Dostoevsky

2024-01-01

I met Dostoevsky, so to speak, a little more than a year ago. I won't go into how I got to Crime and Punishment, but reading it (in the span of a single weekend) was the principal — though not singular or initial — cause of the most profound transformation I have ever suffered: at the same time a reorientation of my life and the consummation of my personality, a reconciliation of every internal doubt I had about me and my choices (if one may call them that) in life.

At the same time, I found again and revived one of my greatest passions: reading. As I used to when growing up, I read furiously once again, only now not wearing to escape into that glorious world, but with that rare pleasure in life: that of finding true connections with sympathetic souls. And so it was that, among many incredible finds, I ended the year with the book pictured here, which accompanied me across three continents on a journey to and a sojourn in my old home.

I am now a completely different man in no small part because of this man's writing. He is the greatest author there ever was, and The Brothers Karamazov is the greatest work of literature of all (Crime and Punishment previously held that title, to call these merely “books” or “novels” feels blasphemous). In the dark periods since, I found solace in what I learned from him and the innumerable other mysterious worlds I touched. In finding light and always keeping it even in medio umbrae mortis (τὸ φέρειν αὐτὸ γενναίως εὐτύχημα).

There is nothing more seductive for man than the freedom of his conscience, but there is nothing more tormenting either.

Кланяюсь вам, Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский.