Stanislaw Lem, like Borges, has written many reviews of imaginary books. You know the ones Borges wrote as H. Bustos Domecq?

During the rational, optimistic periods you plan out elaborate sentences and delicately slot them into place -- a bit like playing correspondence chess. You don't mind having to write 'if' on Monday and 'the' on Tuesday, because you know there's plenty of time...

Then come the darker periods. Bending the rules with huge compound verb-nouns, fantastic polysemes struggling to contain themselves. "Let's make meaning!" you cry as you crack up, poluphloisboiotatotically.

Then the really dark period. The Work continues, but you write '@#$%' 245 times in succession before you pull out of the trough...

And so it goes on.

<"The sin the two of us now share," mused the king. "the sin of having known beauty, which is a gift forbidden mankind. Now we must atone for it. I gave you a mirror and a golden mask; here is the third gift, which shall be the last."

He laid in the poet's right hand a dagger.

Unfortunately. Worst semester ever.

<DomDaniel><With bufon vanquished and you temporarily absent, what else did he have to live for?>

Well put. It took awhile, but I found new enemies. Without enemies, there isn't terribly much reason to socialize, is there?

<Jess><how can I see one of Daniel's films?>

http://www.youtube.com/profile_vide...

<Eyal><<aleatory writing> I suppose you mention that as a way for the author to "disappear" - or at least to problematize his presence. I would add that aleatory procedures lay bare the way in which EVERY text really is, as Umberto Eco once put it, "a machine for producing possible worlds". I actually had a fascination period with aleatory writing myself, though more from the theoretical than the historical angle. Btw, do you include in this category texts such as Raymond Roussel's "Impressions d'Afrique"?>

Er, what table? What room?

2. <Zein und Zeit> was entirely repudiated by Heidegger himself, who wrote an essay near the end of his life claiming that the poetry of <Holderlin> actually had the power to <represent> (actual scholars--find the original German word) the <space before Being>, directly implying that poetry has the power to make metaphysics into physics.

3. The above claim by <H> is, as <Bertrand Russell> might well say, simply silly.

4. Sartre's <Existentialism is a Humanism> and <Nausea> are worth a look, though again the central premise of the latter is merely a fictional recapitulation of <Heidegger's> notion of the <broken hammer>.

5. David Byrne's first radio hit does a more succinct and engaging recapitulation of this notion: "How did I get here? How did I get this big car?"

6. <Ipso Fatso>, there is no reason to read <Continental Philosophy> so long as we recognize that Britain is NOT on the Continent (so we can keep Russell. OK and Hume)

7. <ergo>, <quod demonstrandum> (and <cave canem> for that matter), it is probably wiser to dine on a nice Continental breakfast and read <Moby Dick> until you fall asleep (should take around fifteen minutes per session).

(danielpi returns to the room to find a copy of 'Being and Time' on the table)

Who's been reading this filth? And what the heck did you do with that Kripke I gave you?! You fools!

<Jess><6. <Ipso Fatso>, there is no reason to read <Continental Philosophy> so long as we recognize that Britain is NOT on the Continent (so we can keep Russell. OK and Hume)>

Hold on there, sister. As I'm sure you know, the analytic/continental schism didn't really get going until Frege and Hegel. Frege, Wittgenstein, and Carnap had at least an equal share in founding analytic philosophy as Russell and Moore. Furthermore, there are a good many analytic philosophers on 'the continent', and a healthy (or unhealthy, as the case may be) number of continental philosophers traipsing around Anglo-America as we speak!

Let's be clear. Analytic philosophy is that which values clarity and rigor above all. Continental philosophy, as one might expect, is that which revels in confusion, opacity, and fallacious reasoning. I'm not saying one's better than the other. They're just different. To each his own.

Tsk tsk! What would poor Descartes, Kant, Plato, Aristotle, or Leibniz say about your calling them 'continental'? It's blasphemy, I say! Blasphemy!

<The word for today is: I>

The great German philosopher in Walter Abish's novel How German is it? has many Heideggerian qualities.

Domdaniel: The word for today is: I,

the avatar is an amazing eye

and the first responder is Eyal.

It is clear that the "eyes" have it.

Immanuel Kant was a real piss-ant who was very rarely stable.

Heideggar, Heideggar was a boozy beggar who could think you under the table.

David Hume could out-consume Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel.

And Whittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as sloshed as Schlegel.

There's nothing Nieizsche couldn't teach 'ya 'bout the raising of the wrist.

Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed.

John Stewart Mill, of his own free will, after half a pint of shanty was particularly ill.

Plato, they say, could stick it away, half a crate of whiskey every day!

Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,

And Hobbes was fond of his Dram.

And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart:

"I drink, therefore I am."

Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;

A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed.