Revelațiile morții. Dostoievski - Tolstoi Quotes

“If Darwin had seen in life what Dostoevsky saw, he would not have talked of the law of the preservation of species, but of its destruction.”
― Lev Shestov, In Job's Balances: On the Sources of the Eternal Truths

“Suffering "buys" something, and this something possesses a certain value for all of us, for common consciousness; by suffering we buy the right to judge.”
― Lev Shestov, In Job's Balances: On the Sources of the Eternal Truths

“One must not ask for sincere autobiographies from writers. Fiction was invented precisely to give men the possibility of expressing themselves freely.”
― Lev Shestov, In Job's Balances: On the Sources of the Eternal Truths

“Even Pushkin, who could understand everything, did not grasp the real significance of Dead Souls. He thought that the author was grieving for Russia, ignorant, savage, and outdistanced by the other nations. But it is not only in Russia that Gogol discovers "dead souls." All men, great and small, seem to him lunatics, lifeless, automata which obediently and mechanically carry out commandments imposed on them from without. They eat, they drink, they sin, they multiply; with stammering tongue they pronounce meaningless words. No trace of free will, no sparkle of understanding, not the slightest wish to awake from their thousand-year sleep.”
― Lev Shestov, In Job's Balances: On the Sources of the Eternal Truths

“They certified that I was sane; but I know that I am mad." This confession gives us the key to what is most important and significant in Tolstoy's hidden life.”
― Lev Shestov, In Job's Balances: On the Sources of the Eternal Truths

“St. Augustine hated the Stoics, Dostoevsky hated the Russian Liberals. At first sight this seems a quite inexplicable peculiarity. Both were convinced Christians, both spoke so much of love, and suddenly - such hate! And against whom? Against the Stoics, who preached self-abnegation, who esteemed virtue above all things in the world, and against the Liberals who also exalted virtue above all things! But the fact remains: Dostoevsky spoke in rage of Stassyulevitch and Gradovsky; Augustine could not be calm when he spoke the names of those pre-Stoic Stoics, Regulus and Mutius Scaevola, and even Socrates, the idol of the ancient world, appeared to him a bogey. Obviously Augustine and Dostoevsky were terrified and appalled by the mere thought of the possibility of such men as Scaevola and Gradovsky - men capable of loving virtue for its own sake, of seeing virtue as an end in itself. Dostoevsky says openly in the Diary of a Writer that the only idea capable of inspiring a man is that of the immortality of the soul.”
― Lev Shestov, In Job's Balances: On the Sources of the Eternal Truths

“(...)on earth "everything has a beginning and nothing has an end.”
― Lev Shestov, In Job's Balances: On the Sources of the Eternal Truths

“Dostoevsky's nature was two-fold, like Spinoza's, and like that of nearly all those who try to awaken humanity from its torpor.”
― Lev Shestov, In Job's Balances: On the Sources of the Eternal Truths

“But strange though it may seem, the more he judged, and the more he realized that men feared and acknowledged his right to judge, the more his innermost soul questioned man's right to judgment of any kind.”
― Lev Shestov, In Job's Balances: On the Sources of the Eternal Truths

“But Dostoevsky does allow himself to ask just this very question: whether our reason has any right to judge between the possible and the impossible.”
― Lev Shestov, In Job's Balances: On the Sources of the Eternal Truths

“Furthermore, as long as the world shall last, there will always be people who, either for the sake of peace or from an unquiet conscience, will build up sublime lies for their neighbours. And these people have always been and will always be the masters of human thought.”
― Lev Shestov, In Job's Balances: On the Sources of the Eternal Truths

“[Dostoevsky] soon began to notice that the life of freedom came more and more to resemble the life in the convict settlement, and that “the vast dome of the sky” which had seemed to him limitless when he was in prison now began to crush and to press on him as much as the barrack vaults had used to do; that the ideals which had sustained his fainting soul when he lived amongst the lowest dregs of humanity and shared their fate had not made a better man of him, nor liberated him, but on the contrary weighed him down and humiliated him as grievously as the chains of his prison. . . . Dostoevsky suddenly “saw” that the sky and the prison walls, ideals and chains are not contradictory to one another, as he had wished and thought formerly, when he still wished and thought like normal men.”
― Lev Shestov, In Job's Balances: A collection of essays by Lev Shestov

“Aproape de fiecare data cand se refera la moarte, Socrate repeta, in opera lui Platon, cuvintele lui Euripide. Nimeni nu stie daca viata nu inseamna moarte iar moartea nu inseamna viata. Din cele mai indepartate timpuri, oamenii cei mai intelepti traiesc in aceasta enigmatica ignoranta; numai oamenii de rand stiu prea bine ce este viata, ce este moartea. Cum s-a petrecut, cum s-a putut intampla ca inteleptii sa sovaie acolo unde spiritele de rand nu vad nici o dificultate? Si de ce piedicile cele mai grele, mai complete, sunt intotdeauna rezervate celor mai intelepti? Or, ce poate fi mai cumplit decat neputinta de-a sti de esti mort sau viu? "Justitia" ar pretinde ca aceasta cunoastere ori aceasta ignoranta sa fie apanajul tuturor fapturilor omenesti. Dar, ce spun eu: Justitia! Logica insasi o cere, intrucat e absurd ca unora sa le fie dat a deosebi viata de moarte, in timp ce altii raman lipsiti de aceasta cunoastere; cei care o poseda difera complet, intr-adevar, de cei carora le este refuzata, iar noi nu avem asadar dreptul sa-i socotim pe toti, in mod nediferentiat, ca apartinand speciei umane. E om numai acela care stie ce inseamna viata si ce inseamna moartea. Cel care nu stie, cel care, fie numai si din cand in cand, fie numai si pentru o singura clipa, inceteaza a deosebi limita ce separa viata de moarte, acela inceteaza sa mai fie om, pentru a deveni...pentru a deveni ce? Cine este Oedipul ce poate rezolva aceasta problema si patrunde acest suprem mister?”
― Lev Shestov, Revelațiile morții. Dostoievski - Tolstoi

“Cine doreşte să se apropie de Dostoievski trebuie să îndeplinească o serie de exercitio spiritualia: trebuie să trăiască ore, zile, ani întregi în sânul evidenţelor contradictorii. Nu există altă soluţie. Numai aşa se poate întrevedea că timpul nu are una, ci două dimensiuni sau chiar mai multe, că legile nu există de-o veşnicie, ci ne sunt date, date pentru ca păcatul să se poată petrece, că nu faptele noastre, ci credinţa noastră ne salvează, că moartea lui Socrate poate nărui cumplitul «doi ori doi fac patru», că Dumnezeu nu pretinde decât imposibilul, că răţoiul cel urât se poate preschimba într-o frumoasă lebădă albă, că totul începe, dar nu se sfârşeşte aici, că şi capriciul are dreptul la garanţii, că fantasticul este mai real decât normalul, că viaţa - este moarte, iar moartea - înseamnă viaţă, şi alte adevăruri de acelaşi gen, care se măsoară cu ochii lor ciudaţi şi cumpliţi din toate paginile operelor lui Dostoievski.”
― Lev Shestov, Revelațiile morții. Dostoievski - Tolstoi