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Traditionally speaking,

Traditionally speaking,

14.02.2010

Although I don't much hold this day (Feb 14) in high esteem - I mean let's face it, how can anyone really get off on such a commercialized luvy-duvy-fest? But I do have a little tradition. And by that I mean something I've been doing every V-day, bec... [mehr]
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oasis20

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15495 Besucher seit 28.06.2005

Studium

Anglistik
Universität Zürich

Liebesleben

Sag ich nicht

The Cur(s)e

09.02.2009 um 11:49

Riddles are the favourite playthings of an idle and der(a)il'd mind:

It is both a curse and its own cure. Poised on the truth it poisons the heart with its seeming omnipotence. Its mastery is both a gift and a burden of great power and responsibility. But, ultimately, amidst all this lament, this purgatory of doubt, it stands tall, a beacon of incorruptible truth: it is my church, and there I go to heal my hurts.

What is the answer to this riddle? This question is rhetorical, yet quintessential. For the answer is a different one for each and every one of us. So, what is the answer to this riddle for YOU?

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oasis20
oasis20 11.02.2009 um 11:03
A: By the way, what’s your answer to my riddle?

B: your....dream?...your...conscience? maybe hope or belief

A: I have heard religion, love, but I have also heard ‘Archaeology’. It is interesting to see how some answers try to be as universal as possible, for fear perhaps of excluding something, while other answers are very personal

B: and whats the answer then?

A: ... for me?

B: no. the real one

A: haha. well it would have to be my answer because I wrote the riddle with that answer in mind... but if one looks at it your way - there is indeed no ‘real’ answer...

B: What would be yours then? or is it too personal?

A: the English language
oasis20
oasis20 09.02.2009 um 21:44
Oh I think I have to delete that comment - it makes me blush... Yes it is mine. Anything else would be plagiarism... and that's definitely not my style. Moi? Je suis anglais-hongrois-suisse. Something like that. English is my father's tongue, as it were.
oasis20
oasis20 09.02.2009 um 21:18
Well who knows I might end up teaching it one day, so I'll read it then, but thanks for your explanations . No, "Fools rush in..." is part of Pope's very first poem called "An Essay on Criticism" which talks about his own literary styles and dishes out warnings to the intending writer. The line has since then been used as, yes, mostly the 'love fool', and it is how I use it too:

For all the worldly wisdom in my head
I am a fool at heart. What should be one
In me lives as two, and too far apart.
Happiest I thought myself suspended
In a tideless sea. Cradled from danger
In Arcadian fields of childhood memory.
Such happiness is but a form of pain
Refined, a halcyon gaze out of skew,
Such joy but human nature thrown in chains,
Designed to take everything out of true.
With you on stage I will no longer act
But listen as you stop me in my track.
You, who has the voice of home, no more tears,
For your true wisdom my heart is all ears.
oasis20
oasis20 09.02.2009 um 20:38
I like your comparison, though my pentameter and a half "For all the worldy wisdom in my head, I am a fool at heart" was inspired by Alexander Pope: "Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread". Eliot's use of the capital 'F' suggets hers is a Shakespearean Fool. I have not read 'The Catcher in the Rye', so I cannot comment on your sweeping statement. Mind elucidating what you mean exactly?
oasis20
oasis20 09.02.2009 um 19:02
To write is to be. (See my other blogs). According to Paul de Man, the autobiographical project produces and determines life. Masks are an inherent part of the trope of autobiography; they manifest themselves “in the etymology of the trope’s name, prosopon poien, to confer a mask or a face.” To write an autobiography, in other words, is to give and take away faces, to face and to deface. (“Autobiography as Defacement” 1979, 924, 926).
oasis20
oasis20 09.02.2009 um 18:39
I've read your Shakespeare blog. Very interesting, though nothing new under the sun, at least for me (then again I do study English). Why can you not breathe? Are my sentences too long and endangering your health, because you read everything aloud and in one looooong breath? I certainly hope not!!
oasis20
oasis20 09.02.2009 um 18:19
Besides, if you were to read my other blogs you'd have a lot more lines to read between...
oasis20
oasis20 09.02.2009 um 18:14
I am not a Dr (yet), neither am I a psychiatrist (and never want to become one), so I can't judge your mental state. But I do like your mentality.
oasis20
oasis20 09.02.2009 um 18:04
Oh well, if you want the answer just read between the lines Yeah, sure, Caesar may have only said it by implication, but I'm not quoting Caesar anyway. PS: Is not to withdraw the dice to play God?
oasis20
oasis20 09.02.2009 um 17:41
I hit a nerve, it would seem... As to whether I am an intellectual voyeur or just playing a game: There is many a word spoken in jest, and alea iacta est!
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