Essayists From Russia

"Bear in mind that the Narcissus of legend gazed, not at a man-made mirror, but at the mirror of Nature [a pool of water]. Perhaps it was not just himself that he beheld in the mirror, but himself as if he were still All: would he not otherwise have fled, instead of lingering before it? And does not melancholy dwell next to enchantment upon his face? Only the poet can make a whole picture of this unity of joy and sorrow, departure from self and absorption in self, devotion and self-assertion."

"Objectivity is mankind's glorious goal, summoning narcissism, Eros masked, from the dreams of childhood to the service of research, progress, art, and culture. When it stays behind in childish dreaming, and when its leap falls short, it slips without a blow into the bottomless deeps of disease."

"Mourning is not as singular a state of emotional preoccupation as is commonly thought: it is, more precisely, an incessant discourse with the departed one, in order to draw him nearer. For death entails not merely a disappearance but rather a transformation into a new realm of visibility. Something is not just taken away but is gained, in a way never before experienced. In the moment when the flowing lines of a figure’s constant change and effect become paralyzed for us, we are imbued for the first time with its essence: something which is never captured or fully realized in the normal course of lived existence. -- Kindle p. 26"

"[Russia's God] cannot prevent or improve all things; he can only represent closeness and intimacy for all time . . . This all-pervasive sense of security, this omnipresence, leads to a confidence in the surroundings, whatever they may be, and it presupposes an untorn integration with one’s childhood, within the unity of the womb. It was exactly that childlike purity and the primitiveness in basic outlook on life (so characteristic of the Russian spirit) that captured the imagination of the poet and was released in his language. It made possible the return to a kind of familiar divinity in mankind, as if Rilke were suddenly presented with the gift of the primal home and childhood he had been deprived of. Kindle pp. 33-4."

"The most daring thing we have invented was to become human, and, with that, the creation of human values as life's most sublime adventure."

"Human life -- ah! life in general -- is poetry. Unconscious of ourselves, we live it -- day by day and piece by piece -- but in its inviolable wholeness it lives, it composes, us. Far from the old phrase: "turn your life into a work of art"; we are not our art work."

"If for years I was your wife, it was because in you I encountered what is real for the first time: body and person indistinguishably one, an undeniable fact of life itself. Word for word, I could have confessed what you had said in your declaration of love: ‘You alone are real.’ With that, we became spouses, even before we were friends, and we became friends hardly by choice, but rather from an unseen but already consummated marriage. Not two halves searching for one another: a startled wholeness that recognized, with a shudder, its own incomprehensible unity. And so, we were siblings – but as in previous times, before incest became a sacrilege."

"The man that we love, regardless of the exalted state of both his spirit and his soul, remains a priest in his robes who only vaguely guesses what he is celebrating."

"It delights me that the one thinker I approached in my childhood [Spinoza] and almost adored now meets me again, and as the philosopher of psychoanalysis. Think far enough, correctly enough on any point at all, and you hit upon him; you meet him waiting for you, standing ready at the side of the road. (pp. 75-76)"

"I cannot think of any personal fate which could have cost me anything like such anguish. And I don't really believe that after this we shall ever be able to be really happy again. (p. 20)"

"Outwardly and inwardly both, Lou Salomé's life is among the richest on record. She kept company -- uncannily stimulating, uncannily receptive -- with the cultural elite of her times, as judged from ours. She wrote in the widest variety of literary genres, including a couple of her own devising, happy and unhappy respectively: the diary essaylet and the achronological memoir. And by and large she wrote well: her peers among essayists at all odds are numbered."

"In my talks with Lou, things became clear to me that I might not have found by myself. Like a catalyst, she activated my thought processes. [...] Intellectually, she was nurturing and creative. Not only encouraging – but enthralling. One felt the spark of genius in her. One grew in her presence."

"Here then is the record of long and turbulent life, a gallery of pictures that extend from her birth in Czarist Russia to her death in Nazi Germany. An unusual life, whatever judgement we pass on it. Voila, un homme, said Napoleon when he met Goethe. By way of introducing Lou Salomé, I can only say, Voila une femme."

