Great Premier — November 2017
At the awkward age of nineteen, life is bound to be hard, especially if one is a girl, and far from stupid, and if an idiotic puritanism makes one unnecessarily hard on those — and there were plenty! — who would have been only too glad to dispel one’s virginal tedium”.
The Road to Calvary by A. N. Tolstoy
Katya betrayed her husband, but having betrayed, having sinned, having lied, she became even more charming. Only the blind man would not notice something new, some specific languorous tenderness in her. And the way she lies can make one go crazy — and fall in love with her”.
The Road to Calvary by A. N. Tolstoy
Why not admit that the desire for happiness is strongest of all? I want it despite everything. Very well! Can I abolish queues, feed the hungry, stop the war? I can’t! And this being the case, does it mean that I, too, ought to disappear into the gloom, to renounce happiness? Surely not!”
The Road to Calvary by A. N. Tolstoy
Answer me: what is one’s country? What is it for you? You are silent… I know what you would say… People only ask that once in a lifetime, when they have lost their country… Oh, it’s not my Petersburg flat, my legal career that I lost… I’ve lost the great man in myself, and I don’t want to be a small one”.
The Road to Calvary by A. N. Tolstoy
Morally, we’re all in a blind alley, Katya. I haven’t had a single powerful emotion for the last five years, or taken a single important step. Even my love for you, our marriage, seem to have been just part of the general
The Road to Calvary by A. N. Tolstoy
[He] remarked abruptly that there was no such thing as art, that it was all a fake, the old trick of the fakir who makes a monkey climb a rope and disappear into thin air. There’s no such thing as poetry. Everything has been extinct for ages — people, art, everything. Russia is mere offal, with a flock of crows hovering over it at a crow’s banquet. And all who write poetry will find themselves in hell one day”.
The Road to Calvary by A. N. Tolstoy
«When a newcomer came to the house she would invite him to her room, where a bewildering conversation would ensue, ranging from dizzy heights to profound depths, as Elizaveta Kievna endeavoured to find out whether her interlocutor had ever felt stirrings towards crime. Was he capable of murder, now? Had he ever experienced an impulse of
The Road to Calvary by A. N. Tolstoy
I have a godlike body,” he said with unexpected vehemence. I can tear a
The Road to Calvary by A. N. Tolstoy
The Slav represents a type which is morally quite new, and in some respects a danger to European civilization — the
The Road to Calvary by A. N. Tolstoy
«I don’t trust people either. I’ve been bathing in blood ever since 1914. People have become wild beasts nowadays. Perhaps they were before, but we didn’t know it. Everyone waits for an opportunity to knock his neighbour out of the saddle… And I’m a beast, too, don’t you see, you innocent little dove? I want my children to live in a house built of stone and talk French ever better than you — pardon, merci, and all that…»
The Road to Calvary by A. N. Tolstoy
«We are the new Columbuses! We are the brilliant instigators to action! We are the seeds of the new humanity! We demand that bloated bourgeois society cast aside all prejudice. Henceforward there will be no virtues. The family, social amenities, marriage, must all be thrown overboard. We insist on this. Men and women must be naked and free. Sexual relations are the business of society. Youths and maidens! Men and women! Clamber out of the lairs in which you have languished so long, and emerge, naked and happy, to join hands and dance beneath the sun of the Wild Beast!»
The Road to Calvary by A. N. Tolstoy
«I escaped with my life from the world war, and the only thing I value is the breath of life. Excuse the phrase. I read a lot of books in the trenches, and my phrases have become literary… (…) I reconcile myself to any regime so long as I see people are happy… (…) I myself don’t need much — a bit of bread, a pinch of tobacco, and genuine spiritual contacts…»
The Road to Calvary by A. N. Tolstoy
Beasts, scum, red swine! I’ll bash your mugs in, d’you hear, you swine! Haven’t enough of you been thrashed and hung, you curs? Haven’t you had enough yet?”
The Road to Calvary by A. N. Tolstoy
«The abrupt, assured phrases, the authoritative tones, the cold eyes were rapidly enchaining her vacillating will. She felt the same sort of relief that one feels when the doctor, seating himself at one’s bedside, his spectacles gleaming sagely, says: „Well, dear lady, from now on we’re going to behave ourselves…“»
The Road to Calvary by A. N. Tolstoy
We are smashing everything up, from top to bottom… We will burn all the books, destroy the museums… Man must learn to forget the centuries… Freedom consists in one thing only: divine anarchy… The immense conflagration of the passions… Oh, no! Never expect peace or love from me, pretty one! I will emancipate you… I will strike the chains of your innocence asunder… I will give you all you can ask, between two embraces…”
The Road to Calvary by A. N. Tolstoy
When I was doing hard labour under the tsar, I was picked up by my head, and my heels, and flung on to a stone floor… That’s how the leaders of the people are forged”.
The Road to Calvary by A. N. Tolstoy