I talked to Evgeny earlier today, it was like talking to Leo Tolstoy.
Well done.
And so, Karam, thank you for helping Stephen organise Evgeny.
So well done, good job.
Alright everybody, welcome to Medical Doctors for Covid Ethics International.
In today's discussion, this group was founded by Dr Stephen Frost over three years ago with
a desire to pursue truth, ethics, justice, freedom and health.
Stephen has stood up against government and power over the years and has been a whistleblower
and activist.
His medical specialty is radiology.
I'm Charles Covess, the moderator of this group.
I've practiced law for 20 years before changing career 31 years ago.
We comprise lots of professions here and we're for all around the world.
Many of us thought that vaccines were okay.
Now many of us proudly say yes, we are passionate anti-vaxxers.
If this is your first time here, welcome.
And feel free to introduce yourself in the chat and where you're from.
If you publish a newsletter or a podcast or you have a radio or TV show or you've written
a book, put the links into the chat so we can follow you, promote you and find you.
Most of us understand we're in the middle of World War III and that the medical science
debate is only one of 12 battlefields of this latest World War.
There's no time to be tired.
I assess we're four years into a seven year war.
So we've got plenty of work to do.
Most of us understand the development of science and the science is never settled.
Some of us believe that viruses exist.
Some of us believe that viruses are a hoax and some of us are on the fence.
And many of us consider that having a debate on that topic is a misleading one in the context
of the threats that we face.
This meeting runs for two and a half hours afterwards.
For those with the time, Tom Rodman runs a video telegram meeting.
Tom puts the links into the chat if you're able to join.
We will listen to our guest presenter Evgeny Lergedin for as long as Evgeny wishes to speak.
And then we have Q&A.
Stephen Frost, by long established tradition, asks the first questions for 15 minutes.
There's a free speech environment with appropriate moderating.
Free speech is crucially important in our fight to preserve our human freedoms.
If you're offended by anything, be offended.
We are lovingly not interested.
We reject the offense industry that requires nobody to say anything that may offend another.
We come with an attitude and perspective of love and not fear.
Fear is the opposite of love.
Fear squashes you.
Love, on the other hand, expands you.
These twice weekly meetings are not just talk fest.
An extraordinary range of actions and initiatives have been generated from linkages made by
attendees in these meetings.
If you have a solution or a product or links or resources that will help people, put the
details into the chat.
The meeting is recorded and is uploaded onto the Rumble channel.
And we're now delighted to welcome our guest presenter today, Evgeny Legodin.
And let me tell you a little bit about him.
He was born in the Soviet Union in Sverdlovsk.
Evgeny can tell me that.
Now called Yekaterinburg.
It's the same city where Boris Yeltsin came from.
He was in the Soviet army for a year, studied medical school for six further years and after
graduating, specialised for one year in infectious disease unit and then worked for 10 years
for a pharmaceutical company.
Since the Second Chechen War, he's been in opposition to the government organising protests
in support of human rights.
In 2011, he left Russia due to criminal prosecution and arrived in the UK.
He had a basic knowledge of English, but learnt in an intensive way for one year, passing
several exams to confirm his diploma.
In 2015, he moved to Scotland to work as a junior doctor.
He chose Scotland under the influence of two novels by Walter Scott.
He was re-reading them prior to his application.
He worked in Elgin where Macbeth killed King Duncan.
In Aberdeen, where Lord Byron spent his infancy.
In Inverness, the location of some Walter Scott's novels.
Now he's in Glasgow, the most Soviet town in the UK, according to Evgeny.
Evgeny has been training in psychiatry in the UK where he discovered a tremendous amount
of systemic patient harm due to the inappropriate use of therapeutic medications, resulting
in his whistleblowing activities which have delayed his career due to unfounded accusations
and investigations, all of which have failed to demonstrate any wrongdoing on his behalf.
Evgeny is passionate about reading and you can almost always find him relaxing with a
book.
He has compiled an ever-evolving list of the 100 books everyone must read and re-read.
Today he would like to talk about one of them.
We welcome you Evgeny and we thank you again Stephen Frost for creating this group and
for organizing Evgeny to be with us today and Karam for the help that you've given
Stephen in organizing Evgeny.
Evgeny, we are in your hands.
You muted Evgeny.
Is it Evgeny or Yevgeny?
Like yes, Evgeny.
There is a Y, yeah, okay, very good.
Thank you very much for this introduction and thank you for this hospitality.
It will be an interesting experience to talk like that via Zoom with people I believe from
different even continents.
Nothing to add to my career and all the time I am contemplating about actually can art,
can books, can good literature influence your life?
In psychiatry I am on the psychological side of psychiatry.
We can divide all psychiatrists into huge camps.
One of them we call them biological who think that, oh, something wrong with our brains,
it's chemical imbalance, let's give this chemical and everyone will be happy.
There are other psychiatrists that belong to this circle in the UK called Critical
Psychiatric Network where we think that all severe, all extreme psychological distress
which can present with voices or change in mood, down mood or manner, it's actually
a result of life adversities, especially childhood adversities.
I always think when I am taking history how this person grew up, what were relationship
between the parents, what were relationship with the siblings, what was going on in nursery,
in school, etc., etc.
Because I believe that the person is a product of the environment and family.
And that's why I am always thinking in what extent the books we read influence our life
decisions.
And in my own experience I think that it happened several times.
So, there was already mention in this thing where I was in 2014 making a decision where
to continue my medical training in the UK.
At this time I was living in County Durham and I was going to apply for training program
in the area Newcastle or Durham.
But at the same time for some coincidence I was reading these two novels and one of
them by the way mention Castle South to Aberdeen.
I've never been in Scotland before.
So, I wasn't keen to go to Scotland, maybe apart from city Glasgow where I was keen to
see houses designed by Charles-René Macintosh who I believe influenced modern architecture.
And the landscape I was thinking I got in Russia the same as well because I am from
Ural mountain and it's also mountainous area with lochs.
The only difference that we got more snow than in Scotland.
But when I read these two novels...
So, back to these novels.
And when I read these Walter Scott novels I just saw a similarity between the characters
of Scottish people and Russians.
I thought like they are more open-hearted.
And then I was just amazed by the history of Scotland from these novels and I thought
oh wow I will move from England and I will never return.
And then I made my application to Scotland just praying God oh please give me Scottish
placement.
And then I was looking for...
I was choosing between different cities.
So the choice was between south of Scotland, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Elgin.
And again I was praying oh please give me a location to Elgin because there is a fantastic
small hospital there.
And also it's a historic place where real Macbeth killed real King Duncan.
So it's like sort of literary place.
And I've never regretted.
So and there I meet my friend Karam Sassam.
All the time...
Sorry Karam for speaking out that.
I have an argument with him.
And I say that the knowledge or things they don't come from Twitter.
They come from books, from reading books.
All the time when he is telling me something I'm asking him Karam if it's not a scientific
paper or magazine could you give me please like a book to read about that.
Where this idea comes from.
Because again I don't think that we can build our knowledge just on short messages in Twitter.
So we need to read the books and because the books allow us to create some sort of picture
of this world in the head.
The world is very complex thing.
We can see the same thing but we can have different like idea what's this thing about
in our head our perception and different angles and etc.
So and I was pushing Karam to push him like all the time that Karam you need to read some
great books.
And Karam told me I think it was 2015 or 2016 like again okay give me make me a list.
How many books Karam do you want?
Like 5, 10?
I think he said like 50.
I said no.
Okay let's do it 100.
100.
And I just made this list to be honest I haven't changed it since then.
Maybe I will remove one title and add another one.
But when I was making my list I was thinking that this list should include culturally important
texts.
Because so many great books written in the last like 4,000 years in different continents
in different places.
The life is very short.
We cannot we cannot like read everything so we need to choose.
It's like for example with the with the Emile Zalat the French writer who is in my list
and I left there only two novels.
Germinal and Thérèse Racane.
Thérèse Racane by the way was one of the first book Karam read from this list.
But Emile Zalat he wrote a lot of great novels.
But again we cannot read all of them.
So and all the time I am like tempted not to go beyond this list.
But do you know what has happened recently at my work?
So with my colleague we were discussing literature and I asked like what you are reading now?
And she said oh I am reading Emile Zalat I am reading Asanfar.
In English translation it's called The Trap.
So the novel that I never encountered and she said oh this lady doctor she said like
oh I hate this book it's like horrible you can't get like into the head of the people
in this book and the stuff.
So but I was intrigued because in my experience from other novels by this writer I was thinking
that it's impossible because Zalat he was one of the best writers in 19th century
who actually got into the head of the person describing what people were thinking
and how they were feeling.
And this is like the favorite bit of psychiatry.
Like what actually people think because they feel in certain way because of their thoughts.
And on my return home I took the I found the copy on the internet of this novel
and I read it and I thought oh my god it's another masterpiece of Zalat.
What to do?
Because I knew that I will definitely read it.
And all the time again with Karam I am saying Karam apart from carefully choosing the books
for reading we also need to reread them.
I don't believe just in reading.
We need to reread some pieces of fiction so they get in our head so they will be in our sort of consciousness.
Why I'm thinking that?
Because first of all every time when reading the same novel it looks like different thing
because of your life experience.
You're sort of drawing slightly different picture.
It's in a way it's like Hamlet where you got the piece by Shakespeare
but different theaters they present their adaptations and their movies.
So it can happen as well with a book.
And I recall with Walter Scott whom I mentioned today that 10 years ago I reread I Wenhol
which I read when I was like 12.
First of all I was impressed like how did they manage to get in school
to read this thick book with a serious topics and a lot of historical background.
What was the name of the book?
I Wenhol.
Ivan Ho.
Yes so we'll have to help you with the pronunciation Evgeny.
So and then I thought that no it's not a child book it's an adult book
because now when they have like sort of aesthetic taste and taste literature
and as a professional reader I can see a lot of stuff
and I can notice a lot of stuff funny stuff where which I haven't noticed when I read it for the first time
and sometimes it could be amusing where Walter Scott describes
the garment or armory on some person in totally dark room
and you're thinking like but on earth how can you see what was the color of his like I don't know
of his shirt etc etc.
And then some of the books in the reading again you appreciate that actually they are adult
for example Three Musketeers another book I recommended to Karam Three Musketeers
and Three Musketeers I think which I read around like 10 or 11
it was the book that where I learned what is love
what is loyalty what is friendship
and I think it's one of the greatest book in this respect
and all the time if I'm thinking about something doing something
I'm thinking about myself and comparing them with the characters from this book
or from other books so it's sort of I have some sort of moral code
which comes from these books I won't slightly deviating from the topic of this list
I want to say several words about what was the attitude to books in the Soviet Union if you don't mind
Oh please do yes please
So I think it was some sort of pandemic or epidemic which started after October revolution in 1917
because before Bolsheviks before Lenin before Trotsky before Stalin
only a bunch of people in Russia maybe several thousand managed to read these great novels
by Dostoevsky or Tolstoy
there were a few copies and most of the peasants and that was the population of Russian Empire
almost to I think it was more than 200 millions of people
most of them were just illiterate and the books were unavailable for them
so and when revolution happened during the civil war when the country was just surviving
the new regime was just surviving industry in ruins hunger
the Russian writer Gorky met Lenin and he said that the main thing revolution should do is
first of all give literacy to every peasant to every citizen of the country
and the second one we need to translate the best literature of the world into Russian language
we need to find the best samples of world literature
we need to translate it and to commission it to the great Russian writers and poets like Pasternak or Akhmatova
and we need to publish them
wait who is the second one in?
