Without Lifting A Finger

From Beckett's "Assumption": The process was absurd, extravagantly absurd, like boiling an egg over a bonfire.

The chain of being/reading goes: Milosz was told (commanded) to read Shestov by Sorana Gurian; Shestov was told (forced) to read Kierkegaard by Husserl (according to Shestov, Kierkegaard was not yet a big deal in the the France of the 1930's); R L Swihart was told (armtwisted) to read Shestov by Milosz. Anyway, certainly Shestov found a kindred reflection in Kierkegaard. To close the week, and the week of the Absurd, I leave a few words from Shestov on Kierkegaard (in "Kierkegaard as a Religious Philosopher," see http://www.angelfire.com/nb/shestov/sar/kierkegaard1.html ):   I concluded the previous section with those words of Kierkegaard's that are never to be forgotten if you wish to penetrate into the essence of his philosophy: "Only terror reaching despair develops a person to his highest." That is why Kierkegaard was so irresistibly drawn by the Book of Job which, in his view, is the most human book of the whole Bible. That is why he a...

Today's laudatory gesture goes to that crazy Dane: Soren Kierkegaard. If you wade through him I guarantee you'll find some golden nuggets.  Examples: Like a thunderstorm, the genius goes against the wind. It is the path we all take -- over the Bridge of Sighs into eternity. One thought succeeds another; no sooner have I thought it and am about to write it down than there's a new one --hold it, grasp it -- madness -- insanity! I'm also here to praise his longing for Repetition: When this experience had been repeated for several days I became so exasperated, so tired of repetition, that I resolved to make my way home again. My discovery was of no importance, and yet it was a strange one, for I discovered that there is no such thing as repetition, and I had  convinced myself of this by trying in every possible way to get it repeated. 

By chance, I was looking through a few photos from a recent Prague trip (2009) and thought Why not. * Celebratory Photo #1: The Cafe Franz Kafka in Prague (which I ran into on the way to Photo #2). Celebratory Photo #2: The Kafka Statue (inspired by an early Kafka short story, "Description of a Struggle") by Jaroslav Rona (see his "Parable with Skull" also on my blog).  Look behind the statue and you'll see part of the Spanish Synagogue in Prague's Jewish Quarter.