"Why did he have such a rough picture of her? It was strange that he found it so difficult to comprehend women in the manifold ways of their humanity and not just schematic way, as representations of their gender. Whether he idealized them, or regarded them as diabolic, a man always interpreted women's behavior too simply and personally, based on some chance reaction to himself. Maybe the notion that woman was sphinx-like stemmed from the sole fact that her full humanity, in no way inferior to man's, could not be grasped with such artificial simplifications. p. 25"

"Salomé's construction of femininity did not challenge the ultimate fact of sexual difference or the presumption of heterosexuality head on. What Salomé did do, however, was figure woman's masculine will and strength as the mark of her completeness in herself. The double directionality of "masculinity" and "femininity" within woman only made her more woman; it differentiated her from modern man, who had renounced his own basis in what Salomé called the primal ground of life or, later, narcissism."

"My most useful activity this summer was talking with Lou. There is a deep affinity between us in intellect and taste -- and there are in other ways so many differences that we are the most instructive objects and subjects of observation for each other. I have never met anyone who could derive so many objective insights from experience, who knows how to deduce so much from all she has learned."

""Oh, the mountains!" she said in her soft voice, and the indeterminate color of her eyes seemed to grow darker. "I used to love the plains, that's where I'm from. And it is beautiful there, too, where it is boundless, or at least appears to be so. But when people come to the plains, they immediately become human themselves, serving people, and they're no longer untouched and unapproachable. It occurs to me now that's why the mountains have the effect they do. As if one were seeing nature itself as it rises above all that's human and looks down upon it. No matter how many small settlements might grow among them, they still retain something so primeval." -- Anjuta ("Incognito"), p. 135"

"What a great revolutionary you are. -- You didn't overthrow thrones inside me. But the one throne that waited there: you strode past it gently smiling. Ever upward. And my desire, which before had crowded and become tangled around the vacant throne like wild roses, now rise as white columns around the space from whose temple friezes you smile down into my soul and bless my longing."

"She had a very quiet way of speaking and a great gift of inspiring confidence. I am still a little surprised today how much I told her then. But I had always the feeling that she not only understood everything but forgave everything. I have never again experienced such a feeling of conciliatory kindness, or, if you like, compassion, as I did with her."

"As the great-grandson of a Party commissar, I resent Stalin avatar tankies for appropriating my culture without even doing the research (becoming an alcoholic, dying before the age of 50)"

"A good rule of thumb is that if a society requires a vast secret police network, multi-million death tolls, and expendable prison labor to operate, it definitely doesn't work."

"Just because you’re doing something for someone else doesn’t mean it’s impersonal. We do things for others every day that have completely personal reasons. I mean, this isn’t some selfless, saintly movie! Obviously there is ego and hubris involved, things you’re doing because you think they’ll look cool. Often, those are the things that don’t really turn out right"

"[Goncharov's] best work is Oblomov (1857), which exposed the laziness and apathy of the smaller landed gentry in Russia anterior to the reforms of Alexander II. Russian critics have pronounced this work to be a faithful characterization of Russia and the Russians. Dobrolubov said of it, “Oblomofka [the country-seat of the Oblomovs] is our fatherland: something of Oblomov is to be found in every one of us.” Peesarev, another celebrated critic, declared that “Oblomovism,” as Goncharov called the sum total of qualities with which he invested the hero of his story, “is an illness fostered by the nature of the Slavonic character and the life of Russian society.”"

"To this day the Russian, though surrounded by a stern, unimaginative world of reality, loves to believe the seductive tales of antiquity. And long will it be before he will have been weaned from that belief."

"[Oblomov:] "Picture a thief or a fallen woman or a cheated fool, if you like, but do not forget the rest of mankind. What about humanity, pray? Writers like yourself try to write only with the head. What? Do you suppose the intellect can work separately from the heart? Why, the intellect needs love to fertilize it. Rather, stretch out your hand to the fallen and raise him, weep over him if he is lost beyond recall, but in no case make sport of him, for he is one to whom there should be extended only compassion. See in him yourself, and act accordingly. That done, I will read you, and bow my head before you." [...] "Give me man, and man alone" said Oblomov. "And, having given me him, do you try to love him.""

"In 1921, the Jewish philosopher Ahad Ha’am wrote that Arab Palestinians “have a genuine right to the land due to generations of residence and work upon it. For them too this country is a national home and they have the right to develop their national potentialities to the utmost.”"

