A ray of light in the kingdom of darkness

Abstract

Where should I go now? Home? No, to go home is the same as going to the grave. Yes, to home, or to the grave … It is better in the grave … A little grave under a tree … How fine! The sun warms it, the rain washes it. In the spring the grass will grow over it, soft grass … The birds will fly to the tree, they will sing, raise their young. The flowers will blossom: yellow ones, red, blue … all kinds … all kinds. How quiet, how nice everything will be. I feel somehow better! I don't even want to think anymore about life. To live again? No, no, I don't want to. It's not worth it. Aleksandr Ostrovskii, The Storm , 1859 To live in the kingdom of darkness is worse than death. Nikolai Dobroliubov, “A Ray of Light in the Kingdom of Darkness,” 1860 In 1859, the radical literary critic Nikolai Dobroliubov published one of his most influential articles entitled “The Kingdom of Darkness.” Applying the principles of real criticism, Dobroliubov interpreted the dramatic corpus of the well-known playwright, Aleksandr Ostrovskii, as an expression of real Russian life. This was a world of petty tyranny ( samodurstvo ), particularly in the family, and its primary consequence was the deformation of the human personality. Not only did it produce “an external submissiveness and a dulled, concentrated grief;” it also encouraged “a slave-like cunning, the most vile deception, and treachery without conscience.”