A political life -- Norberto Bobbio

Curiously enough, I found this book on sale at the PU store, and I thought it would be interesting to read, because Bobbio is one of the best known thinker and professor in Torino.
The book was OK, but not great: there are quite a few passages that are interesting because they allow the reader to get an idea about Bobbio's thought, how his opinions came into being. On the other hand many passages are not very interesting (unless you are a specialist, I think), in particular when he writes about his speeches/communications/letters with people who are now perfectly unknown (but they probably were well know in the past, or in the philosophical/academic environment).

I report below some of the passages that I found the most interesting.

"On the right there is the the error of agnostic or conservative liberalism, which leads to freedom without justice. On the left there is the error of authoritarian collectivism which leads to justice without freedom." [pg. 40]

However, I am also unsuited to politics, because I suffer from the academic's typical profession deficiency, that of being an eternal doubter. If you carry out research, especially in the field of human sciences, you can, once you have examined all of the pros and cons, end your study with a question mark. As can be seen, there are profound existential reasons that have contributed to keeping me from public office: a politician has to be a man of action, which I am not by any stretch of the imagination. [pg. 141]

Day by day, I could see a moral problem emerging in which the Socialist were mixed up: the enforcement of moral standards in public life was a question of good government, and the basis of democracy. <...> (letter to Craxi) "It is not that I am an unaware of the objective difficulties that the party faces, caught as it is a rock and a hard place, and I therefore consider your concern over safeguarding the party's independence by not taking my part in any preconceived electoral programme to be correct. But the problem is that your unscrupulous exercise of power has made you less and less credible. Even you good intentions seem increasingly the ones that pave the way to hell. [pg. 148]

I argued that there had never been such a trend in democratic countries towards the integration of a great economic power and an equally great cultural power, through an extremely powerful instrument like television, with political power, as was occurring before our very eyes.This was the result of Berlusconi's 'entering the field', and, within the few months of an election campaign, becoming the prime minister of a government that even claimed to represent the quintessence of a liberal state. [pg. 158]

Cosmos

Carl Sagan--Cosmos

This one is a fascinating book. Carl Sagan writes beautifully, and the topics being discussed are some of the most fascinating questions about everything around us, from galaxies, to planets, to life on Earth (and eventually on other planets, and to human the limits of human knowledge. The book is divided in thirteen chapters: (1) The shores of the cosmic ocean (2) One voice in the cosmic fugue (3) The harmony of worlds (4) Heaven and hell (5) Blues for a red planet (6) Travelers' tales (7) The backbone of night (8) Travels in space and time (9) The lives of the stars (10) The edge of forever (11) The persistence of memory (12) Encyclopaedia galactica (13) Who speaks for Earth?.

I am jotting down here the passages that I liked the most.


For Ann Druyan. In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with Annie. (dedication)

Occasionally someone remarks on what a lucky coincidence it is that Earth is perfectly suitable for life--moderate temperatures, liquid water, oxygen atmosphere, and so on. But this is, at least in part, a confusion of cause and effect. (pg.14)

Many hypotheses proposed by scientists as well as by non-scientists turn out to be wrong. But science is a self-correcting enterprise. To be accepted all new ideas must survive rigorous standards of evidence. (pg.73)

"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns, they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water." (pg. 86, quoting O.H.Wells, The war of the worlds)

I am a collection of water, calcium and organic molecules called Carl Sagan. You are a collection of almost identical molecules with a different collective label. But is that all? Is there nothing in here but molecules? Some people find this idea demeaning to human dignity. For myself, I find it elevating that our universe permits the evolutions of molecular machines as intricate and subtle as we. (pg. 105)

[About Huygens] "The world is my country," he said "science is my religion." (pg. 117)

"If a faithful account was rendered of Man's idea upon Divinity, he would be obliged to acknowledge that for the most part the word 'gods' has been used to express the concealed, remote, unknown causes of the effects he witnessed; that he applies this term when the spring of the natural, the source of known causes, ceases to be visible: as soon as he looses the thread of these causes, or as soon as his mind can no longer follow the chain, he solves the difficulty, terminates his research by ascribing it to his gods..." (pg. 133, quoting P.H.Dietrich, Systeme de la Nature)

The two Voyager interstellar spacecraft, the fastest machines ever launched from Earth, are now traveling at one ten-thousandth the speed of light. They would need 40,000 years to go the distance to the nearest star. [...] What is magic about the speed of light? Might we someday be able to go faster than that? (pg.166)

