Review: What Is to Be Done?

What Is to Be Done? by Nikolai Chernyshevsky
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I had been meaning to read this book for a while, so after finishing another Russian book, "The Master and The Margarita", I picked it up. What surprised me most is how few radicals I know have actually read the book. It was extremely influential on the growth of the Russian Socialist movement and is the oldest feminist novel I have ever read.

The book itself is a very thinly vaneered revolutionary propaganda story told through a number of young people in middle russian society. It uses a drama story about relationships and society as a way of pushing more radical messages through the tsarist censors. Though it wasn't the most exciting story, it was still very interesting from a historical perspective how it discussed the rationality of socialism and feminism. There was also a vivid example of a garment workers collective and long descriptions about the economic and social logic of doing so as well as critiques of marriage, the rich, the nuclear family, and others. Definitely an interesting read and a classic of Russian literature.

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Daniel Viglietti - Sólo digo compañeros

Review: The Master and Margarita

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I am very thankful to Dan to showing me this book, which would have had even more influence on me had I read it a few months earlier.

It is a Faust like story taking place in Russia with the Devil and his minions traveling through Moscow causing trouble and setting up multiple threads of peoples lives toward destruction or pain. Two characters are particularly effected and connected to a story traversing 2,000 years.

Reading this, I had been reminded how much I loved reading Russian literature which includes all matters of psychological issues and a manic/agitated pace which is indescribable elsewhere. I didn't give it 4 or 5 stars because I never felt particular sympathy for most of the characters, nor did I feel pain or relief when good things happened to them (maybe with the exception of Rimsky). Still a good iconic read.

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These Anthropological Synapses

My latest poem....



"These Anthropological Synapses"

Critical brain failure
a desire unquenchable
while repressed memory is unleashed

..yet the longing remains.

What I perceive as love is a damaged brain
coping with a memory of you
brilliant and formidable, beautiful and bold
burned into my existence with a searing fire

And I open myself to it

knowing it is material... mechanical

like the whirring of machines

chained in place as the sweatshop worker

Freedom would be a relief

an intensity mirrored by your own

lost are the stories, the teargas

the sensation of dark eyes and penetrating intelligence

Incidents, moments, milliseconds

interpreted through an algorithm

digesting culture, music, and danger

... the reality of struggle.

I can live in this heightened state

feeding off your memory

the silver spoon wrapped in dressings of poverty and contradiction

boundaries.... but walls too.

Echoes

There are echoes of the future in our rivers and trees
quietly stagnating in smoke and fire
drowning in profit, you can hear the strain
of stooped backs and urgent desire

The wind, it cries as the sounding alarms
a cascade of injustice and fear
awashed in poverty and mechanized tumult
while the forests...they just dissappear

Can you hear the echoes over backbreaking labor
of the rich condemning us all
or those trapped in prisons or covered in blood
waiting for the ax to fall

Ya Basta! Enough! yell the struggling masses
let the strike be your introduction
gather your neighbors and all people who work
and seize the means of production

Review: The Republic of Thieves

The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While I didn't think that this book contained the emotional force of the previous two books, it substantially furthered the back story which drives the story as well as creating a much more dangerous antagonist than either of the first 2 books.

While I dont think that the love story really clicks in this as much as the short one in the second book or in some other stories like the kingkiller chronicle, I still continue to appreciate the character's problem solving skills and the exploration of 2 new cities. I will be sad that the newest book of the series isn't out yet and I will have to find other stuff to read now!

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A Stab at Poetry

I have been reading a lot of poetry lately, mostly old stuff from the late 19th, early 20th century of Yiddish, Italian, or Latin American origin.  So I decided to give it a go myself.





Heartbreak and Hope



Caught in the past like a prisoner
With walls my historical shrine
hands are agape at the immovable shapes
and barriers of mental design

I have lost many loved ones and comrades
I love lost many struggles as well
The pain accumulates daily
and inside I am stuck here to dwell

Will we make it through this together
collecting tears and blood while we travel
will friendship and solidarity bind us
or will hope of the people unravel

And though time continues eternal
It breaks failures and losses away
it destroys the rotting of friendships lost
and prepares for a very new day

I may not be there to see it
I may be crushed underneath its embrace
but one of these days the workers will triumph
with freedom for the human race