Tag: diaries
Murdering trees
A powerful symbol of the continuing human assault on the natural world is the wanton destruction of trees. The outstanding example must be the wholesale clearing of Amazonian rainforests by the Brazilian government (over 11,000 square kilometres were destroyed in the year to July 2020). Britain carries its own arboricidal guilt: the uprooting of whole […]
Writing as self-torture
In Prague Franz Kafka, then 28 years old, wrote this paragraph in his diary on 12 October 1911: Yesterday at Max’s [Max Brod, K’s close friend] wrote in the Paris diary [K visited Paris in September 1911]. In the half-darkness of Rittergasse, in her autumn outfit, fat, warm R. whom we have known only in […]