Europeans around the turn of the century generally believed in privileged frames of reference: that German, or French, or British culture and political organization were better than those of other countries; that Europeans were superior to other peoples who were fortunate enough to be colonized. The social and political application of the ideas of Aristharcus and Copernicus was rejected or ignored. The young Einstein rebelled against the notion of privileged frames of reference in physics as much as he did in politics. (pg.167)

Compared to a star, we are like mayflies, fleeting ephemeral creatures who live out their whole lives in the course of a single day. From the point of view of a mayfly, human beings are stolid, boring, almost entirely immovable, offering hardly a hint that they ever do anything. From the point of view of a star, a human being is a tiny flash, one of billions of brief lives flickering tenously on the surface of a strangely cold, anoumalously solid, exotically remote sphere of silicate and iron. (pg.178)

"We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss whether they was made, or only just happened." (pg. 179, quoting M.Twain, Huckleberry Finn)

"I have...a terrible need...shall I say the word?...if religion. Then I go out at night and paint the stars." (pg.179, quoting V.Van Gogh)

The relative abundance of the chemical elements found in the Cosmos matches the relative abundance of atoms generated in stars so well as to leave little doubt that red giants and supernovae are the ovens and cricibles in which matter has been forged. The Sun is a second- or third-generation star. All the matter in it, all the matter you see around you, has been through one or two previous cycles of stellar alchemy. (pg. 191)

Ten or twenty billion years ago, something happened--the Big Bang, the event that began our universe. Why it happened is the greatest mystery we know. That it happened is reasonably clear.[...] The remnants of that fireball, the cosmic background radiation, emanating from all parts of the sky can be detected by radio telescopes today. (pg. 201)

Where is the center of the Cosmos? Is there an edge to the universe? What lies beyond that? In a two dimensional universe curved through a third dimension, there is no center--at least not on the surface of the sphere. The center of such a universe is not in that universe; it lies, inaccessible, in the third dimension, inside the sphere. While there is only so much area on the surface of the sphere, there is no edge to this universe--it is finite but unbounded. And the question of what lies beyond is meaningless. Flat creatures cannot, on their own, escape their two dimensions. (pg. 220)

There is an idea--strange, haunting, evocative--one of the most exquisite conjectures in science or religion. It is entirely undemonstrated; it may never be proved. But it stirs the blood. There is, we are told, and infinite hierarchy of universes, so that an elementary particle, such an electron, in our universe would, if penetrated, reveal itself to be an entire closed universe.[...] Our familiar universe of galaxies and stars, planets and people, would be a single elementary particle in the next universe up, the first step of an entire infinite regress. (pg 221)

To specify whether a lamp is on or off requires a single bit of information. To designate one letter out of the twenty-six in the Latin alphabet takes five bits (2^5 = 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 32, which is more than 26). The verbal information content of this book is a little less than ten million bits, 10^7. The total number of bits that characterizes an hour-long television program is about 10^12. The information in the words and pictures of different books in all the libraries on Earth is something like 10^16 or 10^17 bits. O f course much of it is redundant. Such a number calibrates crudely what humans know. But elsewhere, on older worlds, where life has has evolved billions of years earlier than on Earth, perhaps they know 10^20 bits or 10^30--not just more information, but significantly different information. (pg. 224)

"How vast those orbs must be, and how inconsiderable this Earth, the theatre upon which all our mighty designs, all our navigations, and all our wars are transacted, is when compared to them. S very fit consideration, and matter of reflection, for those kings and princes who sacrifice the lives of so many people, only to flatter their ambition in being masters of some pitiful corner of this small spot." (pg. 263, quoting C.Huygens, New conjectures concerning the planetary worlds)

"[...] A day will come, a day in the unending succession of days, when beings, beings who are now latent in our thoughts and hidden in our loins, shall stand upon this earth as one stands upon a footstool, and shall laugh and reach out their hands amidst the stars." (pg. 264, quoting H.G.Wells, The discovery of the future, Nature, 1902)

About two thirds of the mass of the human brain is in the cerebral cortex, devoted to intuition and reason. Humans have evolved gregariously. We delight in each other's company; we care for one another. We cooperate. Altruism is built into us. We have brilliantly deciphered some of the patterns of Nature. We have sufficient motivation to work together and the ability to figure out how to do it. If we are willing to contemplate nuclear war and the wholesale destruction of our emerging global society, should we not also be willing to contemplate a wholesale restructuring of our societies? (pg. 272)

