Getting Free

We are caught in the prison of the mind. If we are to escape we must recognize that we are in prison. If we think we are free, then no escape is possible.—George Gurdjieff, quoted…

Writing Matters

This much the outsider can make out. He looks at the harrowing of Pushkin, at Gogol’s despair, at Dostoevsky’s term in Siberia, at Tolstoy’s volcanic struggle against censorship, or at the long catalogue of the…

So Be It!

“They say:  sufferings are misfortunes,” said Pierre.  “But if at once, this minute, I was asked, would I remain what I was before I was taken prisoner, or go through it all again, I should…

Responding to a Pogrom

Violence was much on Tolstoy’s mind. Some eight months before Bryan’s visit a terrible pogrom against the Jews had occurred in Kishinyov. Horrified by this event, Tolstoy readily lent his name to a protest signed…

The Way It Looked in 1908

What  you  are  doing,  you  do  not  for  the  people  but  for  yourselves,  to  retain  the  position  you  occupy,  a  position  you  consider  advantageous  but  which  is  really  a  most  pitiful  and  abominable  one.  So …

Like Being in Warsaw in 1941

Merely to know that somewhere, far away, there are men who torture other men by inflicting all sorts of humiliations and inhuman degradations and sufferings on them; and for three months constantly to look on…

Neo-Pagan Elites

No longer able to believe in the Church religion, which had betrayed its own lie, and unable to adopt the true Christian teaching, which denied their entire life, these wealthy and powerful people, being left…

Keep It Simple

The goal of human life is constructing an architecture of the soul. –Simone Weil, quoted in Gabriella Fiori, Simone Weil: An Intellectual Biography