I believe there are only a few people in the world that experienced an epiphany like I did. And my ground breaking revelation had roots way back to a noble November day in Moscow. I don’t know whether it was morning, or evening; though it would have made it sound prettier. But I’d rather keep it simple than to lie about it.
It was November 11, 1821. That’s all I know.
About 190 years after that, I was putting down a book back on the shelf. This thick, mean, bitch-of-a-reading book. I had been dragging it along for weeks, in the middle of all the tests and exams and studying, it had just silently stuck with me. It wasn’t too friendly or anything, the more I tried to figure it out, the more it got tangled in my head. But I held my breath and I finished it. It was the weirdest experience of my life. I put it down knowing something was now set. Something had changed.
It was all downhill after that. I had, without my knowing, had had a glimpse at the godliest thing I would ever come across. A god who can dance—and pretty good, too.
So now, I have that start point, that moment of clarity, that very second in which everything makes itself visible. I have that very instant which I will tell my children, and the children of their children, and everyone else who would ever take the time of the day to get to know me. I will point back to that day, that mystical day in which I changed drastically, the day that was the beginning of everything in me and about me. It was the day I put away that book. Crime And Punishment. That was what the book was called.
The day I knew, for the first time, what it felt like to read Fyodor Dostoevsky.
If there’s ever a birthday that needs to be celebrated, I’ll say this is it.
Now I could sit here and type words for hours, and you’d still not understand. No one would. It’s a journey you have to take on your own, and forgive me, but it’s a very privileged one. I’ve seen many crumble at the doorstep, and I‘ve seen many who couldn’t even make it there. I’ve seen people not getting it. I’ve seen people not feeling it. Because I assure you kids, it’s not about brains, it’s not about historical facts, it’s nothing about being all too well read and well knowing. It’s about closing you eyes and being able to reach out to it. Some may grab it; fold their fingers over spirits of the truest forms. Some will miss it.
You have to accept faithfully what had been given to you. I saw in a flash of light the dark, fiery eyes of Mitya, the innocence of Alyosha, the sincerity of Ivan; I saw the paranoid, self destructive Rodya in his painful existence; I saw Alexey smirk right before he put everything out on the table; I saw Myshkin’s pale face lying next to his dead beloved—yes I’ve seen it all, everything, and if not more, and I was there, in every second of it, I was at the heart of things and in the hearts of men, noble and honest, passionate, burning; and it happened right before my eyes.
Long story short, if there is ever a god, people; he must be jealous as hell that this feeble, suffering fella born on just another November day had created, somehow, far better and far precious things than he himself ever could.
Happy past birthday Fyodor.
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