Hello Good People,
I Finished The Iliad. Now I’m reading Plato’s Republic. Translated by Allan Bloom. What did everyone think about it? I’ve read it once before so you wont spoil it for me.
‘Frankenstein’ again. I’m sure I missed a typographical error in there somewhere. 
Hello Maryshelley,
What is your favorite theme or quote from the book Frankenstein?
-Dr. F.
The book in its entirety, a slim volume of only 223 pages, is worthy of reading but if I must quote something then this penultimate paragraph, for me, is timeless:
“I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly, and exult in the agony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will sleep in peace; or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.”
Nice quote Maryshelley!
Man’s burning question of what happens after death. Also, a little ways above your quote the monster says, “he is dead who called me into being” The created came to master his creator. Very Nietzchean, in a sorrowful way.
This is my favorite passage from Volume 1 Chapter 4 paragraph 3 from Frankenstein.
“The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardor that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and the breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.”
I thought that so many themes and messages are within these couple sentences alone. I love it. The romantic sense of play and our authentic self at work is opposed when we take a passion and turn it into a career. When we turn our passions into a job, it loses its aesthetic appeal. The mentioning of rest also goes back to god and how god even took time to rest when creating us. Even further, the sole purpose of creating life shouldn’t be merely to create life, but also to cultivate the mind-- with poetry and art.
Cheers, Frankenstein.
It seems to me to be relatively easy to create life. Many humans do it without any sense of compunction. Does the farmer bear responsibility for the seed which is sown? Frankenstein had worked hard for two years in the hope that he would become like a god in the eyes of his peers and society beyond. He was a slave to his ambition. His ambition blinded him to the consequences of his action. The inherent dangers of humans and their alchemy:
Monsters be-getting monsters?
By the way Frankenstein it’s maryshelley
Just began reading -
Just finished reading American Gods and wondering how I’ve only just ‘discovered’ Neil Gaiman.
Currently reading a very early 1900s translation of Nietzsche I found in a second hand book store in Hay on Wye, it makes absolutely NO sense.
I’m starting the Red Wheel series. I liked Cancer Ward, so why not? I will say that August, 1914 feels somewhat unfinished. There is a vitalism to that unfinished nature – is it a book, a screenplay for a movie, a play, something else? It can’t quite decide. It often feels sloppy but the narrative itself is compelling. Like the Big D, I wish that I had an appendix of some sort to keep the names straight as Russian naming patterns aren’t something that is intuitively obvious to me but it isn’t too hard to keep things straight from context. Though there is a very large cast, which makes it a little harder than other Russian novels I’ve read.
Alright ILP, I just finished Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf (introspective, surreal kind of read) and now I need help deciding my next book. Here are my options:
A Tale of Two Cities (because I’ve never read it and I just found an old copy laying around the house)
OR
Narcissus and Goldmund (immediately continuing my journey through the novels of Hesse)
What do you think?
Aristotle’s Metaphysics, plus some other stuff. Notably Leonard Mlodinow’s excellent The Drunkard’s Walk.
EDIT: fuse, that was not necessarily an answer to your question. But then again, why not? After all, the latter title treats of randomness.
“Magic without tears” - Aleister Crowley
An all-around guide to the occult
Switching to Remembrance of Things Past, Volume 1 (Proust) because I need a break from Les Miserables…still 500 more pages or so on that one…and he’s not even Russian!
Good stuff, enjoy.
“The China Study” by Colin Campbell…
I’m currently indulging in a bit of popular culture with Game of Thrones.
@fuse: Did you continue with the Hesse? I read…Daemon/Damien, whatever it was called, a year or two ago and have been tempted to get stuck into some more of his stuff but I can’t help but remember a kind of wetness to his works 
I don’t know, something about the books and the gospel-seeking devotees of his works just puts me off…
Hey Trevor,
Wetness? What? lol, I decided to continue where I left off with Nietzsche instead. I’ll get back to Hesse eventually.
Yeh…wetness…it’s hard to explain because that’s just my lasting impression of him, but his books are about the inner self, and destiny, that kinda crap…I also remember a sense of passivity in his writing, placid and passive. Wetness. Maybe he was gay…
Yeah, he’s definitely concerned with the inner self. And I might be able to relate to what you mean about passivity… I’ve read Siddhartha, Demian, and Steppenwolf now and all three novels develop in dreamlike fashion, as if the narrator is a more or less passive observer of a series of surreal events. Is that at all what you meant? Anyhow, Steppenwolf was the most nonlinear and subsequently the most difficult to read, while Demian is my favorite of the three because I relate to its story and characters the most.
I guess I just struggle to take the whole “search for self” subject seriously…Siddharta was the other one I had read but forgotten about. Huxley can also be a bit too wishy-washy like Hesse, they’re work is deeply related, but Huxley has a cyncial vein running through him and his work which is his saving grace. Maybe this is what Hesse lacks - teeth. His work has no bite, it’s all gums. Soft, wet gums.
