Dostoyevsky: A Writer in His Time
By Joseph Frank
Part V
"The Mantle of the Prophet, 1871-1881"
Page 673: "Despite the young radical's growing affection for the seer [Dostoyevsky] in her midst, she found some of his pronouncements disconcerting. In the course of an impromptu attack on the danger to Russia of absorbing European influences, he said, 'our people are holy in comparison with those over there. . . . [I]n Rome, in Naples, on the streets I was made the most shameful offers--youths, almost children. Disgusting, unnatural vices--and openly, before everybody, and no one even bothered about it. Try to do that amongst us! All our people would condemn it, because for our people that's a deadly sin, but there--it's in the customs, a simple habit, nothing more.' When Timofeyeva objected that it was not this aspect that admirers of the West wished to emulate, he rancorously replied that 'there is no other,' that 'Rome went to pieces because they began to transplant Greece among themselves; beginning with luxuries, fashions, and various sciences and arts, it ends with sodomy and general corruption.'"
Page 678: "Soliciting a contribution from the nationalist historian Mikhail Pogodin, whose staunchly patriotic writings Dostoyevsky admired, he complains that the weekly [The Citizen; Dostoyevsky was the editor] had no secretary to take care of routine business matters, and even more, 'my main source of distress is the mountain of topics on which I would like to write myself.' 'Much needs to be said,' he continues, 'for which reason I first joined the journal . . . We need to fight, because everything has been infected. My idea is that Socialism and Christianity are antitheses. That is what I would like to show in a whole series of pieces, but meanwhile I haven't even started.'"
Sounds like Dostoyevsky is describing the Uniteds States in 2010.
Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky
Mark Taylor's Prophetic Word on Russia and the United States (10-30-16)
Breaking off the Greek Mindset
Putin embarrasses Megyn Kelly
No comments:
Post a Comment