Los Cínicos No Sirven Para Este Oficio - Ryszard Kapuściński

Rating: ★★★

17/05/17

...our profession can't be practiced correctly by someone who is a cynic. It is important to

point out the difference: one thing is to be skeptical, realistic, prudent. That is absolutely necessary, otherwise, there wouldn't be journalism. Another thing is to be a cynic, an attitude which is incompatible with being a journalist. Cynicism is an inhuman attitude that automatically pushes us away from our profession - if we take it seriously. [...]

As you know, every year more than one hundred journalists are killed and many more are imprisoned or tortured. In different parts of the world, this is a dangerous profession. The person who is willing to do this job and to leave everything for it, considering the risks and suffering involved, cannot be a cynic. (53)

This book includes three interviews of Kapuściński, a Polish journalist, reporter and writer. Only the first one turned out to be interesting and enriching - concerning journalism, of course.

* Photo credit: Book cover via Goodreads.

Gitanjali or Song Offerings: Introduced by W. B. Yeats - Rabindranath Tagore

Rating: ★★★

06/05/17

It is the pang of separation

It is the pang of separation that spreads throughout the world and gives birth to shapes innumerable in the infinite sky.

It is this sorrow of separation that gazes in silence all night from star to star and becomes lyric among rustling leaves in rainy darkness of July.

It is this overspreading pain that deepens into loves and desires, into sufferings and joys in human homes; and this it is that ever melts and flows in songs through my poet's heart.

* Photo credit: Book cover via Goodreads.