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4.05 AVERAGE
4.05 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Content Warnings
Graphic: Religious bigotry
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
local boy learns to manifest a milf
No pude aguantar este libro, especialmente la segunda mitad. Es todo demasiado filosófico para mí, no podía identificarme con el protagonista ni nada. Cuando terminé el libro, leí numerosas reseñas y críticas... me sorprendió que hay tantas valoraciones positivas. Así que decidí darle otra oportunidad al libro... pero no. No es un libro para mí.
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
L’angosciante ricerca di se stessi in un mondo che tende solo all’annullamento della propria individualità. Da questo libro traggo l’importanza della propria volontà, del proprio destino più interno, l’essere al di là del bene e del male ma vederne la completezza, l’equilibrio di un asse che è in fondo continuo. E infine, l’amore che è realmente il fine ultimo di gioia... nei sogni, nella realtà che divengono tuttuno.
Forse il trovare se stessi implica un confronto con la realtà più omogeneizzante. Saperla affrontare rimanendo fedeli ai propri valori.
Forse il trovare se stessi implica un confronto con la realtà più omogeneizzante. Saperla affrontare rimanendo fedeli ai propri valori.
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Wonderful, cathartic, poignant
I wrote a big review of this and then I saw it was self-indulgent and I decided to spare you.
See, it's a great novel (novella). But I don't recommend this one to young people. If they're under thirty just give them Narcissus and Goldmund instead. It's still about self discovery.
The reason: it's an easy message to misunderstand. And young people need very little extra encouragement to be self-centred. It presents a young man who is set apart from most people. He encounters another man who is similarly set apart. And another. And then the first one's mother. They form a bond that transcends normal relationships. It's pretty much a how to guide to starting a cult based on complete balance of good and evil within you.
Most young people think they're special. Thankfully the smart ones grow out of it. Nothing wrong with loving yourself. The distinction lies in the promotion of the ego. And I think that distinction is largely absent from most people's experience of the world.
This book speaks of marks. Special breeds of human. A need to find the honest self within. That answers only come from inside. From reaching deep inside and then having something come into orbit around the gravity of that act.
That's fundamentally wrong. It'll lead people astray.
And no war is cleansing. Blood stains. It doesn't wash away sin. Not in this world. Not human blood.
Anyway. I'm getting a little fervent.
I'm not an evangelist. I just have a personal spiritual perspective divorced from any written scripture.
But the point stands. This world is too full of people who are arrogant and self interested. If you read this and decide it speaks to you... invest in some therapy. But the true message of this one is that being honest with yourself and your desires will help you find balance within yourself. That it is a temporary calm. From that you are meant to build something better. Form a path. Find a purpose.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐✨ (4.5)
I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me. My story is not a pleasant one; it
is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams--like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves.
But every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the
very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again.
Still, the part of the story set among the evil and the lost was more appealing by far, and--if I could have admitted it--at times I didn't want the Prodigal Son to repent and be found again.
My sin was not specifically this or that but
consisted of having shaken hands with the devil.
A strange new feeling overcame me at this point, a feeling that stung pleasurably: I felt superior to my father! Momentarily I felt a certain loathing for his ignorance. His upbraiding
me for muddy boots seemed pitiful. "If you only knew" crossed my mind as I stood there like a criminal being cross-examined for a stolen loaf of bread when the actual crime was murder. It was an odious, hostile feeling, but it was strong and deeply attractive, and shackled me more than anything else to my secret and my guilt.
...but in the most secret recesses they continue to live and
bleed. I immediately felt such dread of this new feeling that I could have fallen down before my father and kissed his feet to ask forgiveness.
I'll weep, then the lump in my throat will melt, then I will throw my arms around her, and then all will be well; I will be saved!
I have always been a great dreamer; in dreams I am more active than in my real life, and
these shadows sapped me of health and energy.
I realize that some people will not believe that a
child of little more than ten years is capable of having such feelings. My story is not intended for them. I am telling it to those who have a better knowledge of man.
I did not want to sacrifice Abel to glorify Cain, not just now when I had once more become Abel.
What my curiosity sought, what dreams, lust and fear
created--the great secret of puberty--did not fit at all into my sheltered childhood. I behaved like everyone else. I led the double life of a child who is no longer a child.
