https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/chooseyourwords/irony-satire-sarcasm/

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/serious-art-thats-funny-humor-poetry

Extract

Carolyn Forché, someone who has never been accused of being a funny poet, has said “irony, paradox, surrealism . . . might well be both the answer and a restatement of [Theodor] Adorno’s often quoted and difficult contention that to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” But what did the philosopher and critic Adorno mean by this fatuous statement? No poetry? Or just a very, very serious and earnest poetry? Because, let’s face it–earnestness is almost always bad art. Good art makes us think; it has more questions than answers. Often, but not always, satire does this too. But earnestness almost never does this–that’s not its job. Earnestness is comforting. It wants to hug us. And we want to be hugged sometimes. But sometimes we want to laugh while poking holes in self-righteousness and oppression, whether it be literal political oppression or oppression of a quieter sort – cultural and aesthetic oppression. Irony and satire are such a good antidote to oppression because oppression needs to be earnest (or at least look earnest) in order to be feared by those it seeks to cow. Oppression cannot work alongside irony because it believes in its own righteousness and a monolithic concept of truth that must be asserted to the oppressed with a straight face. Irony and satire are the tools by which the oppressed get to make fun of the oppressors without the oppressors getting it.

Mothers are familiar with bums

With bitten nipples colic in the tum

Was it for this they wore a wedding gown

Bore a heavy child without a frown

Fingers stained with nicotine and shit.

Now stir the dinner wash the baby kit

They did not know the nearness of their Doom

In the haystacks sunny afternoon .

Father in the coal mine black with dust

The tin bath waiting mother filled with lust.

There has to be a cat before the fire

A blackened kettle bows,it’s Lancashire.

Tea that makes your hair curl helps them on.

They stumble up the stairs to bed again

What’s satire to the rich with their plum tones

Is near the truth, the rickets in the bone

https://www.britannica.com/art/negative-capability

negative capability, a writer’s ability, “which Shakespeare possessed so enormously,” to accept “uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason,” according to English poet John Keats, who first used the term in an 1817 letter. An author possessing negative capability is objective and emotionally detached, as opposed to one who writes for didactic purposes; a literary work possessing negative capability may have beauties and depths that make conventional considerations of truth and morality irrelevant.

https://0f6873cd4ccccc574b6d098e5e86e91d.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.htmlRelated Topics: literature

See all related content →

This article was most recently revised and updated by J.E. Luebering.

Czech literatureTable of ContentsHomeLiteratureLiteratures of the World

Czech literature

Actions

By The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Article HistoryTable of Contents

Czech literature, the body of writing in the Czech language. Before 1918 there was no independent Czechoslovak state, and Bohemia and Moravia—the Czech-speaking regions that, with part of Silesia, now constitute the Czech Republic—were for a long time provinces of the Habsburg Holy Roman and Austrian empires. Because of this, the evolution of the Czechs’ literary language became historically linked to their efforts to maintain their ethnic identity.

Jan Hus

See all mediaKey People: Milan KunderaVáclav HavelKarel ČapekIvan KlímaMiroslav HolubRelated Topics: literatureWestern literatureCzech language

See all related content →

Origins and development through the 17th century

The earliest origins of literature in Czech are connected with Old Church Slavonic, which was devised by Saints Cyril and Methodius in the 9th century to counter Frankish (German) influence. Latin was established as the liturgical language of the Bohemian state in 1097, however, and its script was adopted for what would become the Czech language. The earliest preserved texts in the Czech language, mainly hymns, were written in the late 13th century at the courts of the Přemyslid kings of Bohemia.

The 14th century brought a continuous stream of Czech literary works, mostly consisting of biographies of saints (hagiography), legends, epics and chronicles, and adaptations of chivalrous romances, all in verse. The earliest secular work in the language was the epic Alexandreis, a life of Alexander the Great based on a Latin poem by the French writer Gautier de Châtillon. From about 1350, prose genres began to be cultivated, initially descriptions of the lives of saints and chronicles and then versions of popular medieval tales. From the last part of the century dated a group of verse satires and didactic poems as well as the political allegory Nová rada (“The New Council”), written by Smil Flaška to defend the rights of the Bohemian nobility against the crown.

