Kafka and Dostoevsky as "Blood Relatives"

Glad there is a connection..

Kafka's private library, unfortunately recorded a decade after his death, contained Dostoevsky's "Letters", "The Brothers Karamazov", "Crime and Punishment", and a one volume collection of shorter works with the title "The Gambler". (4) In 1914 a German translation of Dostoevsky's "Complete Works" had become available. On thebasis of Kafka's Letters and Diaries we know that he read many other works besides those in his library, including Nina Hoffmann's Dostoevsky biography and Strachov's introductory essay to Dostoevsky's "Collected Works". Further it will become obvious that, although unmentioned, Kafka was familiar with "The Double". As early as 1913, in a letter to his fiance Kafka wrote: "the four men, Grillparzer, Dostoevsky, Kleist and Flaubert, I consider to be my true blood-relations". (5) This statement expresses not only his affinity with those men as writers, but also an identification with their existential complexion. In the one case, Kafka might have had in mind Dostoevsky's epilepsy, paralleled in his own life by tuberculosis and, perhaps even more so, the complex and ambiguous relationship with their respective fathers. In their writings this culminated for Dostoevsky in "The Brothers Karamazov", for Kafka in "The Judgment" and the notorious "Letter to His Father". As for their illness, both viewed it as release and punishment, both were aware of the complex and secret workings of mind and body, both cursing and blessing it at the same time. 

- Roman S. Struc, The University of Calgary

Tower of Babel and the implications...

“As I told you before, I started to paint to kill my boredom. I painted pretty normal pictures initially. One day, I happened to see the painting of the Tower of Babel. I soon learnt about the legend behind the painting. It was really wonderful and I was spell bound by just looking at it. I couldn’t sleep that day. It really impressed me very much and I couldn’t get it out of my mind for weeks after that day.“

“What’s so special about it?” I asked her with curiosity.

The Angel Ambassador..

I was sitting in the classroom on the bench beside the window. It was a cloudy morning. The sun hadn’t woken up and must have become lazy due to the cool breeze that flowed across it. The clouds which were quite certain that the sun wouldn’t come soon were moving slowly towards me. They seemed like an ambassador sent from heaven carrying a beautiful message to me that would greatly delight me. The cloud motion was slow, sluggish and dull but was very romantic.

The shape of the clouds was random but when looked at carefully, one could make out an angel out of the randomness. She was an angel ambassador. The cloud cover was not consistent all over and wherever it wasn’t there it appeared as a void; something like a hole on a leaf or a mole on a cheek. There were 2 big round eyes that were formed due to the non-existence of the clouds there and a long thin nose which almost touched her lips. Her neck was thin and the breasts spread. The waist was slim but there was no navel. It then expanded in to a big frock. The color of the frock was not clear. The blue and white fought with each other, one overshadowing the other and it looked as if she wore white frock sometimes and light blue at other times. She had no legs and it appeared as if she was hauled by the air and was moving towards me to tell me something special. The clouds were spreading more at her lips and it looked as if she was smiling as she approached me. The transition was very slow and I could visualize her smile right from the time it started. She also seemed greatly delighted to come to me.

A passage from the novel THE LITTLE HEARTS authored by me...

http://www.flipkart.com/the-little-hearts/p/itmde9hbxv7tkmag?pid=RBKDE9KXCSGNBNEB&ref=82869f74-7242-428a-9c4e-4e0a2360c0c4&srno=s_1&otracker=from-search&query=the%20little%20hearts

Why am I an atheist?

Read an essay “Why I am an atheist?” by Bhagat Singh. Nice article...Good thoughts and very well expressed..For a while I felt as if I read Candide by Voltaire.. 

But the entire argument in the essay (leaving the personal traits aside) is based on the fact that suffering is inhuman which shouldn't be entertained by God if he really existed. The arguments took its root from logical reasoning with humanity as the theme which essentially is the root of the communist theory (religion is the opium of the masses as Marx said). The definition of happiness here is the logical division of riches and rights.

Why do we tend to separate..??

Why can't the world be our home?

We fight for it's survival and we are its' citizens. This idea will come more into our perspective in an imaginary situation of an alien attack. Other cases include: if we expand our boundaries, and let people settle in other planets... In this case we would be regionalistic about the earth and consider the other planets to be our enemies. It seems that this spirit or competition or shoudl I say this urge to form enemies with those who pose as a danger to our resources is inbuilt in us, even though this may not give us any long term advantage. We will have to evolve.

Courtesy: Arvind

http://aravind1.blogspot.in

Hyderabadi...

Travelling early in the morning along the vein of the city when the darkness starts to leave giving space to light is so delighting. The bus needs to pass through the Old city and the Hi-tech city before reaching my destination. In the Old city, there would be silence everywhere that I would wonder what people would be doing. But I don't get bored; for the beautiful old buildings and the bridges would be speaking to me.