Dead Souls

by Nikolai Gogol

Even as an incomputable host of churches, of monasteries—with cupolas, bulbous domes, and crosses—is scattered all over holy and devout Russia, so does an incomputable multitude of tribes, generations, and peoples swarm, flaunt their motley, and scurry across the face of the earth. And every folk, bearing within itself the pledge of mighty forces, endowed with the creative aptitudes of the soul, with a vivid individuality of its own and with other gifts of God, each folk has become singularly distinguished by some word all its own, through which, expressing any subject whatsoever, it reflects in that expression a part of its own character. With a profound knowledge of the heart and a wise grasp of life will the word of the Briton echo; like an airy dandy will the impermanent word of the Frenchman flash and then burst into smithereens; finickily, intricately, will the German contrive his intellectually gaunt word, which is not within the easy reach of everybody. But there is never a word which can be so sweeping, so boisterous, which can burst out so, from out of the very heart, which can seethe so and quiver and flutter so much like a living thing, as an aptly uttered Russian word!