The Principles of Life on Black Friday

Name : The Principles of Life on Black Friday

Emotions are the true inhabitants of our human lives. They reside in people just like people live in houses. From within these houses, our emotions gaze onto historical events and the larger world. This volume, the first in a series of nine notebooks by Alexander Kluge entitled ‘Chronicle of Emotions’, concerns itself in particular with the question of time—‘the body of water in which all life transpires’. Beginning with the description of a brief fragment—the 000.1 per cent of a person’s lifetime that passes by in a matter of minutes—this volume concludes with stories of the unexpected stock-market crash of 1929, a once-in-a-century event that Europeans call ‘Black Friday’ because Wall Street’s collapse reached the Old World one day later.

In The Principles of Life on Black Friday, Kluge dwells on some fundamental questions not altered by the passing of time : What can I trust? How can I protect myself? What should I be afraid of? Our age today has achieved a new kind of obscurity. We’ve encountered a pandemic. We’ve witnessed the Capitol riots. We see before us inflation, war, and a burning planet. We gaze at the world with suspense. What we need in our lives is orientation—just like ships that navigate the high seas. We might just find that in the many vignettes and stories in Kluge’s chronicle of emotions.

Country of Origin : India