Akhmatova, Akhmatova
so she was a lady poet and
was she in India?
no no no she was a Russian poet
sorry yes
by the way if there are some of you living in London and going to national gallery
so when you enter the main entrance of national gallery there is a mosaics there
mosaics made maybe like in late 20s and 30s and there are allegorical figures on the floor
so one of them I think it's called compassion or passion
so actually it's a portrait of Akhmatova when she was young
she was one of the we can say four main poets although we have hundreds of them great poets
but she was on the par with Pasternak who wrote Dr. Zhivaga and Pasternak himself he was a poet
and Pasternak he was commissioned to translate some important fiction drama and poetry from the west
so he translated the main plays by Shakespeare
Hamlet, Hinley, Romeo and Juliet, Anthony and Cleopatra, Othello, Henry IV, two parts
so and although we have a lot of translations of these things in Russian
before revolution after revolution here's translations how to come what to say about them
it's like Shakespeare speaking in Russian
it's a poet who speaks in Russian and it's like a live Shakespeare
we understand Shakespeare better than British why?
because for modern British the text and the verses of Shakespeare slightly outdated
there is a lot of echoism old words but in Pasternak translation it's a modern Russian language
and it's a language of Russian golden age of poetry
so Pasternak also translated Goethe Faust
he translated dramas plays by Schiller, by German Romantics, by Spanish writers
and so that was his contribution into world culture that he sort of opened the door
for Russian, for Soviet citizens for great achievements in literature, fiction and poetry
and the same heroic deed was done by other poets
like Akhmatova she was translated plays by Victor Hugo
so and again they were not just scientists who making sort of literal translation
quite often Oxford classic series you can see that they are just scientists who are translating text
it's just some sort of black and white copy from the original
they cannot recreate like the spirit, the spirit of the work
and with their literal translation they actually destroys the poetry
so and this work which was started by Gorky, this writer who went to Lenin
and the Soviet state began to fund all this work for translation
and also they founded an institute to search for world literatures
where there were we can say specialists who are regularly reading what's published in Latin America
what's published in like in France
so they were reading that and trying to find the pearls in all these things that are published
so that was the work which Gorky started and it culminated in late 60s
in 1967 there was a project by one of the main publishing houses in Russia
where they carefully choose 200 to publish in 200 volumes
the best of the world literature
and it goes in chronological order from the ancient times
so we got epic of Gilgamesh, some pieces of Bible, ancient Indian poetry
ancient Chinese poetry, ancient even there are pieces there from ancient
I think Babylon, Shumer from these countries
and it goes chronologically through different continents to our time to 20th century
and they compiled that in 200 volumes
where you got ancient times, ancient Rome, ancient Greece, ancient China
then we go to middle ages Europe and Japan, India, Vietnam, Korea
and through the middle ages they go to Renaissance period
in Europe, Italy, Spain, Britain, also ancient Russian literature
and then 17th century, 18th century, 19th century, 20th century
so apart from Russian classics which we already know
there is no need to translate them
apart maybe from the old songs composed like 1000 years ago
where you need at least a translation or notes
with the translation of certain words
annotations
so we got the world literature
and since then I think
and this was like in the blood of our families in school
so in school there was a compulsory program for my grandparents
and for my parents and for myself
we got foreign literature
there were how say it subjects
so there was foreign literature, Russian literature
it's year by year
and all the pieces of fiction were compulsory
so you need to read them during summer holidays
and in Russia they are from 1st of June till 31st of August
so you got three months
and before your summer vacations you got a list
it's just in the end of your textbook
that for the next year you need to read
and when I was I think 13
I recall that in this list there was like
you need to read Donkey Hot
to volumes
and you need to read Crime and Punishment
so the next year when I was 13
in this list was War and Peace
and that's in Russian
it's published in two separate volumes
it's like a huge book
and all these readings were according to the age
that when I was even in the nursery
and I started reading in the nursery
so I was 5 or 6
I got do you know an adapted chapter
from Victoria Goliya Mizorably
which is an adult book
but what they have done
they took two episodes about Little Girl Gazette
how she was mistreated by these guys
and they also took the chapter Barricades and Death of Havros
or Gavros
so I read it already at this age
as an adapted version
and then Russian people and Soviet people
they spend a lot of money
not a lot of money
they make a lot of effort to create home libraries
where they got books
and also there was a thing where
we were borrowing books from the neighbors
or they were borrowing books from us
and essentially we were reading the same books
I was reading the same books at school
as my parents were reading
and as my grandparents
so we were on sort of the same wavelength
and it goes to the level
to such extent in Russia
that quite often
the characters of these novels
mostly from War and Peace
and Eugene Anabas
or Eugene Anagen or Eugene Anagen by Pushkin
they are some sort of members of your family
and sometimes as a joke
the members of your family
they give you different names
or in a school you give nicknames
or you got nicknames
according to this little character
it's like very funny
because the family and the schools
people easily spotted the traits of the character
and these traits of the character
they correspond to some
like literary character
so it's like a fun where
my father he was calling me
Pierre Bezouhov
so this like person from War and Peace
who is like in glasses
Pierre Bezouhov
and at school
although I was Yevgeny
almost like Eugene Anagen
but actually some people called me Anagen
but some called me
with the name Pichorin
and I think Anagen is like misanthropic character
sort of romantic hero from Lermontov novel
A Hero of Our Time
I've read that
Lermontov by the way
and it shows that there are no boundaries
between liturgies and between people
because Lermontov himself
he is of Scottish origin
his ancestors they came to Russia
like to serve Russian tsars
and in some of his novels
when you read now
you can see the influence of Walter Scott
German Romantics
writers
it was sort of a small sis between liturgies
today when I will talk about Don Quixote before that
I want to mention this thing
how the things go through the time
and that's the importance of reading
especially old classics
and I'm talking about this like standard list
Yevgeny
we talked today
and what really impressed me
you started me to think about
you said that
that society was atomised
not just in the UK
but everywhere
and it was deliberately done
especially in the West
but the point was that you said
if you read the great classics
so you said now
you said the children were reading the same books
as their grandparents
that meant they had something to talk about
if everybody has different interests
going on the internet
and then going into rabbit holes
and getting into cults
and echo chambers
but in Russia it seems that somebody
has maybe Gorky understood
that the way to keep values
if you like
was to kind of get everybody to read the classics
because then at least they got a conversation
between the children and the grandparents
and the grandparents
as happens in
and we haven't got that in the West
they've taken it away from us
and that's what we need to reverse
I think
I understand your point of view
but I think it's just a byproduct of classical education
which originated mostly in 19th century
because this system of reading classics
it was in France
in Germany in a way
maybe in Britain
so it's not only like Russian experience
but it's like in Russia
that the state
gave money
to poets
and great Russian writers
to translate the best things created in the world
created in Europe
created in India
created in Japan
in China
because we know that artists
or writers they suffer
how much money they will earn from selling their books
but they were just getting regular salary
for doing this job
I will give an example
we have several translations of Divine Comedy
by Dante into Russian
but the best one
was done by the poet
who was very close to Pastor Nak and Akhmatova
so he was a poet himself
and he spent I think
so he started to translate in 1939
just before the war
the first songs from the book
and he finished the work
and published it in 1950
so it took almost like 11 years
to translate this piece of work
where he studied everything about Dante
he obviously read and knew everything
that Dante could read and touch
he looked into all the commentaries
and he recreated this thing
in a poetry
so in Russian it's not a Prasek translation
it's something like Dante reciting his tussens
in Russian
so going back to this thing
this thing we see now
with the internet
and also with the appearance of popular culture
when the society is atomized
it's like a by-product
and this thing when we are reading the same book in Russia
oh, Stephen disappeared
so it was a by-product
it wasn't a purpose
I think I just reckon that the main reason
why Gorky went to Lenin
was an aesthetic reason
aesthetic and also educational
because I believe Gorky like myself
he believed that we can raise new people
or we can make people spiritually better and richer
if they know these treasures well literature
I think that was the purpose
and he was a writer himself
so he knew that
it's a pity that these treasures are sort of hidden
from millions of people
so it was some sort of
enlightening thing
because from great books we can learn a lot of things
although we can get aesthetic pleasure
we can have the topic for discussion like today
and they hope that in our age
where everyone
again the society became atomized
where we create
so the industries
the entertainment industries
the publishing industries
they create sort of niches
where people go
the novels for ladies
or historical novels
or detectives
so everything is atomized
and people they just follow this
and they read like these bestsellers
they read them to the point that
actually when they meet somebody
they find out that nobody read that
nobody
and they discuss things like Game of Thrones
I mean TV series
not even the book Game of Thrones
if they have seen it
they can understand mass, pop, culture
things
I read War and Peace when I was 18
I was astonished that
I've only met about
two or three people who've read War and Peace
in my life
yeah so that's the point
and just imagine that
all the population of the Soviet Union
in all these republics
it was compulsory reading in their school
but at the same time
apart from War and Peace
there was a great medieval poem
by Shota Rostavely
so he was a Georgian poet
I think in 13th century
and he wrote something in verse
which is no worse
than Tristan and his old legend
and this thing in the Soviet Union
it was translated from Georgian to Russian
to Estonian to Ukrainian to Lithuanian
so it was translated into all languages
in the Soviet Union
and so people read it
so it was some sort of enrichment of the culture
so this list is just
there was a question in the chat
I think John Lukacs who's a podcaster
he was asking me
why I read War and Peace
can you tell him why everyone should read War and Peace?
