Alexander Pushkin

positivism chooses grey colourless paint and ordinary composition metaphysics prefers brilliant colouring and complicated design and always carries the vision away into the infinite in which trick it often succeeds owing to its skill and perspective but the canvas is impervious there is no melting through it into the other world nevertheless skilful perspectives are very alluring so that metaphysicians will still have something to quarrel about with the positivists the task of a writer to go forward and share his impressions with his reader in spite of everything to the contrary he is not obliged to prove anything but because every step of his progress is dogged by those police agents morality science logic and so forth he needs always to have ready some sort of argument with which to frustrate them there is no necessity to trouble too deeply about the quality of the argumentation why fret about being inwardly right it is quite enough if the reasoning which comes handiest will succeed in occupying those guardians of the verbal highways whose intention it is to obstruct his passage fifteen the secret of pushkin's inner harmony to pushkin nothing was hopeless nay he saw hopeful signs in everything it is agreeable to sin and it is just as delightful to repent it is good to doubt but it is still better to believe it is jolly with feet shod in steel to skate the ice it is pleasant to wander about with gypsies to pray in church to quarrel with a friend to make peace with an enemy to swoon on waves of harmony to weep over a passing fancy to recall the past to peep into the future pushkin could cry hot tears and he who can weep can hope I want to live, so that I may think and suffer, he says, and it seems as if the word to suffer, which is so beautiful in the poem, just fell in accidentally, because there was no better rhyme in Russian for to die.

The later verses, which are intended to amplify to think and to suffer, prove this.

Pushkin might repeat the words of the ancient hero, Danger is dangerous to others, but not to me.

Therein lies the secret of his harmonious moods.

The well-trodden field of contemporary thought should be dug up.

Cain, whose sacrifice did not please God, raised his hand against his brother, and it seemed to him he committed murder in the name of justice, in vindication of his own injured rights.

Nobody has ever been able to understand why God preferred Abel's sacrifice to that of Cain.

In our own day, Salieri repeats Cain's vengeance and poisons his friend and benefactor Mozart, according to the poem of Pushkin.

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Pushkin.

Too quick? No, it was perfect.

Pushkin.

Stop.

You

You can be appalled by what the present government is up to.

But I mean, if there were a, a sort of fantastic new edition of a Tolstoy novel or Pushkin poetry, would, would that-

Yeah, they can be published, they can be published elsewhere.

They don't have to be imported from Russia.

...

I'm just trying to g- be clear about this then.

Is this an economic embargo or is it, are you concerned about propaganda? Because hence my question about Pushkin or Tolstoy or Dostoevsky or whatever.

Well, it's on the basis on specific customs codes.

You can, uh, be appalled by what the present government is up to.

But I mean, if there were a, a sort of fantastic new edition of a Tolstoy novel or Pushkin poetry, would, would that-

Yeah, they can be published.

They can be published elsewhere.

Exactly

... be clear about this then.

Is this an economic embargo or is it-- are you concerned about propaganda? Because hence my question about Pushkin or Tolstoy or Dostoevsky or whatever.

Well, it's on the basis on specific customs codes.

At last Carol Millich made her appearance again.

She held a volume of Pushkin in her hand.

She did not, however, glance at it once during her recitation.

She was obviously nervous.

She went on with the same fervor, and only towards the end her voice dropped again, and in it and in her face the same weariness was reflected again.

The last four lines she completely murdered, as it is called.

The volume of Pushkin suddenly slid out of her hand, and she hastily withdrew.

The audience fell to applauding desperately, encoring.