The Russians. The crisscross design of humanity that had so fascinated Dostoevsky, inspiring him to write in his notebook: I like, when roaming the streets, to look attentively at certain wholly strange passersby.
I study their faces and speculate.
Who are they?
How do they live?
What is their occupation?
What are they saying?
Whatever a man wishes to see in our Mother Russia is there to find.
It just depends on how you look at it.
The world's most spectacular armies.
The Hermitage.
The home of so many astonishing rulers—warriors and fools, geniuses and madmen.
It's the mud on our shoes, it's the rubble. It's the mud in our teeth, it is slush.
It's the pure, taintless dust that we crumble, that we pound, that we mix, that we crush.
But we call it our own for it will open one day. To receive and embrace us and turns us to clay.
It's the pure, taintless dust that we crumble, that we pound, that we mix, that we crush.
But we call it our own for it will open one day. To receive and embrace us and turns us to clay.
In all the world no people are so tearless.
So proud, so simple as are we.