Memory Multitudes
During the night he went through his vast store of memories. He remembered the hundreds of people who had passed through his life. He remembered pupils and teachers, friends and enemies. He remembered books and…
Tag: Soviet Union
Today’s One-Liner (#189)
Jokes could be fatal in the Soviet Union. –Gary Saul Morson, Wisdom Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter
Bearing Fruit
Russian literature might almost be described as the literature of conversion. (We noted some famous instances in Chapter 3.) Time and again, suffering leads to awareness of Truth or apprehension of God. Tolstoy’s autobiographical Confession recounts…
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.
Senseless Kindness
Yes, as well as this terrible Good with a capital ‘G’, there is every day human kindness. The kindness of an old woman carrying a piece of bread to a prisoner, the kindness of a…
Never Undemanding of Ourselves
John Garrard and Carol Garrard, The Bones of Berdichev: The Life and Fate of Vasily Grossman Wednesday 1 August 2012 Vasily Grossman represents an inspiring figure of engagement, and old fashioned Russian insistence on telling…