Tag Archives: revolution

NABOKOV & CASANOVA

***UPDATE – a slightly more polished and beautifully typeset version is part of the SYSTEMICS II book.

(made available to read online for free once-in-a-while or generally with a donation based password.)

[ a literary discussion about girls and honour ]

 

When I came across the book The Annotated Lolita in my local charity shop the other day, quite a few things fell into place. Having just finished Casanova’s memoirs a few weeks earlier, and always having been acutely aware that Lolita is no ordinary book at all, Alfred Appel, Jr.’s annotations (I’m pretty sure this is another tongue-in-cheek pseudonm of ‘magician’ Nabokov, it does bear all the signs and hallmarks) were a timely further eye-opener. Hearing so many tales and behind-the-scene infos about Nobokov and what he was doing with the novel, suddenly so many things tied into the cultural pastiche rendered by Casanova that I decided to contribute a few trails of thought to the cause.

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TRAGIC IMPOTENCE OF MONEY

***UPDATE – a slightly more polished and beautifully type-set version is part of the SYSTEMICS book.

(made available to read online for free once-in-a-while or generally with a donation based password.)

[ or ‘off the the other shore’ ]

 

CONDITIONS

We’re born naked. We die naked. As not only religion but also logic suggest, no matter how much funds we raise throughout our worldly journey, in the face of Ultimate Reality, even the most beautiful diamonds and castles merely amount to worthless chunks of mud. There is of course the argument of safeguarding relatives and loved ones, putting our kids on golden thrones and what not – but, honestly, can we really ease their various, vastly unpredictable hardships – emotional havoc, political corruption, abusive encounters, ageing, deterioration, madness – with monetary ailments? Besides, are we doing such an apparently altruistic act really unconditionally, with only their best interests in mind, or do we actually expect a return-of-investment, where we need them to do certain things in exchange, behave in certain ways, before our hard-earned juices will change bank accounts at the end of the day? As most of us haven’t been loved by our parents unconditionally, there is usually a wicked agenda behind the way how we interact with each other. Most exchanges are burdened with crooked meanings underneath and beyond the actual surface transactions. Like the sticky fingerprints we leave as soon as we touch it, Money involved in human transaction inherently corrupts any relationship through its conscious and unconscious strings attached – its Conditions.

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