrum, pedestrian map of the subject, English includes three central activities. It is, humbly, a three-legged stool if you like, and, in order to support any weight, all three legs are essential. In no hierarchical order, there is, first, the cultural aspect, in which students and teachers engage primarily with literary texts (though engagement with other sorts of text is possible and, I think, desirable) in order to enable discussion of issues and values. Second, there is the functional or instrumental aspect in which students and teachers acquire and understand modes of communication and how to operate them successfully. Finally, there is the creative aspect. This is of increasing importance and includes not only ‘creative writing’, but also the broad appreciation of intellectual and aesthetic creativity and originality. This third aspect is a relatively late development in the evolution of the subject, and is likely to be a growth area in the future. In its pedagogy it highlights the necessity of understanding through doing – but that, I think, is characteristic in different ways of all three aspects.

Clearly these three aspects overlap, intersect and are mutually dependent. Understanding text in the ways indicated in the first ‘cultural’ aspect, for example, clearly depends on being able to operate successfully in the second ‘functional’ area. The different aspects overall are also mutually inclusive, and in describing them I have deliberately tried to draw them with wide, accommodating boundaries. By ‘issues and values’, for example, I mean not just politics, ethics or matters of ‘personal development’, but questions of cultural and aesthetic quality and importance. By ‘functional or instrumental’, I don’t have in mind merely the ability to write and speak effectively, spell correctly and know where to put an apostrophe, but also the understanding and appreciation of the function of style, argument and persuasion, and the way in which ideas are managed in intersubjective discourse. In the third aspect, functioning creatively in writing and speech requires some developed awareness of how effective communication has occurred in the past, and of the ways in which creative traditions thrive, develop and are expanded.

To describe things generally always risks stating the obvious, and I don’t think there is anything especially fresh or invigorating about these generalisations. What I do think, however, is that much debate within and about English in recent years has too often got bogged down, on the one side, in partisan and sometimes messianic visions of the subject, and, on the other, in the minute detail of operational matters like the nature of the syllabus or the protocols of particular assessment regimes. It is of course essential to be painstaking here, and to think operations through with care to consequence and efficiency. But I’ve increasingly started to think that such matters have come to preoccupy and distract, to clog things up in routine and bureaucracy about mark schemes, the checks and balances of a curriculum, the requirements of modular learning, quality assurance, and so on. Fair, efficient administration is always essential, but it should not make dismal or pointy-headed what is gratifying, generous-spirited and creative.

From time to time I am asked what it is that higher education wants from students arriving to study English. The answer, for me, is simple. I want people with experience of how to read all sorts of things (not just novels) with the skill and care of which they are capable. I want people who can attempt to communicate effectively and with curiosity, and who are concerned to develop this. Finally, I want people who enjoy reading in all of its shapes and sizes, and who take pleasure in appreciating or performing acts of language. Of these three, it seems to me just now that it may be the last that is the most important. As we speculate on how English will evolve over the coming years, there needs to be a strong voice for the pleasure principle and the joy of words, and an account of English that has this among its primary aims.