Criticism
Helen Nearing, who had known Krishnamurti in the 1920s, stated, in Loving and Leaving the Good Life, that Krishnamurti's attitudes were conditioned by privilege. This was due, in her view, to his being supported, even pampered, by devoted followers starting as far back as his "discovery" by the theosophists. She also said that he was at such an "elevated" level that he was incapable of forming normal personal relationships.
In her 1991 book, Lives in the Shadow with J. Krishnamurti, Radha Rajagopal Sloss, the daughter of estranged Krishnamurti associates Rosalind and Desikacharya Rajagopal, wrote of Krishnamurti's relationship with her parents, including a secret affair between Krishnamurti and Rosalind which lasted for many years. The public revelation was received with surprise and consternation by many, and was also dealt with in a rebuttal volume of biography by Mary Lutyens (Krishnamurti and the Rajagopals).
U.G. Krishnamurti (no relation) reported that the two had almost daily discussions for a while, which he asserted were not providing satisfactory answers to his questions. Finally, their meetings came to a halt. He described part of the final discussion:
"And then, towards the end, I insisted, "Come on, is there anything behind the abstractions you are throwing at me?" And that chappie said, "You have no way of knowing it for yourself". Finish – that was the end of our relationship, you see – "If I have no way of knowing it, you have no way of communicating it. What the hell are we doing? I've wasted seven years. Goodbye, I don't want to see you again". Then I walked out."Read more about this topic: Jiddu Krishnamurti
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how little to the West.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)