"We who live abroad are accustomed to believe that almost all Eretz Yisrael is now uninhabited desert and whoever wishes can buy land there as he pleases. But this is not true. It is very difficult to find in the land [ha'aretz] cultivated fields that are not used for planting. Only those sand fields or stone mountains that would require the investment of hard labor and great expense to make them good for planting remain uncultivated and that's because the Arabs do not like working too much in the present for a distant future. Therefore, it is very difficult to find good land for cattle. And not only peasants, but also rich landowners, are not selling good land so easily...We who live abroad are accustomed to believing that the Arabs are all wild desert people who, like donkeys, neither see nor understand what is happening around them. But this is a grave mistake. The Arab, like all the Semites, is sharp minded and shrewd. All the townships of Syria and Eretz Yisrael are full of Arab merchants who know how to exploit the masses and keep track of everyone with whom they deal – the same as in Europe. The Arabs, especially the urban elite, see and understand what we are doing and what we wish to do on the land, but they keep quiet and pretend not to notice anything. For now, they do not consider our actions as presenting a future danger to them. … But, if the time comes that our people's life in Eretz Yisrael will develop to a point where we are taking their place, either slightly or significantly, the natives are not going to just step aside so easily."

"Historical truth is that, and that alone, which reveals the forces that go to mould the social life of mankind."

"We must surely learn, from both our past and present history, how careful we must be not to provoke the anger of the native people by doing them wrong, how we should be cautious in our dealings with a foreign people among whom we returned to live, to handle these people with love and respect and, needless to say, with justice and good judgment. And what do our brothers do? Exactly the opposite! They were slaves in their Diasporas, and suddenly they find themselves with unlimited freedom, wild freedom that only a country like Turkey [the Ottoman Empire] can offer. This sudden change has planted despotic tendencies in their hearts, as always happens to former slaves ['eved ki yimlokh – when a slave becomes king – Proverbs 30:22]. They deal with the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, trespass unjustly, beat them shamefully for no sufficient reason, and even boast about their actions. There is no one to stop the flood and put an end to this despicable and dangerous tendency. Our brothers indeed were right when they said that the Arab only respects he who exhibits bravery and courage. But when these people feel that the law is on their rival's side and, even more so, if they are right to think their rival's actions are unjust and oppressive, then, even if they are silent and endlessly reserved, they keep their anger in their hearts. And these people will be revengeful like no other."

"It is pre-eminently among the ancient Hebrews that Prophecy is found, not as an accidental or temporary phenomenon, but continuously through many generations. Prophecy is, as it were, the hall-mark of the Hebrew national spirit."

"We can't ignore the fact that ahead of us is a great war and this war is going to need significant preparation."

"[But if things continue the way they are] ...the society that I envision, if my dream is not just a false notion, this society will have to begin to create itself in the midst of fuss, noisiness and panic, and will have to face the prospects of both internal and external war..."

"The Idea of the Priest is not, therefore, a primal force; it is an accidental complex of various forces, among which there is no essential connection. Their temporary union is due simply to the fact that they have happened to come into conflict in actual life, and have been compelled to compromise and join hands. The living, absolute Idea, which strove to make itself all-powerful, and changed the external form of life while remaining itself unchanged—this elemental Idea has died and passed away together with its Prophets. Nothing remains but its effects—the superficial impress that it has been able to leave on the complex form of life. It is this form of life, already outworn, that the Priests strive to perpetuate, for the sake of the Prophetic impress that it bears."

"When the Prophet saw injustice, either on the part of men or on the part of Providence, he did not inquire closely into its causes, nor bend the knee to necessity, and judge the evil-doers leniently; nor again did he give himself up to despair, or doubt the strength of Righteousness, or the possibility of its victory. He simply complained, pouring out his soul in words of fire; then went his way again, fighting for his ideal, and full of hope that in time—perhaps even "at the end of time"—Righteousness would be lord over all the earth."

"The Prophet is thus a primal force. His action affects the character of the general harmony, while he him self does not become a part of that harmony, but remains always a man apart, a narrow-minded extremist, zealous for his own ideal, and intolerant of every other. And since he cannot have all that he would, he is in a perpetual state of anger and grief; he remains all his life "a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth." [Jeremiah 15:10] Not only this: the other members of society, those many-sided dwarfs, creatures of the general harmony, cry out after him, "The Prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad" [Hosea 9:7]; and they look with lofty contempt on his narrowness and extremeness."

"The Prophet is essentially a one-sided man. A certain moral idea fills his whole being, masters his every feeling and sensation, engrosses his whole attention. He can only see the world through the mirror of his idea; he desires nothing, strives for nothing, except to make every phase of the life around him an embodiment of that idea in its perfect form. His whole life is spent in fighting for this ideal with all his strength; for its sake he lays waste his powers, unsparing of himself, regardless of the conditions of life and the demands of the general harmony. His gaze is fixed always on what ought to be in accordance with his own convictions; never on what can be consistently with the general condition of things outside himself."

