We

by Yevgeny Zamyatin

It is such pleasure submitting to the “meant to be.” It must feel as pleasant for a piece of iron to submit to the inevitable, determined law and be stuck to a magnet, for a stone tossed up to hesitate for a second and then rush back down headlong to the ground, and for a person after agony finally to sigh for the last time—and die.

And the air itself is slightly pink, and everything is impregnated with the tender sun’s blood; everything is alive, and the people living and all smiling.

Maybe actually it’s that you all are my shadows. Is it not I who populated these pages with you, the pages that recently were mere quadrangular white deserts? If it were not for me, would you ever be seen by all whom I will lead down the narrow paths of these lines?

Remember: In paradise, desire is unknown, pity is unknown, love is unknown; there are the blissful with operated imagination (blissful due to that only) angels, the servants of God.