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People say you only live once. Yeah, maybe. Sure. But that's like saying Mona Lisa is only one painting. Or Shakespeare is only one man. Or France is only one country. That's true, however this one thing has thousands of parts. Millions. Billions.
My one life is so varied. It seems like a hundred lives.
I picked up this edition of "The Idiot" last week and am almost through re-reading it. After sixty years. (A poor choice for cover art, by the way.)
What a difference. When I was in my twenties Prince Myshkin seemed like someone else, but today I see how often I've acted like this fictional anti-hero. I must have absorbed his character without fully realizing it.
You can seem like an idiot if you are too sincere in a phony culture.
But for all that I'm relieved that I outgrew Dostoyevsky's powerful influence. I now see the novel as a little plodding.