One of the things the ASOUE series does particularly well is that it subverts the narrative that is all too often perpetrated in children’s literature (and adult literature, let’s be honest), that karma is a real operating force in the world and that we all are fated to have good or bad things happen to us depending on how well we act in the world. ASOUE shows that that is not at all true. Sometimes good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people - but it’s all random happenstance, and not some cosmic destiny for good people to be rewarded and bad people to be punished.
At the beginning of the series we get these three lovely, perfect children who as far as we know have done nothing wrong and are incredibly polite and kind even in the face of evil. Even though Snicket warns the audience that nothing good will happen to the orphans, kids know that good people always have happy endings so it’s brushed off as a depressing narrator who is simply describing the trials and tribulations that the Baudelaire orphans will face throughout the book. But when we get to the end and the orphans have solved the mystery, escaped from their captor and have proven themselves worthy of respect and a happy ending, they are defeated again through random happenstance and left more or less where they started. They have done nothing to deserve evil, but evil has been forced on them anyways.
One of the problems with perpetuating the idea that karma is an active force in the world is that if good people are always rewarded and bad people are always punished, then good people who consistently do good thing with no payoff are left feeling like they’re bad people because apparently if they were actually good they would receive some kind of retribution. But the world doesn’t work that way. Sometimes bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people and that’s just the way the world is.
A Series of Unfortunate Events does an incredibly good job of explaining the concept of a random universe - where things just happen and nothing really matters in the long run because everything will just turn out how it turns out regardless. It’s an absurdist (like happier nihilism) take on the world, and I find it interesting that such an obscure and defeatist philosophy is able to be introduced so easily to children as young as I was when I read the series. But then again, one of the things ASOUE does best is not being condescending to children and engaging with them about the real world - recognizing that they are smart, functioning beings capable of understanding the world - and teaching them such a hard lesson about life so early on without making it overly depressing is something that I rarely see talked about in praise of ASOUE, and something that I think is worthy of commendation.
Those born with Pluto in Leo in their natal chart make up the bold leaders who don’t hesitate to take action, whenever necessary. Natives use their inborn creativity and strong imaginative drive to revolutionize theirs and their peer’s existence. Art, especially, might be one of the preferred domain of activity for them. Also, these natives have spiritual tendencies, and may even be strongly religious as a matter of fact. It would be a normal thing, given society’s predilections at that time, and the social context, but since a Leo is a Leo, they also want others to share their convictions. Thus, they want to convince everyone else about the truth of their beliefs. They are very good at stepping over limitations, over societal regulations, and generally, doing what they think is best. This is because they aren’t tied up to the past, to traditions, and their creativity exceeds the norms that society imposes on them. They’ll likely bring about great changes in the field of the arts, as a result. Pluto actually is probably is at its detriment here, making it harder for it to work its magic of transformation. These people idealize heroic characteristics, however, they mostly would like to be the idealized hero themselves. Traumatized by their innocence being destroyed it is hard for them to grow up. Bombastic and bold, the generation born under Pluto in Leo sure created a lot of great things for the World, however, they would rather it all to stay the same. Meaning, they are probably the toughest generation to except the upcoming generations. If they had the power to freeze the time they sure would’ve had and they kind of pretend like it is still their time. They are creative when it comes to change and transformation but it has to be under their control only. They like romance, entertainment, and pleasure of all sorts. They have a need to be seen, to be remembered and to be noticed. They are flamboyant and colorful. They can be self-indulgent in their quest for fame and glory. They may reach their greatest pinnacles of self-discovery when in the midst of creative expression. Together with them, the golden-age of Rock music came. They were born around the time Absurdism became an important movement. Absurdism: the belief that human beings exist in a purposeless, chaotic universe.
(source: alwaysastrology)
(-1941) 1945 - 1948: Kids of Gemini Progress in Intellect (Uranus in Gemini)
1948 - 1955: Kids of Cancer Progress in Family Dynamics (Uranus in Cancer)
1955 - 1961: Kids of Leo Progress in Creativity(Uranus in Leo)
Samuel Beckett wouldn’t need to dream of fair to middling women in this dapper, if risky, get-up. He wouldn’t have to wait eternally for the hotties either.
Stark and minimal, just like his plays, this black/dark grey two-tone outfit is muted. You’d normally expect a flash of colour or brightness to offset that, which actually comes from his hair more than anything. His pocket square, while seemingly coloured, barely shows. Beckett’s clothing is stylish, while restrained like actors in Endgame, encased in man-sized urns.
It’s not the only photo that I’ve found of him sporting an upturned collar, which is a gesture of defiance toward an uncaring universe into which he was thrown without any say in the matter.
“This very second has vanished forever, lost in the anonymous mass of the irrevocable. It will never return. I suffer from this, and I do not. Everything is unique and insignificant.”
- Emil Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born
Art: Caspar David Friedrich. The Monk by the Sea, 1810.
“Everyone tries to make his life a work of art. We want love to last and we know that it does not last; even if, by some miracle, it were to last a whole lifetime, it would still be incomplete. Perhaps, in this insatiable need for perpetuation, we should better understand human suffering, if we knew that it was eternal. It appears that great minds are, sometimes, less horrified by suffering than by the fact that it does not endure. In default of inexhaustible happiness, eternal suffering would at least give us a destiny. But we do not even have that consolation, and our worst agonies come to an end one day. One morning, after many dark nights of despair, an irrepressible longing to live will announce to us the fact that all is finished and that suffering has no more meaning than happiness.”
