Sa'di (c. 1213-1292)

Persian poet and prose writer, whose best-known works include Bustan (1256-57, The Fruit Garden), which contains histories, personal anecdotes, fables and moral instructions, and Gulistan (1258, The Rose Garden), a didactic work composed both of prose and verse. Sa'di is basically a moralist whose stories have similarities with Jean de La Fontaine's (1621-1695) fables. In Persia his golden maxims were highly valued and considered a treasure of true wisdom. Condonation is laudable but nevertheless Apply no salve to the wound of an oppressor of the people. He who had mercy upon a serpent Knew not that it was an injury to the sons of Adam. (from The Rose Garden)Shaykh Sa’di (Sa'di Shirazi), byname of Musharrif Od-din Muslih Od-din, was born in Shiraz (now in Iran). Little is known...

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Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207 - 1273)

The greatest mystical poet of Persia, famous for his didactic epic Masnavi-ye Ma'navi (Spiritual Couplets), a treasure-house of Sufi mysticism. The theme of Rumi's ghazals is sacred love. After Rumi's death his disciples were organized as the Mawlawiyah order, called in the West the "Whirling Dervishes". This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say. I don't plan it. Whewn I'm outside the saying of it, I get very quiet and rarely speak at all. (from 'Who says words with my mouth?', trans. by Coleman Barks) Jalal al-Din Rumi, known to his disciples as Maulana Rumi, "Our Master, the Byzantine", was born in Balkh, Ghurid empire (now in Afghanistan). His father, Baha'uddin Walad, was a jurist and preacher. The family moved from place to place, perhaps because political reasons or...

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Muhammad Yamin (1903-1962)

Indonesian historian, poet, playwright, and politician, member of the leftist Murba Party. Yamin became President Sukarno's principal 'myth-maker'. He started his career as a writer in the 1920s, when Indonesian poetry was marked by an intense and largely reflective romanticism. Di atas batasan Bukit Barisan Memandang beta ke bawah memandang Tampaklah hutan rimba dan ngarai lagi pun sawah, telaga nan permai : Serta gerangan lihatlah pula Langit yang hijau bertukar warna Oleh pucuk daun kelapa : Itulah tanah airku Sumatera namanya tumpah darahku. (from 'Tanah Air') Minangkabau Muhammad Yamin was one of the pioneers of modern poetry in Indonesia. He was born in Sawah Lunto in West-Sumatra. Yamin started to write in Malaya in the Dutch-language journal Jong Sumatra in 1920, but...

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Jean-Paul Sartre 1947 - The Historical Process

“Existentialism is unaware of the historical process.” (Pravda January 23, 1947)I have expected an attack of this kind for some time. In my review, Les Temps Modernes, I had posed a few questions to Communist intellectuals and they weren’t able to answer. What is more, M. Ilya Ehrenburg, upon his return from America, severely criticized my books, and I had forced him to admit that he hadn’t read them, which he did with good grace and without being the least bit flustered. It was obviously necessary that an encyclical be issued to make things clear. It goes without saying that M. Zaslavski had no more read existentialist works than did M. Ehrenburg. Be he speaks of them from even higher and farther away. I am embarrassed to answer him: we answer someone, but M. Zaslavski is no one....

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Jean-Paul Sartre 1946 - The Time of the Assassins

This war will be the war of fear. It is in fear that it is being prepared. People are allowing it to come on slowly, with a kind of ecstasy. They believe in it like they believe in chiromancy, like a confessor, like everything that releases them from forging their own destiny. They love their fear; it reconciles them with themselves, it suspends the faculties of the soul in the same way as sneezing and diarrhoea. And that threat that weighs on their heads conceals from them the empty heavens: it’s a roof. And in the meanwhile, the terrorized governments observe each other. When in a panic a nation will make too abrupt a gesture, the others will leap at its throat. Then the abstract massacre will begin. Once we risked our lives against that of others; we saw the enemy dead up close,...

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Critique of Dialectical Reason. Jean-Paul Sartre. 1960

Critique of Critical Investigation1 The Basis of Critical InvestigationWe know the abstract conditions which this investigation must satisfy if it is to be possible. But these conditions leave its individual reality undetermined. In the same way, in the sciences of Nature we can have a general idea of the aim of an experiment (experience) and the conditions for it to be valid, without knowing what physical fact is to be investigated, what instruments it will employ, or what experimental system it will identify and construct. In other words, a scientific hypothesis includes its own experimental requirements; it indicates, in broad outline, the conditions that the proof must satisfy; but this initial schema can be distinguished only formally from the conjecture which is to be tested....

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Literature: Anton Chekhov

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Franz Kafka (1883 - 1924) The Vulture

A vulture was hacking at my feet. It had already torn my boots and stockings to shreds, now it was hacking at the feet themselves. Again and again it struck at them, then circled several times restlessly round me, then returned to continue its work. A gentleman passed by, looked on for a while, then asked me why I suffered the vulture. "I'm helpless," I said. "When it came and began to attack me, I of course tried to drive it away, even to strangle it, but these animals are very strong, it was about to spring at my face, but I preferred to sacrifice my feet. Now they are almost torn...

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Franz Kafka (1883 - 1926) The Metamorphose - Part Three

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