I think it's
I'm struggling to answer this question
because there are personal reasons why I read
and I'm thinking like what should I tell you
why you should read
but I will just share my experience
why I read and reread it
so for me it's like rewatching a movie
I always compare it
it's like a DVD I put in my head
so I'm just rewatching and seeing the same things
and Tolstoy in contrast to some other writers
he managed, of all the writers I think
he managed to capture the flow of the time
so the dialects and the description in the scenes
it's just exactly like a script
where it's in a normal temp of tempering of our life
in contrast to Dostoevsky
where quite often the scenes are in sort of accelerated
hysterical movement
just accelerated
and in contrast to Marcel Proust
who slowed the time
who just chased the train of the thoughts
going from him, recalling his summer vacation
with his aunt or grandmother
so there are opposites
but Tolstoy I think
he tried to be a harmonious artist
he didn't like Shakespeare by the way
he thought a lot of hysterics
stuff unnatural
it's like very weird theater or opera
but he didn't like it
but he wanted some sort of to represent reality
the reality of time
and relationships in literature
there is another thing
it just shows how the characters are
they are like human
in the way that they have their flaws
and their best parts
and also there is an element
like Hitchcockian element
where Natasha Rastova
one of the four main characters
so she got a fiancé
who is a decent person
and she wants to marry him
but he wants to check your feelings
so he gave you like one year
to be just free
and in this one year
she falls in love with a scoundrel
with whom she abscondes from the house
so she elopes from the house with this guy
and you're thinking
oh my god
this stupid lady
this stupid girl
what you have done
you ruined everything
but it shows that this is life
nothing is ideal
this is like real life
and there are so many strong moments there
in the book
which
like a mixture of everything
by the way
it's like anecdote about Russian
how it was in our school
in the school we need to read totally
in totality
both books
but there is like a joke, an anecdote
that the teacher in the school
say like
okay boys you read war parts
but it's a joke
because in this book
you cannot separate them
yeah surely you can find
the description of the battles
of philosophy about Napoleon
and it comprises like a whole universe
do you know
there are books that comprise the universe
Brother Karamazov's
War and Peace like that
and again these books
they are not for reading
they are not to read the plot
they are to enjoy the scene
it's like the favorite song
or the favorite poem
which you read and you just
you have these feelings
because all the time you want to stop
Natasha Rastova
but you cannot
because she is doing that
yeah
she was my favorite character Natasha
yeah
I was 18
yeah
so
if you allow me to
I need to turn the light
because it's already slightly dark
in Glasgow BISEC
yeah sure
so and now
I just want to
to go to the book
that I wanted like sort of to sell you
if you haven't read it
we have a chat in this Zoom meeting
and
I was thinking today
for the audience
can people write their sort of
five top books they take on an inhabited island
just imagine this is the end of civilization
this is something like 451 Fahrenheit
all books destroyed
all books are banned
and you have only like five books somehow
like you preserved them
and you want to preserve them for humanity for yourself
so
you'd like people to put that in the chat would you
yeah in the chat like the list of their five books
that they will reread
reread and like preserve
so and I want to bring into discussion this book
so this is one of the English translations
Don Quixote
the book that celebrated
wait a minute
let's just make sure everybody heard that
so everybody on the call
well obviously not everybody is going to do it
because they're all rebels
which is good
but if you could put your favorite five books in the chat
those who wish to do so
no compulsion
oh we've got an eminent publisher here
I'd like to see his choices
yeah
and again
when I'm talking about the list of the books
I always say like is it culturally important
because some books influence other books
it means that to appreciate some books
you need to know other books
and I will show an example of Don Quixote
how I go from this book to another book
because it could be just like infection
several words I want to
and why I chose Don Quixote apart from
from my opinions
the greatest books
and as you know also it's a bestseller
apart from Bible
I think they counted that
it was published in different countries
in total in the last 400 years
more than
so it's the second place after Bible
so several words about the writer
and this is obviously
Miguel Cervantes de Saavedra
so we don't know too much about his life
because at this time people didn't bother
and if we find something in the archives
it could be some notary notice
or information about somebody
it could relate to our
Miguel Cervantes
or it can relate to another one
who is Miguel Cervantes
for example in Spain they found a note
that Miguel de Cervantes ran from Madrid
like absconded from Madrid at the age of 23
after Duel after killing somebody on Duel
so we don't know
was it our Cervantes or was it somebody else
but we know definitely that our Cervantes
most probably was born in the middle
of 16th century
not too much information about his parents
but possibly his father was a surgeon
possibly
and Cervantes he got good education
so he studied in the university
which is not far from Madrid
in the place where he was born
and then at certain age
he went into the army
so he decided
to be a soldier of fortune
and at this time
in Europe there was a huge war
between Turkish Empire, Ottoman Empire and Europe
so if you Google in internet
Ottoman Empire in different years
you can see a map where in different colors
they show how it grew
so it grew to the point that
they were almost beside Vienna
so and at this point
in the middle of 16th century
some European countries were so worried
that they organized like a mutual campaign
so United Campaign
Pope in Rome, Spanish King, money from Genoa
and Cervantes joined them
and he was serving on one of the ships
that participated in the famous battle
this one
and this battle happened off shore Greece
Lepanto
so and in this battle
these united forces of Europe
so they defeated Turks
but Cervantes he got severe injuries
he got three gunshot wounds
and to the extent that
the nerve was damaged in his left arm
and it was paralyzed since then
till the rest of his life
in some somewhere Cervantes wrote
in one of his books
in one of his literary fictions
the loss of his left arm was compensated
with his right hand
in the way that he was a writer
so after these troubles
after his recovery which took a lot of time
he was doing some small jobs
and at some point he went from Italy
to Barcelona on a ship
and at this time
in this place in Mediterranean Sea
there were a lot of pirates
mostly of them
they were from Northern Africa
from Algeria
from this area
not necessary that there were Arabs
many of them were by the way
former Christians or Europeans
who converted Islam
because that was the spread
initial of caliphates
and then of Turkish Empire
so these people were capturing
travelers in the Mediterranean
and then they were demanding ransom
from their relatives
so they captured Cervantes
and his older brother Rodrigo
so there were captives almost for five years
in the North Africa
so and there are like lucky coincidences always
first of all he is lucky that he hasn't been killed
in this battle
that he survived
it's a great luck
another one when he was on this ship
when he was captured
there were recommendation letters
I think from the Vice King of Napoli
something like that
and these pirates they thought that
he is an important figure
that they need to get from him
like huge ransom
and they didn't touch him
tried to preserve him
because they knew he will cost them
a lot of money they will get from him
in contrast to other prisoners who were easily
executed, impaled, tortured
so during this stay five years in prison
it wasn't actually a prison
you can find on the internet
how this prison looks like
it looks like a cave or a pit
where they were kept
I will be not surprised that he lost his state
his health you know
but he got a spirit and he stayed there
and he organized four attempts to abscond
to escape four attempts
I know about one of these escapes
where his comrades who just participated
because he was an organizer
and these guys I mean these Muslim people
who ruled this area they knew that he is an organizer
he is a leader
actually they executed all these guys
but they let Cervantes alive
eventually his family managed to get all this money
and buy him from this captivity
so he returned back to Spain
and at some time he was working as a tax collector
and again misfortune
so he was so honest that potentially somebody
harassed him and accused him of something
so and when there was this suspicion that he stole
this money from tax collection
he spent some time in prison in Madrid several months
so and there he began to write a book
Don Quixote
so prior to that
prior to that he already wrote one small novel
like pastoral novel
and he wrote or composed several plays
20 or 30 plays which didn't survive
at this time it's like Shakespeare
Shakespeare he never like
had planned to publish his plays
they were just things he wrote
they performed several times
and there is another play
what we have from Shakespeare
is just the drafts of his colleagues
who kept these sort of things
which they recalled or put down
so no early plays of Cervantes survived
he was very good in writing poetry
when the wife of the Spanish king died
Philip II, the second was the king at this time
so there was a competition
poetical competition to write
The Beautiful Sonnets on Her Death
so he got the prize for that
so he was a poet
so he tried himself in different genres
he tried himself to write poetry, drama
but there are other great guys who were working at this time
and I will just show maybe several books and mention that
so in theater at this time
there were great play writers like Lope de Vega
who wrote more than thousand plays
400 survived
there was the dramatist called Tifso de Molina
and he composed a drama about Don Juan or Don Juan
so that's the origin of this thing
which went later into European literature
Don Juan, this character
Pedro Calderon
so this dramatist was a philosopher and a play writer and a poet
and I will recommend if you have time
and if you manage to find
just to read one play by Calderon
which is called The Life is Just a Dream
it's fantastic, it's something on the level of Hamlet, of Shakespeare
poetical, philosophical at the same time
it's some sort of drama about matrix
where we live, do we live in reality, do we live in dream
and there is like very interesting funny plot there
so then there were
Evgeny, what was the name of that one?
so that was Calderon
just a second I will show you the book
a second
I can't find it now
sorry
yeah
is that illustrated as well?
yeah there are several illustrations there
how many books have you got Evgeny?
less than 2000 but not all of them are fiction
and some of them are duplicates like the same play by Shakespeare in different translations
or even the plays of Calderon like in different translations
and have you read all those 2000 books?
not all of them
have you read them all?
not all of them
I read this 2000
the one which is like in the Soviet Union, this 2000
but then you go like aside
like to different things
you deviate from this list
for example 2000
which 2000? the Soviet Union produced a list of books?
yeah the list, the publishing project where they published 2000 volumes of
it was called like the library of the world literature
and where can we find that list?
I think potentially there will be English articles about that
there will be a list there
and by the way every volume in this 200 was published 300,000 copies
300,000 copies
wow
so some writers they don't have these copies apart from this translation
so then there were writers
then there were writers who wrote
I don't know
have you heard about picaresque novels?
picaresque?
sorry how do you spell that?
it's like p-i-q-u-a-r-s-q-u-e
picaresque
yes I know the word but I haven't heard of those novels
so that's the specific genre which appeared in Spanish literature at the turn of 16th 17th century
it's a short novel about the life of some scoundrel or the person who is from the bottom of the society
picaro in Spanish means scoundrel
scoundrel like or the thief
so some people, educated people in Spain at this time
they were writing novels about this we can say people who are like at the bottom of society prostitutes or the thieves
they were writing books from their point of view
and there were three or four influential novels
and there are two things just about these novels
because I included one of these novels in my list 100 it's by Francisco Quivado
so El Buscon it's about the life of one of these scoundrels
and the funny thing is that it's written by the person who is not a scoundrel
it's written by educated person who knows apart from French, English, Italian, Latin and Greek
he knows Arabic, he knows Iverit
so this person was like a minister in the time of the skins
so he was sent with diplomatic missions to Italy back and forth
so this person from the high society is writing a novel
a literary novel about this scoundrel from the bottom of the society
and there were several novels like that
in some extent they influenced the appearance of the European literature as a genre
so in some way they influenced the appearance of Don Quixote as well
and many books since then they could be seen as sort of variations of these picaresque novels
where you got somebody who is a thief or prostitute
but actually they make the book and write it in the way that you have a sympathy for this person, for this outcast
I can say like some people argue for example that Thomas Mann he wrote the book called An Affair of Thomas Krull
it's also sort of education novel, it's called like education novel
where we see the development of the characters since his birth
but it's like with negative, like with a minus
a interesting thing
then we need to read some poets from this time and the famous one is Gengora
and in this time in Spain
so that's why when I'm reading Don Quixote
at the same time I'm reading dramas of the play writers of this time
and the poets of this time because every one of them got unique style
unique style
and next step what happens
when we look at the history of the peninsula we see how it developed
in the sense of what people populated it in different times
so initially there were Iberians
so that's why Romans called it Iberia
they were Celts
hence Celtibers
then Romans came, conquered Spain
and they founded their colonies in their cities
and some great people from ancient Roman came from Spain
for example Seneca the philosopher and writer
who was a tutor for Nero
or Macas Aurelius this philosopher emperor
he was born in Spain and he grew up in Spain
or Adrian the emperor who left
Adrian wall and also in his time they I think completed Pantheon in Rome
so and then after Rome what happens?
Rome destroyed goes away and then this huge movement migration of nations in Europe
fourth, fifth, sixth century
and Germanic tribes called Goths or Visigoths
they come and they come to Spain and they found these first kingdoms in Spain
so they stay in Spain and they were by the way they later turned to Christianity
at first they were using they were converted not converted
they were preaching or how could their confession was like Christianity
but like heretical one heretical
but then they turned like to full Christianity
and they were living in Spain without issues
but then what happened?
So Mohammed the prophet dictated sort of his book
so the Allah speak to him
and we see this movement of Arabic tribes which unite into first Arab caliphates
which begin to spread spread spread
so and when the first dynasty of this Arabian caliphate is overthrown in Damascus
and the new dynasty they assassinated all the members of this family
only one survived
so and this member of the family he runs from Damascus to northern Africa
and from northern Africa with his followers and tribes from the north of Africa
they just cross Gibraltar it's like small distance
and they go and conquer Spain without issues
it happened like that
there was almost no resistance
so and what Arabs do?
they bring the culture and they bring irrigation techniques from the from the from the east from Egypt to Arab
so along the rivers they create this irrigation canals
they begin to plant I think sugar cane if I'm not mistaken
cotton vignettes and everything
and the cities which were already there they begin to flourish
so they create huge and beautiful mosques and palaces
and also they invite one of these caliphs in Cordova
he invites translators he invites scholars
and what they do?
