“
What caused me most pain during the course of their nocturnal confessions was the indestructible love for Russia that these revelations inspired in me. My intellect, struggling with the bite of the vodka, rebelled: ‘This country is monstrous! Evil, torture, suffering and self-mutilation are the favourite pastimes of its inhabitants. And yet I love it? I love it for its absurdity. For its monstrosities. I see in it a higher meaning that no logic can penetrate . . .’ This love was a continual heartbreak. The blacker the Russia I was discovering turned out to be, the more violent my attachment became. As if in order to love it, one had to tear out one’s eyes, plug one’s ears, stop oneself thinking.
”
”