Love

Before writing a review about a book I spend a lot of time actually thinking about the title of the post. I try to incorporate the name of the novel and the most distinguishing aspect of it for me. I have only one blog post with a one word title - Hunger. Now I have another - Love. I guess when the words are so important in my life, I don't need any further explanation.

Elif Shafak's Forty Rules of Love is a tale about love, in all its forms, that transforms people, opens their hearts, and sets them free both from society's and their own boundaries. Shafak unfolds two paralel stories, one set in contemporary time and the other in the 13th century. The author successfully escapes the cliches and the trivialities and by exploring the nature of sufism, shows that love is transcendental; that it goes beyond race, age, and sex; that it is the sincerest and strongest force; that it makes us better people; that it helps us lose ourselves and find ourselves; that allows us to die only to be reborn; that changes us; that shows us the path towards happiness. Love is the ultimate goal and ultimate truth.

Ela is a bored middle-aged housewife, who has given up her dreams in order to take care of her husband and her three children. Days before her 40th birthday Ela realizes not only that she is not happy but that she hasn't been happy for a long time. Her estranged and unfaithful husband doesn't give her the love she thought she didn't need. Her daily activities are trivial: cooking, meeting with housewives as herself, taking care of the children. For 40 years Ela never broke any rule, never crossed any line, and never lived. Until she meets Zahara.

In a slight effort to change her life, Ela takes a job as a literary critic. Her first assignment is a manuscript by an unknown author, Sweet Blasphemy. It tells the story of a 13th century wandering dervish Shams of Tabriz and his inspirational relationship with Rumi, the greatest poet of the Sufi canon. Most importantly, it shows how the love between Shams and Rumi helps transform the latter from a conservative literator of the Koran into one of the most praised mystics in the Islam and one of the most famous poets. Ela is so impressed by the novel that she contacts the author Aziz Zahara, never expecting that similarly to Rumi and Shams, this relationship is going to change her life.

Told through the view point of a range of characters, The Forty Rules of Love follows the development of two types of love, separated by more than seven centuries. Shams introduces to Rumi a new religion - the religion of love. His forty rules of love philosophy implies a gentle and non-judgmental reading of the Koran, which rejects religious fundamentalism and is accessible to all, drunkards, whores, intelligence. Through his love for Shams, Rumi denies his former way of living, his strong reliance on reputation and other people's opinion, and his conservative reading of the Koran. Instead, he turns to Sufism and writes Masnavi, a key Sufi tract which weaves Koranic analysis with poetry, parables of the everyday, the mythic and miraculous. This inspirational bond sets Rumi free from any conventions, opens his heart to spirituality and teaches him to accept people for who they are.

Similarly, Aziz appears to set Ela free. All of her life she believed she didn't need love. She looked down on the concept of eternal and passionate love and she despised romance. At least she thought so. Upon realizing there is a terrible void in her heart, one that needs to be filled exactly with love, she starts a passionate on-line affair with Aziz, an affair that is set to have life-changing consequences.

As much as I liked to avoid the religious part, I indeed have to touch upon it. Shams's philosophy focuses extensively on love for God and on the eternal search for God within yourself. I am not religious but I am willing to accept people that are. Without going too much into the subject, I would just say that the God part of the novel did indeed irritate me. I personally don't see the need of religion to prompt people to be virtuous, to love one another, and to accept other's faults by a simple fear of being punished or by a blind fate that they are serving some omnipotent creature. And for me religion in its essence is the cause of an infinite number of conflicts and confrontations, of unnecessarily strict rules, of the church's desire to control and guide people, and of endless hatred between people.

