Now I no longer live in our clear, rational world; I live in the ancient nightmare world, the world of square roots of minus one.
Interpretation
This quote reflects a departure from rationality into a more chaotic and abstract existence.
Yevgeny Zamyatin's quote highlights the shift from a clear and logical understanding of reality to a realm filled with confusion and irrationality. The metaphor of 'square roots of minus one' illustrates the concept of imaginary numbers, symbolizing how he has become immersed in a complex and perhaps disturbing world that defies straightforward reasoning.
In practice
In a philosophical seminar discussing the nature of reality.
The knife is the most durable, immortal, the most genius thing that man created. The knife was the guillotine; the knife is the universal means of solving all knots; and along the blade of a knife lies the path of paradox - the single most worthy path of the fearless mind.
Accentuated plainness and accentuated vice ought to bring about harmony. Beauty lies in harmony, in style, whether it be the harmony of ugliness or beauty, vice or virtue.
The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy...
The lilac branches are bowed under the weight of the flowers: blooming is hard, and the most important thing is - to bloom. (“A Story About The Most Important Thing”)
A man is like a novel: until the very last page you don't know how it will end. Otherwise it wouldn't be worth reading.
Knowledge, absolutely sure of its infallibility, is faith.
I could not understand why men who knew all about good and evil could hate and kill each other.
I am not good. I am not virtuous. I am not sympathetic. I am not generous. I am merely and above all a creature of intense passionate feeling. I feel—everything. It is my genius. It burns me like fire.
That which is striking and beautiful is not always good, but that which is good is always beautiful.
The more often we see the things around us - even the beautiful and wonderful things - the more they become invisible to us. That is why we often take for granted the beauty of this world: the flowers, the trees, the birds, the clouds - even those we love. Because we see things so often, we see them less and less.
Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.
There is no doubt whatsoever that the universe is the merest illusion.
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