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Sunday, February 6, 2011

Liberty (30.vii.1987)

Solzhenitsyn's Gulag book
has over seventeen hundred pages,
and I would not have him remove one,
but what the man is saying
boils down to something simple, and old:

You can lock men up, and maltreat them,
but there is no way to imprison the spirit.
Unless I imprison myself, I am free.

The Gulag and the Hermitage lie in the same country.
The Hermitage is a Gulag for venal money-grubbers.
The Gulag is an Hermitage for innocent and quiet minds.

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