Guillermo Erades

“It struck me that the Russian word for compassion, sostradaniye, derived from the word suffering, stradaniye, and literally meant co-suffering. A compassionate person was, in Russian, a co-sufferer.”
― Guillermo Erades, Back to Moscow

“In spite of the years, Pushkin tells us, Tatyana remains in love with Onegin. Now, finally, she has a real chance to be with him. So, what does Tatyana do? Does she ditch her husband and elope with her true love? Nyet, she doesn’t. In the culminating scenes of Pushkin’s long poem, Tatyana decides to stick with her husband and, in her own nineteenth-century way, tells Onegin to fuck off. A simple love story which most Russians know by heart. Many are even able to recite entire chapters – ‘ya k vam pishu’, Tatyana’s letter, being an especially popular passage. The symbolism of the story should not be ignored. Tatyana, the pure girl from the countryside, embodies the essence of Russianness, while Onegin, the cosmopolitan bon vivant, is a cynical fucker corrupted by modern European values. Onegin’s life is about superficial pleasures. Tatyana’s is all about meaning.”
― Guillermo Erades, Back to Moscow