Literature born of suffereung …

… The Open Presentness of Past Moments: On Gary Saul Morson’s “Wonder Confronts Certainty”. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Lenin is responsible for the remorseless sacrifice of millions of people for the sake of a terror-based Marxism that reminded no contemporary Marxists of the creed. And yet, like a character in Chekhov or Tolstoy, Lenin (as I learned from Sebestyen’s biography) hunted, smoked, read, loved, and was even nice to his family! That Lenin and Stalin were genocidal terrorists who also loved books makes one’s head and heart hurt. If literature makes us better, or inclined to less evil, how much worse would they have been if they hadn’t read Pushkin?