We must learn the science and technology that provide he only conceivable tools for our survival. We must be willing to challenge courageously the conventional social, political, economical and religious wisdom. We must make every effort to understand that our fellow humans, all over the worlds, are human. (pg. 273)

The ash of stellar alchemy was now emerging into our consciousness. At an ever-accelerating pace, it in vented writing, cities, art and science, and sent spaceships to the planets and the stars. These are some of the things that hydrogen atoms do, given fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution. (pg. 283)

If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another. (pg. 283)

The God Delusion

Richard Dawkins--"The God Delusion"

When I started this book I was a little skeptical, since in the introductory part the author claims that he wants to prove some kind of rationale for an argument against religion. That sounded weird to me, as I was used to think that religion is usually part of a domain which is disconnected from the rational/scientific land. However I must say that the arguments that he brings are very convincing, and they tend mostly to point out the sociological/psicological/economical etc. consequences of religion. The book is divided in 10 chapters, which go from a description of the most important religions, to the confitation of the usual proofs of God's existence, a discussion of "morality", and the abuse of religion on most of the people. I copy below some of the passages that I liked the most.

"Here is an idea or a notion that you are not allowed to say anything bad about it; you're just not. Why not? because you're not! [...]Yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn't be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn't be". (pg.42)

Far better, of course, would be to abandon the promotion of religion altogether as grounds for charitable status. The benefits of this society would be great, especially in the United States, here the sum of tax-free money sucked in by churches [...] reach levels that could fairly be described as obscene. (pg.53)

"The priests of the different religious sects...dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight, and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subdivision of the duperies on which they live." (Thomas Jefferson) (pg.137)

The anthropic principle states that, since we are alive, eucaryotic and conscious, our planet has to be one of the intensely rare planets that has bridged all three gaps. [...] Other find this unsatisfying [...]uses the analogy of a man sentenced to death by firing squad. It is just possible that all ten men of the firing squad will miss their victim. [...] `Well, obviously they all missed, or I wouldn't be here thinking about it.' But then he could still, forgivably, wonder why they all missed, and toy with the hypotesis that they were bribed, or drunk. (pg.169-173)

Is religion a placebo that prolongs life by reducing stress? [...] It is hard to believe, for example, that health is improved by the semi-permanent state of morbid guilt suffered by a Roman Catholic possessed of normal human frailty and less than normal intelligence. (pg.195)

The antropologist Helen Fisher, in Why We Love, has beautifully expressed the insanity of romantic love, and how over-the-top it is compared with that might seem strictly necessary. Look at it this way. From the point of view of a man, say, it is unlikely that any other one woman of his acquaintance is a hundred times more lovable than her when 'in love'. Rather than the fanatically monogamus devotion to which we are susceptible, some sort of 'polyamory' is on the face of it more rational. (pg.214)

The following is a partial list of religious memes that might plausibly have survival value [...]: (*) You will survive your own death (*) Heretices, blasphemers and apostates should be killed (*) Belief in God is a supreme virtue (*) Faith is a virtue (*) Everybody, even those who do not hold religious beliefs, must respect them with a higher level [...] of belief. (*) There are some weird things that we are not meant to understand. (pg.232)

Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law:'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.' (pg.235)

Why should a divine being, with creation and eternity on his mind, care a fig for petty human malefactions? We humans give ourselves such airs, even aggrandizing our poky little 'sins' to the level of cosmic significance! (pg.270)

As the Nobel Prize-winning American physicist Steven Weinberg said, `Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.' (pg.283)

Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man--living in the sky--who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time...But he loves you! (George Carlin) (pg.317)

"There is in every village a torch--the teacher: and an extinguisher--the clergyman. (Victor Hugo) (pg.348)


"I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man's place in the world. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own." (Bertrand Russell) (pg.397)

"That it will never come again/Is what makes life so sweet." (Emily Dickinson) (pg.405)

In the end: I enjoyed a lot this book, for the good points that it brings to the discussion, and for some of the awesome quotations that are in there.

Animal Farm

George Orwell -- "Animal Farm"

This book is awesome. It was first published in 1946, but it is still (or even more) actual nowadays.
The book is about the story of a farm where the animals, tired of being exploited by the owner (Mr. Jones), organize a rebellion, and kick him out of his property. The animals start then to manage themselves, with laws (the seven commandaments), with the organization of the work to be done, and planning the future. Even though everything is working perfectly at the beginning, when each animal is performing the task which best fits to his/her species, things start to become more complicated when the pigs, who are supposedly the smarter animals, and therefore are the ones leading the farm, start to take advantage of their position, and an oligarchic/dictatorial regime is established.
The power of this book, at least in my opinion, lies in the great representation (in between a tale and a sci-fi story) given by Orwell of the different attitudes of the animals, which reflect and represent the ones that human being have in a society. This representation also gives an excellent description of the steps that usually lead to any tyranny--and those steps have been and are always the same ones...

