Wonder or Wander

Hannah Arendt. (1968). NY: Harcourt, Brace & World. "People remembered everything, but forgot what mattered," the author wrote somewhere in her essays about Rosa Luxemburg or Bretolt Brecht. I also like a quote from Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), "I have a cursed longing for happiness and am ready to haggle for my daily portion of happiness with all the stubbornness of a mule," in a letter designated to Jogiches, her cursed husband, which shows her natural force of a temperament, according to Arendt. Luxemburg, non-orthodox Marxist, was not so dogmatic to see the world based upon the dialectic theory and saw torture of negros in South Africa, the author argues. Arendt differentiates Luxemburg from Bolsheviks in that she preferred an unsuccessful revolution to a deformed one, where the people hold neither power nor voice. Arendt brings Sartre's shockingly precise description of after-WW II into the context where Bretolt Brecht (1898-1956), "gifted with a ...

by Bertold Brecht(translated from German by H. R. Hays) (Retrived from http://www.eecg.toronto.edu/~flouris/docs/brecht1.html) 1. Indeed I live in the dark ages! A guileless word is an absurdity. A smooth forehead betokens A hard heart. He who laughs Has not yet heard The terrible tidings. Ah, what an age it is When to speak of trees is almost a crime For it is a kind of silence about injustice! And he who walks calmly across the street, Is he not out of reach of his friends In trouble? It is true: I earn my living But, believe me, it is only an accident. Nothing that I do entitles me to eat my fill. By chance I was spared. (If my luck leaves me I am lost.) They tell me: eat and drink. Be glad you have it! But how can I eat and drink When my food is snatched from the hungry And my glass of water belongs to the thirsty? And yet I eat and drink. I would gladly be wise. The old books tell us what wisdom is: Avoid the strife of the world Live out your little time Fearing no on...