Religious reforms begun by Jan Hus in the early 15th century set in motion the Hussite movement, which for two centuries pitted Czech reformers or Protestants against the Roman Catholic rulers of the Holy Roman Empire. The religious controversies and civil strife of this period fostered the use of Czech writing for practical and polemical purposes. Hus himself composed strong sermons in Czech and wrote various treatises, of which De ecclesia (“The Church”) was the most important. Petr Chelčický, one of his successors, wrote treatises containing radical social ideas from which sprang the Unitas Fratrum, or Bohemian Brethren, a sect and prototype of the Moravian church that became an important source of Czech literature for the next two centuries.

Czech literature in the 16th century was predominantly didactic and scholarly, reflecting the humanism of the European Renaissance. The Moravian bishop Jan Blahoslav completed an early translation of the New Testament, and the lexicographer Daniel Adam of Veleslavín further enriched the vocabulary of humanist Czech, but the most significant landmark of the period was the Unitas Fratrum scholars’ translation of the Bible into Czech, known as the Kralice Bible (1579–93). The language of this version became the model for classical Czech.

The Austrian Habsburgs defeated the Protestants of Bohemia in 1620, after which Protestantism was eradicated and Bohemia was brought under direct rule within the Austrian Habsburg domain. The (largely Protestant) Bohemian nobility was crushed and replaced by newcomers with little knowledge of Czech. Under the Habsburgs, the literary traditions of the past two centuries were proscribed, and it was only among political exiles that Czech literature survived at all. Among these exiles Jan Ámos Komenský (John Amos Comenius) was preeminent. His Latin works on education and theological problems and his works in Czech revealed him as a writer and thinker of European stature. His Labyrint světa a ráj srdce (1631; “Labyrinth of the World and Paradise of the Heart”) stands as one of Czech literature’s great achievements in prose.

Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content.Subscribe NowLoad Next Page 

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/feb/22/three-four-people-uk-fear-failed-ae-services-nhs?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

In the past 14 months I have spent 92 hours in A&E and in a corridor or some other similar place

Now they realise we are losing our trust.

Well you don’t need to do research to know that that’s bound to happen like when a woman dies and falls on the floor with her coat covering her face. And for several hours before they find her body they assumed she has decided to go home whereas in reality she was having another serious brain hemorrhage

It could be you or me so what should we do, what can we do?

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/woke

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/12/10/the-dangerous-myth-of-woke-left-fascism/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/13/african-american-studies-republican-ban-florida?CMP=ShareAndroidApp_Other

The failure to teach about structural racism will make Black children born into poverty feel that their parents and grandparents are responsible for their own impoverished position relative to white children, and so will make Black children feel “anguish or other forms of psychological distress” because of “actions … committed in the past by other members of the same race”. The “anguish” and “psychological distress” these laws forbid are only anguish felt by the dominant racial group, white Americans.

If writing had not been invented could we   have split the infinitive?

I have not been able to split the atom as yet but I’ve started by splitting the infinitive

You can split up a compound sentence into several parts as long as each part has a verb in it.

What a pity we learned to write because it means children have to learn grammar.

Does spoken speech have grammar?

Why does grammar have to be universal?

Why do sentences begin with the capital letter now that we have done away with capital punishment?

What does capital mean?

London has  long been the capital city  but not all capital punishment took place in London. Discuss, ideally with yourself.

(this is part of the entrance exam for university) Please don’t report  me to quora

Can you get irritable bowel syndrome from using too many colons and semicolons in your writing?

Language and reality, what is the connection if any?

Please don’t quote me on any of this

Write a short essay on the comma without using the comma in your essay and yet keeping the grammar correct

This is from the University of Sussex United Kingdom

Now notice something else which is very important: a quotation is set off by quotation marks and nothing else. A sentence containing a quotation is punctuated exactly like any other sentence apart from the addition of the quotation marks. You should not insert additional punctuation marks into the sentence merely to warn the reader that a quotation is coming up: that’s what the quotation marks are for.

https://www.sussex.ac.uk/informatics/punctuation/quotes/marks

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/opinion/the-long-strange-trail-of-woke.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

I was drowning in the lily pond so deep

My eyes were closing I would fall asleep

I was drowning in the Lily ponds where you liked to gaze

I was tangled up in all the leaves, no light but a haze.

Then I saw the sun above shining bright so strong

I started to ask questions about where do I belong

It reminds me of Narcissus gazing in the pool

It’s always seemed  a great mistake Narcissus was a fool

But I’ve been gazing at the places where we sat

I think I looked too deeply, I’m like a drowning rat

I want to extricate myself from this lovers trap

When you’re in the water you cannot read a map.

