Unde malum?

[terefere]

The eternal question.

[UNIVERSAL DIRECTOR]

MY CHILDREN , UNDE MALUM is ONE of the ETERNAL QUESTIONS...

Here are some more:


1) Why is the world the way it is?


2) Why is there something rather than nothing?


3) Where does it all come from?



4) Where do we come from?



5) Who are we?



6) Where are we going to?



7) Is there a God?
 
Well, you have the proof in front of YOU(in case you haven't noticed!!!!!)

8) What is good and what is evil?



9) Do we have a "free will"?


10) What is knowledge?


I am sure that you will come up with MORE QUESTIONS....

[manosd]

Where does evil come from?
It comes
from man
always from man
only from man
- Tadeusz Rozewicz
Alas, dear Tadeusz,
good nature and wicked man
are romantic inventions
you show us this way
the depth of your optimism
so let man exterminate
his own species
the innocent sunrise will illuminate
a liberated flora and fauna
where oak forests reclaim
the postindustrial wasteland
and the blood of a deer
torn asunder by a pack of wolves
is not seen by anyone
a hawk falls upon a hare
without witness
evil disappears from the world
and consciousness with it
Of course, dear Tadeusz,
evil (and good) comes from man.

Especially if the MAN is a MISOGYNIST,eh JULIAN BARNES?

[Crazy Jane]

Manosd,my boy,don't disappear!Instead go, find MarkMywords and come near. I have a meeting to encounter:

I met the Bishop on the road

And much said he and I.

`Those breasts are flat and fallen now

Those veins must soon be dry;

Live in a heavenly mansion,

Not in some foul sty.'



`Fair and foul are near of kin,

And fair needs foul,' I cried.

'My friends are gone, but that's a truth

Nor grave nor bed denied,

Learned in bodily lowliness

And in the heart's pride.



`A woman can be proud and stiff

When on love intent;

But Love has pitched his mansion in

The place of excrement;

For nothing can be sole or whole

That has not been rent.'
Do you want to know what happened to the Bishop? He went to listen www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kNGnIKUdMI

Michel Faber is neither Pynchon nor Nabokov and surely David Mitchell seems to be more confident,more determined and many more things.... If you compare Faber with Barnes, Barnes is a 'teller',whereas Faber is a storyteller. But J.B. FICTION has an IDENTITY, whereas his fiction is in SEARCH of an IDENTITY(a bit like himself). But read  for a start a short story he has written for LIBERTY and his 'UNDER THE SKIN'. That could help you understand him a bit....

'To save what can be saved so as to open up some kind of future--that is the prime mover, the passion and the sacrifice that is required. It demands only that we reflect and then decide, clearly, whether humanity's lot must be made still more miserable in order to achieve far-off and shadowy ends, whether we should accept a world bristling with arms where brother kills brother; or whether, on the contrary, we should avoid bloodshed and misery as much as
possible so that we give a chance for survival to later generations better equipped than we are..'


Now ,what do you think of this? If you like it as an idea,then you should read 'The Book of Strange New Things'.  

[RESCUE SOCIETY]

There are some stories that not only grab you from the first lines, but they also bring memories of a song, poem, movie or piece of art that you already love. That happened to me when I started reading “the Broccoli Eel”. As soon as I realized what it was about, Bukowski’s poem “A Smile To Remember” came to my mind:



We had goldfish and they circled around and around


in the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes


covering the picture window and


my mother, always smiling, wanting us all


to be happy, told me, "be happy Henry!"


and she was right: it's better to be happy if you


can


but my father continued to beat her and me several times a week


while


raging inside his 6-foot-two frame because he couldn't


understand what was attacking him from within.





my mother, poor fish,


wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a


week, telling me to be happy: "Henry, smile!


why don't you ever smile?"





and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the


saddest smile I ever saw





one day the goldfish died, all five of them,


they floated on the water, on their sides, their


eyes still open,


and when my father got home he threw them to the cat


there on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mother


smiled





“The Broccoli Eel” is such a compelling and deeply disturbing short-story. I don’t know whether it’s the saddest story that Michel Faber has written, but it’s certainly sadder than “the Book of Strange New Things”. Actually, it’s Faber at his best.


