Klara’s Universe

               Darcy’s unexpected (or not so unexpected) proposal and his subsequent explanatory letter following Elizabeth’s violent refusal represent the turning point of the novel. It is the story’s moment of truth: not only because the reader now discovers or has its doubts confirmed about Darcy’s feelings and true character, but also because it is the first instance when the protagonists face each other revealing their true selves. In addition, Darcy’s letter turns out to be revelatory in explaining the title, as even though Darcy was already obviously standing for the ‘Pride’, thanks to Elizabeth’s constant reflections on the subject, never before was Elizabeth’s prejudiced mind revealed better than in confronting the true nature of her rejected suitor’s behaviour and manners as derived from his written confession.

              The proposal scene brings the two main characters, standing on opposite positions to face each other and speak their minds openly for the first time. If Elizabeth’s strong antipathy, fuelled by her recent discovery of his role in her sister’s being ignored by Bingley while in London and the long acknowledged injustice that she thought him responsible of towards Wickham was more than obvious to even the most distracted reader, guessing Darcy’s antithetical feelings required a more challenging level of lecture. Still, however thoroughly a reader would have considered the subtle hints dropped by the narrator, such as the enduring observation of the brightness of Lizzy’s eyes, they could have only lead him or her to the conclusion that Darcy was far from despising or ignoring the heroine or at most feeling interested and attracted to her. The violence of his passion, as it erupts during his proposal must have taken by surprise even the keenest reader, as the narrator never bothered to thoroughly prepare the ground for this scene, whose unexpectedness induces the looked-for effect of surprise and dismay.

              The result of this open exposure to the ‘other’s side of the story’ induces a deep feeling of humiliation in both protagonists and enables them to further analyse themselves and their conduct. It is indeed the point of departure for further change in the characters themselves, as they both gradually realise their own faults and start thinking of each other in a new light. It has been amply argued that this transformation is less obvious in Darcy than in Elizabeth. But nothing can be more natural than that, considering that after all the main character is the heroine and that the story is told entirely from her perspective to such an extent that the reader has no easy time to differentiate –if possible at all!- between the narrator’s voice and Lizzy’s own judgements in many a scene. This suddenly triggered but gradually appropriated metamorphosis in the characters is essential to the plot, as it finally enables in Elizabeth those feelings that will lead her to rise only a faint objection to visiting Pemberley, a place we now understand she almost yearns to see.

In fact, nowhere else in Austen’s novels does the relation between the two main characters shift so dramatically and stun the reader to such an extent as in Pride and Prejudice. Although deceived love like that of Marianne Dashwood’s for Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility or that of Edmund Bertram’s for Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park is not that uncommon, long steady affection like that between Fanny Price and Edmund Bertram, Elinor Dashwood and Edward Ferrars or Emma Woodhouse and Mr. Knightley seem to be the perfect recipe for a happy romance. Consequently, Darcy and Lizzy’s love story seems only all the more passionate, romantic and appealing not only to Austen’s contemporaries but even to uncountable subsequent generations of readers, marking it not only as her greatest masterpiece, but also as one of the most enduringly popular novels in the English language.

Ideal Beauty

Radial Beauty 

If one does not live to tell

The stories hidden benneath one’s heart,

Then why would stary nights

And rainy days be sent to us?

If there is nothing more to life

Than people, things we take for granted,

And feel that all our feelings

Have been bestowed on us

For the sole declared purpose

Of self-love and loneliness,

Then where would spring’s perfumes

Summer’s beaches and autumn’s leaves

Be exiled by the omnipotent winter

Which should by then already rule

Throughout our hearts? 

Apres le vent d’automne

l’arc-en-ciel colore les nuages
d’une lumiere des ombres
et les fleurs a seve d ‘orage
perdent leur vie dans l onde

mon sang coule a flots legers
parmi roses et perles
et je reve d’un lourd ether
qu’anneantisse les siecles

des tenebres rouges et bleues
nous ecroulent les veines
et l’ancien archange de boue
tue d’un oeil sa belle sirene

entre les morceaux perdus
de mai maigre et vaine poitrine
je rencontre plus les clous
qui m’ont dechire  l’echine

Oiseaux de plasme

encore un jour et l’hirondelle pleura sa perte d’une voix de fer
et apres deux-trois autres siecles le cigne enlevera le ciel
avec son coeur brise de rage le pave arrachera les lunes
et l’aigle des hauteurs tombe allumera ses plumes
adieu a eux adieu a moi  adieu au monde d ‘azbeste
car c’est a moi de transpercer la plasme des voix celestes