Sometimes struggling makes things worse sometimes it’s an aid

We have to think quite deeply before the decisions made

I found some steps of pinky stone that went into the lake

I gripped the edges with my hands, I climbed up for his sake

I walked away I left to pool I don’t know where I am

I am not going to drown myself for the the death of any man.

At first I could not walk so far but now I’m getting strong

I’m back upon the living earth and that’s where I belong

The water is so tempting it’s like  a mirror bright

But there’s a darkness in that place that blocks out earthly light

Keep your eyes wide open and look out not inside.

For if you don’t you may become one of Narcissus’ brides

F’

I felt very weary after visiting the hospital on Tuesday and they decided not to give me the treatment that they’ve been threatening me with.

Because if you’re not  very well  it can be dangerous.

Nevertheless it was a bit disappointing and yesterday I was feeling very low

In the late afternoon a man came to the door with a parcel from Amazon and he realised how I felt and he said to me something which if it’s said in the wrong way can make you feel worse.

Keep smiling

But the way that he said it was very sympathetic or empathetic so I knew he was not trying to make me pretend to feel better so I wouldn’t upset other people.

No he wanted me to understand that if you smile it can make you feel better.

And in one of the newspapers this morning it sounds that a trial is being carried out in some part of London to see whether watching funny movies can help depressed people more than medication might and it seems there is some evidence for this.

But what interest me is that I have received more kindness from people like this delivery man who look quite poor and do not have the best kind of winter clothing etc

I find some highly educated intellectuals are very cold and the unable to relate to other  let alone to make you feel better.

I wonder if the more abstract  and intellectual your mind becomes, the less you are able to feel the reality of other people and to convey that to them non-verbally.

It’s partly to do with living in your body and being in your body not just in your head

I discovered this when I was helping a lady of 99 with dementia. If I wasn’t present in my body I could not get any response from her at all but when I was it made a tremendous difference.

Instead of swearing at me and calling me names she eventually told me that she loved me and that meant a lot to me more than if someone else might have said it because I think it was very hard for her to say that. At one point she begged me to kill her and when I said I couldn’t she told me I was a coward

I think a lot of it was due to boredom and inactivity and lack of conversation she said to me that each day seemed like a whole year. She didn’t have reading glasses with her I don’t even know whether she had her name but all she had was a television but I don’t think she was watching it much.

I think boredom is very difficult to live with when you are unable to walk about and go out and do things and we don’t realize how hard it is not to be able to do such simple things

Floating like seaweed on the tide,
The final leaves of autumn glide.
The birds ride on the wind’s broad back,
They know no fear and know no lack.
The air is filled with unearned treasure.
My happy heart its wonders measure.
The clouds are deep and dark and grey
What snow storms may they fetch our way?
The sun appears and gives a glow
Of yellow to bare branches low.
Red berries bright,like summer flowers,
Decorate the holly’s natural tower.
Sharp thorns protect the smaller birds,
And from inside,their cheeps are heard.
As dusk arrives the blackbird sings,
So much sweetness nature brings.
I turn my mind from in to out,
I feel salvation for my doubts.
I know that I’m part of a whole,
And with all life I share my soul.
In this peaceful place I rest,
As with love’s eloquence I’m blessed.
There’s singing in my inner heart.
Like bees to flowers,my fears depart

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-donald-trump-political-depression-mental-health-2016-psychiatric-cbt-methods-heal-britain-a7528581.htmlPolitics

Quote:

So what is helpful? What’s the cure for political depression? For one thing, liberal conservatives are going to have to borrow from some of the left’s irrepressible optimism. But if my last few months of lethargy and dark doctors’ waiting rooms have taught me anything, it’s that all those in search of a cure for our current political malaise could do well to look at recent advances in the mental health ward. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, or CBT, is today’s wonder cure – but what does it actually entail, and can it save a country as well as it can a person?

CBT is all about breaking unhelpful mental patterns. It’s also about the art of the possible. Under pressure at work? Find one request you can reasonably make of your boss. Determined to run a marathon to feel better about being obese? Start by using the stairs instead of a lift.

