QUOTE
" I lose hope when the desire for life awakens within me; but I regain it whenever the longing for death comes upon me."
Gustaw Herling - Grudzinski
posted by Aleks - Anarcho-Syndicalist at 11:13 am
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
" I lose hope when the desire for life awakens within me; but I regain it whenever the longing for death comes upon me."
Gustaw Herling - Grudzinski
About Me
- Name: Aleks - Anarcho-Syndicalist
- Location: In my own world
I'm a delusional, paranoid, self-righteous, left-wing insomniac with too much time on my hands and an intolerance for right-wing arseholes and the latte left.
Previous Posts
- THE HUMAN RACEGiven the week that has been, I was ...
- I’ve been Tagged: My top ten turn on and turn offs...
- PATHETIC POSTWhy is it that seeing somebody who yo...
- INDIFFERENCE, ANGER AND HATREDRecently I read Albe...
- UNIONS AND THE ALPLast night I went to the Unions ...
- PROPOSED IR CHANGES DON’T GO FAR ENOUGHAs Australi...
- RACE HATE CRIMESRecently there has been a disturbi...
- THE BIG QUESTIONAs I have mentioned previously, I ...
- WHY THE TV SHOW BIG BROTHER IS EVILAs I indicated ...
- WITHHOLD MY OPINION - NEVER!While stuck at home on...
10 Comments:
What do you think he means by that?
Do you take it literally?
If death is meant literally, we can say the poet wants a cessation of what he is feeling, death being an end to his feelings (note the use of the INDEFINiTE article 'an', implying that there are more than one ways to stop a feeling, yes?).
I associate death with love in some contexts. What do you think?
11:42 am
Jusine, Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski, like myself , suffers from what William Styron so perfectly described in his book Sophie's Choice as Slavic Melancholy.
Part of this Slavic Melancholy is the feeling that death can be a release from the emotional (and sometimes physical) suffering that is an integral part of human existence. The more heightened one's emotions are, the greater this longing for a release through death.
But there is a catch-22 in play here which he hints at; when you don't feel like this it is because you have become emotionally numb and this in fact is not better, but may be even worse, because to become numb to the suffering going on in and around you means that you are becoming detached from your humanity.
12:14 pm
I don't know that that's specifically "Slavic" melancholy, is it? Read Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale". The language may be more flowery, but trust me - that shit's the same the world over.
2:07 pm
Ruby, why this is Slavic Melancholy is that this is the state of mind of all Eastern and Western Slavic people (excluding the Czechs really) almost all the time. This is where I think things differ when compared to most other people.
3:15 pm
I'm not going to pretend to know anything about Slavic anything. But a, lets just call him a Slav (born in Croatia, raised in Croatia, but maintains he's not Croatian, might be from Slovenia, but I forget) recently came back from his homeland after a visit.
He does seem nice and positive, loves to talk about how pretty his country is, despite how war-ravaged it is.
The Yugoslavic situation is mind-bogglingly confusing to someone born in a country with no borders, and no real battle scars on site.
But I guess you can see something, in the eyes I guess. I could never understand a fraction of the shit that he's been through, and selfishly hope I don't. Not even sure the situation is the cause of the Melancholy.
6:12 pm
Oh, I get it - you enjoy being sad... is that it? You know, I used to drink a lot with a Russian woman, who incidentally or perhaps not was BEAUTIFUL, who fitted your description. She was melancholic and we wrote poetry and read it to eachother.
By the way we drank gin not vodka.
When I was a teenager Kurt Cobain said, "I miss the comfort in being sad", i knew what he meant. Then, after I stopped being a heroin addict, I really really knew what he meant :-)
Scots are like that too. Obstinate bastards.
10:06 pm
"I miss the comfort in being sad"
Always loved that line.
10:11 pm
Justine, I wouldn't say that I enjoy it, but is a part of me (and many other Slavs) that cannot be changed. As such it does provide a measure of reassurance just like other things that you have grown up with and are a part of you.
Larry, in my experience knowing many Southern Slavs (Croats, Serbs, Slovenes, Macedonians) they, like the Czechs, don't seem to have Slavic Meloncholy; maybe it's becuase they were ruled by non-Slavs for so long and because culturally and genentically they intermingled extensivelly with other races.
10:13 am
do you really think mood is culturally determined?
11:32 am
Mood (I believe) can be determined by culture and genetics.
12:52 pm
Post a Comment
<< Home