essayists-from-russia

"When Russians were growing up in Soviet times, they thought Chukovsky’s story about the cockroach ruling over all the other animals was nonsense, but now in adulthood, they recognize that the Soviet children’s writer was really a prophet."

"The last refuge of a scoundrel is patriotism says Tolstoy in The Reading Circle Not all patriotism of course Patriotism is only acceptable after it has passed through the purifying fire of denial Patriotism is not given to a person but entrusted to him and must be purified of all the filth of selfishness and self absorption that clings to it With a little pressure on the accelerator one could say that patriotism must be endured otherwise it is worthless Especially Russian patriotism."

"In London, the red route is road marking used to indicate bus priority area. I found myself In East London at the turn of the 2000s. The East End was lively and diverse back then, and I enjoyed wandering there. I was particularly impressed by the railway bridges over the streets - a piece of iron crossed residential quarters whimsically. Car repair shops, pubs, warehouses and shops were built into space under a flyover. Another artery cutting off the East End from the rest of the city was the Regent Canal. I photographed two- and three-story residential blocks, bridges, parked red cars and roaring double-deckers. There was much red: buses, hydrants, telephone booths, bridge trusses and road markings."

"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)"

"Whatever happens to me -- I never lose the certainty that behind me arms are open to receive me."

"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)"

"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"

"Perhaps life's earnestness might often come to destroy the lovers' play, as it had today, perhaps the little song of love might often die out unheard amid the painful, confused tones that assail his heart [as a physician], as it had today. -- But with a happy face she will from this day forward raise up her arms to him, in gratitude that he does not merely caress her and forget life's seriousness when he is with her, but that he struggles with life for himself and for her. And in her lap he shall rest his head when he is suffering. Perhaps then a tender dream will always rise up anew -- in a night like this one -- and, ever again, secretly weave, in the dark, new love around their life. -- -- -- ("One Night") p. 74"

"Branhardt set aside the book he had come for. Her face, which was not beautiful and, through all those years, could have faded into banality if it hadn't borne the intimate inscription of her soul, spoke eloquently to him. He loved it as strongly and deeply as he had in his youth. But differently now, because he too bore, perhaps in harsher letters, what was also written there: the signature of life itself. (p. 17)"

"In truth, our narcissism is nothing other than that mysterious knowledge rooted in the emotional life, which posits the ultimate in subjectivity as the keystone of objective existence. When any metaphysical position attempt to harmonize 'Being' with 'God', as the principle of absolute value, it is not only engaged in a narcissistic mode of thought but is itself the very image, philosophically elaborated, of the union of narcissism and objectivity."

"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."

"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."

"[On receiving the newly completed Sixth, Eighth and Tenth Duino Elegies] Ah слава Богу [Russian for thank God] dear Rainer, how rich his gift to you -- and yours to me! I sat and read and cried from joy, and it was not just joy at all but something much more powerful, as if a curtain were being parted, rent, and everything were growing quiet and certain and present and good. I remember as if it were today how much the beginning of the last Elegy plagued you, and when it had shaken me so severely, how even that plagued you; it has been on your lips for such long years; a word which one cannot make conscious and which is there all the same; in the beginning was this word. And then the Creature Elegy [the Eighth]! -- It is the poem of my most secret heart, oh so sayably glorious; and said, the inexpressible made present and actual. And that, finally is the message of this poetry: that we are surrounded, ringed by things of mute presence that are being rescued, redeemed into existence for us only thus, and yet it is these things alone by which we live. (p. 332-33)"

"Let us see whether the vast majority of the so-called "insurmountable barriers" that the world draws are not harmless chalk lines!"

"Slowly Ruth got up; an expression of utter surprise appeared on her face. Doubt, disbelief, even horror were mirrored in it. She felt as though she should call a distant friend, Erik, to come to her aid against this unknown assailant. But then she realized that it was he, it was Erik, who stood before her. (p. 326)"

"What does not engage our feelings does not long engage our thoughts either."

"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"

""Do you know what love is? I mean the most profound thing about it? I will tell you: it is the mystery of completely sharing the experience of what is happening to the other person. As if hypnotized, as if replaced or exchanged with that other person, you follow the most subtle stirrings of that other person's soul, enjoying them, experiencing them, in that person. For that reason, they call love a kind of insanity or possession by the other. What is the result? The result is that both persons experience the same thing -- that they become identical, so to speak." ("Maidens' Roundelay") p. 50"

"The problem of the erotic is characterized by two things: for a start, it must be regarded as a special case within physical, psychic and social relations in general, and not, as often happens, as autocratically isolated. Rather, it relates all three of these kinds of problems to each other, and thus merges them into a single problem -- its problem. (p. 188)"

"The house stood on a hillside, overlooking the town in the valley and the long stretch of mountains beyond. From the country road that climbed through the hill's woods in a wide curve, you stepped right into the middle story, as if it were at ground level -- so deeply was the little, white house nestled into the slope. But perched up there it had a freer view out over the terraced garden and the broad expanse below, gazing down with many bright window-eyes and with boldly protruding bays -- extensions of original rooms that had been found too confining. This undeniably made for whimsical architecture, but it gave the house an impression of grace and lightness -- almost as if it were just resting there. (p. 1)"

""No! No! Not one! Never just one! Even the wisest judgment can become unjust, willful, arrogant, when measured against life. And the worst -- you see -- the worst thing under the sun -- is the violation of one person by another." -- Anneliese, p. 117"

"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."