www.theguardian.com/books/2003/aug/02/originalwriting.fiction7

On the other hand, Julian Barnes was one of 7 writers who wrote a short-story reflecting on “Failure”(Guardian-22 June 2013). After giving his own definition to failure, he observes the life of a late workmate. That man succeeded to have children, but he failed to keep himself sober, to keep his marriage alive, to keep his family together. Eventually he lost everything and everyone and died alone! However, Barnes surprisingly discovered at his funeral that his children not only had turned out well, but they also spoke with words of affection for their late father. What Barnes failed to do is congratulate the mother of those kids and that man’s ex-wife, for her magnanimity and maturity to put aside their personal differences and failures and raise their kids with values and principles.

Barnes needs to be reminded of his grandmother's, Nellie Louisa Scoltock, views on women( she was a Socialist , often geting pissed off with Bert,a schoolmaster and outerly bore.)

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”, Tolstoy wrote in ‘Anna Karenina’.


I believe, and I think I’ve written it before, all that a child needs is one good parent; that is so much better than two unhappy parents living together or no parents at all. At the end of the day, a family works as a link to the past and a bridge to the future. Once we cross the bridge, it’s up to US to choose the path we’d follow…. *


*(This is a personal wish and hope, but as a Realist I know that the statistics show otherwise.)

[AGATHA]

"Words  are all we have",Samuel Beckett said. Michel Faber,however,despised Literature for "the impotence of the language as a whole to change the world for the better and its inability to dissuade or enlighten PEOPLE WHO DO HARM(?!!!),especially since the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars."
Excuse me? What did he say? I thought that only YANN MARTEL had the naive idea that his 101 books could transform STEPHEN HARPER. And now Michel Faber fantasized about changing WHO? TONY BLAIR ? GEORGE BUSH? OSAMA BIN LADAN?or AYMAN AL-ZAWAHIRI? Neither the Bible nor the Koran were able to stop these monsters form deciding and ordering the death of million innocent people.On 9th September 2001,2 days before the September 11th attacks A.S.MASSOUD, the political leader and a deeply religious person,was assassinated by al-Quaeda agents. The following year was post-mortem awarded the NOBEL PEACE PRIZE and 9th September is national holiday in Afghanistan.
Michel Faber is a self-exiled Dutch Australian who leads an isolated life somewhere in Scotland. There is good intention in his art,but is his intention good enough? What happens to his characters? What happens to Isserley? What happens to William? What about Agnes and Sophie? Do they grow,develop? I DOUBT.  So how could he expect his fiction to affect and transform his readers' lives? Especially if they already strong ideologies or personalities? There is MORALITY in Faber's work,but his morality is either problematic or misguided. Most of his protagonists are disconnected with the(ir) world,a bit like Faber himself.
So I would suggest to Mr. Faber:1) to connect himself with the world,
                                                                    and
                                               2)then take it form the beginning and decide for whom does he write:" the people who do harm" or "the common reader"?
The common reader who reads for pleasure and/or education;the common reader who is neither a literary critic or a scholar;the common reader who poses questions and/or gains some answers.
Maybe Michel  Faber speaks with his 'heart of darkness' and not his 'soul of inspiration'. Maybe Michel Faber feels that "DOMINE,NON SUM DIGNUS."
"Beauty is truth,truth beauty...that is all
 ye know on earth, and all ye need to know", JOHN KEATS wrote.

I believe in facts. Facts do not cease to exist and if they are combined with the right words,then they could go through you;they could go through anything.

Take for example WOLF- GANG SCHAUBLE'S case. What do you think that he is currently reading?
1. The Communist Manifesto by K.Marx
2. Under the Skin by M.Faber 
3. The Zone of Interest by M.Amis

He is reading History, the "ANSCHLUSS REFERENDUM(1938)",where Hitler secured the reunification of Austria with the German Reich with a 99,73% in favour.By the way the turnout was 99,71%.He also remembers Hitler's "wise advice" that "by the skillful and sustained use of propaganda,one can make people see heavens as hell or an extrmely wretched life as paradise". Now could anyone transform WOLF-GANG?