In politics, focusing on the big picture can often seem overwhelming. The future is bleak; there are a lot of battles that the forces of liberalism seem unlikely to win. When I think of Trump in the White House, Erdogan imprisoning critics in Turkey, martial law in the Philippines – I could continue – I curl up and go back to bed. When I think about the two refugee friends who I’ve got coming to stay next week, I scurry up and start readying

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/aug/08/frugal-bloggers-budget-personal-finance-poverty

I have read this and agree there is a big difference between well off people being frugal and people who are really very poor and have little choice.There is no direct connection between frugality and holiness

Some ways I have found to save money

[Don’t go without a warm coat and wool hat in winter.Cold thickens your blood and can cause heart attacks or strokes.[

1.Switch to a digital subscription to a newspaper.For the Guardian it is £11.99 a month rather than buying in a shop… £65 a month.
The Guardian will let you read a lot for free
2 Use dishcloths and tea towels instead of kitchen paper.
Cut up old underwear and use for cleaning bathroom etc.
Try using cloth hankies except when you have a cold. Though you have to wash them well
3 Shower less and use a sponge to wash yourself while standing on a towel
4. Use a public convenience while you are out to save on your water bill.
5 In winter if you are not working sit in a public library and read the newspapers.The rooms are usually quite hot.
6 Wash your outer clothes less frequently.
7 Try soaking dry clean only clothes in cool water and then drip dry.I did this with a wool skirt I spilt milk on.
8 Food is a place you can save money.For example vegetarian recipes.Make your own yoghurt etc.
9.Ring your phone supplier and ask if they can do you a better offer as you are going to switch elsewhere if they refuse.I saved £20 pm
10.Meditate,listen to Radio 3, or 4 have tea with a neighbour…. all free.
11 Buy shoes in Sales.
12 Have people round but not the ones who expect a 3 course meal.Ones who like you and don’t mind what you feed them on,
13 Give some of your savings to charity.The RNIB is poor.Guide Dogs get loads of money ironically

My photo

https://www.theguardian.com/global/2016/jun/18/poetry-can-heal-it-helped-me-through-depression

Extract:

For me, poetry is medicine. The poet Les Murray writes: “I’d disapproved of using poetry as personal therapy, but the Black Dog taught me better. Get sick enough, and you’ll use any remedy you’ve got.” In the 19th century, people in asylums were encouraged to write poetry, while William Cowper (1731-1800) wrote that, in his depressions, “I find writing, especially poetry, my best remedy.” Orpheus was both healer and poet and his lyre could vanquish melancholy.

https://www.latimes.com/books/la-et-jc-joyce-carol-oates-20160405-story.html

G

Yet our tendency to forget the haunting brilliance displayed in the short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?,” in the novel “Them,” the novella “Black Water,” the Marilyn Monroe novel “Blonde,” and to focus instead on her tweets or the sheer volume of her catalog seems fitting, because her latest novel, “The Man Without a Shadow” (Ecco: 384 pp., $27.99), is preoccupied with the act of forgetting. It tells the story of a charismatic amnesiac, Elihu Hoopes, whose short-term memory has been destroyed by encephalitis. Though Eli, his ailment and an image he can’t seem to shake — the disturbing anamnesis of a girl’s body floating just below the surface of a stream — are at its center, the book is as much the story of Margot Sharpe, a neuroscientist who enters Eli’s life as a graduate student but over time becomes much more entangled with her patient’s world. The novel wrestles with our complicated acts of remembrance and the various ways memory constructs and colors our emotions and ethics — our entire identity. After all, it’s memory that allows you to discern where you are going, where you have been.

Oates will appear at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on Saturday, April 9. This phone interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What carries you from one book to the next? Does an image come to you or a character or an idea you want to explore?

In a long work like a novel, a number of elements have to come together. It’s like a river into which many tributaries are flowing. The river builds with different smaller streams. You have one idea and then another and then another. I always start with characters about whom I care. I like to work with characters who are representational. I am interested in the personal, but I also want to write something that has a larger significance in terms of society.

“The Man Without a Shadow” is not only a fascinating portrait of its two main characters, Margot and Eli, but an examination of memory as the very bedrock of the edifices of our identities, our personalities.