"The Priest ... appears on the scene at a time when Prophecy has already succeeded in hewing out a path for its Idea; when that Idea has already had a certain effect on the trend of society, and has brought about a new harmony or balance between the different forces at work. The Priest also fosters the Idea, and desires to perpetuate it; but he is not of the race of giants. He has not the strength to fight continually against necessity and actuality; his tendency is rather to bow to the one and come to terms with the other. Instead of clinging to the narrowness of the Prophet, and demanding of reality what it cannot give, he broadens his outlook, and takes a wider view of the relation between his Idea and the facts of life. Not what ought to be, but what can be, is what he seeks. His watchword is not the Idea, the whole Idea, and nothing but the Idea; he accepts the complex "harmony" which has resulted from the conflict of that Idea with other forces. His battle is no longer a battle against actuality, but a battle in the name of actuality against its enemies."

"The Prophet ... feels it as a moral necessity to set Righteousness on the throne."

"Between things sacred and profane there is this difference among others. In profane matters the instrument derives its worth from the end, and is valued for the most part only in so far as it is a means to that end; and consequently we change the instruments as the end demands, and finally, when the end is no longer pursued, the instruments automatically fall into disuse. But in sacred matters the end invests the instrument with a sanctity of its own. Consequently, there is no changing or varying of the instrument; and when the end has ceased to be pursued, the instrument does not fall out of use, but is directed towards another end. In other words: in the one case we preserve the shell for the sake of the kernel, and discard the shell when we have eaten the kernel; in the other case we raise the shell to the dignity of the kernel, and do not rob it of that dignity even if the kernel withers, but make a new kernel for it."

"These Prophets of Righteousness ... believed in the victory of absolute Righteousness, yet the fact that they turn their gaze time after time to "the end of days "proves that they knew—as by a whisper from the "spirit of holiness" within them—how great and how arduous was the work that mankind must do before that consummation could be reached. They knew, also, that such work as this could not be done by scattered individuals, approaching it sporadically, each man for himself, at different times and in different places; but that it needed a whole community, which should be continuously, throughout all generations, the standard-bearer of the force of Righteousness against all the other forces that rule the world: which should assume of its own freewill the yoke of eternal obedience to the absolute dominion of a single Idea, and for the sake of that Idea should wage incessant war against the way of the world."

"There are ... two ways of doing service in the cause of an idea; and the difference between them is that which in ancient days distinguished the Priest from the Prophet."

"This Moses, I say, this man of old time, whose existence and character you are trying to elucidate, matters to nobody but scholars like you."

"Tolstoy, who among European writers of the nineteenth century probably had the widest access to all sectors of his society, was able to stock War and Peace with an enormous cast of characters and range of situations."

"The novel's outside world, if well enough created, does live on, when you look at the world of Jane Austen, Flaubert, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Proust! They're indelible. War and Peace is not only real to today's reader, it will outlast him too."

"Tolstoy was an advocate of non-resistance only because he was protected from people's impudence by his innumerable friends. One man can stand for non-resistance, because those who stand for resistance will protect him. You will not be able to do without resistance advocates."

"In what did Tolstoi's work actually consist? It is the outcry of the universal conscience. His works voice the consciences of us all, expressed sincerely by the most ardent and the most sensitive of hearts. The popularity of Tolstoi throughout the world is explained solely by the simplicity and the sincerity of his doctrine, which appeals to all, without distinction, calling on mankind to recognise the same great truth, to make the same great moral effort for the realisation of love."

"The play that Luisa Capetillo wrote in 1909, Influencias de las ideas modernas (The Influence of Modern Ideas), published in San Juan in 1916, was inspired by Tolstoy's philosophy and included a main character who resembled him."

"It is to Tolstoy whom Mahatma Gandhi gave credit for his own first understanding of nonviolent resistance to oppression, and there is an unbroken lineage from Tolstoy to Gandhi to Martin Luther King."

"Tolstoy... was also deeply influenced by Indian religious thought. Like Wagner, his introduction to it was through Burnouf and Schopenhauer. Beginning with his Confessions, there is no work of his "which is not inspired, in part by Hindu thought", to put it in the words of Markovitch quoted by Raymond Schwab in The Oriental Renaissance. He further adds that Tolstoy also "remains the most striking example, among a great many, of those who sought a cure for the western spirit in India"."

"He was a revolutionary in his thinking and later in life he was an activist and reformer; he was best known as Russia's greatest moral authority, and his teachings on civil disobedience have inspired Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and countless others. He was, and still is, an author to be reckoned with."