Otherwise, the novel is positive and inspirational. It has a great attention to detail. Every chapter starts with a "b" (even in the Bulgarian translation), as for Sufi mystics the secret of the Koran lies in the verse Al-Fatiha, the essence of which is contained in the word bismilahirahmanirahim (in the name of Allah, the Benevolent and Merciful), with the quintessence of the word in the dot below the first Arabic letter, a dot that embodies the universe. Moreover, Shafak offers a popular and understandable introduction to sufism as a religion towards spirituality and self-awareness. The author wrote the book for more than 15th years and the result is obvious. She is one of the most read female authors in Turkey, a direct competitor to Orhan Pamuk, and possibly a challenger to Paulo Coelho's dominance. The Forty Rules of Love indeed flaws easily and is perfect for people on a verge of their lives when they simply need encouragement, positivism, and hope. I am sad to say that at some points it greatly reminded me of Andy Andrews and Jorhe Bucay, which for me as a reader, is a great offense.Still, Shafak manages to go beyond the cliches and to offer an inspirational tale of love as the most important thing. If it makes readers better people, if it indeed teaches them that religious differences don't exist and should not be a reason for violent acts (something we are quite familiar in contemporary society) and if it actually influences them to love each other and themselves, I believe this novel's value will be even greater. It also reminded me of Eat, Pray, Love, where similarly a disillusioned woman goes on a search for spirituality and falls in love.

It seems that contemporary authors now more than ever attempt to imply that love is the answer to all of our questions, our ultimate goal, our only purpose. Andrews, Bocay, Gilbert, and now Shafak tell tales of despair and hopelessness, of lack of ambition and desire to live, which are all solved byt the power of that one person, who opens your heart and soul. As much as I would like to believe this positive view of life, I am skeptical. Reading about it is ok, but until it happens to me, I stand convinced that even the greatest love in the world is not enough for a fulfilled and happy life. Still a good thought, though. I will give it a try. After reading, I even started my own forty rules of love but I ended with only one: "Lora, don't be afraid."

Words of Wisdom Vol.2 (In Bulgarian!)

Recently, I got a comment on one of my blog posts that the level of my English is terrible. To be honest, the comment went something like that "Oh, God, this is some bad English." Of course, it is. What do you expect from an Eastern European like me, who has studied only 3 years in the UK (in bad English, OMG!) and who is now studying in France (in the same bad English!). I cannot go on with the difficulties I have with this terrible language, called English. I have to memorize all of my lectures without knowing what they are about. I don't have any friends because they all speak this terrible language (English is it?) and I simply cannot memorize the words needed in social conversations. I don't read in English (ok, I don't understand it) and I write in this blog thanks to the generous help of Google translate (God bless it!)

So now, since I don't know English at all, I am going to post a blog in Bulgarian. I am sorry for all of my English speaking readers (if there are such since obviously I don't speak their language!).

Now to the serious part. The second part of Words of Wisdom (i.e memorable quotes I have written down) comes in Bulgarian because I do mostly read novels in Bulgarian. Hence, most of the quotes I love, are indeed in my mother language. Yes, I know I can go through the fuss of translating them but that ruins the whole point of it. I picked them up exactly because I liked the way they sounded in Bulgarian. So if you are not a Bulgarian, you better close this window now because I promise you, there is no way you can understand what I am talking about (with the slight exception of you being a Russian or a Serbian with an extensive knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet).

"Това е бедата на хората, които винаги казват истината. Смятат, че и другите са като тях."
"Ловецът на хвърчила" - Халед Хосейни

"Как безупречна изглеждаше любовта, а след туй дойдоха белите."
"Ловецът на хвърчила" - Халед Хосейни

"Тя каза: Толкова се страхувам.
-Защо? - попитах аз, а тя отговори: Защото съм толкова безгранично щастлива, доктор Раоул. Плаши ме това щастие.
Пак я попитах защо и тя рече: Позволяват ти да бъдеш толкова щастлив само ако се канят да ти отнемат нещо."
"Ловецът на хвърчила" - Халед Хосейни

"Вие сте прекалено нещастна, за да бъдете хубава"
"Биография на глада" - Амели Нотомб

"Оставете любовта на мира. Използвате я за оправдание, за защита, за мотивация, за всичко. Любовта това, любовта онова. Поредната масова психоза. Бедно и не на място ми звучи думата "любов" на всяка крачка. Любовни подбуди - чисти и неегоистични? Хайде стига толкова. Любовта не е чаршаф да я постилате всеки ден с повод и без повод. Когато ми кажеш, че го правиш от любов, чувам нищото."

