Your post, Foxhead, reminds me of the exhange in "The Master and Margarita":
`Dostoevsky's dead,' said the citizeness, but somehow not very confidently.
'I protest!' Behemoth exclaimed hotly. 'Dostoevsky is immortal!'
I, too, protest! Solzhenitsyn is not 'normal'!
Cool quote!
Thanks. I agree. I loved that line when I first came across it. I love that whole passage. Well, why not... here it is:
A pale and bored citizeness in white socks and a white beret with a nib sat on a Viennese chair at the corner entrance to the veranda, where amid the greenery of the trellis an opening for the entrance had been made. In front of her on a simple kitchen table lay a fat book of the ledger variety, in which the citizeness, for unknown reasons, wrote down all those who entered the restaurant. It was precisely this citizeness who stopped Koroviev and Behemoth.
'Your identification cards?' She was gazing in amazement at Koroviev's pince-nez, and also at Behemoth's primus and Behemoth's torn elbow.
`A thousand pardons, but what identification cards?' asked Koroviev in surprise.
'You're writers?' the citizeness asked in her turn.
'Unquestionably,' Koroviev answered with dignity.
"Your identification cards?' the citizeness repeated.
'My sweetie ...' Koroviev began tenderly.
'I'm no sweetie,' interrupted the citizeness.
'More's the pity,' Koroviev said disappointedly and went on; 'Well, so, if you don't want to be a sweetie, which would be quite pleasant, you don't have to be. So, then, to convince yourself that Dostoevsky was a writer, do you have to ask for his identification card? Just take any five pages from any one of his novels and you'll be convinced, without any identification card, that you're dealing with a writer. And I don't think he even had any identification card! What do you think? 'Koroviev turned to Behemoth.
'I'll bet he didn't,' replied Behemoth, setting the primus down on the table beside the ledger and wiping the sweat from his sooty forehead with his hand.
'You're not Dostoevsky,' said the citizeness,who was getting muddled by Koroviev.
'Well, who knows, who knows,' he replied.
`Dostoevsky's dead,' said the citizeness, but somehow not very confidently.
'I protest!' Behemoth exclaimed hotly. 'Dostoevsky is immortal!'
'Your identification cards, citizens,' said the citizeness.
'Good gracious, this is getting to be ridiculous!' Koroviev would not give in. 'A writer is defined not by any identity card, but by what he writes. How do you know what plots are swarming in my head? Or in this
head?' and he pointed at Behemoth's head, from which the latter at once removed the cap, as if to let the citizeness examine it better.
'Step aside, citizens,' she said, nervously now.
Koroviev and Behemoth stepped aside and let pass some writer in a grey suit with a tie-less, summer white shirt, the collar of which lay wide open on the lapels of his jacket, and with a newspaper under his arm. The writer nodded affably to the citizeness, in passing put some nourish in the proffered ledger, and proceeded to the veranda.
'Alas, not to us, not to us,' Koroviev began sadly, 'but to him will go that ice-cold mug of beer, which you and I, poor wanderers, so dreamed of together. Our position is woeful and difficult, and I don't know what to do.'
Behemoth only spread his arms bitterly and put his cap on his round head, covered with thick hair very much resembling a cat's fur.
And at that moment a low but peremptory voice sounded over the head of the citizeness:
'Let them pass, Sofya Pavlovna.'
I can't figure out which part of that passage is best: the great humor and wit, the beautiful style of Bulgakov, or the biting satire of Soviet society.
(I know, we're now way off topic on this thread, but I couldn't help but post that passage from Bulgakov. No more straying.)
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