Метод свободных ассоциаций

Posted by confessionsofadevouteuropean

https://confessionsofadevouteuropean.wordpress.com/2025/04/21/dear-brothers-and-sisters/

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News coverage of the death of Pope Francis today has repeated a short film clip of his appearance yesterday. I don’t know if this shows the whole of that appearance and what he said, but it includes the words ‘Chiari Fratelli i sorelli, buona pasqua’, ‘Dear brothers and sister, Happy (or, more precisely, ‘good’) Easter’. Perhaps it is all he said. 

I’m reminded of a story told by Lessing about the apostle and evangelist St John, who, according to legend, was the only one of the twelve to live to a long old age. The congregation of the church where he lived in Ephesus were, of course, always especially pleased when he addressed them though as he got older his addresses, which always began with the  greeting ‘Beloved’ (a greeting repeated several times in his letters), became shorter and shorter until, at last, all he said was ‘Beloved’. But, Lessing suggested, that was enough because the whole Christian message was implicit in it. ‘Dear brothers and sisters, Good Easter’.

https://confessionsofadevouteuropean.wordpress.com/2025/04/21/dear-brothers-and-sisters/

http://confessionsofadevouteuropean.wordpress.com/?p=1826

Posted by confessionsofadevouteuropean

https://confessionsofadevouteuropean.wordpress.com/2025/04/17/history-and-cosmos/

http://confessionsofadevouteuropean.wordpress.com/?p=1819

Moving house in your 70s is a life-defining event, underlining the linearity and unrepeatability of our existence. Whether or not it’s my last move (I had thought the move here was the last) isn’t so important, but it’s a clear marker of one passage of life coming to an end and another beginning: the kind of decision and action you can’t go back on.

Walking the coastal path at this time of year is a reminder of a very different kind of time. Last week we saw the first sand martins back, this week a scattering of violets, and bluebells are coming through to replace the dying daffodils; in the garden many more flowers that had disappeared for the winter coming through, and the oregano is progressing geometrically; soon, I hope, we’ll be seeing swallows and then, last of all, the swifts. Even the human world has its cycles: the boats have now gone back in the water and European produce is returning to the supermarket shelves, replacing the ‘fresh’ fruit and veg from Peru and Kenya that we avoid buying (because of airmiles, not any objection to Peruvian or Kenyan farmers). And beyond all this, here by the sea, are the daily repetitions of the tides, ebbing and flowing as they have been ebbing and flowing since before the first humans appeared on earth and will very possibly continue after our species has disappeared (unless we take the planet with us).

Never again. Ever again.

Putting these two kinds of time together can produce opposite effects. In one mood, it can make our life-choices seem trivial and pointless, in another it consoles, for whatever we have done wrong or foolishly has not (it seems) injured the fundamental patterns of cosmic order. Faced with the historical catastrophe of the fall of Jerusalem and impending exile, Jeremiah found consolation in the thought of the fixed order of the sun, moon, and stars and the fluctuations of the sea. The world beyond our world is there, it has seen us come and it will see us go.

https://confessionsofadevouteuropean.wordpress.com/2025/04/17/history-and-cosmos/

http://confessionsofadevouteuropean.wordpress.com/?p=1819

Posted by confessionsofadevouteuropean

https://confessionsofadevouteuropean.wordpress.com/2025/04/10/uncertain-times/

http://confessionsofadevouteuropean.wordpress.com/?p=1806

As some readers of this blog know, I am in the process of house-selling and this has also involved me having to reduce the number of books I have accumulated over many years of bibliophilia. Some, of course, were directly related to teaching or research but the fact is I do just like books. In the event, making the big decision to let them go was the easy part. First of all I discovered that university libraries were not so interested in receiving what was a unique collection of Kierkegaard books, especially those not in English as (it seems) British students can’t be presumed to read outside their own language. Probably true, but disappointing. Booksellers have similar doubts. This week, I discovered that even charity bookshops have their limits, when, on presenting a couple of boxes, a suspicious volunteer asked if it was ‘religious stuff’, which, he said, they couldn’t sell. Again, probably true–again disappointing. How I’m going to move two boxes of books that are not only ‘religious’ but in Danish remains a mystery!

I recall Heidegger’s (1936) prediction that in time to come, the ‘researcher’ who goes from conference to conference, negotiates with publishers, and (he might have added) funding bodies has a different and more ruthless set of aims than the old humanist scholar in his library. The replacement of one by the other was, he suggested, inevitable. I’ve known this for years, of course, and even translated the relevant passage once for a talk–but discovering in daily experience the devaluation of the book is a shock, and a sobering insight into the movements of the cultural tectonic plates that are ceaselessly shifting beneath our feet.

https://confessionsofadevouteuropean.wordpress.com/2025/04/10/uncertain-times/

http://confessionsofadevouteuropean.wordpress.com/?p=1806