"...тази млада жена, която толкова дълго е страдала мълчаливо, тази добра жена, която отказва да повярва, че е добра, защото само добрите се съмняват в добротата си и това повече от всичко ги прави добри. Защото лошите, те си знаят, че са лоши, докато добрите не знаят нищо подобно. Те цял живот прощават на другите, но не могат да простят на себе си."
"Мъж на тъмно" - Пол Остър

"Но не трябва да обичаме така пестеливо и набързо сякаш от страх, че после можем да обикнем по-силно."
"Доктор Живаго" - Борис Пастернак

"Да се "вселиш" в едо момиче така че изцяло да го завладееш е изкуство, а да се "изселиш" от него - шедьовър. Последното обаче до голяма степен зависи от първото."
"Дневник на прелъстителя" - Сьорен Киркегор

"Мисленете, казва един мой приятел, мисленето е нещо много трудно и не може всеки да дилетанства в него както си иска. Той никога не би седнал да изсвири соната за фортепиано, защото не може. Ала всеки смята, че може да мисли и се хвърля да мисли безспир."

"-Закъсали сте. Мисля, че Ви се е появила душа.
-Това е много опасно.
-Неизлечимо."
"Ние" - Евгени Замятин

"Откакто се помня умирам от глад. Произлизам от заможна среда, вкъщи никога не е липсвало нищо. Това ме навежда на мисълта, че моят глад е специфичен - той е социално необясним. Нека уточня също, че гладът ми трябва да се разбира в широк смисъл - ако беше просто глад за храна, положението нямаше да е толкова сериозно. Впрочем съществува ли само глад за храна? Може ли стомашния глад да не е израз на един общ глад? Под глад разбирам ужасяващата нужда от нещо, изптивана от цялото същество, мъчителното усещане за вакуум, стремежът не толкова към утопичната насита, колкото към простата реалност - там където няма нищо, да се появи нещо.
"Биография на глада" - Амели Нотомб

"Проблемът на света е, че глупавите са самоуверени, а умните винаги се колебаят."

"Имах чувството, че хората идват и си отиват, раждат се и умират, но книгите са вечни. И като малък мечтаех да стана книга. Не писател - хората мряха като мухи и писателите не правеха изключение. Но не и книгите. Колкото и систематично да ги изтребваш, винаги има вероятност някой екземпляр да оцелее и да продължи да се наслаждава на живота от някоя лавица в ъгъла на забравена от Бога библиотека."

"История за любов и мрак" - Амос Оз

"Ние сме построили тази клетка наречена цивилизация, понеже имаме способността да мислим, а сега трябва да мислим понеже сме хванати в собствената си клетка."
"Пилето" - Уилям Уортън

"-Никога не съм се влюбвал. В това е моето нещастие."
-Аз пък никога не мога да остана влюбен, а това е по-страшно."
Фредерик Бегбеде

Thats all for now. I have many more, most of which are Erich Maria Remarque's. I feel, however, he deserves a separate post, simply because he is great.

Life Can Be a Miracle, says Bulgarian Psychologist Ivinela Samuilova

You must have heard a million times Albert Einstein’s famous thought: There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. I don’t like it. Probably because miracles haven’t happened to me, or I was too busy being negative to notice them. But I feel that throughout my whole life I have always worked for what I achieved and I have never received anything for granted. Let alone a miracle. Miracles have this unfortunate characteristic of not happening when you most need them. And when (if) they indeed happen, you realize it was a miracle very quite later on. Like the time I met a guy accidentally on the street while reading a book and several months later I had some (un) fortunate relationship with him. But at the time when he asked me whether I liked A Clockwork Orange I didn’t even expect this would turn into some kind of relationship. You may call this a miracle but I realized it might be so quite after that.

