Last week my dear colleague said that I don’t fail to surprise her and called me ‘terra incognita’. Well, I must say I feel the same way about her. We’ve been working (and regularly having breakfast) together for more than five years, but I keep discovering new fascinating things – from the topic of her PhD research to the fact that she’s knitted one of her sweaters herself. And it’s true for many people who surround us, at work or elsewhere in our life. We ordinarily see only a certain side of them, and then we unexpectedly find out about the true scope of resources or interests that they have.
I’ve been thinking along such lines for what feels like my whole life, and last academic year my philosophy teacher introduced me to a beautiful poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko in which he puts the idea so eloquently and so simply. I was happy to discover there is an English translation too. Another poem my philosophy teacher would quote in relation to the matter is Silentium! by the nineteenth-century poet and diplomat Fyodor Tyutchev. I remember learning the first verse by heart for my literature class at school many years ago, while my philosophy professor recited the second one.
Another Russian author he would often mention is Leo Tolstoy. My philosophy professor referred to Count Bolkonsky’s encounter with an oak described in chapters one and three of War and Peace, volume two, part three as an illustration of a person’s spiritual rebirth. I think that by describing the character’s diametrically different thoughts and feelings on seeing the same tree within the space of several months one of my dearest writers made a beautiful statement about the infinite power of love and hope.
24/11/2021
/Photo by my knitwear-designing cousin/