"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."

"The more fully we enter into the 'challenge of the hour', into the present factual moment, into the conditions that hold from one case to another, instead of being trammeled by prescriptions and directives (written by human beings!), the more connectedly do we act in accord with the whole . . . If anyone thinks that is immorally presumptuous and high-handed, then it would be truer to call the childish-slavish obedience to prescriptions, which make everything easy, a convenient moral slovenliness!"

"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."

"Our first experience is, remarkably, of a disappearance. A moment ago we were still everything, undivided; any other existence was indivisible from us. Then we were thrust into being born. We became a residual part of everything, which from then on had to strive not to fall into further diminution, which had to assert itself against a contrary world rising ever wider against it, a world into which it had fallen from its fullness into an initially depriving emptiness."

"As truly as I'd love a friend, I always have loved you, riddling life, whether I've laughed with you or wept, whether you have brought me pleasure or strife.Even in your sorrow I love you, and, when you scatter me through space, I will tear myself out of your arms as a friend from a dear friend's embrace.With all my strength I cling to you! Let all your fire enkindle me. Even in the heat of battle, let me unravel your mysteries.Thousands of years to live and think! In your arms I long to remain. And, when you have no more joy to give -- very well -- you still have your pain."

"Conversing with Nietzsche is uncommonly lovely . . . The content of a conversation of ours really exists in what is not quite spoken but emerges from our each approaching the other half way. He gave me his hand and said earnestly and with feeling, "Never forget that it would be a calamity if you did not carve a memorial to your full innermost mind in the time left to you.""

"I can neither live according to models, nor shall I ever be able to provide a model for anyone else. On the contrary, what I shall quite certainly do is to shape my own life according to myself, whatever may come of it. In this I have no principle to put forth, but something much more wonderful -- something that is within oneself and is hot with sheer life, and rejoices and wants to come out."

"You also write: you had always thought that such complete devotion to purely intellectual goals was only meant to be a "transition" for me. What do you mean by "transition"? If other goals stand behind it, for which I must give up the most glorious and difficult thing on Earth, namely freedom, then I want to stay in this transition, because I won't give that up."

""The grave is not the end. From the graves of those we love most and where, with those we love most, are buried all our selfish drives and desires, we must draw the strength to dedicate outselves wholly and unreservedly to the great purpose of our life: Behold: this is my religion." -- Kuno, p. 308"

"It was in September, the quietest time of year in Paris. The world of rank and fashion hid in the seaside resorts; visitors were being scared away in droves by the stifling heat. Nevertheless, the crowds that flooded the boulevards in the close evening air were so large and checkered that it would have looked like high season in any other city. (p. 3)"

"Once upon a time, everything was based on trust, free from worry or care; now everything stands in doubt. One upon a time, the wondrous was taken for granted; now everything that had been taught her -- even the most obvious and certain -- appears gnarled and incomprehensible. In such a moment, a child helplessly gropes for the hand of the adult in order to find guidance and direction; but another type of childlikeness, intimately related to the ideals of life, can rapidly gather strength and masculine force. Far from subduing Nora or attuning her to compromise, the first decisive conflict acts upon her like a battle cry . . . Resistance and bravery harden into armor. She has grasped that the peaks of wonder in life do not appear as readily as the fairies who awaken Sleeping Beauty; in life peaks must be conquered. That insight she is willing to put to the test . . ."

"A genuine Nietzsche study would require the psychology of religion that would spotlight the meaning of his being, his suffering, and his self-induced bliss. His entire development, as it were, derived from his loss of belief and therefore from his emotions that attend the death of God. These tremendous emotions reverberate in his writings up to the final work, the fourth part of Also Sprach Zarathustra, which was composed on the threshold of madness. The possibility of finding some substitutions for the lost God by means of the most varied forms of self-idolization constituted the story of his mind, his works, and his illness. (p. 26)"

""For we women who have only recently been allowed to study, it is not at all as you say," she countered, totally convinced of her position. "For us it is not an ascetic kind of life or a retreat behind a desk. How could it be -- when it now enables us to join the battle for our freedom and our rights and to enter into the fullness of life? Those of us who elect to study so not do it with our heads or our intelligence only; no -- we do wit with all our will-power and our total humanity. Our gain is not just knowledge but a new hold on life with all its emotions. What you describe as science sounds like an activity for very old men, who have finished with life as such. Perhaps it is you who are old and senile. Among us women, it is the young, the strong, and the cheerful who become inspired." -- (Fenitschka) p. 9"