Secondly, Einstein’s thought is quite banal and trivial. These quotations never work for me. In my notebook for exquisite thoughts I only write down original, unpopular, unconventional sentences. I never do write the trivial ones because I’ve just heard them way too many times to even notice them. Still, there is one unarguable argument for banal phrases – they are banal because they are sometimes painfully true. So when I received Ivinela Samuilova’s novel Life Can Be a Miracle and I saw Mr. Einstein’s words on it, I felt something boring and trivial was ahead of me, in the style of Bucay or Andrews. However, it was not as bad as expected. Indeed, some parts were worth reading and reflecting upon.

The story is simple. Adi, the heroine (who astonishingly resembles the author herself) has everything in her life – a good job, a loving fiancée, honest friends, and a stable family. She hasn’t experienced any trauma or suffering and she hasn’t endured any sufferings. Her only problem is that she doesn’t know what her vocation is. Similarly, the author has studied religion, economics, administration, PR, journalism, and finally psychologie. Looks like we are dealing here with a confession of how difficult it must be to find a job that suits you. Adi feels something vital and essential for life is missing; her mind is filled with saudade. This is Adi’s favourite Portuguese word, which doesn’t have an equivalent in any language she knows of. It mainly refers to an inexplicable void, to a longing to something that is not there or may not exist, a feeling that something vital is missing. I loved that word. I identified with it. In fact, I read something similar in Nothombs’ The Life of Hunger and ever since this particular expression has become my explanation about what is wrong with me. One red point for Ms. Samuilova.

In order to find her vocation, Adi joins a psychological group with the weird and unconventional Alexei. These psychologists disprove the conventional methods of treatment and insist that Froid was a fool. In other words, you might have had the perfect childhood, the ideal parents, the best friends, and the coolest boyfriend, and still you might be unable to deal with your life. Adi enjoys this explanation and excitedly joins the group to try and find what she is supposed to do.

More or less the novel is predictable and simply written. There are rarely profound and deep investigations, conclusions, or ideas. Most of them we have read in one form or another or we have personally tried and found out they don’t work. The aspect I disliked the most was the concept about miracles. To say it plainly, you can transform anything in your life by writing a letter to the given problem (illness, love issue, work problems, etc) and release it. Adi used this technique upon some of her best friends and it worked immediately. Call me sceptic or cynical but this is never the way the world works. I need a positive book but mostly I need a REALISTICALLY positive book. Not some science-fiction about how happiness is just around the corner and all you need to do is write one f*cking letter.

On the contrary, the idea about “No” is great. We all know (or we should know) that “no” doesn’t work. All psychological books say that you should construct your positive statements avoiding the word “no” because the human mind is constructed in such a way as to avoid it. For example, you shouldn’t say ‘I will not drink beer today’ but instead ‘I will drink only juice today’. The words send positive waves to your brain, which it understands. Samuilova explains this amazingly using the simple example with the squirrel ‘If I tell you not to think about an orange squirrel, what did you just think about? An orange squirrel of course’. This ‘no’ concept also explains why the best way to seduce a woman is to ignore her. Women most of all simply do not get the word ‘NO’!

Samuilova scores another point by explaining with an original metaphor how the way we see the world shapes our life. Basically, she compares our mind to a map. We have a mental map and the world is one big territory. Depending on our map, the territory that will fill it is different. If we offer a positive card we will see that only good things happen to us and vice versa. A more original and interesting way to say that if you expect happiness, that is what you will get and if you only see the worst, the worst will happen to you.

In conclusion, most of Life Can Be a Miracle you have heard a billion times and you will find boring and predictable. However, the books is worth reading for these several passages I mentioned (and maybe a couple more), which offer a different perspective to conventional psychology.

