Sublime

“Wait, I’ll tell you what I think myself. I think that if the beast dormant in man could be stopped by the threat of, whatever, the lockup or requital beyond the grave, the highest emblem of mankind would be a lion tamer with his whip, and not the preacher who sacrifices himself.

il voyait que tous ceux de son entourage le considéraient comme un désagrément accidentel, comme une inconvenance (tel un homme qui, en entrant dans un salon, exhalerait autour de lui une mauvaise odeur). Toujours les apparences qui avaient été le culte de toute sa vie. Il voyait que personne ne le regrettait, que personne ne voulait même comprendr

Some totalitarians prefer to conceal themselves behind the machinery of the state, but, like the cannibal who lovingly cradles his victim as he digs around for his heart, Stalin liked conversing with his terrorized children. He was an intimate murderer.

Memory met imagination halfway in the hammock of his boyhood’s dawns.

Prominent friends introduced him at court; the emperor Alexander II asked him to be the spiritual guide of his younger sons, the Grand Dukes Sergei and Pavel;

Le Maître et Marguerite de Mikhail Bulgakov. Je trouve que ce livre est l’une des meilleures fictions du siècle dernier. C’est un roman relativement court, d’une profondeur étonnante, qui explore tout, des fondements de la philosophie chrétienne à la satire (fabuleuse et hilarante) du socialisme soviétique du XXe siècle qui corrompt l’esprit. J’ach