Cursed Days: Diary of a Revolution

by Ivan Bunin

Many people now pretend they have news that no one else has.

There is so much lying going around that I could scream. All my friends, all my acquaintances, people whom earlier I never would have thought of as liars, are now uttering falsehoods at every turn. They cannot help but lie; they cannot help but add to their own lies, their own flourishes to well-known falsehoods. And they all do so from an agonizing need that everything be just as they so fiercely desire. They rave on like they have a fever; and when I hear their rantings I take their words in greedily and become infected by them. Otherwise it seems that I won’t survive the week.

I know that all these rumors are nonsense—but I believe them nonetheless.

“I never did anything because I always wanted to do something special.”

But this is precisely the nature of their satanic power, the fact that they managed to cross all limits, all permitted boundaries, so as to make any amazement, any outraged cry seem foolish and naive.

They were completely calm—“Why get upset,” they said, “the rumors have so far not been confirmed.” So things are splendid. . . .

violence, in and of itself, is the sharpest manifestation of inequality.