Sublime

These were years of terrible solitude for him, but also of self-judgment and the beginnings of a spiritual regeneration. On leaving prison, he wrote to N. D. Fonvizina, the wife of a political exile who had given him a copy of the Gospels: Not because you are religious, but because I myself have experienced and felt it keenly, I will tell you that

“giving himself wholly to ideas and to real life,” as he himself defined his activity.

precisely the type of man who is not only worthless and depraved but muddleheaded as well—one of those muddleheaded people who still handle their own little business deals quite skillfully, if nothing else.

“And . . . the worst of it was he was so coarse, so dirty, he had the manners of a pothouse; and . . . and even admitting that he knew he had some of the essentials of a gentleman . . . what was there in that to be proud of? Everyone ought to be a gentleman and more than that . . . and all the same (he remembered) he, too, had done little things . 

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, similarly, whenever he wrote a successful novel, would feel that the financial security he had gained made the act of creation unnecessary. He would take his entire savings to the casino and would not leave until he had gambled away his last penny. Once reduced to poverty he could write again.

It’s still possible to love one’s neighbor abstractly, and even occasionally from a distance, but hardly ever up close.