Category: World Literature

Two Alyoshas

Dostoevsky’s—There was something in him that told one, that convinced one (and it was so all his life afterwards) that he did not want to be a judge of men, that he would not take…

He Made an Impression

“God grant us more such Russian rogues,” Marya Dmitrievna suddenly mixed in vexedly. “He lived a week with us; we saw nothing but good from him,” she said. “Courteous, wise, just.”   –Leo Tolstoy, Hadji…

The Miracle of Being Awake

Suddenly some force shoved him in the chest, in the side, choked his breath still more, he fell through the hole, and there, at the end of the hole, something lit up. What was done…

He Must Go on, He Can’t Go on, He’ll Go on

Everything was doomed [in 1943]: [Yankev Glatshteyn’s] people, his tradition, its language, his artistic freedom, his chances of contributing to a continuing literature. Even his awesome responsibility as the chronicler of the last days of…

One Reader May Suffice

Any author, [Marcel] Proust wrote Jaloux, should be happy to “write for a single, exquisite reader like you,” and he added a Proustian analogy comparing Jaloux’s contact with his book to pollen intended for “a…

Biographilia

I have often thought that there has rarely passed a life of which a judicious and faithful narrative would not be useful. For, not only every man has, in the mighty mass of the world,…

Acting on This Could Save Some Energy

But whatever be the motive of insult, it is always best to overlook it, for folly scarcely  can deserve resentment, and malice is punished by neglect.   –Dr. Samuel Johnson, quoted in Paul Fussell, Samuel…

Memorable Scenes

It has been said of the play “Hamlet” that its best scene is the one in which Horatio first sees the ghost, or the one in which he tells Hamlet of it, or the one…

He Contains Multitudes

[Hamlet] inherits the virtues of a score of his predecessors–and some of their weaknesses. Yet he is no mere recapitulation of them. In him, rather, they recombine to make a man as individual as he…