Very many are caught forever in this impasse, and for the rest of their lives cling painfully to an
irrevocable past, the dream of the lost paradise--which is the worst and most ruthless of dreams.
But I mean we ought to consider everything sacred, the entire world, not merely this artificially separated half! Thus alongside the divine service we should also have a service for the devil. I feel that would be right. Otherwise you must create for yourself a God that contains the devil too and in front of which you needn't close your eyes when the most natural things in the world take place.
Now everything changed. My childhood world was breaking
apart around me. My parents eyed me with a certain embarrassment. My sisters had become strangers to me. A disenchantment falsified and blunted my usual feelings and joys: the garden lacked fragrance, the woods held no attraction for me, the world stood around me like a clearance sale of last year's secondhand goods, insipid, all its charm gone. Books were so much paper, music a grating noise.
I was almost ashamed that I did not feel more nostalgic. My sisters wept for no
reason; my eyes remained dry. I was astonished at myself. I had always been an emotional and essentially good child. Now I had completely changed. I behaved with utter indifference to the world outside and for days on end voices within preoccupied me, inner streams, the forbidden dark streams that roared below the surface.
In fact it was most painful, yet it had something, a thrill, a sweetness of rebellious orgy, that was life and spirit.
Once again I belonged entirely to the
world of darkness and to the devil, and in this world I had the reputation of being one hell of a fellow. Nonetheless, I felt wretched. I lived in an orgy of self-destruction and, while my friends regarded me as a leader and as a damned sharp and funny fellow, deep down inside me my soul grieved. I can still remember tears springing to my eyes when I saw children playing in the street on Sunday morning as I emerged from a bar, children with freshly combed hair and dressed in their Sunday best.
There are numerous ways
in which God can make us lonely and lead us back to ourselves. This was the way He dealt with me at that time. It was like a bad dream. I can see myself: crawling along in my odious and unclean way, across filth and slime, across broken beer glasses and through cynically wasted nights, a spellbound dreamer, restless and racked.
She raised her image before me, she gave me access to a holy shrine, she transformed me into a worshiper in a temple.
Everything dark and hateful was to be banished, there were to be no more tortured nights, no excitement before lascivious pictures, no eavesdropping at forbidden doors, no lust. In place of all this I raised my altar to the image of Beatrice, and by consecrating myself to her I consecrated myself to the spirit and to the gods, sacrificing that part of life which I withdrew from the forces of darkness to those of light. My goal was not joy but purity, not happiness but beauty, and spirituality.
"You spend a lot of time in bars, do you?" he asked. "Well, yes, " I replied. "What else is there to do? In the end it's more fun than anything else. " "You think? Maybe so. One part of it is of course very fine--the intoxication, the bacchanalian element. But I think most people that frequent bars have lost that entirely. It seems to me that going to bars is something genuinely philistine. Yes, for one night, with burning torches, a real wild drunk! But again and again, one little glass after the other, I wonder whether that's the real thing or not? Can you see Faust sitting night after night stooped over the bar?"
I could not have uttered a single word about my dreams and
expectations, my inner change, to anyone, not even if I had wanted to. But how could I have wanted to?
It was futile to sorrow after the loss. I now lived within a fire of unsatisfied longing, of tense expectancy that often drove me completely wild. I often saw the beloved apparition of my dream with a clarity greater than life, more distinct than my own hand, spoke with it, wept before it, cursed it. I called it mother and knelt down in front of it in tears. I called it my beloved and had a premonition of its ripe all-fulfilling kiss. I called it devil and whore, vampire and murderer. It enticed me to the gentlest love-dreams and to devastating shamelessness, nothing was too good and precious, nothing was too wicked and low for it.
The impetus that makes you fly is our great human possession. Everybody has it. It is the feeling of being linked with the roots of power, but one soon becomes afraid of this feeling. It's damned dangerous! That is why most people shed their wings and prefer to walk and obey the law.
When I compared myself with other boys my age I often felt proud and conceited but just as often
humiliated and depressed. Frequently I considered myself a genius, and just as frequently, crazy.
