April 2010
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What Monsieur Ouine says in our time…
Monsieur Ouine, one of the greatest French novels of the 20th century, provides many answers to the modern world as it is. The following few quotes provide a glimpse of the evil that is everywhere. Continue reading
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The virtues of boredom
In a small, acidic book (De la France, translated by Alain Paruit, L'Herne), Emil Cioran gave an answer to the French malaise. He explained how much he cared about boredom, but he distinguished two kinds of boredom: the one that opens "its doors to infinity," "as an extension into the spiritual of an immanent void of being," and the one that Continue reading
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Notes on The Child of Voluptuousness
Notes on Gabriele D'Annunzio's The Child of Voluptuousness. P 58. Between the obelisk of the Trinity and the column of the Conception, I suspended my Catholic and pagan heart as an ex-voto. She laughed at his sentence. He had a madrigal on his lips about this suspended heart; but he did not pronounce it, because Continue reading
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Notes on History of Catholicism
Notes from Jean-Pierre Moisset's History of Catholicism (chapter 9: The Shock of Modernity (mid-18th century — 1870). p. 394. The ritual of touching the scrofula at the end of the coronation, still practiced, is losing its credibility. Symptomatically, the formula of imposition, the formula of laying on of hands is changing. It was "the king Continue reading