Sunday 24 June 2012

  1. La otra historia de México. Hidalgo e Iturbide (La gloria y el olvido). Armando Fuentes Aguirre, Catón (10/02/2011 - 02/21/2012)
  2. Cumbres borrascosas. Emily Brontë (04/23/2012 - 05/09/2012)
  3. The enigma of capital and the crises of capitalism. David Harvey (12/05/2011 - 05/17/2012)
  4. La conjura de los necios. John Kennedy Toole (01/05/2012 - 10/06/2012)
  5. De profundis, the Ballad of the Reading Goal and Other writings. Oscar Wilde (04/12/2010 - 06/24/2012)

Finalmente terminé de leer este volumen. O algo parecido. A decir verdad, no leí completo el poema "The Ballad of the Reading Goal". Pero me lo perdono con toda magnificencia.

Esta es una prueba más de lo que se me dificulta leer en inglés, a pesar de que Oscar Wilde es muy legible y usa un lenguaje muy limpio y comprensible.

Este segundo o tercer sprint que le di, consistió en leer "The decay of lying" y "The critic as artist".

A continuación algunas líneas que me gustaron:

The decay of lying

The only beautiful things, as somebody once said, are the things that do not concern us.

You Christians are so occupied in misinterpreting the fourth commandment that you have never thought of making an artistic application of the second.

For the aim of the liar is simple to charm, to delight, to give pleasure. He is the very basis of civilised society.

The critic as artist

The opinions, the character, the achievements of the man, matter very little [..] but when he tells us his own secrets he can always charm our ears to listening and our lips to silence.

It is difficult no to be unjust to what one loves.

As for modern journalism, it is not my business to defend it. It justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarest.

[..] journalism is unreadable, and literature is no read.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

We, in fact, have made writing a definite mode of composition and have treated it as form of elaborate design. The Greeks, upon the other hand, regarded writing simply as a method of chronicling. Their test was always the spoken word in its musical and metrical relations. The voice was the medium, and the ear the critic.

[..] for the accusations of plagiarism were endless, and such accusations proceed either from the thin colourless lips of impotence, or from the grotesque mouths of those who, possesing nothing of their own, fancy that they can gain a reputation for wealth by crying out that they have been robbed.

For there is no art where there is no style.

If you wish to understand others you must intensify your own individualism.

We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid. [..] The sure way of knowing nothing about life is to try to make oneself useful.

It is so easy for people to have sympathy with suffering. It is so difficult for them to have sympathy with thought.

And idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

There is nothing sane about the worship of beauty.

The real love of beauty [..] is the true aim of education.

It is always with the best intentions that the worst work is done.

We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.

If we are tempted to make war upon another nation, we shall remember that we are seeking to destroy and element of our own culture, and possibly its most important element.