Bored on a sunday evening
Yesterday, I made a futile attempt to clean my book-shelf. I found this copy of translation of "Critique of Practical Reason" from Immanuel Kant lying somewhere down. I must have bought it while I was in Delhi. I was my queerest best when I was there.. I thought what a dud I am, not to have read such a masterpiece even after having it with me for more than 2 years. I opened it and I realized why I hadn't read it and why I will never be able to read it. The opening sentence reads,
"The theoretical use of reason was concerned with objects of the cognitive faculty only, and a critical examination of it with reference to this use applied properly only to pure faculty of cognition; because this raised the suspicion, which was afterwards confirmed, that it might easily pass beyond its limits, and be lost among unattainable objects, or even contradictory notions."
huh ? come again.. ;-)
I get tired of such long sentences. Speaking of long sentences, there is this interesting contest called "Bulwer-Lyttin fiction contest" for long, boring and really bad opening sentences of novels. Here is a list of previous years' winners. Some of them are too good :)
Speaking of opening sentences, they tell me that Tolstoy's Anna Karenina's opening sentence, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." is very good. Why ? beats me..
One other opening sentence, which I have read people appreciating is of Kafka's Metamorphosis - "When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams he found himself transformed into a monstrous insect." Now, that's really good. Holds you right there :)
As an aside, even I used to write very long sentences in English when I studied English as a subject in high school and college and stopped doing so only after my kind English teachers pointed out my mistake to me and said that evaluators typically don't have time to go back and forth reading the same sentence and making sense out of it and so, to get more marks in English exams, you need to split your idea and expression into short sentences. (there, I will send in my entry next year to Bulwer-Lyttin fiction contest :P)
"The theoretical use of reason was concerned with objects of the cognitive faculty only, and a critical examination of it with reference to this use applied properly only to pure faculty of cognition; because this raised the suspicion, which was afterwards confirmed, that it might easily pass beyond its limits, and be lost among unattainable objects, or even contradictory notions."
huh ? come again.. ;-)
I get tired of such long sentences. Speaking of long sentences, there is this interesting contest called "Bulwer-Lyttin fiction contest" for long, boring and really bad opening sentences of novels. Here is a list of previous years' winners. Some of them are too good :)
Speaking of opening sentences, they tell me that Tolstoy's Anna Karenina's opening sentence, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." is very good. Why ? beats me..
One other opening sentence, which I have read people appreciating is of Kafka's Metamorphosis - "When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams he found himself transformed into a monstrous insect." Now, that's really good. Holds you right there :)
As an aside, even I used to write very long sentences in English when I studied English as a subject in high school and college and stopped doing so only after my kind English teachers pointed out my mistake to me and said that evaluators typically don't have time to go back and forth reading the same sentence and making sense out of it and so, to get more marks in English exams, you need to split your idea and expression into short sentences. (there, I will send in my entry next year to Bulwer-Lyttin fiction contest :P)