they search all Europe for all monasteries
they are seeking for all manuscripts in the 9th and 10th century
and they begin to translate them into Arabic
and as a result of it some of the works by Plato or Aristotle we know from Arabic translation
they didn't survive in original Greek
and that's because these guys in Cordova translated them in their time
so this is a rather cruel
but then although it was a time of tolerance in Spain
where Muslims lived together with Jews and also together with Christians
at some point these northern kingdoms which were still Catholic Aragon Castile Leon
they begin to conquer back Spain
so it took several hundred of years to conquer to the south to conquer to the south
so they used any civil strife within this caliphate
when these emirs, these caliphs, Islam caliphs they were weakened
so they used it to conquer back
so a long story but the thing is that
these scholars I mentioned
even this first emir of Cordova caliphate who ran from Damascus
who ran from Damascus, the survivor from the family, he's a poet himself
so in this case when I'm reading these poets of Spain who are Catholics from 15th century
I go because they were influenced by this guy who were before them
and I'm looking into Arabic poetry which was written in the courts of this Cordova
and I'm going to the south even to further Arabic poetry in Egypt, in Syria
and I go to the Islamic Arabic poetry which I discovered
so I'm looking how they influence it, how the poetic form develops
and how this poetry in 11th century, in 10th, 11th century from Spain
from this Islamic emirate influenced the poetry of poets in the southern France, in Provence
who in their turn influenced Dante
so it's like the spread of literary influences
so back to Reconquista, the process when the Spanish kingdoms got the territory back
where they expelled all Muslims from their territory
so 1492, the fall of the last emirate of Muslim states in Granada
the same year Columbus start his journey to the new
I was thinking that actually they just wanted to spread Christianity to everywhere
so that's why they didn't stop in the south of Spain
they just moved further to the northern Africa, to America
and when they traveled there, 1492, that was the year when the first chivalric novels appeared
and I will show one of them
so this is the title
this one
so it's called Amadis the Gaul
it's sort of fairy tale in the spirit of king Arthur and the knights of his table
it's like very simple stories, I got the Russian translations of them
they are very simple, there is like supernatural element there
there are people like Merlin, Enchanters and everything
so that literature was very popular in Spain at the beginning of 16th century
and there is evidence that these conquistadors that went to America
they took this novel to read
and many people believe that these conquistadors, they were thinking that there was these knights from these books
that they need to go to discover new countries to fight like, I don't know, some sort of strange creatures
they need to spread their Christianity everywhere
and they truly believe that it was like a feeling of them
because they are discovering things that nobody, no one saw in the world
so that was very popular literature at the time
and I just suspect that Cervantes, when he was in prison, he was reading one of his novels
and I think maybe he was annoyed with this unnatural situations, simple stuff
it was like very childhood and he thought like, I need to write some parody, satire on that
so that's why he started to write Don Quixote in this way
as a parody
but when he started to write in it, actually it grew from this initial idea
and it grew into something else
so it grew into the first European novel of our time, I think
where we see the characters who are developing through the novel
where we see a huge historical background
because again, it's like a movie
when you read Don Quixote, it's like a movie where you see everything
how people lived, how they were working in the fields, what they were doing in the villages
what was going on in the palaces, in the markets
and you meet all layers of society
it's like a fantastic thing
you cannot even make any proper adaptation of this book
so many things are, it's like war and peace
a lot of things comprise there
so just for those people, I don't want to offend people
I hope that people know what's the main plot
who are the main characters of Don Quixote
so that's by the way the first page of the first edition
Don Quixote
it's like 1905, so it was published 1905
you've got first edition at home
no, no, no
it's a huge treasure, it's like a folio of Shakespeare, it cost millions
oh I see, that was a phone scruff
so yeah, and that's the first page where in the first chapter
it starts something like that
in the village in La Mancha
and it doesn't matter what's the name of this village
there was an old Hidalgo
Hidalgo is like impoverished knight
who had a spear and an old shield
he had a horse and a dog
and then they describe that
and then in the second chapter
this impoverished knight who is around like age of 50
he read a lot of chivalric novels
so a lot of stuff like Amadis de Gaulle
because this novel was so popular
that people make money writing sort of imitations or continuations of this book
there were like a lot of 20 sequels
I think it's called Sequel
Yo, Kenny, did you say La Mancha?
La Mancha, yeah, La Mancha
that's in southern Spain, isn't it?
Yeah, in the middle Spain
which is almost, I will say like
it's almost like Russian steppe
with only difference there is no snow there
Yeah, a lot of people don't realize that Spain is the most mountainous country in Europe
and that includes Switzerland
but La Mancha
so La Mancha now, Yo, Kenny, isn't it known for
they have a tennis school there
thanks to Don Quixote
crazy
I mean that Don Quixote I think is a brand of Spain
you say Spain you think Don Quixote
you say Don Quixote you think Spain
he is associated with Spain
and he read these chivalric novels
and then
I don't want to interrupt you now
just very briefly
I just wonder whether you can find time
in space of 15 minutes or 20 minutes later maybe
if you could go through your list
and just say a brief few words about every book in your 100 list
you mean but not today
well I was thinking today if you could do it
but when you finished whatever it is that you're planning to say now
okay
so and this night he goes sort of like mad
in the way that he imagines that he is like this night errand
that he needs to go out and to do these heroic deeds
so he takes his old horse he puts on this old armory
and then he goes into travel
and then he finds this sidekick
so that's Don Quixote himself
and then that's his sidekick Sancho Panza
and they are different characters sort of
at the beginning of the book they are quite opposite
so one of them is like in the sky in the books
so he's thinking about ideals
and another one down to earth thinking all the time
where to eat where to sleep
like how to survive
yeah and it's interesting how conversations between them
dialogues interactions like influence each other
because when the Cervantes published the second part of Don Quixote
you can see that Don Quixote picked up some stuff from Sancho Panza
and Sancho Panza also is like infected
infected by Don Quixote ideas
I don't want to go into the famous episode with windmills
because everybody knows what has happened
there were windmills in La Mancha
and Don Quixote he was thinking these giants like
waving their hands so he attacked windmills
he thought they are giants but actually one of the sails
just knocked them down
although Sancho Panza wanted that windmills
although Sancho Panza wanted that
senor senor it's not like it's like windmills windmills
I want to touch one episode
it's in the first part of Don Quixote and it's book 22
so he's with Sancho Panza
they are somewhere in this like area
where at the normal tree is nothing just stones
and they see the convicts going somewhere
so they go to the port because these are criminals
they got their convictions
and they will be sent on galleys to row the fleet
Don Quixote asks some of these criminals what they have done
one of them stole linen, another was a pin
some minute stuff
one of them is scandral and saying like
oh do you know in the prison I'm writing a book now
and Don Quixote is asking like have you finished the book
and the scandral is like how can I finish I'm still alive
so like that
but then there is a lot of fun in these dialogues and everything
it's so humane and a lot of humor and a lot of observation of the life
and then Don Quixote
so if we look from our point of view
and we see this scene at the start
is any heroic deed there to do?
we got criminals
they got their like sentences
so the justice is served
nothing to do there
because these people got their punishment like according to the law
but Don Quixote what he is doing he is saying
although they committed crimes, although they are sentenced
we need to treat them with compassion
so and he frees them from these chains
the guards run away
and these criminals are set free
do you know?
so what this episode is all about
when I read it for the first time I was thinking this is absurd
he is going against the law
he is going against the crown
Sancho Panse is saying that senior senior we need to save ourselves
because these guards will run to the city and tell Inquisition that we freed the prisoners
but Don Quixote gives his argumentation
he is saying some people are unfortunate
some people don't know what pulls to and whom to bribe
in some cases the judge wasn't
so he is actually saying about restoring social justice
so that's the character
yeah and there were 40 heroic deeds like that
heroic deeds by Don Quixote
they are quite different
but then when Cervantes published the second book
the character he transforms
he transforms he turns totally different
in the middle of the book he is not Don Quixote which was before
he is like more hesitant
if with these prisoners he didn't have any hesitation to free them
now in the second book we see his doubts
what I want to say
yeah it's the book like to read and reread
because every of these heroic deeds
like you can have conversations just about one chapter
but some of the chapters
it's some sort of literary game
where I think the writer Cervantes is just
make a joke when we are reading it
I will just give an example of the chapters
we say
for example the chapter where he frees prisoners
chapter 22 about Don Quixote freed many wretches
who march against their will
were being taken where they would have preferred not to go
it's like instead of saying they are prisoners
that should be sent to this galaxy
and then the chapter 20
about the unprecedented and unique adventure undertaken by the villain Don Quixote de la Mancha
the one that with the last danger was ever brought to a happy conclusion
the only famous knight in the world
so there is actually no notion of that
but in this chapter if you read
the episode is like that
it's a knight
Sancho Panza he got diarrhea
sorry
and he relieves himself
and Don Quixote hears that
and he smells it
and he says
oh Sancho you are afraid of the next heroic deed
because we hear these sounds
and there are sounds in the air
like boom boom boom
and when they are approaching to this boom boom
there are huge hammers
automatic hammers that work there
but at this point Don Quixote is sober
and he is telling to Sancho Panza
Sancho they are not giants
they are like hammers
so and he is saying like
if there was a magician who turned these hammers into giants
that will be the moment when they will like fight with them
okay
let's go to the next one
that's brilliant Nick
you should be a storyteller Yavgeny for children
seriously
give them back on track
so these children should abandon all electronic devices
throw them away
of course
to save humanity this atomization is like
although it's like paradox
when we got mobile devices
they are connected
but actually they make people disconnected
it's like a paradox
so can you expand on that Yavgeny
or haven't you thought about it really
so I think that's really important lesson
from the last four years
people are addicted to their phones
and to their computers
and what's more they don't realize
that yes you can use computers wisely
but you have to have self-discipline
they don't even know what self-discipline is
so
could you talk about things like that
and also if you don't have people having the same conversation
like grandparents and children
and great grandparents and parents
then it's very difficult to build up values
and if you don't have values in the society
that society won't survive
and that's exactly where we are now
yeah I would say
I share this notion
and they think that
what happens
people have just forgotten simple psychology we can say
or how the brain is working
that the brain wants something easy
you know
because we need to think
to read
to contemplate
to have a meaningful discussion
we need energy, glucose
and the brain is limited in that
so the brain prefers lazy mode to relax
to gather food
to stuff yourself and to lay down
like Sancho Panza
so
we need, I agree with you
so we need will and effort
to create a complex intellectual product in our head
so in the case if we listen classical music
or read books like that
or doing mathematics, physics
like some stuff
which doesn't include scrolling Twitter
or Instagram with pictures
we need to create a complex product in our head
and I always say that we need for that to read books
in the topics
so we need to suffer essentially
we need to suffer to grow
if we don't suffer
if we're always looking for something
if we're always living a comfortable life
we're gonna remain like infants
never mind children
yeah there is a painting by Bregel
I think it's called something like
the people, it's like the famous allegorical painting
15th or 16th century
where is a tree
and on the tree
I think the food or the bread is like falling down
and there are like three fat people
abyss people under this tree
and they just open the mouth
and everything is going into their like
into their like mouth
yeah
like McDonald's hamburgers
yeah sort of exactly
by the way
it applies to Twitter or Instagram
because people
they seek sort of pleasure
because they are seeking pleasure
exactly
the pleasure from
and you can see the behavior
when they are scrolling some pictures
and they stop on one of them
it means like the rest of the stuff is not interesting
but they're interested in something
and they're like
they're sort of informational
diabetes I will call it
it's just all the time supported by this
like Instagram or things
by the way I want to mention that
that's their cult
that's their cult Yergeny
so they stop at something which supports their cult
so it seems to me that human beings
everybody wants to get everybody else into their cult
and some are more successful than others in getting them
so I'm trying to get you into the cult of
reading and reading good fiction
yeah
this cult
I think
everybody recalls how internet appeared
that initially people were writing in internet blogs
huge articles
two, three pages or even more
and then we went to Twitter
where everything is like short
I don't recall how many
124 signs or whatever
everything is short
and then Instagram
we don't need to write anything
you just make a picture and publish it
I invented coined the terms
something like
digital imbecility
or social media
quasi-dementia
because people if they are grown up in this way
when they are unable
to process and to create
have intellectual products
you can easily manipulate with them
absolutely
you can drop a slogan
and people just lose total ability
because the propaganda these days is very sophisticated
like safe and effective
safe and effective
and they all go along and show their left arm to whomever
yeah
so in the way that
the methods of propaganda now are very sophisticated
it's like how you choose the news to present on BBC
how you frame this news
for example yesterday or two days ago BBC reported
several dozens of Palestinians killed in explosions
in the tent camp
something like that in Rafa
so that's how it's framed
sort of passive form
you don't understand who is perpetrator
because we can frame it in another way
Israeli army bombed and killed and wounded
this amount of peaceful population
and people swallow it
they swallow
they don't just realize that
like they swallow this so called antidepressants
which are not antidepressants
which are doing more harm
because of these things
should I go into my list?
oh please yeah
so
from a psychiatrist point of view
what you just described
that people just go along with things
and do things which are harmful to themselves
can you see the explanation for that?
have they been psychologically tortured into a state of Stockholm syndrome?
or what happened in the last four years
that caused so many people to lose their heads
lose their brains
and they still
in my opinion they're still behaving like children
at least in the UK
I'm not like
anthropological sociologist or the person like that
but I think it was a process in time
and it didn't start like four years or even five years ago
it's like a long process
BBC as institution
was working as a propaganda tool
and I'm using the word propaganda in negative connotation
in the way that to hide the truth
to spin the facts
since its foundation in 28 or 29
or you can go through the periods, through the years
any conflict in country and outside was spinned
it was spinned by BBC who pretends to be like objective things
and they are selling this image through byproducts
through their soap operas
documentaries of Attenborough
through just telling their weather
or sort of so they are selling this
to do this like influence on the third country
and I'm thinking there is apart from that
there is an element of mass culture
which I think appeared with the capitalism
where it's like a paradox
this Don Quixote was published
I don't know 400 copies like first folio of Shakespeare
there were like 140 copies of first folio
1626 or whatever
so few people read that
but these days we can publish stuff in millions
we don't need to rewrite these manuscripts in monasteries
we don't need manually to print it like Gutenberg
in Amsterdam, in Madrid like on this primitive machines
now we can print this stuff in millions
and then with this thing
the industry, capitalist industry
they don't want to employ genius
they want something which will be like fast food
like Fifty Shades of Grey
Fifty Shades of Grey, bestseller, British bestseller
which is like from literary point of view
from my point of view is rubbish
we can analyze it as sociological
cultural logical thing
but this is like an example of mass culture
where you simplify everything to the point that anyone can consume it
even the idiot and you sell it
and you add there certain elements which could sell the product
either sex or images of little children or images of animals
so like that
Can I ask you again, you probably understand this
so the Soviet list of world literature
that fascinates me
Gorky goes along to Lenin
and Lenin takes Gorky's advice
presumably Gorky has huge influence over Lenin
but did he have influence over other people
and what would be the interest of the Soviet states
to kind of expose
so not only did they get the stuff translated
because of Gorky's intervention as far as I understand
but actually they printed a huge number of books
which reversed the previous culture of Tolstoy's books
only being read by a few people
maybe 20,000 people in the whole of Russia
is that right? In Tsarist Russia?
