Tuesday, May 24, 2011

The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
(a short story) by Fyodor Dostoevsky
1877

"We were flying through dark, unknown space. I had for some time lost sight of the constellations familiar to my eyes. I knew that there were stars in the heavenly spaces the light of which took thousands or millions of years to reach the earth. Perhaps we were already flying through those spaces. I expected something with a terrible anguish that tortured my heart. And suddenly I was thrilled by a familiar feeling that stirred me to the depths: I suddenly caught sight of our sun! I knew that it could not be our sun, that gave life to our earth, and that we were an infinite distance from our sun, but for some reason I knew in my whole being that it was a sun exactly like ours, a duplicate of it. A sweet, thrilling feeling resounded with ecstasy in my heart: the kindred power of the same light which had given me light stirred an echo in my heart and awakened it, and I had a sensation of life, the old life of the past for the first time since I had been in the grave."

Dostoevsky seems to have a strange and warped mind. Much of his writing is based on death or suicide or desires for such. His mind may have been strange, but his writing is wonderful. Every word that he has written is magical and creates a picture in the readers mind.

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