Neosonet

De ce-mi rad lacrimile pe umarul tau gol

De ce–mi plange surasul sub sarutarile-te fugare

Pe gat, pe umeri, mi se ineaca intristarea

Iar buzele-mi se ratacesc in vise

Rasar si se topesc amurguri de nimeni nestiute

Pe cand in iarna de afara a inghetat un inger

Se plamadeste-n taina un curcubeu de sticla

Descris pe marmura nenascuta a castelelor trecute

Si ceturi nepatrunse etioleaza vraja

Unei pareri ivite in miez de noapte

Din cerul hibernal o stea se sinucide

Iar peste ape sta nemiscata moartea

Si peste tot si peste toate

S-a ridicat tremuratoare o nazuinta

(6.10.2006)

Hunting Tigers

Klara Losonczy

              Wouldn’t it be so easy if things had only one perfectly clear meaning and just one possible interpretation? Perhaps… But then, wouldn’t this lead to what is nowadays happening with an impressive stack of Hollywood movies? Namely encouraging the lack of active intellectual participation of the audience, as the directors seem to have engaged in a struggle to become Gods and give all the answers. But this is not the case of ‘Hunting Tigers’, a movie which though shot in the 80s remains actual and intriguing. As the very title implies, the movie leaves the conclusions to its spectators, as at least two interpretations can be drawn. The title’s ambiguity is very relevant and comprises 2 of the possible main interpretations of the movie itself: hunting tigers. One interpretation is envisaging the tigers as the ones being hunted and the other one as the ones hunting.

              If the movie were build on the concept of hunting the tigers, this naturally raises other questions. Who is hunting them? Why are they being hunted? And in the end, why tigers? Tigers have been believed to represent a wild, exotic, fierce and proud beast, mysterious and unpredictable. It is perhaps no coincidence that the famous words opening the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor are ‘tora, tora, tora ’, which are also the Japanese word for tiger. Therefore, the tigers can be thought of as representing the Japanese people, or at least the young generation therein discussed. To sum up, the movie can be looked at as a hopeless hunt for the mythical tigers, doomed to failure for those who like the director himself and Oe Kenzaburo belong to a different world. The director is obviously a foreigner, while Oe belongs to the older generation, so they can both easily fail to understand the spirit of Japan’s young generation.

              On the other hand, what if the tigers are actually the ones who are hunting? ‘Hunting’ can be after all thought as having both verbal and adjectival value. But since the hunting tigers are Japan’s younger generation, what are they hunting for? This is perhaps one of the movie’s key questions, as the author does not only struggle to prove whether Oe is wrong or not when designating them as a ‘lost generation’, but also tries to identify their model, what they are looking or hunting for. Even here various interpretations are available. Maybe they are hunting for ‘America’, longing to become one with the western world as the very last image or substitute of a conclusion of the movie might imply by showing us the girl who cries as Elvis’ statue, one of Tokyo’s ’landmarks’ is about to be destroyed. And yet it could also be that what the young generation is looking for is actually that model to follow, as Oe suggested in the first place.

              The beauty of this short documentary resides not only in its wide variety of possible interpretations or in its open ending, in two words, with its ambiguity and interactivity, but also in the title itself. Only two words, a very simple, logical expression after all, can sum up in almost antagonising concepts the spirit of this movie, as well as the various problems raised therein. It is perhaps precisely this deeply poetical touch in the title that makes this movie a work of art and puts it above many more famous or recognised films of the last two decades. Perhaps… Because the answer is not meant to be given, but should be found by each and every member of the audience…

Matsushima and the islands just off its shore are considered one of the 3 most beautiful sceneries in Japan and it has been long celebrated as such even by such great writers as the haiku master Matsuo Basho in his book ‘Oku no hoso michi’ or ‘the narrow road to the interior’.

I went and visited it with my sister in late July and here is what we saw. It definetely deserves its fame and remains in my heart as one of the most special places I’ve been to in Japan so far. It also reminded me of the Halong Bay in northern Vietnam, obviously on a much smaller scale.

Each of these small rocky islands has been given a name, lik the last pictures, the famous Kagami or Mirror Island.

If u have the chance, u really must go and see it!:)

As the earliest sparrow

Returning to its long forgotten nest

Or as the sun that once again emmerges in the dark

After the loneliest of nights,

So does my lyre come to life once more

To sing the innermost repressed cravings

Of what was once my soul.

You came into my heart

Like the increasingly furious power

Of the tidal waves

And resolved to flood my mind

With echoes of extinguished stars and rivers

Sparkling, chanting behind my once closed eyes.

And now I wonder for how many years

I’d suffer deep enough

To win your heart again.