Tuesday 25 July 2017

He loves me! He loves me not!


I saw the movie Boyhood. A pretty good movie, but not one worth winning an Oscar. I wonder if we still know what an Oscar-winning movie is?! Yes, we do. Happy funerals and The Shawshank Redemption are Oscar-winning movies. Movies that make one lose oneself in the story and wish for it never to end. The exact thing happens with great books, Requiem for Fools and Beasts or Shantaram, for example.
The last dialogue, at the end of the movie, got me thinking. If Seize the moment! isn’t actually the other way around. Namely, that the moment seizes us, in fact, and we cannot withstand it. And so I realized how much we are mesmerized with dicta. We believe in them, we make believe that we carry our lives according to them and we love to hear ourselves giving advice to others by using them. Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. Good always prevails. Nothing is above love (or law, depending on the circumstances). A lie has short legs. A leopard can’t change its spots. A handful of trade is a handful of gold. He who steals an egg will steal an ox. Yes, there is a grain of wisdom in all of them, but they are not the answer to our existence. In the end, life is impossible to be enframed within dicta. And neither within games such as He loves me! He loves me not!, even if we can choose to ignore the last remaining petal that would give us a response we would never validate as true. While writing the aforementioned dicta, the following verses rang in my mind (and they couldn’t be more appropriate):

Have no hope and be not afraid,
What is like the wave will perish like a wave;
If they urge you, if they call for you,
Remain still, no matter what.

                                                                        Mihai Eminescu - Glossa

Tuesday 18 July 2017

The Pledge by Friedrich Durrenmatt


What I am looking for in detective fiction (even though The Pledge does not entirely belong to this genre) is suspense and the possibility of actually seeing the action unfolding while I am reading.
The novel 'The Pledge' contains both. Moreover, it invites the reader to reflect upon things. Such as, for example, responsibility. Be it for a certain individual or the society. After having finished reading the novel, I kept noticing myself trying to put an end to the abovementioned dilemma. Finally, I realized that I did not properly consider the issue. No one forces us to choose, even though we might feel constrained about certain things. If it is right or wrong? Well, that's a different discussion.
'The Pledge' is something you might call required reading, according to my humble opinion.