човечност

It is not so strange that books outlive eras, that sometimes they enter the next era younger and fresher than they were at the time of their creation. It is stranger that books outlive their own authors, not by their longevity, but by their spirit and temperament, that they remain young and daring sometimes to remind us of the spiritual old age of their creators, of their hesitations and torments. Before his death, Voltaire sought the cooperation of the church, of that same church that he denounced in so many of his works. Gogol's "Selected Passages from Correspondence with Comrades" bears little resemblance to the first volume of "Dead Souls," and with "Confession" Tolstoy also denied "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina." In the same way, old Boccaccio condemned "The Decameron" and even became a monk, but "The Decameron" did not suffer from this at all. Books are a magnificent weapon against both the whims and the fluctuations of old age. Good books are for the spiritually young.