"..descend for a moment into the realm of this remarkably solitary life,.."

“Read in quest of minds more original than your own”. -Harold Bloom-

Today’s passage is from the rather lengthy opening paragraph from Nikolai Gogol's  “The Old World Landowners." It's a story of two neighborly landowners who live peacefully together in a remote Russian village. This short story draws a sharp contrast between the lives of these two landowners versus the lives of those “paltry contemptible creatures” who have left their small, rustic Russian villages and acquired wealth in Saint Petersburg and Moscow by changing their last names and concealing their bucolic origin:

“The Two Old World Landowners”

“I like very much the modest life of those solitary proprietors of remote estates, who in Little Russia are usually known as the old world and who, like decrepit, picturesque little houses, are so nicely mottled and so completely the opposite of a new, smooth building whose walls have not yet been washed by rain, whose roof is not yet covered with green mold, and whose porch does not yet show its red bricks through missing plaster. I like sometimes to descend for a moment into the realm of this remarkably solitary life, where not one desire flies over the paling that surrounds the small yard, over the waffle fence that encloses the garden filled with apple and plum trees, over the village cottages surrounding it, slumping to one side, in the shade of pussy willows, elders, and pear trees. The life of their modest owners is quiet, so quiet that for a moment you forget yourself and think that the passions, desires, and restlessness produced by the evil spirit who troubles the world do not exist at all, and that you saw them only in a splendid, shining dream.”

                                            Literary Apparel for the Enlightened Mind