I report here few of the passages that I liked the most.

And remember also that in fighting against Man, we must not come to resemble him. [...] And above all, no animal must ever tyrannise over his own kind. Weak or strong, clever or simple, we are all brothers. No animal must ever kill any other animal. All animals are equal. (pg. 11)

The pigs had an even harder struggle to counteract the lies put about by Moses, the tame raven. Moses, who was Mr.Jones's especial pet, was a spy and a tale-bearer, but he was also a clever talker. He claimed to know the existence of a misterious coutry called Sugarcandy Mountain, to which all animals went when they died. [...where] it was Sunday seven days a week, clover was in season all the year round, and lump sugar and linseed cake grew on the hedges. The animals hated Moses because he told tales and did no work, but some of them believed in Sugarcandy Mountain [...]. (pg. 17)

But doubtless it ahd been worse in the old days. They were glad to believe so. Besides, in those days they had been slaves, and now they were free, and that made all the difference, as Squealer dod not fail to point out. (pg.113)

A thing that was difficult to determine was the attitude of the pigs towards Moses. They all declared contemptuously that his stories about Sugarcandy Mountain were lies, and yet they allowed him to remain on the farm, not working, with an allowance of a gill of beer a day. (pg. 118)


I enjoyed it at the same level as "1984", and it's richness is somewhat different: while 1984 is very powerful, but has to be read by somebody who is into this kind of topics, "Animal Farm" is powerful and easy to read at the same time. It would be a perfect book even for somebody in middle school.

Ctrl-S in a shell

When you enter Ctrl-S in a shell, it pauses the program.
To resume use Ctrl-Q

emacs+etags

from http://tulrich.com/geekstuff/emacs.html:

from your base dir:

$ etags [your cpp hpp files]

(creates a TAGS file)

Then, from within emacs, go over your function:

M-.       goes to the symbol definition
M-0 M-.   goes to the next matching definition
M-*       return to your starting point

emacs readonly

The command `view-file' will open a file read-only; you could bind it to some convenient key in your .emacs.

C-x C-r open a file in read-only mode
C-x C-q toggle-read-only

automounting with HAL

Following the instructions at this page:
http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/HAL

> rc-update show
> rc-update add hald default
> lshal

Note that because I previously tried "ivman", I had to remove it,

> emerge -a --depclean  ivman

otherwise it would conflict with HAL, and I couldn't right-click and "safely remove".

Gesu' lava piu' bianco

Bruno Ballardini -- "Gesu' lava piu' bianco"

Questo libro e' un saggio in cui l'autore sostiene la tesi per cui la Chiesa e' stata un precursore(ice) delle piu' moderne strategie di marketing. Le prove a sostegno di questa tesi sono portate non secondo un ordine cronologico che segua lo sviluppo dell'organizzazione clericale (e dei fedeli che partecipano alla vita religiosa della Chiesa), ma piuttosto evolvendo dai piu' semplici concetti di marketing verso le strategie piu' avanzate. In questo modo anche una persona che non sappia nulla di marketing, come me, viene gradualmente a conoscenza dei termini e dei concetti usati in questo campo, e li vede applicati in casi specifici. I libro e' suddiviso in 6 capitoli: [1] La Genesi (del marketing) [2] La politica di prezzo come un fattore strategico [3] Merchandising e fidelizzazione del cliente [4] P come propaganda [5] Benchmarking e tecniche avanzate [6] Lo zen e l'arte del riposizionamento.
Riporto qua alcuni dei passaggi che mi hanno colpito di piu'.