Hunger

Hunger. Not just nutritional hunger. Hunger for life, for excitement, for change, for passion. Hunger – a devastating feeling of vacuum, as if something vital for living is missing. Hunger – takes away your soul and your personality and turns you into a shadow of a human being. What would we do without hunger? Hunger is the driving force in the universe, something that prompts people to search for greater possibilities, to abandon their trivial existence and to fight for something more instead. People that do not experience hunger are doomed. They can never feel the painful need of something, they can never be obsessed with an idea, and they can never desire fireworks. They are bored. They just exist because the driver of change has been taken away from them. Abundance is destructive. Hunger is constructive.

Amelie Nothomb, the somewhat weird Belgian writer, discusses the nature of hunger in her novel The Life of Hunger. She starts by giving a short description of hunger and why it is so important. Without nutritional hunger, there can never be anything. Satiety kills ambition, drive, strength, desire. Wars, conquests, struggles, all have been caused by hunger. Starving people are the strongest people. They know something is missing inside of them, they feel the painful contractions of their stomach, and they search for food to fill that emptiness.

The Life of Hunger is a semi-autobiographical novel, where Nothomb shares parts of her childhood. Her father worked as a consulate, so she spent her childhood in Japan, China, USA, Laos, Bangladesh, and Burma. She came from a wealthy family so she never actually experienced the nutritional hunger. But little Amelie was always hungry for something. She felt something important was missing in her life, something that needed to be filled up. Food and water were not enough; Amelie needed cataclysms, catastrophes, and devastations in order to feel alive. The notion of hunger is extended to a desperate compulsion to fill that void.

When you read The Life of Hunger you can almost sense Amelie the anorexic. Her father was bulimic so the girl was exposed to the issues of eating disorder. However, she realized that overabundance with food doesn’t fill that void inside. At 15 years the writer was bored. She felt her life has already passed by. Leaving countries and people behind, Amelie felt a sense of abandonment and loneliness. People, situations, events, nothing seemed to fill her desperate hunger. She was hungry for living and when she couldn’t get it she became hungry for food. She decided to stop eating for good. Her personality started changing. Amelie was no longer a person; beyond continuous hunger what we call soul gradually disappears. The nutritional deprivation becomes a mental one. Amelie recedes and isolates from people in her small world of literature. When she cannot eat food, she eats letters. The girl attempts to find a meaning to life beyond what is happening around her.

The Life of Hunger is philosophical, slightly humorous, and extremely profound. It attempts to decompose hunger into its main components and to show that nutritional hunger is merely a symptom that something is ingeniously wrong. Nutritional hunger signifies the search not for some utopian pleasure but for the simple quest for something to appear, where previously there was nothing. Life of Hunger is not simply about nutritional anorexia. It is about the anorexia we experience in life when we feel we have been deprived from our driving force. Physicists have attempted to discover this driving force, the one thing that forces people to continue searching, to continue fighting, to continue being. Nothomb finds the answer to this question. Hunger. Hunger determines the battle, hunger leads the battle, and ultimately hunger wins the battle.

In Amelie’s case, hunger helped her write. Every September, Nothomb’s fans are expecting another novel from the brilliant Belgian writer. She writes simply and understandably about life. She doesn’t pretend to be deeply philosophical but she is engaging and entertaining. Her novel Life of Hunger is for all those people, anorexic, bulimic, or whatever, who have felt a desperate hunger that they couldn’t fill. For all those people that realize that hunger must not be fought but instead used as a driving force towards a better tomorrow. Because how you act today determines how you are going to live tomorrow.

PS: While reading The Life of Hunger I also felt the hunger for excitement, for drama, for cataclysms in my life. The saying "Be careful what you wish for" is absolutely relevant in this case. Minutes after I wrote this post I fell on the street on my chin, I started bleeding like a dead pig on Christmas day, and I had to go to the emergency. I wished for something to happen and well, it did happen. On Friday, 13th.