A highlight of my recent trip to Europe was the three days I spent in Prague, renowned for its beauty, and home, at least in some ways, to three writers important to me: Vaclav Havel, Rainer Maria Rilke and Franz Kafka. I learned a little about each of these three, very different authors in my... Continue Reading →
Franz Kafka was a poet of shame and guilt. So writes Saul Friedlander in his Franz Kafka: the poet of shame and guilt (2013, public library). Friedlander reveals to me the Kafka of sexual fantasies, spurned homoerotic thoughts, disgust at his sexuality and animality. This Kafka does not interest me, although I am intrigued to learn... Continue Reading →
A blog is a fragmentary artwork, or at least it can be. So the blog's aesthetic philosophy is at odds with the virtues of the masterpiece - completion, mastery, comprehensiveness, a vision fully and perfectly realised. I guess there are some blogs that present their niche as an encyclopaedia of their author's thought-world. But much... Continue Reading →
The Burning Archive 