A Gentleman in Moscow

All poetry is a call to action.

All poetry is a call to action

COUNT ALEXANDER ILYICH ROSTOV

Given Russia’s long, heartless winters, its familiarity with famine, its rough sense of justice, and so on, and so on, it was perfectly natural for its gentry to adopt an act of definitive violence as the means of resolving disputes.

He was thinking about Katerina. In particular, he was thinking—with a sense of foreboding—that in the course of twenty years this firefly, this pinwheel, this wonder of the world had become a woman who, when asked where she was going, could answer without the slightest hesitation: Does it matter?

van Turgenev
(1852)

The past and the present merged together. He was dreaming he had reached the promised land flowing with milk and honey, where people ate BREAD they had not earned and went clothed in gold and silver. . . .

Hadn’t he rhapsodized over how the constellations seemed to halt in their course when on a warm summer’s night one lay on one’s back and listened for footsteps in the grass—as if nature itself were conspiring to lengthen the last few hours before daybreak, so that they could be savored to the utmost?

Anna Urbanova took the cigarette from the Count’s fingers, dropped it in a water glass, and kissed him on the nose.

Boreas, Zephyrus, Notos, and Euros—the Four Winds

Of course, the Count was perfectly right. For when life makes it impossible for a man to pursue his dreams, he will connive to pursue them anyway.