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly
So why did they do that?
because it was a dictatorship
arguably the Bolshevik revolution
and along comes the dictatorship
a totalitarian state it became in the end
but what was the interest in educating the people?
or was it to defeat the rest of the world?
It's like a huge discussion maybe for a separate meeting
Karam maybe knows a lot of things that I think
it could be a lot of discussion
what is dictatorship, what is totalitarian
but my point of view is like that
since maybe 17th, 18th century
since France, absolute is France of Louis XIV
and further all states
if we're talking about states in Europe and in the world
they are totalitarian in their nature
when I say totalitarian it means
the ruling class in any country controls what people think
they control and they impose the ideas of the ruling class
imposed on middle class
and they put in the submission lower classes
so everything is about this
everything serves this purpose
laws of the country
educational system
literature, fiction, cinema, music
everything, everything
even innocent entertainment products of Hollywood
they bear propaganda
take Dark Knight for example
on the surface this is an action movie about
Batman and Joker
but there is a deep message there
because if you analyze this act
you can see that the main character
he lives in a palace
he's on the side of a police
sort of, and law
and he's defending this Gotham which is like New York
so they show the role model for your generation
so they show what you should strive for
to be a Batman
like a lone wolf who is fighting
not against the system
and this is just an action movie
so what was going through Lenin's head then?
because it appears like a contradiction
so I think
I don't want to say that there were some sort of revolutionary idealists
no, they were very pragmatic people
but I think they wanted people to be sort of enlightened
educated in the way that
we should bring these treasures to the people
so did Lenin realize that actually his revolution wouldn't survive
if they didn't try to get some semblance of truth
and the best way to get the truth was to look at world literature
it was a brilliant idea, Gorky's idea was unbelievably brilliant
I didn't know that though
anyway thank you so much
carry on please
yeah so I start the list with Iliad and Odyssey
and again in my list there are books we can say from the west and from the east
at some point they are like separated
because some books in the west like Bible
I didn't include the Bible in this list
but it should be there
and I want to show you an example
so we didn't study Bible in school
but in our recommendation literature to read
was this like small thin book
which have we can say adapted rendering of New Testament and Old Testament
so it got all the chapters all the books of Bible
also it's accompanied with the like illustrations
in the way that you know what these books about
because without this book you cannot read Dostoevsky
you cannot read other writers
the same Don Quixote you will not understand that at some points he's like Christ
there is an episode where by Mischief he's suspended by his hand after
sort of the last supper
where he was sitting at the table
a long elongated table with 12 people
and he was in the middle
and he was preaching something about kindness
and after that he's like suspended by his wrist
so it's referring like to Christ
it's a sort of Spanish Christ figure
yeah so that was the book important for reading
so was that a reference to the crucifixion?
in Don Quixote
the one where the scene where he's going
yeah so the story is like that
Sancho Panst in Don Quixote they go to the village
and they stay at some how say it like hotel all the time
and somebody brings the table
and Cervantes says there was no round table
and there was no square table
but there was like elongated table
so apart from Sancho Panst in Don Quixote
there are other 10 people at this table
sorry there are 12 people
including Sancho Panst and Don Quixote he is like 13
so there are like 12 disciples 12 apostles
and Don Quixote begins to speak something about
doing good about these heroic deeds
all the time Sancho Panst is telling them
senior senior you need to eat you need to eat
and he's like abstaining from food
so it resembles like the last supper
and then when everybody goes to sleep
Don Quixote because he's a knight
and he has to defend this castle
because he's thinking that this poor hotel is a castle
and he has to defend them
so he goes on vigilance with a spear
sitting on the horse outside this like hotel
where the gates are closed
and two ladies play a joke
so they go into high window and they shout him
Oh Don Quixote Don Quixote
can we touch your hand because you are a great person
we just want to touch the hand of the great man
so he's sitting on the horse
the window is high
he's putting hand like that and what they do
they take the bridle I think it's called bridle
bridle bridle bridle
which is actually the bridle from the donkey
they take a bridle
make a loop like make a noose
so they catch his wrist of his arm
and the other like end of this bridle
they tie it to the noose
the noose
so they tie to something
so he's fixed and he cannot escape
his hand is up he's sitting on the horse
by the way I think he stood on the horse
so actually he stood to get to this window
he's standing on this horse
and he's barely breathing because he's afraid that the horse will run away
and he will just cannot
and the horse eventually goes away
and he is experiencing a crusading pain
and he's on this wrist
eventually somebody took him down
but for me it's some sort of
I don't know how to describe it
is it a parody or is it a referral to the Last Supper
and crucifixion of the Christ?
exactly
well the latter probably
but the thing is that with Don Quixote
many episodes they could be interpreted in different ways
ambiguous
it's not something like
it's not something like Steven Spielberg movies
where everything is chewed up
there is no ambiguity
you know definitely what's going on
there is no mystery
like in Kubrick's movies we are puzzling
we are not going to go on there
so some of the chapters of Don Quixote is like that
we are trying to get into his head
it's not always described
and we are trying
and there are like do you know these sort of associations
just quick example
he's encountering people who are
Don Quixote encountering people who are in this desert
have a carriage with lions
I think with two lions
he's approaching them
he's with Sanchez Panza
and he's saying oh another heroic dance
can you open the
door of this cage so I can fight these lions
everybody is afraid
Sanchez Panza is saying no senior please
they will eat us
the guys who are carrying this lion saying that
is he crazy
Sanchez Panza is saying no he's not crazy
but he is audacious
he's a hero
eventually everybody runs away
they open the door
and the lion just stretching itself
Don Quixote is saying something
but the lion goes back
so that's all heroic did
but what it shows
that actually
there are
I will say associations with something
which happened in the old Spanish epic song
about El Cid
national hero of Spain
where this hero El Cid
again there was a lion who went out of the cage
everybody ran away
but this El Cid
he shouted at the lion
took the lion by
how say it
by the neck and threw away
by the scruff of the neck
and I'm thinking
is it a referral to this episode
maybe it's the same lion
because he already knew that
you don't play
jokes with national heroes of Spain
like this El Cid or Don Quixote
so the lion just retired
but again it just shows that
Don Quixote changes his title
so it's like important again moment
and we can interpret it in many ways
it just shows that
and also the question like why the lion retreated
was it interference of God or Providence
or was it a fate
Yeah
So Yevgeny
just very quickly
you're from the Soviet Russia
and
I think you
you're from the kind of
mid 70s is that correct
that's about the time you were
you came to life as it were
Yeah
So there was quite a bit of the Soviet Union still to run
but so there's a massively rich culture
in Soviet Russia
and then of course in Germany
and
and then of course you've got
Spain and Italy
and which Greece as well
but which of these cultures
you seem to be an admirer of the Spanish culture
is that right
is that the richest culture in your opinion or not
Ah
I would say like that
all world
because there are treasures
which are spreaded everywhere
everywhere
you take the continent and you will find something there
you can take for example African continent
and I got anthology from this 200 like best books
and it comprises the best poets
of 20th century in Africa
in every single African country
Sure
You can see some stuff which is
we can see is like sort of political
and also like audacious what they wrote
Yeah
and there is stuff experimental
and there is a variety of that
and the same with Latin America
Hmm
So we can't ignore any of it
essentially because the genius might come from
the genius might come from anywhere
Yeah
It can't be predicted
Is that right?
