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Junior Member
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 9
Alastrina is an unknown character at this point 
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Bertrand Russell, great philosopher and writer
I love Bertrand Russell's works. Not just for thier philisophical content, but for the poetic prose style of writing. Here is a sample.
Quote:
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"This is the reason why the past has such magical power. The beauty of its motionless and silent pictures is like the enchanted purity of late autumn, when the leaves, though one breath would make them fall, still glow against the sky in golden glory. The past does not change or strive; like Duncan, after life's fitful fever it sleeps well; what was eager and grasping, what was petty and transitory, has faded away; the things that were beautiful and eternal shine out of it like stars in the night".
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It's a shame that writers don't write this way in English anymore. I think it's lovely. And he is commenting on what he calls the "Empire of Fate" .
Quote:
"To every man comes, sooner or later, the great renunciation. For the young, there is nothing unattainable; a good thing desired with the whole of force of a passionate will, and yet impossible, is to them not credible. Yet, by death, by illness, by poverty, or by the voice of duty, we must learn, each one of us, the the world was not made for us, and that, however beautiful may be the things we crave, Fate may nevertheless forbid them. It is the part of courage, when misfortune comes, to bear without repining the ruin of our hopes, to turn away our thoughts from vain regrets. This degree of submission to power is not only just and right: it is the very gate of wisdom.
But passive renunciation is not the whole of wisdom; for not by renunciation alone can we build a temple for the worship of our own ideals. Haunting foreshadowings of the temple appear in the realm of imagination, in music, in architecture, in the untroubled kingdom of reason, and in the golden sunset magic of lyrics, where beauty shines and glows, remote from the touch of sorrow, remote from the fear of change, remote from the failures and disenchantments of the world of fact. In the contemplation of these things the vision of heaven will shape itself in our hearts, giving at once a touchstone to judge the world about us and an inspiration by which to fashion to our needs whatever it not incapable of serving as a stone in the sacred temple.
There is a cavern of darkness to be traversed before that temple can be entered. The gate of the cavern is despair, and its floor is paved with the gravestones of abandoned hopes. There self must die; there the eagerness, the greed of untamed desire, must be slain, for only so can the soul be freed from the empire of Fate. But out of the cavern, the Gate of Renunciation leads again to the daylight of wisdom, by whose radiance a new insight, a new joy, a new tenderness, shine forth to gladden the pilgrim's heart.
When, without the bitterness of impotent rebellion, we have learned both to resign ourselves to the outward rule of Fate and to recognize that the nonhuman world is unworthy of our worship, it becomes possible at last so to transform and refashion the unconscious universe, so to transmute it in the crucible of imagination, that a new image of shining gold replaces the old idol of clay. In all the multiform facts of the world - in the visual shapes of trees and mountains and clouds, in the events of the life of man, even in the very omnipotence of death - the insight of creative idealism can find the reflection of beauty which its own thoughts first made. In this way mind asserts its subtle mastery over the thoughtless forces of nature."
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He can really turn a phrase. I go to his books to find unique ways of saying things. His writing is prose, yet poetry, and philosophy all in one.
He writes often about nature not having any care towords men. He was Atheist. This piece is an extensive and lovely way of saying to change the things you can, and accept the things you cannot change, and have the wisdom to know the difference.
Fate and the forces of nature have no care for humankind. You must yeild to it, or become embittered and empassioned. In America the "land of dreams" people have the idea that you can do anything you set your mind to. Well, how many aspiring actors spent lives of waiting on tables?
I prefer and love the musical piece from Les Misarable, "I Dreamed a Dream".
It says:
Quote:
"He spent a summer by my side,
He filled my days with endless wonder,
He took my childhood in his stride,
But he was gone when Autumn came,
But still I dream he'll come to me,
That we will live the years together,
But there are dreams that cannot be,
And there are storms we cannot weather."
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I think Americans love this musical so much, not only for the beautiful music, but it allows us to be "just" human. We don't have to be super men and women, doing and achieving the greatest. And no, sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you do not win that prized Gold Medal.
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09-18-2006, 04:42 AM
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