James Joyce

 

Definitely compelling masterpiece. It took all my focus and concentration in order to figure out only some among a thousand symbols and insights within the novel. Stephen Dedalus, the artist determined to reshape and pick up the pieces of Irish art. Leopold Bloom, advertisment agent for the Freeman, whose thoughts rely more on a practical basis, cheated on by Molly, his wife. There wouldn't be any summary for such an outlasting work. Joyce leads us pacing about the streets of Dublin, from Sandymouth beach through Grafton Street, on the way to brothels and shelters, we witness any event through the mind of those characters, whose life and whereabouts are intermingled though they're not aware of it. When asked about what he did during the Great War, Joyce replied : I wrote Ulysses, and what did you do during the Great War?-

Merely tracing the track where this novel conicides with Homer's tale of Odysseus wouldn't be appropriate, it is much more than that. You ought to give that a try at least.

Laurence Sterne.

 

This is what impressed me the most so far, though I am aware of the fact that I lack the knowlegde of a great many other authors not to be underestimated. Anyway, as far back as the 18th century, there has been a main shift within certain literary manners and styles; an introspective view towards a novel characters was gradually spreading throughout the English authors' environment. New techniques were experimented, and, though not successfull at the time, they proved to lay the basis for the Stream of Consciousness manner of Joyce, Virginia Woolf and so forth. Sterne pioneered such movements, he was ahead of his time, as most writers have been, therefore the hilariousness and beams of genius of this novel weren't much acknowledged at the time. This novel overwhelmed me with laughters and admiration. I appreciated Tristram Shandy as I never did with any other book, I can't help laughing even at the present time, as I picture in my mind Tristram's father compiling the Tristopoedia for his son who's still due....I don't mean to tell you anything more about that, you'd better give that a thousand looks, and eventually you will thank me for this hint.

 

- Here lies a poet whose name was writ on the waters -

 

A pretty humble and unnoticed gravestone, whose engraving, though written on water, is scarcely visible. If nightingales ever had a conscience, they should pay their gratitude towards a poets whose words throb in my mind each time I get a glimpse of beauty and truth. As soon as he reached the nightingale's tune he died, as soon as he engaged with the girl he loved the most, despite his friends' constant mocking, he was dragged afar with sickness. I suggest you to read any of his poems, if you're willing to get glimpses of truth whose boundaries are that of beauty.

 

 

on the grasshopper and the cricket...

 

The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshoppers - he takes the lead
In summer luxury,- he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Crickets song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshoppers among some grassy hills