Yeah because the treasures
the treasures like they are spreaded everywhere
but there are certain books I would say
that are very influential
they appear at certain time
and they are like these things
like I will say that
Russian culture is close
we can say in spirit to European cultures
in great extent
Hmm
Don Quixote is we can say
is a Russian character as well
in Moscow by the way Spain at some point
I think it was in 60s and 70s
they give a present a copy of the monument
to Cervantes
so it's in Moscow in one of the parks
and the thing is that
again because of our writers and poets
like Pasternak
these writers they are like part of our
sort of cultural background
they are like in our
in a head
in a similar way where my parents can tell me that
or you are fighting with windmills
like with this your psychiatry things
what you are trying to do
it's like
sort of crazy behavior where you are jumping on
these lines
and you don't know what are the consequences
but the main point is to be audacious
so that's the thing that you learn
Yeah we like danger don't we
and to restore justice
so that's like
that's the idea in Don Quixote
Yeah
So Jenny I think people will be very interested in your list
and I wonder whether
how you organized it
so have you started
is it kind of the first books
are they the most important in your view
or are they just the first you thought of
No I think they are in chronological order
I just took the list of these 200 volumes
and I look at them
200 not 100
How to explain that
these 200 volumes
like Russian project
some of the books they included
books so in one
under one cover
for example under this cover
there are
six different dramatists
and several plays
so they are under one cover
so I counted them one volume
I understand
for example the Picaresque novels
there are six novels there
five of them are Spanish
and the sixth one is by Thomas Nash
actually who was a contemporary of Shakespeare
so there are six of them
but in my list it's like very
compromised thing
I tried to pick up something like
important and they are arranged just in chronological order
So which is the best way to
talk about these books so that we mention
each one of them
So what I'm essentially trying to do is
so it's not just the people on the call
people watch these videos afterwards
you know and it may be that
you know this is your first interview ever
well if it's an interview I can't interview
but I'm trying my best
and so I think that people
will be very interested in your list
and I'm trying to sell the list
and the reason why they need to look at the list
which you've explained
but maybe people have missed it
you know you've got limited time now
when you're a teen you think you've got all the time in the world
but actually
other things take over and you haven't got much time to read
so most people anyway
a lot of people like you make time
So I would say that
the people who are interested in the
books which are so the list is arranged in chronological order
it's chronological order starting from the ancient times to the
like 20th 21st century
so and
the older we can say the book the most cultural importance
because it's influenced more literature that followed it
for example Don Quixote was influenced by books which
appeared before that and Don Quixote influenced literature
which came after that
so I will recommend maybe to start with the first
books in this list
I will give an example although in my list for example
number 11 is Dante Divine Comedy
to appreciate it you need to know
to know for example almost like by heart
Virgil's Aeneid number four
it's about what has happened after
the sack of Troy
with Aeneas his travel
because a lot of stuff Dante
putting in Divine Comedy is taken from
Virgil's Aeneid
so at the top of the list is
Aeneid and Odyssey
and European culture like in my opinion is based upon
his text plus Bible mostly
because even I mentioned Dante
is influenced by Virgil
but Virgil is influenced by Aeneas
and Odyssey
because if there was no Homer there would be no poem Aeneid
a lot of even episodes in Aeneid
they rhymes with a
like Homer the sort of homage
but in the by another poet
so he's doing something on the same topic
but in a different way
so that's why maybe from the top of the list
then Ramayana it's an ancient epic poem
from India it's important
in the way that if you go to the west
India Sri Lanka Vietnam Cambodia
Thailand a lot of imagery there in the temples
music as theater
is based upon the story
because for this agent
it wasn't the Bible
it was Ramayana
one of the ancient epic poems from India
then in my list Apuleos the Golden Ass
it's a fantastic thing
it's the novel from the ancient Rome
I think it's the start of the second century
which survived totally
and the influenced European literature
it influenced the
it influenced European right like
Decameron Bacaccio for example number 12
several of his novels are based upon this writer
in Don Quixote there are several episodes
which are sort of homage or remake
of some things from Golden Ass
and it's written in a fantastic way
it's the story of the man who by mistake
was turned from the human being into donkey
and his travel and what's going on
it's a fantastic book
then number five I put
Icelandic sagas there are a lot of them
but these are family sagas
and they are very dramatic
the first one Gisli saga
is how one brother
saved another brother
and how the brother whom he saved betrayed him
so and Gisli the main character
because of the betrayal he need to go to exile
he need to hide himself
to save himself from the foes
it's very dramatic
and the thing is that it's based upon real story
but it's written in a literary way
10,000 years ago it's unimaginable
and Jalsaga again
a story how the
the young girl
with the naughty character
destroyed her three husbands
and how she brought the destruction to all her family
and to all people in this family
again a real story
written in a dramatic way
and you're just amazed
how people
were telling this family stories
which are based upon real events
in real locations
in Iceland
how they are written from a literary point of view
number six I unite
text epic poems at the start of European literature
it's Beowulf
a poetic athetis
Icelandic sagas about the gods
the Song of Nibelungs
some of these things they are based again upon real stories
about the dragons
and the dragons
and it's interesting how the poets of the time transformed everything into some sort of legendary events and heroic deeds
fighting the dragons
number eight Kalivala
which was influenced by
which influenced Tolkien
this is an old Finnish epic song
if we look at them
we can say social relations
or relations between people
and Kalivala it predates even Homed, Iliad and Odyssey
it's more archaic in this way
it describes this like state of the mind of people
even before kings appeared
and it's a fantastic piece
number nine Arabian Nights
nothing to introduce people know what is that
there are different anthologies of this
I will recommend the translation of Richard Burton
so he was an explorer in Victorian England
who by the way
entered Mecca in disguise
as an infidel
and in certain way
how he translated Arabian Nights is like Odyssey
describing his travels
fantastic thing
then number ten Shahnameh
it's an epic poem from Persia, Iran
number eleven Dante
it's a separate story we can make a program about this
we can talk about Divine Comedy like thousands
it's the work of the genius
who was going through middle ages to renaissance period
and this is like a whole universe
the way he describes
so he created universe which we see now about
Inferno, Purgatoria and Paradise
great piece
the next one Bacaccio
it's a collection of the novels
the same city as Dante, Florence
again a huge influence on European literature
Chossa
so this is perfect just giving a couple of sentences on each
that's brilliant again
then the next one 14
14 and 15 it's two utopias
there were several utopias written in 16th, 17th century
we know Thomas More who wrote utopia about ideal communist state
and number 15
there was a writer
called Cyrano de Bergerac
it's like some sort of musketeer
it's like almost D'Artagnan he was a real person
and he wrote a book about his travel to the moon
where he describes utopian state
but in this book he predicted how you can go into the space travel
using stage rockets on the sides of your spaceship
he describes how he felt that the gravity of the earth leaves him
and he feels the gravity of the moon
and that's written in 1640
so that's just the middle of 17th century
the time of musketeers, the time of civil war in the UK
and in this book he describes how in this planet
in this utopian state in the moon
there are no libraries
I mean like there are no books like in humans
they have mechanical devices that are winded up
they put them as an ear into their earlobes
and the mechanical voice tells them the book
and their students they study better
because all the time they are wearing these things and they are studying
and this is guys again the middle of 17th century
huge predictions and they are a lot of fun
so this is Cyrano de Bergerac
the next one Francois Rabelais
this is like the funny book to read
the author was a doctor and he described a lot of
funny moments with the main characters
I cannot even describe this book
but it's just something
the next one people know Shakespeare
his main planes
he wrote a lot of plays but there are plays
I believe that we need to read again
because there are referrals to them all the time
Cervantes we have a talk
19th I already mentioned Queveda and Buscon
it's like one of the picaresque novels by this minister of king of Spain
where he describes a scandal
the next one Pascal the philosopher
thoughts Milton Paradise Lost
again it's a great poem
which it's not a coincidence that appeared during the huge social upheaval in England
when there was a civil war
you can even see some sort of historic parallels in this retelling of the bible
great piece
22 Grimmelshausen
so this is 17th century and this writer described the life of the person during I think 7 year world war
7 year war
huge piece
23 Robert Burns Scottish poet and ballad
although he's from Scotland he doesn't belong to Scotland
but in this century it's something
it's about humanity it's about justice
it's about that it doesn't matter what rank you are
and how much gold you are
you still be a fool if you are a fool
everything in a human person is his brain and his honor
so this is Robert Burns
24 Faust
that's really important isn't it
yeah go ahead
yeah so Goethe Faust influential text
a lot of questions
should we sell our soul to the devil for the best in this world for immortality
and there are a lot of variations of this topic in the literature before Goethe and after that
Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe
an experiment can the person survive in an uninhabited island
by the way it's interesting how in this book when he met the first human being he turned him into slave into his servant
it's funny
yeah but also Defoe teaches us that when everything is bad in your life
you need to look at the bright sides of the life and you see also positives
it's like Robinson Crusoe making a list
I am saved that's good
I have five grains of wheat it's good
I have a dog that's good
so to balance the bads and goods evils and goods in our life
then the next two writers this is 18th century France
this is just before evolution
this shows one of the book the dangerous liaison
it just shows there what was the moral codex of the aristocracy
how they were betraying each other
framing each other
but it's fantastic pics and the first one Manon Lusco
this is the first psychological French novel published maybe like 1740
and it describes what I like the psychology of the people
the main character the young man he describes his love
the lady who abandons him and then comes him back saying that he loves him
and then he abandoned so he does that like several times in the book
when I was reading this book first time I was just tortured
you know tortured
I was thinking oh my god
and the thing is that he goes into the head of the characters
so he describes like what he thinks and what he feels it's fantastic
it's very short
and there are two operas
one of them is by Puccini and another by Masnet
so French composers created both of them are masterpieces
both of them based upon Galvestre's travels
it's not a book for the children
actually it's a satire if you reread it you will see the same
you know the same thing about the parliament about the judges about science about academy
it's the book which just shows that nothing has changed since the time of Anne of Stuart
early 18th century England
the corruption of the power and the hypocrisy and the bribe elections
everything is the same
the next one Goldsmith the Wicker Wakefield
I think it's one of the we can say proper realistic novels in 18th century
Tolstoy adored it
so Tolstoy liked Wicker Wakefield
the next one Stern the life and the penis of Tristan Chandler
that's a funny book
it's sort of literary experiment
forget about what's his name
Marokami the Japanese writer
forget about him
all these experiments were already done in the past and one of them by Stern
so this book which promises to show the life and the penis
almost the whole book is spent for the pregnancy of his mother
and his early like years when he's just barely working and speaking
like age of two and all the time the writer is just annoying and teasing us
and one of the pages in this book is just a black page there is no text there
it's a huge huge fun
the next one 31 Schiller
this his plays Mary Stuart
Tilly Oll...
what's his name?
Wilhelm Tell and the rest
they just influence Don Carlos
they influence political thinking in Europe
they are very influential
and it's not a surprise that one of the poems
by Schiller is the text lyric of Ninth Symphony by Beethoven
Schiller is something
very influential
the next one Anderson fairy tales
again they are not tales for the children
it's the tales about adults in disguise of fairy tales
it's like the swing head and the porcelain like ballerina
when this swing head
they sit on a mantelpiece I think
and he said let's see the huge world
so she follows him to the roof but then she's afraid and says
oh we should return back like to the flat
for me it reminds like the husband who is restrained by his wife sort of
and some of the things he describes in the tales
it's about again it's sort of
isopoph tail language
isopos
the next one Balzac
Balzac just put one book Lost Illusions
but he wrote a lot of great stuff
I think I will add into Lost Illusion
that's his huge novels just two or three short novels
Colonel Chabret which I recently reread and Per Gorio
so these two small we can say stories
Thomas Hardy Tess the Abbeville
so in 19th century in the literature there are three great female characters from my opinion
Madame Bovary by Flaubert
Anna Karenina and this one
Tess of the Abbeville
the next one Nikolai Gogol
the Russian writer Dead Souls
this is sort of Russian Divine Comedy where he travels through the villages
and he shows like the life in the country
unfortunately this book is untranslatable because of their a lot of juicy like Russian rich language
but from cultural point it's important it's very influential in Russia
in Russia I will say that it's maybe one of the favorite novels people read
so you've got your email address includes a reference to Nikolai Gogol
oh yeah exactly exactly my address is like that Nikolai Gogol yeah exactly
so is he a hero of yours?
yeah the next one Hoffman
so this German romantic writer who was a poet and artist
he left a lot of great stuff
short novels one of them influenced not Krakow by Tchaikovsky
but he wrote a funny novel called The Life and Opinion of Tom Cat Moore
so the book written from the point of view of Cat
and the first pages it's like description how he recalls his time spent in the tummy of his mom when she was pregnant
his mother cat and when he was taken out he's still blind
how he scratched somebody and got like kicked and how he gave him a milk
but the fun is that in this book Hoffman I think he was possibly a disciple of Hegel in the university
so there are a lot of this cat learns how to speak in German
and quite often he makes comments in the language of philosophers of these times
and funny episodes are like combined with this sort of philosophy
it's a great book and fun just a huge and it's amazing
it's amazing how he again is some sort of satire at the same time
but and the life of the people of humankind seen from the point of view of the cat
it's like you go into the side of the cat and you try to think like a cat
it's fantastic
so the next one Hugo
and could you think like a cat Yevgeny?