- Albert Camus. The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt, 1951.
A two-for-one special going on my “want to read” list from one of my all time favorite authors.
“The Plague”
and
“The Myth of Sisyphus”
by Albert Camus
When I read “The Stranger” in high school (I covered some of this in an earlier post about that particular book) I fell in love with Camus and his writing style. There’s something familiar and comforting about it. Maybe that’s weird but that’s what I love about literature, there’s something for everyone and not everyone does it the same.
I’m excited to get into these at some point but for now they collect dust and sit on my bookshelf.
Albert Camus, The Wrong Side and the Right Side, 1937 (L’Envers et l’Endroit): Preface; from Personal Writings (translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy and Justin O’Brien)
Your letter at last! How weightless, how light the air is, how I breathe better! Just think: nothing since Friday, nothing since that sad letter… But it’s all over, the sun that floods into my room is leaping up and down all over the place. I love you and I’ll wait, yes I’ll wait for everything to find you at last, alive, happy, desiring… Yesterday I completed my program. That is to say, I wrote sixteen letters. There are still as many left. But I’ve worked out a little form that I’ll send to all the unwelcome and even to the others. It’s like, “Mr. AC, who is ill, apologizes for not being able to… etc.” With this I’ll liquidate everything and I’ll be able to think about my work at leisure.
I’m so ashamed that I’ve done almost nothing in two weeks! On the other hand, my appetite has returned. I look good and I seem to have put on weight. I sleep much better. From time to time an insomnia of two or three hours, but more rare. I am afraid of them, because then the imagination works too much. Last night I went through your whole life, I mean everything I know about it. Then I wait for the morning and the sun that puts the shadows on the run. Last night Kim’s master came to pick him up. He had dinner here and I said goodbye to the beast.
I don’t care if you sum up your days. But do this for me: be clear. Never put: “At 4 o'clock, an appointment.” Say with whom. I know it’s stupid, but it helps me. You understand me, by the way. You did well to advise Serge in the sense that you’re telling me. There’s no reason to deceive the audience. This Chinese system goes well with the Elite Theater! My dear love, my black, my beautiful, my lukewarm, what a desire I have for your presence, your warmth. I think of the little room suspended above Paris, of the falling evening, of the glow of the radiator and of us, linked to each other, in the penumbra… I also dream that I am walking through Paris with you, and that we are listing restaurants…
Darling, there was also sweetness, laughter, sweet complicity, infinite tenderness between us. And this is what I also regret, at my hours, as at others I regret the storm of desire, or the perfect hour near the lake, in the sky of Ermenonville. It is you as a whole that I regret. And if I desire so much to have the strength to sink into my work it is to be able to arrive at spring, free in heart and mind, and melt totally into you. Write every day, if you can. Give me the dates of your shows. And send me your love, Maria darling, I use it every hour. How I kiss you! Until it wears off, precisely, my beautiful face…
Monday 10 p.m. [January 16, 1950]
After writing to you this afternoon, we went for a little walk in a group. The light was beautiful, but I was bored. I love this country in solitude. It was getting cold under the sun. I went home and started working. I redid my preface and wrote about half of it. I thought of you, I was warm at heart. Dinner and then a moment by the fire. No one was talking, so I came alive, I said stupid things, I laughed. Those lonely excesses leave you sad afterwards.
I went back to my room, got into bed, and there you are. The wind picked up outside and blew around the house. But the room is warm. I can imagine you. I love you. I’m caressing you. Close to you, even closer… I love the night, with you, the enclosed spaces, the secluded countryside, the ends of the world, but with you. So I wait, with patience or with rage, I wait for those moments when the world is depopulated, when everything is silent, when there is only us and those black horses, you know. My darling love, wait, my love, come back soon. And until then be strong and patient, armed with all my faithful love. I kiss you endlessly.”
Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, January 16, 1950 [#130]
Throughout the whole absurd life I’d lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living.
We gasp for air among people who believe they are absolutely right, whether it be in their machines or their ideas. And for all who cannot live without dialogue and the friendship of other human beings, this silence is the end of the world.
Albert Camus
“The Century of Fear,” which is the first essay in Neither Victims Nor Executioners, published Nov 19, 1946
He had turned back toward the window and tightened his hand over the nape of Lucienne’s neck. She said nothing. Then, without looking at him, “At least you feel friendly toward me, don’t you?” Patrice knelt beside her and gently bit her shoulder. “Friendly, yes, the way I feel friendly toward the night. You are the pleasure of my eyes, and you don’t know what a place such joy can have in my heart.”
hate how this guy in this book im reading criticizes camus’ lack of pessimism and insists on how actually the character of meursault is closer to us than the myth of sisyphus because the physicality of life is a greater comfort than the act of rebellion like
1) why are you calling out camus’ lack of pessimism when he says that on his philosophy shines a “neverfading sun” and that he doesn’t think his philosophy can described as pessimist in the first place. like why are you criticizing a point HE DOES NOT MAKE
2) the meaning of the myth of sisyphus doesn’t have end in self-awareness and smug satisfaction for your own rebellion otherwise that’s not rebellion in itself. if you think about a rebellion born out of pride that has still a positive impact on the world around you though perhaps intrinsically meaningless as meaningless is life itself then. then how can you compare the two when one of them is a creative, continuous effort and the other is just passivity lmao
![Albert Camus & María Casares[x]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/15525267f3577bfc1031abec43b5c62f/tumblr_okmgkmVsmv1relxa7o1_640.jpg "Albert Camus & María Casares[x]")