Il mercato della colpa. E per conseguire il successo, [...], occorre innanzitutto preparare accuratamente il terreno. Ad esempio, creando disagio psicologico nel target. Per ottenere questo [...] non c'e' niente di meglio del senso di debito e del senso di colpa ad esso correlato. [...] esso e' infatti strettamente funzionale alla coesione sociale attorno all'autorita'. (pg.15)

In questo senso anche i miracoli, ovvero i ``fatti'' addotti come prova d'efficacia, potrebbero essere visti come una sorta di allucinazione testuale, un'ubriacatura da eccesso di parola. E' come se venisse esaudita l'aspettativa dei fedeli che fondano le loro rappresentazioni soltanto su quanto hanno esperito attraverso il testo scritto. Un meccanismo che origine in una fase precedente alla religione, quella della magia. Hubert e Mauss erano arrivati a comprendere che ``la maggior parte della magia e' costituita dai desideri.'' [...] Ecco il punto: il ricordo diviene scrittura, e quindi realta'. E' questo il vero miracolo. (pg.51)

Ecco una grande intuizione della Chiesa che il marketing moderno non ha mai attuato: e' piu' efficace istituire sul punto vendita una forma di animazione stabile che si ripeta regolarmente secondo gli stessi dettami, rispetto alla variazione continua. (pg.75)

Il punto di vendita piu' importante della catena deve avere sontuosita' e spettacolarita' tali da suscitare sensazioni forti. [...] D'altra parte, come potrebbero trasmettere i valori del bello coloro che hanno rinunciato alla vita mondana in favore della ragione aziendale? (pg.91)

[Referendum fecondazione eterologa] il Vaticano consiglio' l'astensione dal voto. E' qui la sottigliezza. Non votare ad un referendum abrogativo produce alla fine lo stesso risultato del votare ``no'' ma in piu' c'e' il vantaggio di evitare ai fedeli il problema di dover risolvere da soli una complicata questione etica che normalmente e' gestita dalla Chiesa. (pg. 178)

Allo stesso modo, occorre comprendere che i valori che le grandi multinazionali tentano di venderci ci appartengono gia'. Ci appartengono le cose della nostra vita, come pure i valori e le parole che li descrivono. Non esiste un amore cristiano, esiste l'amore. Si puo' avere un grande rigore morale anche senza essere religiosi. La fede non puo' essere condivisa e quindi divenire oggetto di massificazione da parte del marketing, ne' essere esportata, diventare merce di scambio, motivo di persuasione degli altri. Deve restare una questione rigorosamente privata e personale. Solo cosi' aumentera' l'autocoscienza e diminuiranno i conflitti. (pg. 200)

The letters of Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh -- "The letters of Vincent van Gogh"

I read this book, with much pleasure I must say, over the past few months. This is the collection of letters that Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) exchanged from 1872 until his death. Those letters were mostly addressed to his brother Theo, with whom Vincent had a very close connection. I won't copy and paste here the details of van Gogh's life, but one thing that I want to keep in mind is the fact that his path started as a failed pastor, with delusions here and there, and mostly, with a long and intense training of himself (by himself for the most of it) as an artist. I jot down here few of the passages that I liked the most.

When I compare the state of the weather to our state of mind and our circumstances, subject to change and fluctuations like the weather, then I still have some hope that things may get better (pg.64)

And I don't think it ever occurs to her that God may only appear once we say the words, those words with which Multatuli ends his prayer of an unbeliever:`Oh God, there is no God.' [...] but you see, I love, and how could I feel love if I were notalive myself or if others were not alive, and if we were alive there is something wondrous about it. Now call that God or human nature or whatever you like, but there is a certain something I cannot define systematically, although it is very much alive and real, and you see, for me that something is God or as good as God. (pg.124)

What is drawing? How does one come to it? It is working through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do. How is one toget through that wall--since pounding at it is of no use? In my opinion one has to undermine that wall, filing through it steadily and patiently. (pg. 206)

I tell you, if one wants to be active, one must not be afraid of making mistakes now and then. Many people think that they will become good just by doing no harm--but that's a lie, and you yourself used to call it that. That way lies stagnation, mediocrity. (pg.281)

[About one of his paintings] So the last thing I would want is for people to admire or approve of it without knowing why. (pg. 291)

Enjoy yourself too much rather than tool little, and don't take art or love too seriously--there is very little one can do about it, it is chiefly a question of temperament. [...] For me, for instance, it's a relief to do a painting, and without that I should be unhappier that I am. (pg. 338)

And if, deprived of the physical power, one tries to create thoughts instead of children, one is still very much part of humanity. And in my pictures I want to say something consoling as music does. I want to paint men and women with a touch of eternal, whose symbol was once the halo, which we try to convey by the very radiance and vibrancy of our colouring. (pg.394)

The day will come, however, when people will see they are worth more that the price of the paint and my living expenses, very magre on the whole, which we put into them. [about his paintings] (pg. 419)

Even though some of the letters are not particularly interesting, I still enjoyed the book very much. The life of Vincent van Gogh has been a real adventure: the struggles, doubts, and reflections of this painter are very intense, and very much close to what human beings in general experience, making it a source of comfort and inspiration. We feel less lonely in our little life, if we that know that other people, at some point, posed the same question which righ now seems to be so hard to ourself.

install new latex package

Download
2. move .sty file to ..textmf/tex/latex/package-name/
3. if no .sty file .run latex on the .ins file
4. type texhash

from: http://avizit.blogspot.com

Alsa: Device or resource busy

I have seen this prblem a couple of times, more or less randomly:

mplayer 
[AO_ALSA] alsa-lib: pcm_dmix.c:996:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
[AO_ALSA] Playback open error: Device or resource busy

Today I solved it in this way:

lsof /dev/snd/*
[look at the pid's, excluding kmix]
 kill pid's

I dont' know wether this always works, anyway...

Invitation to a beheading

Vladimir Nabokov
Invitation to a beheading

This books is about the last few days of a man, Cincinnatus, who is condemned to death. He doesn't know when his execution will take place, neither the reason why he was condemned. The incipit of the book is the following:

"In accordance with the law the death sentence was announced to Cincinnatus C. in a whisper. All those, exchanging smiles. The hoary judge put his mouth close th his ear, panted for a moment, made the announcement and slowly moved away, as though un-glueing himself."

The novel evolves with the narration of "the last few days", with flashbacks and nightmares of the main character providing some background on the situation. For example we know that Cincinnatus' wife was cheating on him, but we don't know precisely what he has done to get to jail (neither does he).

Another interesting fact in the plot is the fact that at some point another prisoner (inmate) is brought into the cell, and he tries to be nice to Cincinnatus. Later on we discover that this person is the executioner of the sentence to death who, according to the law, should get to know better his victim.

All of the characters are quite surrealistic, something in between the ones in "The master and Marguerite" and the ones in Kafka's novels.

"It was then that Cincinnatus stopped and, looking around him as if he had just entered this stony solitude, summoned up all his will, evoked the full extent of his life. and endeavoured to comprehend his situation with the utmost exactitude. Accused of the most terrible of crimes, gnostical turpitude, so rare and so unutterable that it was necessary to use circumlocutions like 'impenetrability', 'opacity', 'occlusion'; sentenced for that crime to death by beheading; imprisoned in the fortress in expectation of the unknown but near an inexorable date (which he distinctly anticipated as the wrenching, yanking and crunch of a monstrous tooth , his whole body being the inflamed gum, and his headthat tooth); standing now in the prison corridor with a sinking heart--still alive, still unpimpaired, still Cincinnatic--Cincinnatus C. felt a fierce longing for freedom, the most ordinary, physical, physically feasible kind of freedom, and instantly he imagined, with such sensuous clarity as though ti all was a fluctuating corona emanating from him [...]." (pg. 61)

"He went on, batting his eyelashes: 'I need not to explain how precious to the success of our common undertaking is that the atmosphere of warm camaraderie which, with the help of patience and kindness, is gradually created between the sentenced and the executor of the sentence. It is difficult or even impossible to recall without a shudder the barbarity of long-gone days, when these two, not knowing each other at all, strangers to each other, but bound together by the implacable law, met face to face only at the last instant before the sacrament itself.'" (pg. 148)

"'Just an instant more. I find it ludicrous and disgraceful that my hands should tremble so--but I can neither stop nor hide it, and, yes, they tremble and that's all.[...] I feel only one thing--fear, fear, shameful, futile fear...' Actually Cincinnatus did not say all this; he was silently changing his shoes. The vein on his forehead was swollen, the bold locks fell on it, his shirt had a wide-opened embroidered collar, which impairted a certain extraordinary youthful quality to his neck and to his flushed face with its blond quivering moustache.
'Let's go!' shrieked M'sieur Pierre.
Cincinnatus, trying not to brush against anyone or anything, placing his feet as if he were walking on bare, sloping ice, finally made his way out of the cell, which in fact was no longer there." (pg. 181)


The book maybe is a little too sophisticated for my English, using a rich and varied vocabulary. Apart from this, the book is a good "inviation to a behading", in the sense that it gives to the reader the feeling of being part of something which is going on, without having a clear point of view, moving between reality and nonsense, nightmare and imagination. The book is excellentin stimulating a reflection on the way we usually perceive capital punishment, in particular the "clean and neat picture" of it that our society is giving of the procedure.