no I don't think so I need to observe the behavior of the cat
so I can figure out sort of what the cat is thinking I need to observe
the next writer I put only one book
I put only one book but that was my favorite writer when I was a child
because in my grandparents there was a library of all his works
because he wrote several great novels
Les Miserables, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Ninety-three
and the others but I chose like The Mustache
because it gives a description of the seismic events like revolution close to our time
so we can draw parallels what's going now with this like social shift like huge events
because I think we are living in some sort of great events these days
the next one Dickens again a huge prolific writer a lot of stuff but they leave just only Oliver Twist
you cannot read everything yeah
the next one 39 but for this one Dostoevsky It's Must
Brother Karamazov I will put it on the same level as Don Quixote
so it comprises universe and again it's very so it book which have all the humanity there
a lot of characters a lot of philosophy a lot of thoughts which are relevant
a lot of prophetic moments a lot of prophetic moments
so and again these books they grow bigger
Idiot by the way is some sort of version of Don Quixote
again the main character is some sort of Christ figure who is like sort of sort of sacred idiot
the next one I mentioned today already Emile Zoliat, Therese Raken
so this possibly one of the books you can start reading even today
you don't need to read other books for this one
a very very short like 200 pages just three main characters
and it follows them from their birth to their death
and it's fantastic again in psychology getting into it's like love triangle
and the murder which is unsolved and the writer gets into the head of the people
and we can see their evolution Zoliat is amazing writer
Germinal it's about the strike on the mine again it's some sort of realism
where by some magic you go inside of the life of these people how they work what they were doing
and the end of the book when the mine is flooded resembles just Titanic
love triangle and somebody has to survive
Henry Gibson his plays I think must read again it's psychology and also we're trying to figure out why people do what they do
in one of the plays I think it's Dollhouse the main character the lady
so she realized that because of the owner because of her past crime
she can't stay with her husband and her child and she abandons the family
so it's very paradoxical like decision of this lady
because most of the lady will just forget about this crime stay with the family
but this one some sort of yeah you're we need to look like why she's doing that it's fantastic
the next one Pondklais so that was a romantic playwright and poet
his plays are good and the novel Michael Callas it was by the way there was adaptation of this play recently
Charles de Castel so this is the writer from France sorry from Belgium but he's French writing
and this is the legend of Thierry Lundenspiegel so this is the national character of Netherlands
of these areas when they are fighting with the Spanish because Netherlands were the colony in 15th 16th century of Spain
because of Habsburgs and the guys who tried to control this Protestant territories and eventually there was a revolution
in lowlands which just swept away after 40 years this Spanish rule and the book of Belgian writer who is writing in French
creates like a great character and description of these events sort of folklore figure must read
the next one Melville Moby Dick it's like Jaws spillback we got a captain who is following somebody you know to his death
but this is intermingled with the description of this whale trade what the how they hunt and also a lot of sort of allusions to Bible
and a lot of philosophy and a lot of great like episodes it's good the next one Mary Mayer this is the French
writer of 19th century he wrote psychological novels and also Chronicles of Rain of Charles the Ninth this is novel very short one
I think it's like 50 pages it's the description of the religious war in France in the end of 16th century when during the marriage
there was a wedding of King de Navarre and the daughter of the sister of the French King so Catholics invited Huguenots for this wedding
and I think in one or two nights St. Bartholomew night they assassinated everyone if you recall like most of them so it's something
and the book describes two brothers who belongs one of them is Catholic another Protestant it's about civil strife and about this
again like huge seismic events in the France the next one psychological writer from France who was in some way
disciple of Russian writer Turgenev Mopassan so his two novels Bellamy about the journalist and Unvie like The Life of the Lady from her childhood
to her death and just short stories which are very concise like two three pages they're just masterpieces the next one
the style the psychology the development the ending Guido Mopassan the next one 47 Edgar Allan Pooh so this is American romantic writer and poet
who invent in several genres and whose stories I think are unsurpassable Gothic novels forget about Stephen King people read like Stephen King
they haven't read Edgar Allan Pooh this is something and this is real when you read them you just believe what he's writing although he can write about Macabre and Gothic
the next one Walter Scott again this is important writer in Europe he wrote first important historical novels which influence the historical genre in Europe in the world
without Walter Scott there will be no other writers like he because he was for the first time showing that you can do simple thing take historic events huge historical canvas
and just personal story of the people on the front of this canvas and these people they speak in different genres so in the regional novels you can see the difference
how the people from the bottom speak servants how aristocracy speaks it's like amazing and it's like a clockwork mechanism the action is just developing developing and you're all the
the next one stand all the French writer the red and black realistic novel from France then the next one Mark Twain the adventures of Huckleberry Finn
I will say like epic thing this personal story of this boy who travels with African American who absconded or like run away from these plantations and they're joining on Mississippi
and on their way they just encounter many situations historical background when there was still slavery in the US then we go with Leo Tolstoy Leo Tolstoy and Karen and Elisabeth
and then we have the little resurrection so this is a novel about the young aristocrat who is summoned to be a jury in a court over the prostitute who poisoned her customer
and when he goes to jury he recognizes that these prostitutes is a girl whom he seduced and just abandoned years ago and the story how he redeemed himself
how this aristocrat and the count I think he was a count or Duke he just left his family and went with this girl into exile into Siberia
it's like a huge piece from for this book the Russian Orthodox Church they I'll say like they expelled from Russian Church Tolstoy for this book
Ivan Turgenev a great stylist with his fathers and sons on the even sportsman sketches many writers in Europe they learned how to write from Turgenev Oscar Wilde the picture of Dorian Gray
the profoundness about his experience in prison 56 Radit Kipling short stories again the masterpieces in short stories Radit Kipling who was born British and Indian in the subcontinent
but eventually turned to be one of the great although he was a sinner of imperialism in Soviet writer all the time he was translating because there was a great literary qualities in all his writings
take up the white man's burden take forth the best you breathe yeah with the comments obviously the next one Walt Whitman the great poet from the United States Flaubert
I already mentioned Madame Bovary and then sentimental education two novels must read Anton Chekhov so this is we can say antipode for Ibsen if Ibsen something extraordinary happens with the people in Chekhov is just description of boring life in Russia just
and between that there is something else and all his plays about dignity and the values what's important and again the place about people who are between the times going from one era to another one it's interesting like to see how the whole system of their ideas collapses how the new appears it's like interesting to see like the shifting moments
it's not it's not a surprise that many great books appeared just at the time of the seismic movements the next one Akutagawa Rinoseke so this is I think master number one Japanese writer who wrote novels and short stories some of them are influenced by European literature but they are like in Japanese disguise
if you have seen Kurosawa movies he made several adaptations of Shakespeare so he took Shakespeare's place but they're in like Japanese disguise so the same was with Rinoseke Eva Andreech so he described in these two books the beach on Drina Chronicles of Trabnik so he describes area in former Yugoslavia in the time where it was still under Ottoman Empire and how the indigenous people lived in the region
and in this area a lot of influences a lot of strains were like in the cauldron you know Turks Arabs Jews Christians you know Russia Austria France and it's interesting to see how complex is it how complex is it so yeah he got Nobel Prize for these books the next one Louis Aragon so the French writer this is the book published in the same year as Dr. Zhivago
Holy Week it's a historical novel with the elements of stream of consciousness which goes to the time when Napoleon returned from his first exile during his like 100 days so and what was happening in Paris and around Paris at this time in this novel again the writer goes into the head of the people and a lot of like historic shows like a huge canvas of history and also personal history of the people
Holy Week 63 Henry Barbus I will say Under Fire is the best book about the First World War is the best there are other great books like Nothing Has Changed on the Western Front or for example Hemingway his Farewell to the Arms we can say also about the First World War but the way how the trenches are described and also how people get into this madness the best one is this one is something that I think is very interesting
and what was the name of that book? Under Fire. Oh right. Okay. Henry Barbus Under Fire and that's his personal experience. So who is the author? Henry Barbus. It's like the way how you pronounce in French yeah?
And from his personal experience he delivers this experience and again from we can say realistic point of view we can see everything we can smell everything we can feel everything and also there is a humanistic touch in this even when he's describing like bodies which are mutilated or something horrible happens something like going down in Palestine he is using sort of
of poetical things even to describe like the way of this of these bodies with a static thing he trying to relieve us from this torture like witnessing and traumatized by what he's describing actually where people blown like into pieces or he described like somebody's body on this wire above the wire.
Bertolt Brecht I think maybe I will just say that the rest of the book the rest of the list it will be 20th century and the principle is just from every country or every continent for one to writers.
So the Russian writer will be Ivan Bunin he got Nobel Prize for his short stories. Yaroslav Khashak this is another good book about this first world war and it's not about atrocities it's about fun.
How the guy volunteered to go he's like he did from the village here how he goes to the trenches. So and it's like fun a lot of fun in this book it's like a comical book.
Then the British saga goes worthy the Russian writer Maxim Gorky then drives an American tragedy it's about how the guy killed his fiance just to get into another marriage and how he was found like and trialed Icelandic writer how the Luxus.
So these two books it's great to see how these books are connected to the great Icelandic literature which I mentioned before the sagas and their poetry.
Jack London great stories great great stories apart from the novel Martin in Martin is in some sort of biography but it shows how the person suffers to get to be acknowledged writer nobody wants them to publish and how the things destroys him like to suicide.
Lucy this is the Chinese classics of 20th century famous for short stories and then we got two brothers man one of them professor on the right.
And another one Thomas man who is philosophic he liked the German Tolstoy will say like Tolstoy plus the staff ski but on the German soil buddenbrocks Joseph and his brothers magic mountain.
Vladimir Mike Oski although he's a poet his point was influenced in the 20th century poetry in Italy in France in Spain so and the path from the point he describes a lot of again seismic events around the Russian Revolution.
Oh my God I'm on 76 so through the countries Danish writer Martin others and exit so this is about childhood in Denmark and how it how it was in the end of 19th century beginning of 20th.
77 remember alone Jean Christophe it's the life of the composer who resembles slightly bithoven good realistic novel and psychological as well stained back the grapes of wrath.
So this is I think the time of depression the states are being drawn out the gore who was a prize.
Who was a prize the Nobel Prize laureate his poems and short stories again great humanist some of his stories is just amazing there is a story called Kabul eval about the little girl if you find it it should be on the Internet free of charge just three four pages just read it.
Because there is like a pearl in the novel in the short story genre polkner light in August dimension like the great writer no need to like to do to do some Hemingway.
Yeah so this is something different to 19th century how to write without adjectives without other just nouns and verbs.
How not to go into the head of the people but describe what they think and what they feel with the small touches with the description of environment yeah in the way they behave behave so that's that's amazing.
How he goes and the children almost the same effect where we know what the character is feeling and farewell to us I don't think it's a book and the war book or a book about the first world war I think it's the greatest love story.
That's from my point of view of a well terms is the next one Michael Sherlock of it's a great epic novel about the Civil War in Russia.
The Civil War in Russia.
Gabriel Garcia Marcus 100 years of solitude it's something like Don Quixote like Bible.
Where the book where magical things they are portrayed as natural and natural things portrayed as magical.
I think it's some sort of poetry poetry in prose the next one 84 the name of the Rose ball the Lena.
Great books a lot of stuff there and these books survive multiple readings multiple readings some people say that it's difficult to read them.
I for some time I refused to read one of his books I was convinced by my colleague I read it once twice but then I appreciated that.
Horace Lewis Borges his short stories Christopher Nolan's movies will be impossible without his short stories this paradoxes and referrals to everything.
Pablo Neruda I think he was one of the greatest poets in the 20th century he got Nobel Prize in 1972 and 73 when the coup d'etat by Pinochet happened in September several days.
For some reason he died some people by the way he thought that he was poisoned so this great poet and was the name of him Losa was that sorry.
Was that the proven sorry he was Chilean he was he was he was from Chilean okay who is the Peruvian who is the Peruvian writer Losa was it.
He's in my list he's number 89 Mario Mario Vargas Losa.
He became president of Peru was it.
I don't think so maybe he was a minister but the thing is with Marco Vargas Losa he started as a left person but then he ended like as a pro-American right wing guy.
I don't know if he's a regalia.
I think he's good for president but he didn't win that's right.
Maybe but possibly you're talking about somebody else but I don't recall that Vargas Losa was the president maybe you're talking about.
He wasn't the president but he stood for president I think.
Maybe I just didn't follow his career as a right wing politician he is not interested to me but he's.
Didn't he win the Nobel Prize.
I think yes I think yes.
Yeah.
Then number 87 Stanislav Lem he's from Poland and his greatest novel Solaris.
There are three movie adaptations on this book on this book which have multiple like layers which is mystical beside like this just space space space travel and he wrote.
And he wrote if you will be interested in Lem he wrote other fantastic short science fiction novels in different genres some of them are satire like Galvest travels.
Some of them are sort of detectives but this is the greatest it's like philosophy and sort of prediction about the future.
Marcel Proust we already discussed him today the guy who looked under we can say with a slow motion every moment in his life yeah.
His books you will not appreciate them if you don't read them all but you don't have time to read and read them all.
I will suggest to read just the first I put I think four in the list.
The next one French writer who was a pilot and died during the Second World War Santok Zipary.
So he wrote this thing Southern Mail Night Flight and everyone know the Little Prince.
So very good humanistic writer he was a dog in Soviet Union although he wasn't a communist he was a dog for his humanism.
Sort of make peace may garden in your planet look after your planet save it.
Yeah the next one couldn't call us and that it so this is Latin America.
The next one to it will be from Latin America.
So that's the best writers from this part of the world together with the whole he Louis Borgeson public in the next one.
Heinrich Böhl so that was a German writer who was in sort of immigration spiritual immigration in Ireland.
And his book his novel and the famous short novel Katharina Bloom which got like movie adaptation and Irish Journal is like worth to read.
Alberto Moravia so the communist Italian writer I will call him it's like Italian the state of ski Italian the state of ski.
These three the first two books they were even adapted into the movies again get into the head of the characters.
Showing social background and show how the environment the family and the social events influence decisions of the people and to their demise.
Yeah.
Ninety five.
