#avril pyman

[here-be-words]

Silence enveloped the flat, crawling into every corner. Twilight infiltrated it, ill-omened, tense, in a word - murk.

Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov, translated by Avril Pyman

[here-be-words]

And you surely breakfasted today, you who are a great man of world importance all thanks to the glands in the male sexual organ.

Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov, translated by Avril Pyman

[pizzandro]

On the other hand, the burden which Russian literature had borne for so long had given it an heroic strength, and, in its best manifesta-tions, had invested it with a special dignity. Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy had thought in terms of the fate of Russia and the salvation of man-kind. Nor had they lost sight of the individual: there is no more Russian declaration in literature than Ivan Karamazov's pronouncement that, if he were offered the entree to paradise at the expense of the suffering of one small child, he would respectfully return his ticket. Such was the scale of Russian thought: a man's own soul could counterbalance the whole of history, the world, the universe.

At the same time, the individual soul was not isolated, but always considered in relation to these immensities. Not the pursuit of happiness is the theme of Russian literature, but the pursuit of salvation.

'Happy ends' are unknown for the simple reason that it is in the nature of happiness to be transient and the only end is death. In litera-ture, as in life, joy and suffering are interwoven, and explicitly irrational.

[here-be-words]

By kindness. The only way to deal with a living being. You'll never do anything with an animal by terror, at whatever stage of development.

Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov, translated by Avril Pyman

[here-be-words]

She hasn't even enough for the cinema and the cinema is woman's one comfort in this life.

Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov, translated by Avril Pyman

[contemporaryarttokyo-blog]

Here at last!