""How do I imagine love? This is quite uncomplicated -- very simple and wholesome. I would compare it with things that are least demonic or romantic, like the daily bread that is blessed and stills our hunger, like the stream of air that comes into our home to refresh us. In one word, with that which is most important, most beautiful, and most natural, on which we most depend and about which we do not need to engage in empty rhetoric." -- (Fenitschka) p. 19"

""Listen to me," she exclaimed resolutely, "why are you putting on this farce? Why are you treating me like a breakable doll with whom you can play all kinds of games, as long as you pack her safely in cotton? I know very well that you know the whole story. Well then, you know it all. I cam here because I had forgotten something here in my room the other day. Because I do have a room here. And last night -- last night it was I who was getting into a sleigh with a man whom I love." -- (Fenitschka) p. 30"

""There was no way in which I could have intended that [to get married]!" she interrupted him. "Tell me, would one of you [men] want that perhaps, a young man for instance, who had spent his entire youth in order to become free and self-reliant, and who was just on the threshold -- about to reach his goal -- who had learned to love life because of it, because of his professional opportunities, his responsibilities, his independence? No, I cannot envision this as my aim in life: home, family, housewife, children -- it is alien to me, alien. Perhaps only at this moment, at this time in my life, how do I know? Or maybe I would never be good at all that. Love and marriage are simply not the same thing. -- (Fenitschka) p. 39"

"Hildegard sensed darkly that she would now at once have to spread two light gray wings and let them lift her up -- high, high, as in her dream. But she also sensed darkly how it is in feverish dreams: as though something in her were helplessly, powerlessly beating its wings -- and suddenly she didn't know whether she was flying -- or falling --. Then Dietrich drew the playing child to him. He looked at Hildegard, almost a bit timidly -- and at the same time gently kissed the child on his blond hair. And Hildegard slowly laid her hand in his. Reaching out over a paradise. -- ("Paradise"), p. 132"

"You can tackle the problem of the erotic however you want, but you will always feel that you have done so very one-sidedly, especially if you tackle it by means of logic -- that is, from the outside. (p. 184)"

""Don't you think that a great yearning is like the birds' heading south -- a sign that somewhere life is in bloom?" -- Georg ("A Death"), p. 173"

""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"

""Conflicted creatures, that’s what we [parents] are — we give birth, without knowing to what; we educate, without knowing whom; we must answer for it, without knowing how; and we can give up neither our power nor our fear." -- Anneliese, p. 52"

""Theory and practice, philosophy and religion, and heaven knows what, how little all that means compared to this one simple thing: the desire for life of a completely healthy, physically harmonious person — and I’m not one of them. — Only such a person knows what life really is. Life can be trusted — if Liese trusts it." -- Renate, p.52"

""But this danger you mention?" he went on. "Tell me, where is there beauty that isn't at the same time in danger? -- and when wasn't the greatest beauty also the greatest danger! -- And mind you: this know-it-all attitude and drive to control, the 'firm hand' you were talking about -- all that arrogance, especially of the usual, masculine kind, will go to pieces trying to deal with this! That approach is only best right from the start and with women who are no threat to anyone. But -- please tell me -- what's so great about a manly stance that has to look out for itself, that's so anxiously self-defensive?" -- Marcus, p. 180"

"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."

"For the angels [of the Duino Elegies] are not intermediaries, and that is important. For him there were no mediating saints or redeemers, although the name of the angels may have come from his Catholic childhood. For him God remained for all time the designation for the all-embracing unity. If in The Book of Hours God is addressed only as a “neighbor,” it is because the slightest removal from him would pose an absolute and hopelessly insurmountable distance. What is presented here, instead, before the dominion of the heavens over the earth, is the horizon of angels, an optically unifying illusion. -- Kindle p. 85"

"The optimistic nature finds joy in the very feeling for life; the pessimistic nature finds a feeling for life only in joy."

"[Speaking of Rilke] Abandoning himself in everything, and thereby making himself superfluous, the benefactor becomes at once the petitioner, the recipients become donors, and he hides in their secure existence. And were this loner, who was isolated in death, still with us, I believe he would feel most immediately at home in the deepest anonymity of his work’s effects— there in the no longer audible processes of man’s union with the cosmos, where his form is allowed to fade and no longer requires visibility or the boundaries of self. Restored to a stronger presence: standing there, in deep peace, he too a nameless one among the nameless. -- Kindle p. 96"

"His gaze lit upon a lovely girl who was just crossing the street diagonally, carefully lifting her skirt as she did so as to reveal a pair of charming little ankle boots. He had to smile about the about childish impatience of his desire to deck Marfa out like this until she too was a lovely girl -- bring her out of her dour shell. But Marfa was not coming. -- ("A Reunion"), p. 103"