Perpetually confused: Futility

Thursday, February 1, 2007

Futility

Omar Khayyam on the nature of existence

Futility: My understanding of Khayyam

Smoky past, fiery present and future in flames
Desire to burn, the only motivating force
Body turns to ash, soul’s existence questionable
SO WHAT REMAINS?
Just the footprints on the wet ground
Not even that
They also fade with time
Passing time feeds on our identity
How cruel?
But it will go on and on and on and on..
Like a scavenger feeding on dead bodies

Leaving no trace of existence

1 comment:

Rashneek said...: wonderfully translated...; 12:07 AM

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The First Man by Albert Camus

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Letter to D by Andre Gorz

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The Outsider: by Albert Camus

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The Name of the Rose: by Umberto Eco

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The moon and six pence: by W. Somerset Maugham

Zorba the Greek By Nikos Kazantzakis, trans by Carl Wildman

Istanbul, Memories of a city by Orhan Pamuk, trans by Maureen Freely

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The Unbearable Lightness of Being’ though published some years back continues to be read and pondered upon for its philosophical speculations on post World war II anxieties in Eastern Europe. The book though a work of fiction underlines the absurdities of life and gives us a clear cut glimpse in the life of the author himself. What is extremely fascinating about Kundera is his belief that a person can write only about himself, hence making all his books his different autobiographies
to read a short review log on to http://www.artconcerns.net/2007May/html/bookReview_milanKundera.htm

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His sense of humor is simply fabulous..here is one of my favorite sentences,

"We are the Emperor of India, Bhakti Ram Jain
but we can't write our own damn name"

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One Hundred Years of Solitude........last line

"....Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchmemts, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second oppurtunity on earth." IF THE TRANSLATION HAS SUCH AN IMPACT WONDER HOW IT WOULD FEEL TO READ THE ORIGINAL