Some Other Literary Notes

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Henry David Thoreau

It has been a long day and writing new post each day on the blog has gradually become my habit. The good thing of possessing the habit is that writing new posts nowadays does not take much thinking-one just need to write some words done which make sense to the people, the same words which are also true to one's conscientiousness. I feel like writing the introduction of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, but I do realise my lacking of eloquence. I remembered the time, like six or seven years ago,  when I first read Rousseau's works, which were some articles including 'The Social Contract' and 'On Education', his logical reasoning inspired me so much. I can barely remember now how he put his words, but what left in me was the ideas he was trying to convey hundreds of years ago. Such encounter through history is something in which I was so fascinated. He seemed to be talking to me face to face while I was reading his words and more real than anyone around me at that time.

Federico García Lorca

Rainer Maria Rilke

Sigmund Freud

Whenever I mentioned Rousseau, I had always to address the one with a similar difficult name, Henry David Thoreau, who wrote a famous book in Walden. Maybe it was because I read them at nearly the same time. But I read Federico García Lorca, Rainer Maria Rilke and some of Freud's works at that time as well. Reading those authors' books in China and in my family at that time was something fanatic and I was treated badly because of that. Please don't take me as name dropping here since each name has had its unique and important meaning to me and there would be many more names if I try to list them all down.

Since this post is turning more into a personal literature review, it will not be a sin to bring up a name which I have not talked about to others for a very long time-Jiddu Krishnamurti, the one who completely changed my life.

Juddi Krishnamurti

If I have to choose among all human beings whom I have encountered in life and who gave me the biggest influence, I have to say it was him. I read nearly every book he wrote which I could get in China at that time. I have subsequently in the past six years recommending his writing to numerous people, but they all found him too difficult to read and digest. But for me, his words were so simple and touching. It took me less than a second to understand after reading his sentences. From the very first encounter with him in a remote corner of a bookstore, it only took me less than a week to finish three of his books. I could not help but kept on reading like mad. I just could not have enough of him. Each sentence of him meant a whole new world to me. I was like a young kid who one day opened his eyes and saw earth from the space. K's teaching completely changed the way I looked at the world and my own life. If I have to choose a religion, K is my religion though I know perfectly well he is not and it is me who is.

Franz Kafka

Orhan Pamuk

I don't like using the letter K, because whenever I start using them, with no very much valid reasons, Franz Kafka and Orhan Pamuk's figure will pop up in my mind. I know the main character Ka in Pamuk's novel 'Snow" was named Kafka's witness K. Well, in Kafka's novel, anyname can be anyone's name. Mr X, Mrs Y? Name loses its social value when the existence takes its weight in life.