Category: Russia

The Demise of Kindness

There were once many kind people, and even unkind ones pretended to be good because that was the thing to do. Such pretense was the source of the hypocrisy and dishonesty so much exposed in…

Today’s One-Liner (#70)

“And I shall also tell you, dear mother, that each of us is guilty in everything before everyone, and I most of all.” –Markel, in Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Today’s One-Liner (#60)

Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. –Staretz Zosima, “Of Prayer, Love, and the Touching of Other Worlds,” in Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov Easter morning 2012, Chouteau AvenuePhoto by Andrew Wimmer

La Fin du Roman

Karamazov, s’écria Kolia, est-ce vrai ce que dit la religion, que nous ressusciterons d’entre les  morts, que nous nous reverrons les uns les autres, et tous, et Ilioucha ?  Oui, c’est vrai, nous ressusciterons, nous…

Today’s One-Liner (#55)

The meaning of life lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but in the development of the soul. –Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, First Things, August/September 2024, p. 70,

The Teachings

However little education a man may have, he cannot but know that Christ did not sanction murder, but taught kindness, meekness, forgiveness of injuries, love of one’s enemies—and therefore he cannot help seeing that on…

Start Where We Are

Why exactly is sudden transformation according to a model impossible? The same question can be asked about individuals: why c­an’t someone just become what she admires? Disgusted with her life, Tolstoy’s Kitty, as we have…

Today’s One-Liner (#16)

Sometimes I think that pain is a bridge between people, a secret connection; other times, it seems like an abyss. –Svetlana Alexeievich, Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, translated by Bela Shayevich.