Dream and Poetry (abstract)

都是平常情感。

都是平常言語。
偶然碰著個詩人。
變幻出多少新奇詩句！

 醉過才知酒濃。

愛過才知情重；
你不能做我的詩。
正如我不能做你的夢

It’s all ordinary feelings,

All common words.
By chance they encounter a poet,
Turning out infinite new verses.

Once intoxicated, one learns the strength of wine,

Once smitten, one learns the power of love:
You cannot write my poems
Just as I cannot dream your dreams.

 

胡適 (Hú Shì  –  1891-1962)

The alienation of being normal

«The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one’s mind, is the condition of the normal man. Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal».

(Ronald D. Laing, The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise, Penguin Books (reprint), London 1990 p. 24)

The Culture industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception

«Culture today is infecting everything with sameness. Film, radio, and magazines form a system. Each branch of culture is unanimous within itself and all are unanimous together. (…) All mass culture under monopoly is identical, and the contours of its skeleton, the conceptual armature fabricated by monopoly, are beginning to stand out. (…) Films and radio no longer need to present themselves as art. The truth that they are nothing but business is used as an ideology to legitimize the trash they intentionally produce».

(Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, first published in1944, pp. 94-95 SUP edition 2002)

A full cup

«A full cup must be carried steadily».

(English proverb)

L’etica è il cuore della legge

Una tra le tante folli credenze del nostro tempo è quella secondo cui si pretende che la legge possa essere un valido sostituto dell’etica.

(Dr. Divago)

If my hurt is to be that you will write no more...

William Shakespeare: I am done with the theatre. The playhouse is for dreamers. Look where the dream has brought us.
Viola: It was we ourselves did that. And for my life to come I would not have it otherwise.

William Shakespeare: I have hurt you and I am sorry for it.
Viola: If my hurt is to be that you will write no more, then I shall be the sorrier.

(From: Shakespeare in Love, written by Marc Norman & Tom Stoppard)

Dal sapere alla terminologia del sapere

«ogni scolasticismo è la degradazione del sapere a semplice terminologia».

(José Ortega y Gasset)