Try getting blindly carried away by your feelings, without reasoning, without a primary cause, driving consciousness away at least for a time; start hating, or fall in love, only so as not to sit with folded arms. The day after tomorrow, at the very latest, you’ll begin to despise yourself for having knowingly hoodwinked yourself. The result: a soap bubble, and inertia. […] Better to do nothing! Better conscious inertia! And so, long live the underground! […]
For what and to what end, in fact, do I want to write? […] There’s something imposing in it, there will be more of a judgment on oneself, it will gain in style. Besides: maybe I will indeed get relief from the writing. […] Snow is falling today, almost wet, yellow, dull. And it was falling yesterday, and it was falling the other day as well. I think it was apropos of the wet snow that I recalled this anecdote that now refuses to be gotten rid of. And so, let this be a story apropos of the wet snow.
~ Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (one of six texts on which MA candidates will be tested on the upcoming comprehensive MA exam at Chapman University)
"Колокольня Морского собора" (St. Nicholas Cathedral, St. Petersburg)
