Blessings of a Long Life
The world has allowed me to hand down a thousand of my poems; Heaven has let my years draw out to more than three score. I count over the happy chances that have helped me all my…
Category: World Literature
He Knew His Books
Jesus’ education in the Hebrew Bible is so extraordinary that he is able to quote a wide variety of texts with ease—and to interpret them with great depth. His knowledge of Moses’ Torah in particular…
Specks and Seeds
Incidentally, I have already mentioned that although he lost his mother in his fourth year, he remembered her afterwards all his life, her face, her caresses, “as if she were standing alive before me.” Such…
Notice the Littlest
Nor is it always in the most distinguished achievements that men’s virtues or vices may be best discerned; but very often an action of small note, a short saying, or a jest, shall distinguish a…
From Fyodor Dostoevsky to Thich Nhat Hanh
“Compassion will give meaning and understanding to Rogozhin himself. Compassion is the chief and perhaps only law of being for all mankind.”—Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot Please call me by my true name,so that I can…
We Inter-Are/1
What I mostly feel in myself is my father and mother, you, Yegor, Pushkin, Gogol. A whole crowd. They all colour my perception of reality, share my destiny and go with me wherever I am…
Virtue Signaling in the 19th Century
“Therefore the task for me is not to change my own life, as I thought at first, but as far as I can to aid in improving the position of those unfortunates who have evoked…
Of Course, A Russian Would Say This
A book is a square chunk of hot, smoking conscience–and nothing else!–Boris Pasternak, quoted in Gary Saul Morson, Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter
For Sure
Surely there can be nothing to distinguish us from the beasts, if we simply devote ourselves to greed and never turn our hearts to the Buddhist truth.—Yoshida Kenkō, Essays in Idleness What is a man,If…
New Life
Later I’m back in New York sitting around with Irwin and Simon and Raphael and Lazarus, and now we’re famous writers more or less, but they wonder why I’m so sunk now, so unexcited as…