Another necessary jump into the Bulgarian literature rabbit hole, this time with Karastoyanov's novel set in Bulgaria in the 1920s, but bringing to mind Dostoevsky's Demons with its anarchists and assassins, lighthouses, zeppelins, and synthesis of modernist narrative techniques and Balkan storytelling.
And as the monsters come out from the past they settle in the man. Gaustin ( The yellow notebook)
Happiness is not only impossible, but also unbearable. What will you do with its volatile matter? This ghostly light, soapy bubble that will burst in front of your nose, leaving a bit of hot foam in your eyes. Happiness? Happiness is impermanent - like milk in the sun, like a fly in winter and a crocus in early spring. His back as fragile as a dragonfly... Happiness is not in the history books.
If people are not whole, even the most perfect plans go to the movies
There was an earthly savour in the air, a chilly bareness in the place, which associated itself somehow with too much getting up by candle-light, and not too much to eat. 💝
pickReading for the second time in two years this absolute of a gem of modern Bulgarian literature. I'm diving again into Terziyski's beautiful world full of nostalgia hoping I'll never have to come back for air again.
Another crazy Bulgarian post-socialist adventure from the most original writer in the Balkans for the last two decades, this time going to Asia in search of the ...old Bulgarians. This is one for the ages. I needed this humour in my life right now.
Men, at any rate, never fulfilled expectations. They might, upon acquaintance, turn out more entertaining than they appeared; but almost always taking up with a man was like reading a book you had read when you had forgotten that you had read it. You had not been for ten minutes in any sort of intimacy with any man before you had said: “But I‘ve read all this before…”
Today I decided to be a kid...for a day...during the 80's Bulgaria, filled with heavy nostalgia of an age that promised everything and gave nothing. I was a kid myself during those years...just in another country, across the northern border, but outside the language everything is so relatable. Let's shoot some hoops with the yesterday's kids turned into today's joyless adults.
While it is better to be loved than hated, it is also far better to be hated than ignored.
My dear, dear soul of Bulgaria!
It‘s night again. It could be yesterday‘s, or tomorrow‘s. A night four years back. They‘re all the same.
I have no ambition to change my nature, I merely intend to conquer my dislikes.
pickI'm getting back again into the brutal universe of detective Bank Romero.
To light a candle is to cast a shadow...
People all know the usefulness of what is useful, but they do not know the usefulness of the useless. Zhuang Zi
Truth, by its very nature, is ugly, savage and cruel; it disturbs, it frightens, it hurts and it kills. If, in some extreme situations, it is to be used at all, it must be taken only in small doses, in strict isolation, and with the most rigorous prophylactic precautions.
Such a surprising book! Great comfort reading!
Bacon was right in saying that the conquest of learning is achieved through the conquest of languages.
Stupidity is not my strong point. I have seen many people; I have visited a few countries; I have taken part in various undertakings without liking them; Today I can still recall a good hundred faces, two or three great shows, and perhaps the gist of some twenty books. What I remember is neither the best nor the worst of these things: simply what has managed to remain, remains. This arithmetic relieves me of any surprise that I am growing old.
Man‘s estrangement from the mythical realm and the subsequent shrinking of his existence to the mere factual—that is the major cause of mental illness.
AS YOU may perhaps remember, some time ago the English actor Hugh Grant was arrested by the police in Los Angeles: he was performing a rather private activity in a public place with a lady of the night. In this distressing circumstance, he was interviewed by an American journalist, who asked him a very American question: “Are you receiving any therapy or counselling?” Grant replied, “No. In England, we read novels.”
I'd never been one to give up on lost causes, maybe because I was one myself.
To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law—a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security.
Modern man, who moves with the times and seeks power without grace, is finally a much greater menace to human integrity than tattooed cannibals.
Hell is not “truth seen too late” (as Hobbes said); on the contrary, it is truth seen too soon, and knowingly rejected.
The most beautiful sadness in the world, the Bulgarian kind...and everything became moon.
Nostalgia filled summer holiday with Alex, Ana, Yana & co
Well, life is not just a business of standing on dry land and occasionally getting your feet wet. It is merely an illusion that some of us stand on one bank and some on the opposite. So long as we stand like that we are not living at all, but dreaming. So jump, jump in, and let the shock wake us up. Even if we drown, at least for a moment or two before we die we shall be awake and alive.
Half of the misery in this world is caused by people whose only talent is to worm their way into positions for which they otherwise have no competence.
life is a prison, and only imagination can open its windows.
The primary source of scientific thought is not reasoning, but the precise verification of an association originally supplied by the imagination.
What we should remember, however, is this (if I may thus paraphrase Bernard Shaw): The successful man adapts himself to the world. The loser persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the loser.