The person whom you would like to do away with is of
course never Mr. X but merely a disguise. If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.
I live in my dreams--that's what you sense. Other people live in dreams, but not in their own. That's the difference.
We aren't pigs as you seem to think, but human beings. We create gods and struggle with them, and they bless us.
He had given me faith in myself. And now I became conscious of gradually
beginning to resist him. There was too much didacticism in what he said, and I felt that he understood only a part of me completely.
I had
often speculated with images of the future, dreamed of roles that I might be assigned, perhaps as poet or prophet or painter, or something similar. All that was futile. I did not exist to write poems, to preach or to paint, neither I nor anyone else. All of that was incidental. Each man had only one genuine vocation--to find the way to himself.
Yes, you must find your dream, then the way becomes easy. But there is no dream that lasts forever, each dream is followed by another, and one should not cling to any particular one.
So it won't be the end of the world, no earthquake, no revolution, but war. You'll see what a sensation that will be! People will love it. Even now they can hardly wait for the killing to begin--their lives are that dull! But you will see, Sinclair, that this is only the beginning. Perhaps it will be a very big war, a war on a gigantic scale. But that, too, will only be the beginning. The new world has begun and the new world will be terrible for those clinging to the old.
But sometimes when I find the key and climb deep into myself where the images of fate lie aslumber in the dark mirror, I need only bend over that dark mirror to behold my own image, now completely resembling him, my brother, my master.
is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams--like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves.
But every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the
very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again.
Still, the part of the story set among the evil and the lost was more appealing by far, and--if I could have admitted it--at times I didn't want the Prodigal Son to repent and be found again.
My sin was not specifically this or that but
consisted of having shaken hands with the devil.
A strange new feeling overcame me at this point, a feeling that stung pleasurably: I felt superior to my father! Momentarily I felt a certain loathing for his ignorance. His upbraiding
me for muddy boots seemed pitiful. "If you only knew" crossed my mind as I stood there like a criminal being cross-examined for a stolen loaf of bread when the actual crime was murder. It was an odious, hostile feeling, but it was strong and deeply attractive, and shackled me more than anything else to my secret and my guilt.
...but in the most secret recesses they continue to live and
bleed. I immediately felt such dread of this new feeling that I could have fallen down before my father and kissed his feet to ask forgiveness.
I'll weep, then the lump in my throat will melt, then I will throw my arms around her, and then all will be well; I will be saved!
I have always been a great dreamer; in dreams I am more active than in my real life, and
these shadows sapped me of health and energy.
I realize that some people will not believe that a
child of little more than ten years is capable of having such feelings. My story is not intended for them. I am telling it to those who have a better knowledge of man.
I did not want to sacrifice Abel to glorify Cain, not just now when I had once more become Abel.
What my curiosity sought, what dreams, lust and fear
created--the great secret of puberty--did not fit at all into my sheltered childhood. I behaved like everyone else. I led the double life of a child who is no longer a child.
Very many are caught forever in this impasse, and for the rest of their lives cling painfully to an
irrevocable past, the dream of the lost paradise--which is the worst and most ruthless of dreams.
But I mean we ought to consider everything sacred, the entire world, not merely this artificially separated half! Thus alongside the divine service we should also have a service for the devil. I feel that would be right. Otherwise you must create for yourself a God that contains the devil too and in front of which you needn't close your eyes when the most natural things in the world take place.
Now everything changed. My childhood world was breaking
apart around me. My parents eyed me with a certain embarrassment. My sisters had become strangers to me. A disenchantment falsified and blunted my usual feelings and joys: the garden lacked fragrance, the woods held no attraction for me, the world stood around me like a clearance sale of last year's secondhand goods, insipid, all its charm gone. Books were so much paper, music a grating noise.
I was almost ashamed that I did not feel more nostalgic. My sisters wept for no
reason; my eyes remained dry. I was astonished at myself. I had always been an emotional and essentially good child. Now I had completely changed. I behaved with utter indifference to the world outside and for days on end voices within preoccupied me, inner streams, the forbidden dark streams that roared below the surface.
In fact it was most painful, yet it had something, a thrill, a sweetness of rebellious orgy, that was life and spirit.
