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Claude Sarraute: “And what, in your opinion, is the tragic element of our epoch?”
Céline: “Stalingrad. There’s the catharsis for you. The fall of Stalingrad was the end of Europe. There’s a cataclysm. The epicenter was Stalingrad. After that you can say white civilization was finished, really washed up.” Read more …
The Certainty of Chance
“I believe in the certainty of chance,” sang Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy in 1998, a wonderful songwriter musing on one of philosophy’s oldest conundrums. Are events pre-ordained or as yet unwritten? Do we live in a world of free will or determinism? All of us will look back on our lives and find at least one incident that changed Read more …