But besides them there were
Dante “Hell”
In the two greatest creations of Dante Alighieri – “New Life” and in the “Divine Comedy” (see its summary) – the same idea has been carried out. Both are bound by the thought that pure love ennobles human nature, and the knowledge of the frailty of sensual bliss brings a person closer to God. But “New Life” is only a series of lyrical poems, and “Divine Comedy” represents a whole poem in three parts, containing up to one hundred songs, each of which contains about one hundred and forty verses. Continue reading
Grossman “Life and Fate”
How strikingly disappeared all the Soviet spells and formulas, enumerated above! [cm. Grossman’s article “For the Right Cause” – analysis by A. Solzhenitsyn] – and no one will say that this is from the author’s insight of 50 years? And what Grossman really didn’t know and didn’t feel until 1953–1956, he managed to catch up in the last years of work on Volume 2, and now, with passion, it’s all missed into the fabric of the novel.
Now we learn that not only in Hitler Germany, but also here: the mutual suspicion of people towards each other; It is a matter of suspicion if people talk over a glass of tea. Continue reading
Bitter “Chelkash”
The hero of Maxim Gorky’s story “Chelkash” is Grishka Chelkash, an old wounded man, an avid drinker and a clever, courageous thief and smuggler in one of the southern Black Sea ports. Barefoot, in old, worn plush pants, in a dirty calico shirt, with a torn collar, which opened it with moving, angular, dry bones covered with brown skin, long, bony, slightly stooping, he immediately drew attention to himself by his resemblance to a steppe hawk, his with a predatory thinness and aiming gait, as smooth and calm in appearance, but internally agitated, with a sharp look, like the flight of an angry, nervous bird that he resembled. Continue reading