interrupted

I have embarked on the study of metaphysics several times, but happiness always interrupted - Macedonio Fernandez

The Bus and the Road - Lu Xun

For more than a year now I have spoken very seldom to young people, because since the revolution there has been very little scope for talking. You are either provocative or reactionary, neither of which does anyone any good. After my return to Peking this time, however, some old friends asked me to come here and say a few words and, not being able to refuse them, here I am. But owing to one thing and another, I never decided what to say - not even what subject to speak on.

I meant to fix on a subject in the bus on the way here, but on the road is so bad that the bus kept bouncing a foot off the ground, making it impossible to concentrate. That is when it struck me that it is no use just adopting one thing from abroad. If you have buses, you need good roads too. Everything is bound to be influenced by its surroundings, and this applies to literature as well - to what in China is called the new literature, or revolutionary literature.

However patriotic we are, we probably have to admit that our civilization is rather backward. Everything new has come to us from abroad, and most of us are quite bewildered by new powers. Peking has not yet been reduced to this, but International Settlement in Shanghai, for example, you have foreigners in the centre, surrounded by a cordon of interpreters, detectives, police, 'boys' and so on, who understand their languages and know the rules of foreign concessions. Out this cordon are the common people...

Some Thoughts on our New Literature - Lu Xun

Never Any End to Paris - Enrique Vila-Matas, New Directions, 2011, p. 30

I also saw Perec himself in real life. It was halfway through 1974, the year he published Species of Spaces. I'd seen lots of photographs of him, but that day, in the bookshop on Boulevard Saint-Germain, I saw him arrive for the launch of a book by Phillippe Sollers and do very strange things I won't go into now. What is certain is that for quite a while, so impressed to be seeing him in real life, I watched him intently, so intently that, at one moment, his face was a hair's breadth from mine. Perec noticed this anomaly - a stranger was a whisker away from his goatee - and reacted by commenting out loud, as if trying to let me know I should take my face elsewhere: "The world's a big place, young man."

*Se - Giorgio Agamben p.136, Potentialities

'It is not because life and death are the most sacred things that sacrifice contains killing; on the contrary, life and death became the most sacred things because sacrifices contained killing. (In this sense, nothing explains the difference between anitquity and the modern world better than the fact that for the first, the destruction of human life was sacred, whereas for the second what is sacred is life itself).'

Assume vs Presume

presume vs. assume. Although they're used interchangeably now, to presume originally meant to assert that something is true without complete evidence; to decide something without absolute certainty. (Since absolute certainty is impossible, you could say that we presume everything, including the physical condition of the world.) To assume, on the other hand, meant to acknowledge that not all evidence was in, but to act as though something were true.

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In many contexts when the meaning is 'to suppose', the two words are interchangeable: e.g. I assume/presume you are coming to the party. But, as the Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage (Ed. Robert Allen. Oxford University Press, 1999) points out, 'Fowler (1926) maintained that there is a stronger element of postulation or hypothesis in assume and of a belief held on the basis of external evidence in presume.' The Oxford English Dictionary definitions are very similar. Assume is 'to take for granted as the basis of argument or action'; presume is 'to take for granted, to presuppose, to count upon'. There is a faint suggestion of presumptuousness about presume.

The New Oxford Dictionary of English which is based on recent usage evidence, provides these definitions:

assume suppose to be the case, without proof.
presume suppose that something is the case on the basis of "probability"; take for granted that something exists or is the case.

http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexper...assume?view=uk

Assume has a variety of meanings. It basically means "to take up or on oneself," "to suppose or take for granted," "to pretend," or "to be taken up." The noun form is assumption.


Presume is related to and similar to assume, but it has the sense of doing it beforehand. It means "to dare or venture without prior knowledge," "to assume as believable without direct proof," "to take as a premise, subject to further proof," or "to behave arrogantly or overconfidently." The noun form is presumption.


A presumption is often taken up or assumed to be true until proven otherwise, as presumed innocent. Sometimes it has the sense of behaving in a superior manner, as in to presume upon someone. Presumption often has the sense of blind overconfidence, or going beyond the limits of proper manners. Presumptive means "based on reasonable grounds of evidence" as in presumptive heir. Presumptuous means "unusually confident or bold, often arrogant," or "foolhardy."


To assume suggest taking by one's own will or power for good or evil, right or wrong. If he assumes a position that is not rightfully his, he has arrogated or usurped it. A person can assume office either lawfully or unlawfully. When a debater assumes something, he or she may take it for granted without explaining it. If a person takes to himself character traits or a position he does not posses, he pretends to or affects the character he is assuming. A smooth talker often assumes something to be true that would be challenged if directly stated. When people claim something, they assert that they have a right to it. When they assume it, they take it.

The adjective assumed means "taken for granted" or "fictitious." When used as an adjective, assuming means "arrogant," its opposite, unassuming is more common. Something that is assumable is something that can be taken, as an assumable loan.

http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000304.htm

In other words, you should not assume things when thinking or planning. You should check details and ask questions.

You can, therefore, use the word assume when speaking or writing because you are, in fact, checking. The person you are writing or speaking to is supposed to set you straight if your assumption is wrong.

I assume he will be at the meeting. (You expect the reader/listener to inform you if your assumption is wrong.)

I presume he will be at the meeting.

If the person is important to your meeting, you should never “assume” he will be there. You should check by writing or speaking.

Rabelais and his World

p. ix - no one voice/ quoted speech
p.16/ 421- formal and familiar addresses, polite as false to the familiar
p.405 - Father and Son as continuation than break
p.463 - use of numbers, symbolic
465 - language and philosophy/ideology, language and dialects, latin (classic. medieval), early French... dual language and transformation of vulgar Latin, Italianisation of French...

No Pork on Monday

His favourite stall is closed today
Most of the pork-related soup and food
A friend of my did not know why
For Sunday, I was told, the abattoir is closed
And for those that are open for business the pork isn't fresh.

That is why he is having lunch with me on every Monday