A bet between God and the Devil.
A shrewdness beyond comprehension to the mind of a man.
A tragedy.

If only this were the case, the oldest of all stories of Christianity, then Goethe probably wouldn't have ventured to write Faust.

Faust is a blueprint. A blueprint of tragedy that an intellectual, curious, and rigorous philosopher may have to navigate in his life.

At the beginning, when we meet Faust the polymath, he was in Loevinger’s Ego Development Stage 4/5 (Self-Questioning/Individualist/Pluralist). The notions of reality and truth are fractured, yet not in complete disharmony. We can find the evidence for it in Scene IV:

This life of earth, whatever my attire, Would pain me in its wonted fashion. Too old am I to play with passion; Too young, to be without desire.

and,

The God that in my breast is owned Can deeply stir the inner sources; The God, above my powers enthroned, He cannot change external forces. So, by the burden of my days oppressed, Death is desired, and Life a thing unblest!

This stage comes with acute existential dread and distress, as Goethe portrayed them so faithfully.

We need to make a clear distinction here. This distress is not the work of the Devil. Every sincere person, at some point in their life, must stomach this. In consensus, Christianity allows free will; therefore, free exploration of knowledge is allowed. With that exploration, considering the depth and breadth a philosopher may navigate, comes obvious distress.

At this lowest of the moments, Faust made a pact with Mephistopheles. Here, we can see the brilliance of Faust's mind. While Mephistopheles wanted to give all possible earthly pleasure in return for his soul, Faust's counter-offer was to forfeit his soul only when he is content. And if you consider his state of mind at this point, bringing contentment to him is a formidable task, even for Mephistopheles— if Mephistopheles is a man.

But Mephistopheles is no man. While a man, with his short span of life, and probably by the very architecture of our mind, cannot help thinking from the perspective where we are the centre of everything. This egocentrism is the Devil's playground. He runs a whole gamut of tests on all of our feelings to catch us off guard:

MEPHISTOPHELES
Yes, thou findest that unpleasant! Thou hast the moral right to cry me "shame!" at present. One dares not that before chaste ears declare, Which chaste hearts, notwithstanding, cannot spare; And, once for all, I grudge thee not the pleasure Of lying to thyself in moderate measure.

Indeed, he is right when he declares:

MEPHISTOPHELES
Poor Son of Earth, how couldst thou thus alone Have led thy life, bereft of me?

For he is the first rebel in the Bible, and he, also, is the scapegoat for all our dubitable actions.

But Mephistopheles is an egoist too. Soon, it became a chess match of ego. In every turn, one superseding another's strategy. Although by narrow means, Faust conquered all the traps and lures. You may disagree with me on this point. But this conquering happens in such a bloody, agonising way that it often may feel like a defeat.

We can see their battle externalised in Walpurgis Night:

Tell me, if we still are standing,
Or if further we're ascending?
All is turning, whirling, blending,
Trees and rocks with grinning faces,
Wandering lights that spin in mazes,
Still increasing and expanding!

MEPHISTOPHELES
Grasp my skirt with heart undaunted! Here a middle–peak is planted, Whence one seeth, with amaze, Mammon in the mountain blaze.

First, we find Faust's mind-bending philosophical investigation being externalised by a metaphor of Will-O-Wisp.

Then we see the satanic promise of remedy, but not through philosophy, but through materialism, by promising Mammon's treasure.

Despite every attempt, despite a tragic end, we can see Faust keeping his intellectual sovereignty intact. A prime example of this is when Gretchen, the innocent lover of Faust, asked him about his faith; he replied:

FAUST
My darling, who shall dare "I believe in God!" to say? Ask priest or sage the answer to declare, And it will seem a mocking play, A sarcasm on the asker.

This is not a lack of faith, but a sincerity. A sincerity that the person should show if his faith or belief is not handed down to him and accepted as is.

Faust was right in thinking that Mephistopheles, indeed, cannot make him content. No worldly pleasure (or, even woe) can deter him, ultimately, from the philosophical distress of his soul, a tragedy most intimate, a tragedy wrought in his soul, which no diversion can touch.

It was a stalemate, at least, at the end of this book.

Consider one of your senses, not even the most important one— vision, but a minor one like smell, gone! Imagine a world of smell barred from you. Not reading Dostoevsky is just like that, not developing a sense.

And, his final novel, his magnum opus— The Brothers Karamazov, branches out new senses and intellectual capacities like an energetic sprout in your mind.

This book is deeply philosophical. But, like novels of the later period, like Proust did in Remembrance of Things Past, the author is not living the philosophy (existentialism in the aforementioned case), but explains it in detail in the author's voice. Let me enumerate the ideas being covered: Christianity and related concepts of sins, soul, free will, and kindness, psychology, law and jurisprudence, and life through his infinite lenses.

He is, in a sense, the sincerest novelist I have encountered. Ivan is one of the most powerful atheist characters I have ever read of, that too, in a novel about Christianity.

The first part is deeply about Christianity, or, to be specific, Dostoevsky's interpretation of Eastern Orthodoxy. In his mind, suffering and joy are intertwined, as if one joyfully suffers in a feast of suffering.

While The Grand Inquisitor remains the most intense of all chapters in the novel, the ultimate and deeper question posed at the end of the book is the nature of crime.

Like a true philosopher, who is aware of the insignificance of our knowledge by far, Dostoevsky never gave any solution, but asked such really important questions, and asked how! As if, just like Socrates, he also wants an unassuming general reader to slowly work out the answer in the depths of his mind.

DotR, a dotfiles manager as dear as a daughter, is now stable!

DotR is a dotfiles manager written in Rust. It supports templating, a centralised configuration, multi-level variables and secrets management, dependency, and package & profile patterns. It's still in Beta. Feedback is welcome!

I consider myself a writer. However, I fear writing, and I fear publishing more. For writing is agonising. And, I don't dare to publish until I really have a story to tell. My fear accumulated over time by reading more, by reading books just like this. And, I will tell my fellow writers this: If you are not really as serious as Danielewski, Borges, Tagore, Pessoa, or Jibanananda, stop writing.

The structure of this book is recursive, layered and of a madman. It is a book you should approach with an arsenal of bookmarks, much patience for multiple re-readings and the intention to read cover-to-cover, footnotes and appendix and all. While some of the references in this book are purely fictional, many are real. It is not necessary, but some familiarity with classic literature and existential philosophy (resources like Being and Time by Martin Heidegger) can be very rewarding. I will also recommend reading Walking by Thomas Bernhard, which deals with madness singularly, unlike this book, which deals with a lot of things. A knack for etymology and the exact meaning of words can be rewarding, too.

Now about the madness… It is everywhere, and it must be relished. It must be understood on its own terms, not from our couch of comfortable 'normality'. Madness is, in some sense, divine. Madness is motherly. Madness is a concentrated potion, too hard to gulp down, of the essence of our existence. This book talks about that madness,1 and love,2 and madness-inducing love,3 and love-inducing madness.4

Most readers of this book may find the preceding paragraph needs some qualifications. The book is considered to be of the horror genre, and rightly so. However, it is not a run-of-the-mill horror. I will put it in a sub-genre: philosophical horror. Because most horror content depends on unfamiliarity and not understanding of the situation, this book depends on understanding and examination. Instead of jump-scares and goosebumps, the author brings in elaborate discussion on meanings of words like 'uncanny', 'space', 'echo', etc., so that as the meanings sink in us in the most accurate and non-trivial manner, so does the horror of the situation.

But, in the end, it remains a story of love, seeking, remembering, hope, and redemption.

Technically, any cms should be able to generate a Digital Garden. However, some tools make it easier than others.