I’m interested in how we fashion our personalities out of somewhat selective memory. We forget much. It is both very natural and very normal to forget a good deal. Things that we remember may have a certain cast. As in a movie, there’s a certain tone, of lighting, of music, of sound, so with our memories some people have a natural tone of melancholy and others have a more optimistic or cheerful tone. We all know people who are determined to be upbeat and other people who seem to be looking over their shoulders all the time, wounded and complaining. Personality to me is the ultimate fascination — how we’re all so different, and yet we’re very much alike in many ways.

How did the function of memory determine the book’s structural and aesthetic choices?

The novel is constructed as if it were notes on an amnesiac. A neuroscientist is keeping a personal journal and part of that is the novel, but then we’re also in Eli’s memory and imagination too. We see what he’s remembering of his past. He’s haunted by his past. That’s true of many people. There are seminal incidents in people’s lives that they keep returning to and thinking about. He’s tormented by something that happened when he was very small and didn’t have any ability to comprehend. He’s trying to comprehend it with his art.

Author Joyce Carol Oates talks with Michael Silverblatt during the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at USC on April 19, 2015.

(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

Are there similarities between comprehension through art and science? You write of Margot, “She has always asked questions for which there are not ready answers. To be a scientist, Margot thinks, is to know which questions to ask.” Is that also in some way the definition of a writer?

A scientist is someone who is really looking at the causality of things. If you were a political scientist, let’s say, you would look at the current political situation with Donald Trump and the others in a very analytical way, seeing it maybe as part of a cycle of American politics. A scientist is always looking at the context, whereas most people just read the newspaper and throw it out. “Does this thing have consequences?” “What does it mean?” “Is there a precedent in history?” These are questions that a scientist would ask, and a novelist asks these questions as well.

calendar@latimes.com

Malone is a writer and professor of English. He is the founder and editor in chief of the Scofield and a contributing editor for Literary Hub.

BOOKS

MORE FROM THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

• BOOKSHere are the longlist nominees for the 2022 National Book AwardsSept. 16, 2022
• ENTERTAINMENT & ARTSAnne Heche was working on another memoir before she died. It hits shelves next yearSept. 15, 2022
• BOOKSAt 9, Javier Zamora walked 4,000 miles to the U.S. At 29, he was ready to tell the storySept. 15, 2022
• BOOKSReview: A British cult favorite crosses over with a blistering novel about an inscrutable mumSept. 15, 2022

LATEST BOOKS

• FOODL.A. has been obsessed with ‘healthy’ foods for a century — these cookbooks prove itSept. 6, 2022
• BOOKSTo get to the root of mental illness, Rachel Aviv went to the patientsSept. 14, 2022
• BOOKSReview: From sensitive dogs to flirty nurses, David Means’ stories are playful and dead seriousSept. 14, 2022
• BOOKSBestsellers List Sunday, September 18Sept. 14, 2022
• ENTERTAINMENT & ARTSIntimate portraits of St. Francis Hotel residents in 1975 capture a bygone Hollywood eraSept. 13, 2022

Sign up for the Los Angeles Times Book Club

Join our community Book Club. Our mission is to get Southern California reading and talking.

SUBSCRIBERS ARE READING

• FOR SUBSCRIBERS10 eye surgeries by age 10. How Julio Urías beat the odds to become the Dodgers’ ace
• FOR SUBSCRIBERSThese 38 classic Mexican restaurants are essential to Los Angeles
• FOR SUBSCRIBERSThey wanted their drought-tolerant yard to spark conversations. But not on Nextdoor
• FOR SUBSCRIBERS‘$250,000 cash in a brown paper bag.’ How legal weed unleashed corruption in California
• Former USC dean admits to arranging bribery payment for Mark Ridley-Thomas

Subscribe for unlimited access

Follow Us

• Twitter
• Instagram
• YouTube
• Facebook

• eNewspaper
• Coupons
• Find/Post Jobs
• Place an Ad
• Media Kit: Why the L. A. Times?
• Bestcovery

Copyright © 2022, Los Angeles Times | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | CA Notice of Collection | Do Not Sell My Personal Information

By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. You can learn more about how we use cookies by reviewing our Privacy Policy.Close

Emmanuel Levinas, Don Quixote, and the Hunger of the Other Man

Quote from the above article

Like many Jews over the centuries, I am fasting to commemorate the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD. Now that I’m in middle of the fast, I’m having a hard time distracting myself from my hunger. In the midst of being enthralled with my hunger, an academic memory came to my rescue. I remember how the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, in opposition to the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, argued that it’s not about my death and suffering (as Heidegger would say (in translation) my “being-towards-death”), it’s about the death and the suffering of the other. Echoing this, I thought: perhaps Levinas is right, it’s not about my hunger; it’s about the hunger of the other.

