The defining Russian idea of the twentieth century is that evil is acceptable because it’s useful.
Dmitry Bykov, VZ (2024)
Bykov is correct but he forgets that Dostoyevsky wrote in the mid-nineteenth century, and this vision of evil was already all over his work.
Another great quote from his new book is this:
The Enlightenment era is ending, and this has a great (and maybe an only) benefit. We are no longer limited to analyzing history through the lens of economic and geographic determinism. As a result, we don’t have to keep looking at history exclusively as an arena where material relations manifest themselves. That is why I insist that a religious interpretation of world politics is legitimate.
These are all my translations, in case anybody wonders.
Bykov is a great admirer of the Polish philosopher Leszek Kołakowski, and that’s one of the things that draws me to his book.
I promise I’ll write about VZ at length very soon, but for now please enjoy the quotes. Bykov is a truly great writer (and a really exceptional poet) who lost his audience. For a writer, there’s no worse fate. Spanish dissidents in the 1930s and 1940s could go to Latin America, join literary life there, get published, hang out with other writers, read their work, find readers, and do all this in their own language. The tragedy of a writer who has nowhere to go and who suddenly lost not only his readers but his literary circle is deep.
This isn’t an issue of finances. Bykov is mega famous. He’s been hired by Cornell and will not become a starving artist. Which might actually have been a good idea given his girth. But he’s bereft by his loss even though he doesn’t whine or pout and insists it’s the right thing to happen and he’s fine with it.
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