Once again I belonged entirely to the
world of darkness and to the devil, and in this world I had the reputation of being one hell of a fellow. Nonetheless, I felt wretched. I lived in an orgy of self-destruction and, while my friends regarded me as a leader and as a damned sharp and funny fellow, deep down inside me my soul grieved. I can still remember tears springing to my eyes when I saw children playing in the street on Sunday morning as I emerged from a bar, children with freshly combed hair and dressed in their Sunday best.
There are numerous ways
in which God can make us lonely and lead us back to ourselves. This was the way He dealt with me at that time. It was like a bad dream. I can see myself: crawling along in my odious and unclean way, across filth and slime, across broken beer glasses and through cynically wasted nights, a spellbound dreamer, restless and racked.
She raised her image before me, she gave me access to a holy shrine, she transformed me into a worshiper in a temple.
Everything dark and hateful was to be banished, there were to be no more tortured nights, no excitement before lascivious pictures, no eavesdropping at forbidden doors, no lust. In place of all this I raised my altar to the image of Beatrice, and by consecrating myself to her I consecrated myself to the spirit and to the gods, sacrificing that part of life which I withdrew from the forces of darkness to those of light. My goal was not joy but purity, not happiness but beauty, and spirituality.
"You spend a lot of time in bars, do you?" he asked. "Well, yes, " I replied. "What else is there to do? In the end it's more fun than anything else. " "You think? Maybe so. One part of it is of course very fine--the intoxication, the bacchanalian element. But I think most people that frequent bars have lost that entirely. It seems to me that going to bars is something genuinely philistine. Yes, for one night, with burning torches, a real wild drunk! But again and again, one little glass after the other, I wonder whether that's the real thing or not? Can you see Faust sitting night after night stooped over the bar?"
I could not have uttered a single word about my dreams and
expectations, my inner change, to anyone, not even if I had wanted to. But how could I have wanted to?
It was futile to sorrow after the loss. I now lived within a fire of unsatisfied longing, of tense expectancy that often drove me completely wild. I often saw the beloved apparition of my dream with a clarity greater than life, more distinct than my own hand, spoke with it, wept before it, cursed it. I called it mother and knelt down in front of it in tears. I called it my beloved and had a premonition of its ripe all-fulfilling kiss. I called it devil and whore, vampire and murderer. It enticed me to the gentlest love-dreams and to devastating shamelessness, nothing was too good and precious, nothing was too wicked and low for it.
The impetus that makes you fly is our great human possession. Everybody has it. It is the feeling of being linked with the roots of power, but one soon becomes afraid of this feeling. It's damned dangerous! That is why most people shed their wings and prefer to walk and obey the law.
When I compared myself with other boys my age I often felt proud and conceited but just as often
humiliated and depressed. Frequently I considered myself a genius, and just as frequently, crazy.
The person whom you would like to do away with is of
course never Mr. X but merely a disguise. If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.
I live in my dreams--that's what you sense. Other people live in dreams, but not in their own. That's the difference.
We aren't pigs as you seem to think, but human beings. We create gods and struggle with them, and they bless us.
He had given me faith in myself. And now I became conscious of gradually
beginning to resist him. There was too much didacticism in what he said, and I felt that he understood only a part of me completely.
I had
often speculated with images of the future, dreamed of roles that I might be assigned, perhaps as poet or prophet or painter, or something similar. All that was futile. I did not exist to write poems, to preach or to paint, neither I nor anyone else. All of that was incidental. Each man had only one genuine vocation--to find the way to himself.
Yes, you must find your dream, then the way becomes easy. But there is no dream that lasts forever, each dream is followed by another, and one should not cling to any particular one.
So it won't be the end of the world, no earthquake, no revolution, but war. You'll see what a sensation that will be! People will love it. Even now they can hardly wait for the killing to begin--their lives are that dull! But you will see, Sinclair, that this is only the beginning. Perhaps it will be a very big war, a war on a gigantic scale. But that, too, will only be the beginning. The new world has begun and the new world will be terrible for those clinging to the old.
But sometimes when I find the key and climb deep into myself where the images of fate lie aslumber in the dark mirror, I need only bend over that dark mirror to behold my own image, now completely resembling him, my brother, my master.