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The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature QUOTES

The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature QUOTES

1 " Three Russian Ideas: Russian Word, Russian Space, and their meeting ground in the human face "

― , The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature

2 " In early Leninist terminology, the geographical opposition of "city" (proletariat) versus "countryside" (peasant) was often expressed in terms of "consciousness" versus "spontaneity." Consciousness in this Marxist sense meant not individual creativity, inspiration, or (as it often did for Dostoevsky) the freedom of personal will and the responsibility of choice, but was applied more narrowly, to mean an awareness of the dialectical shape of history and the inevitable victory of the proletariat. Opposed to this party-minded awareness was "spontaneity": people reacting anarchically, instinctively, out of their immediate anger or blind need, peasants burning manor houses ... Many believed that a symbiotic relation between these two forces was possible, at the level of the individual body as well as the body politic. "

― , The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature

3 " That we can act in the world not as we are "in reality" is, for Gurov, a very good thing. Our public life, "which was visible to everybody who needed to know about it, but was full of conditional truth and conditional deceit" was balanced by a private life, which was hidden from others and in which we are sincere. Doubleness is not duplicity. It is precisely the sincerity of what is hidden that makes tolerance so necessary and moral condemnation so difficult. "

― , The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature

4 " Criminals are free and make choices. Responsibility accrues and repentance is required. Among Dostoevsky's many complaints against socialism . . . was its promise to replace this radical freedom with material and mental security. Hence one of Dostoevsky's great paradoxes: the healthy, free mind demands continual destabilization and doubt if it is to exercise acts of faith, but our deeds are stable, answerable, and belong to us alone. "

― , The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature