PETER ORNER

Obadiah

Why are people are always bursting into tears in Russian novels? What could be more inaccurate? In Dostoevsky it’s every other page—bursts into tears, bursts into tears,  but even Tolstoy himself is sometimes a fool for making it so easy. Anna bursted into tears. Bursted?

Now galoshes—yes. There is much truth in goulashes, if not here, certainly in St. Petersburg, while tears—my beloved Lev—you must know this, it is not too late even for you to know this—are the blood of the soul and they take hours days months years to form and only then do they wander slowly down a face that at first thinks it must be rain.  

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