Strangely enough, Levinas writes about the “hunger of the other man” in relation to Don Quixote (a comic figure which has appeared quite often in Schlemiel in Theory). In 1975 and 1976, Levinas gave a course at the Sorbonne. His course notes are included in the book God, Death, and Time (translated by Bettina Bergo). On his February 13^th 1976 lecture, Levinas addresses Don Quixote and the “hunger of the other man.” This talk, to my mind, gives us at least one angle to understand Levinas’s approach to humor.

Let me sketch it out.

Before making his reading of Don Quixote, Levinas prefaces with a meditation on the relation of thought to the world. He writes: “thought contains the world or is correlative with it”(167). He notes that by “correlative” he means that it comes “prior to” the world. In this spirit, Levinas argues that thought “disqualifies” anything that would be “disproportionate to the world.” He provides two adjectives to describe things that would be disqualified: “all thought said to be ‘romantic’ or ‘theological’ in its inception.”

“Disqualified” thought, argues Levinas, is not equated with the world (which thought contains); it is equated with what is to come. It is, for this reason, equated with “a question” and “hope.” Levinas goes on to say that “God” is also included as something which is “disproportionate” with thought and the world. To be sure, God, hope, and the question are deemed to be “outside” thought and, for that reason, outside the world.

Writing of this, Levinas wonders how much we can be “affected by what is not equal to the world, how one can affected by what can be neither apprehended nor comprehended”(167). In other words, how much can we be affected by that which is disqualified by thought?

Following this question, Levinas launches into a discussion about the disenchantment of the world. He addresses this, like Martin Heidegger or the sociologist Max Weber, from the angle of technology. Unlike them, Levinas sees the disenchantment fostered by technology as good. Here, however, he notes that although it is good, technology “does not shelter us from all mystification”(168). Now “there remains the obsession with ideology, by which men delude each other and are deluded.” And, says Levinas, even “sober knowledge…is not exempt from ideology.”

Everything, even knowledge, is still threatened by mystification. Levinas finds the source in what he calls “amphibology”: “technology cannot shelter us from the amphibology that lies within all appearing, that is, from the possible appearance coiled at the bottom of all the appearing being.”

Benjamin Hutchens explains that amphibology is the “confusion between what something is and the concept that enables what it is to be known.” This, says Hutchens, leads to a “kind of ambiguity.” John Llewelyn cites Martin Heidegger’s notion of Being – in his claim that “language is the house of Being” – as an example of “amphibology.” Being is ambiguous and this ambiguity troubles Levinas as he sees it as the source of what he calls “bewitchment.” And, as Llewlyn suggests, this ambiguity goes along with the ambiguity of language. Perhaps this implies (and may even be a jab at deconstruction) that one can easily become enchanted with the play of words and language and this may distract us from the other.

What Levinas seems to be saying here is that what threatens the project of demystification most is the embrace of ambiguity as such and this kind of ambiguity is associated with how things show themselves or appear. Levinas notes that the basis of “man’s persistent fear of allowing himself to be bewitched” is “amphibology.”

And, strangely enough, the writer who best illustrates amphibology and the attending fear of being “bewitched” (and “allowing” oneself to be bewitched) is Cervantes in his book Don Quixote. In fact, Levinas says that “bewitchment” is the book’s “principle theme.” Levinas finds this to be most pronounced in chapter 46. Hinting at his own phenomenology of the face, Levinas calls Don Quixote the “Knight with a Sad Face” and points out that “he lets himself be bewitched, loses his understanding, and assures everyone that the world and he himself are the victims of bewitchment.”

Photo in North London

Thanks for all your calls and emails,
Thanks for caring that I’m here.
In my darkest,lonesome moments
These replies will keep you near.

Thanks for answering all my letters
Thanks for the time you give ,
Thanks for sharing your deep thoughts,
And being so generous with your love.

Thank you for your wit and grace,
Thank for your funny face.
Thank you for your bright blue gaze and
Thank you for your warm embrace.

Thank you,thank you,thank you,thank you.
Love you ,love you,love you,Love.
Thank you,thank you,thanks to you,
Because,because,because,Because.