Gustav Klimt’s 'The Kiss'

By Dilip -
Gustav Klimt’s 'The Kiss', reproduced on a devastated building in Syria by artist Tammam Azzam.

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Albert Camus's lecture 'The Human Crisis', New York, March 1946. 'No cause justifies the murder of innocents'

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The morning after a great historical crisis, you feel as sad and sick as after a heavy night. But there is no aspirin for historical hangovers .. The world is no longer divided into the just or unjust, but into masters and slaves. He who is right is he who enslaves.  Albert Camus     La crise de l'homme : THE HUMAN CRISIS   (Text read by Viggo Mortensen on March 28 2016)   Ladies and Gentlemen: when I was invited to give a series of lectures in the United States of America, I felt some doubt and hesitation. I am really not old enough to give lectures, and I am more at ease with the process of thinking than I am making categorical statements... since I don't feel I have any claim on what is generally called the truth. I shared this reservation and was very politely told that my personal opinion didn't matter. What mattered was that I'd be able to offer some facts about France so that my listeners could form their own opinions. It was then suggested...
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The Almond Trees by Albert Camus (1940)

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'Do you know', Napoleon once said to Fontanes, 'what astounds me most about the world?  The impotence of force to establish anything.  There are only two powers in the world: the sword and the mind.  In the end, the sword is always conquered by the mind' Conquerors, you see, are sometimes melancholy.  They have to pay some price for so much vainglory. But what a hundred years ago was true of the sword is no longer true today of the tank. Conquerors have made progress, and the dismal silence of places without intelligence has been established for years at a time in a lacerated Europe. At the time of the hideous wars of Flanders, Dutch painters could still perhaps paint the cockerels in their farmyards. The Hundred Years War has likewise been forgotten, and yet the prayers of Silesian mystics still linger in some hearts. But today, things have changed; the painter and the monk have been drafted - we are one with the world.  The mind has lost that regal certai...
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By Dilip -
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After the Truth Shower

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Dear Readers Thank you for reading my blog for the past eleven years. (This is a link to the new one) During this time it has had nearly 1.7 million hits; and I have posted over 9500 posts covering a variety of themes. From July 11 to 19, 2022, my blog was withdrawn by the Blogger administration on account of what its machinery suspected to be 'Impersonation'. It took over a week and the efforts of several well-wishers to get it back online I thank them all for their kindness and goodwill  My blog has always been - and remains - non-commercial. I have used it for academic purposes; and to foster a culture of debate and informed commentary in civil society. Because it contains a large amount of material gathered and collated for over a decade, I cannot afford to lose its contents. I hope it will remain undisturbed now and function as an archive. However, I have decided to use a new blog on WordPress as a platform for my newest comments and posts The new blog is titled After the...
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Baldev Singh Mann: ‘My darling daughter!’

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"Even if we are unable to win in our battle, my darling, try you must to be at the head of the caravan engaged in the battle for truth. It is far from my dream that you grow up to be a Sikh, Hindu or Muslim. Try you must to rise above such identities and be a human being. Beware, lest the humanity in you is diminished because of such divisions.." On the night of September 25, 1986,  Baldev Singh Mann , a communist–activist fighting the extremists in Punjab, was killed while on his way to his village, Chinna Bagga, in Amritsar district, to meet his one–week–old daughter. Reproduced below is the letter he wrote to his daughter the day she was born. Welcome to the world my darling daughter! I got the news of your birth from your  dadi  on the 18th (September 1986). While intimating to me the news of your birth, your grand–mother did not express the joy that she undoubtedly would have shown had a son been born in your place. Because you are a girl, your birth did not...
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The Republic of Silence – Jean-Paul Sartre on The Aftermath of War and Occupation (September 1944)

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Total responsibility in total solitude – is this not the very definition of our liberty? Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the most important philosophers and writers of the 20th century. He lived through World War II first as a French prisoner of war, then as a professor of philosophy associated with the underground socialist movement. Sartre writes of the Occupation: “Because the Nazi venom seeped into our very thoughts, every accurate thought was a triumph. Because an all-power police force tried to gag us, every word became precious as a declaration of principle.” Some of Sartre’s post-war writings have recently been collected in an English Language edition as  The Aftermath of War  and is published by Seagull Books, Kolkata. The Republic of Silence ( Lettres francaises , September 1944) We were never more free than during the German occupation. We had lost all our rights, beginning with the right to talk. Every day we were insulted to our faces and had to take ...
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