De Propaganda

A libel

Propaganda is not only the worst form of argument - it is opium and gas. It is poison. It spreads around in great, impressive sounds, insidiously magnificent with its bright shapes and colors which force their way into our heads, imprinting their power there forever. It takes hold of our minds, seduces, hypnotizes them like tin soldiers vowed to the struggle for ideals. And then, heroically self-confident, we rush upon our innocent fellow citizens to enact the noble mission of spreading the epidemic. For the virus of propaganda has always been incurably contagious.

An Attempt at Comparative Analysis: A Sketch

Brian Patten VS. D. H. Lawrence

The two poems in question present, first of all, a similarity in subject: they both deal with the cinema. The first one refers to an unexpected incident during the projection of a film, while the second one describes the personal feelings of the poet while watching a love story οn the screen. In the first poem the event is narrated in the third person singular, which actually represents the "projectionist" mentioned in the first line, while in the second poem the "Ι" of the poet-narrator is very obviously present.

Fragments of Time

A mini mock essay

Time is the most genius, the most puzzling and wonderful of all human inventions. In his attempt to seize the rhythm of the world surrounding him, man discovered proportion, progress, duration. These three notions, fundamental, functional for the history of humanity, were, at a critical moment, united in the most unconceivable idea, which was fatally to become the ruler of the world.

Much Ado About Nothing

The title of the play as related to the content

Apart from having universally been recognised as one of the most brilliant pieces of comedy ever written, Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing can also be considered as a humorous yet quite accurate definition of the nature of dramatic art, answering with their own weapons to his contemporaries who condemned the theatre considering it as "nothing" because it highlighted spectacle and artificiality against substance and meaning. From beginning to end, the plot of the play is "much ado about nothing", as every character makes too much fuss, or too much ado, about forged facts and testimonies of misled witnesses. An entire theatrical intrigue is therefore introduced within the given, conventional scheme conformable to the very nature of the comic piece, a multiple game of observation and eavesdropping ("noting"), based on false impressions and deformed appearences, in other words on nothing. Moreover, the phonetic relationship between the words "nothing" and "noting" (taking into consideration the fact that "nothing" was pronounced "noting" by the Elisabethans) is here inevitable to remark. The "noting" taking place on stage has, in a further interpretation, nothing as a reasonable counterpoise, it is vacant and meaningless, like a mask which is lifted to reveal no face underneath.

King Lear - A Scene by Scene Walkthrough

Act I, Scene 1

The King of France is surprised and indignated at Lear's unexpected injustice to Cordelia. Lear has just approved of her rejection by the Duke of Burgundy and addressed France, warning him of her supposedly bad nature:

Amos Oz: Black Box

Love's debris & the irreversible of written speech

In his article on Black Box (in a superb English translation by Nicholas de Lange), published in New Statesman on the 1st of July 1988, Sean French expresses his surprise for the epistulary form of this novel; he also locates the inevitable problem of doubtful verisimilarity presented to a novelist by the application of this writing technique. In any case, the epistulary novel, especially when consisting of a letter exchange among individuals of different characters, mentality and origins, could always constitute a temptation to the writing skill of an author, as the heterogeneousness it entails makes it a first class exercise of style.