So this is the 60s and 70s.
The Japanese writer.
So the next will be Camila has a salad.
This is the Spanish writer Carlos Fuentes.
This is the writer from Mexico.
So again the writers to read because we need to know what the great achievements in this part of the world.
Although there are more Mexican writers but again for shortness I just put the best one.
Lausanne the Chinese another Chinese classic.
So cat country it's like anti utopia which he wrote in the early 30s.
And the plot is almost like Cyrano de Bergerac.
The character goes not to the moon but the character the Chinese astronaut goes to the to the Mars and there is a top and cat country where countries ruled by cat civilization.
And there are many prophetic moments.
The book is written in early 30s but he describes there something which looks like cultural revolution in China in the in 60s.
It's amazing.
And during this cultural revolution actually he was people believe beaten to death.
He was he already retired but he was perceived as a like enemy of state and which were like writer.
So either he was beaten to death by this red gods this like crazy youths or he committed suicide after that.
And cat country it's translated into English.
I think it's if people know 1984 or this wonderful world or animal farm they definitely should read like Thomas More Cyrano de Bergerac and this guy this guy.
It's a fantastic how you how you predict cultural revolution that will happen in 30 years.
It's it's an unimaginable.
The next one the Japanese writer again.
So this is Japan.
If you if you want to travel to Japan don't travel unless you read Rino se care I could have gotten a sicker or and this writer must read must read.
I didn't include me Shama in the list because everybody know Osama Mishima who wrote The Golden Temple.
And the last one is who like our to sell a great experiment in Latin American writing again just to show that.
Not nothing new under the world and in Latin America there is literally process and the people they also can play with words.
Yeah.
OK.
So that's brilliant.
Again.
So I never I didn't think you'd complete it but you have done and you're very passionate and also you're very determined.
And most important of all after the last four years you you're very wise through reading all these books.
And so thank you so much for coming on.
So we can take some questions if anybody wants to put their hands up.
John Lukacs or you've gone what you want.
But anybody else who wants to ask questions please put your hands up.
Sorry about the format today.
Again a very impressive.
I was wondering if you were going to give some of your opinions on current events but I guess I'll have to wait for a second round.
But I'm very curious when are we going to see a book written by you.
Sure.
Good question.
OK.
I think I doubt that there will be some sort of great fiction.
Because I should be sort of sort of humble.
I believe that great books they come from the people who get great life experience.
And I just made this conclusion upon two books.
Don Quixote with his Cervantes Miguel who survived the battle wounded survive the capture in the Saljea.
Then and execution and then he survived this imprisonment in Spain.
So there is something in life where you see a lot of stuff.
And the same with the same with the same with the same with the same.
So I think you have Kenny.
He's asking you that because you have all these characters in your head and you've got an amazing memory with instant recall of just about everything you want to get hold of.
And it was just amazing to listen to you.
And I don't think you realize how wonderful this is.
I mean, I think what I would like you to do is write a book on what you've just told us now with a little bit more thought maybe and and just guide people through why they should read the classics and the classics you like most and and why they're important, you know, for people to read that kind of thing.
I have a suggestion just just to mull over because I could tell he's not really enthused by this idea.
But, you know, when I when I write myself because I put out a couple of books and trust me, they're nowhere near as good as the ones you're picking out.
They're more complaints than anything else.
But there's a lot of information there.
But I take my cues when I'm being creative for my blog from all the books that I've read.
And I'm always pulling on examples.
And I've mastered the colorful analogy.
And people, I think, respond a good bit when you touch on something that they're familiar with and tie it to something that's going on.
It's a great way to make a point delicately when you have to.
And I just think you'd be wonderful at that.
Your little bio that Stephen put out said you're a bit of a whistleblower.
You got tagged. We all did here.
I just think that your insights would be good professionally.
I think it would come across fantastically coming from a man like you is so well read.
Exactly.
The thing is that the literary product should be unique, I believe, in sort of maybe topic potentially and also in a way like innovative technique and breakthrough.
And the thing is that there is a lot of already informational noise, we can say.
Already so much stuff written through the centuries that we don't have life even to read this.
And it will be a sin against humanity to increase this informational noise to something else.
I want just to return quickly again to Dostoevsky.
So I said that Cervantes, yeah, a soldier who survived captivity and injury and prison.
Dostoevsky, who was a revolutionary.
So Dostoevsky, it was like that.
In his revolutionary cycle, he was captured with his friends and they were sentenced to execution by a firing squad.
So they're standing in front of this firing squad and with the sex on their heads, he's thinking, what would be my last words I tell to my comrade?
And then the next moment, the messenger from the palace, winter palace arrives and say, oh, the Tsar pardoned you.
You go to exile in Siberia, help yourself.
And then he go to Siberia where he describes this excruciating experience to be with the thieves or whoever like all the and also different people in this hard labor placement.
So and I was thinking that's not a surprise that after that Dostoevsky is writing like his version of Christianity, what to say?
Yeah, somebody asked me in the in the chat, I see how I find the time to read.
I also find myself, ask myself and I recall that for some time ago I found the list what I was reading when I was in medical school in the Soviet Union.
So six years we study.
So and medicine is very hard subject.
And in contrast to the UK, for example, we study six years.
And in addition to anatomy, surgery, physiology, biochemistry, we have we had additional subjects in the medical school.
It was proper Latin.
It was proper ancient Greek, not to the level of philologists, but to the level that you can at least read, understand like simple texts.
There was psychology, history of medicine, history of the of the communist party of the Soviet Union and sociology.
So and I mean, I looked on the list.
Some of the huge novels from the list, by the way, I read them like Thomas Mann, huge novels, philosophical.
I read during the university, almost all important.
Ancient Rome and Greece literature I read in the university and in this list, just some pieces of it.
But it includes, you know, pre-Homeric hymns, Homer, ancient lyrics, ancient Rome lyrics and the lyrics of ancient Rome,
because there were a lot of great guys there, Catullus, Avidius with his metamorphosis, the great Greek historians, Herodotus, Themostoclus, you know, Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Plutarchus.
Oh my God. And so this is during university.
And because I was all the time put down like how the time is spent and I knew how many pages I can read of this and that.
So I was sort of planning that.
And at this time I was reading just one book at the time.
But since then, I am using sort of the method, how say it, it's like umbrella, umbrella, not umbrella.
In Chinese seconds, there's like a trick where they put like the saucers like to rotate on the poles and they run like together.
So I'm reading mostly at the same time several things by small pieces.
I'm not Russian. When I'm reading, I'm like reading aloud in my head.
So to see the picture, I don't rush. It's not for the tick box.
I want to understand what they're writing.
So I'm reading and it's like from the same period.
If I'm if, for example, we had a discussion about Don Quixote with Karam in April and then I begin to read at this point Don Quixote.
So at the same moment in parallel, I'm reading plays at the same day.
So like 20 pages, for example, of this play of Calderon at the same day, like Arabic poetry from Andalusia.
10 pages or 15 pages from the Quivada.
So it's like that in parallel, several things from to have the sort of three dimensional thing and a lot of things like they associate with each other and resonates.
So that's my method. And the way I'm trying to avoid digital devices.
So I'm checking my I'm aiming like to check my notifications, like messages like at nine, for example, at 12, you know, like every three hours and sometimes like even making bigger period not to check like from three to nine because it will be a destruction.
You're restating something I threw in the chat response to someone else earlier.
You know, we since all this digital stuff has invaded our lives, there's a tremendous advantage to be able to just simply press a button and talk to anyone in the world.
But there's also an information overload. We didn't get more hours in the day.
We just got more things to do. And this is a drawback. This has a very insidious nature.
Not to. I would just say, you know, you have to.
What all that is, it replaced other things of value.
So you found a way to time manage and still live in both worlds.
I would just say, you know, to anybody who cares that we need to pull back from this one a little bit. We have more than enough.
Yeah. And I want to I want to stress again that, yeah, I always say that reading a fiction a day and it should include all genres, novel, short stories, poetry and drama, all genres, because there is a beauty in every genre and the poetry as well.
So, guys, you just don't imagine how much great stuff is left in poetry in the East, in India, Korea, Vietnam, I mean, the Middle Ages.
I don't mention even Chinese poetry where there's a long tradition, where it's fun to see how they take the same topic, observing moon like at night and how they try to create that and how it's some sort of interaction and dialogue through the centuries between different poets.
So I think it's important to allocate the time for reading every day at certain time to make it a habit.
It's like going to work regularly.
You know, it's like the work.
And there is another like trick in my system when I read several things.
If I sort of like bored or like tired with this text, do you know, like with the play when I'm losing concentration, I am putting it aside and I'm changing sort of activity.
I'm like reboosted and I'm trying to read like with renewed interest.
Another thing which I haven't finished yesterday, there is an element there of 1001 night because you want to read further like what's going in this play, like what's the intrigue as well.
And apart from that, with some of the texts, it's not sort of necessary to read the whole thing.
It's necessary at least, for example, Divine Comedy of Dante, you know, it's better to know the most important bits of it and to read the sentence on context like Cantos several, several times to the point that all the images, the way how they are developed just retain in your brain.
So in parallel with my sort of Spanish period now, because it will change when I will satiate myself, I will go like to sort of French period or some other.
But at the same point, because these guys in Baroque Spanish Golden Period, they were under the influence of Latin literature, especially Ovid and Virgil.
So at the same time, I'm reading important bits of Virgil and it's very slow reading guys very slow because every like line there's like mythological creature or geographical thing or whatever.
You need to imagine actually what he's describing and he's describing.
OK, this is the start of Sec of Troy.
This is the guy deceived them that the horse is OK.
This is the priest who said like, oh, this is a dangerous animal we need to destroy.
So you need to understand like what he's describing in the verse at this point and how every and again, a lot of referrals, a lot of references.
And if you read it several times.
So in this case, if I don't sort of keep in my head structure of this versus from in it or from Dante the next day, I will not read the next like lines.
I will still stay on this thing unless it's like totally clear because these texts when I say like Homer Virgil Ovid very influential.
So they influence Latin literature, not to mention like Roman and ancient Greece, but also like Renaissance and the stuff.
Do you know all the roots are there? All the roots are there.
Oh, thank you. You can have a brilliant answer.
And Caram to whom I'm indebted for telling me about you.
And I said, oh, that sounds interesting.
And that's when I asked him whether he could help me get you on.
So I'm glad I got you on. Great. Thank you so much.
You're going to go ahead, Karen. Yeah, that was amazing, wasn't it, guys?
I think we can all agree that if Kenny is an authentic force of nature, which who I had the pleasure of meeting in my first year of clinical medicine when I was 24 years old in the north of Scotland.
And I don't think anybody in that area had met somebody as unique as my friend here.
And he started obviously that part of his career. He started a lot later than the rest of us.
So he he stood out like a sore thumb and he did his best to stand out even even more than that.
And I have to say that, you know, I grew up in the UK following, let's call it the dumbed down curriculum that we have now and where I hear speeches by, you know, Robert Kennedy, the elder who's passed away talking about certain poems.
And I think God, I've never even heard of that author, let alone the poem, never mind the line.
So I think we have been robbed. And if Kenny's been, you know, a really important part of my personal development and he through his difficulties in psychiatry, which he stumbled on quite innocently when he realized that none of his patients were getting any better.
And just just all just like coming back to clinic and having all number of issues started to do his own reading to try and solve the problem.
And then he worked out that, you know, there was this tremendous fraud and abuse in that in that industry, which is very much an industry.
So he is he's he's had some incredibly significant challenges over the last few years, including and we have all the paperwork and again, you have again, he's never signed any non disclosure agreements and the dirt we have on some people that are working day in day out to allegedly take care of patients.
Is a disgrace. And I'm talking about black and white lies, people presenting a topic X in writing and then changing it retrospectively and thinking they're going to get away with it.
Complete manipulation of words, inversion of the truth and all of the worst things that you could imagine. But he's even I mean, you can imagine a guy like you have getting so educated, so knowledgeable for about a year and a half.
He was he was on benefits in the UK.
Having just suspended by his hospital.
For trying to protect a patient from emergency tranquilization that that patient didn't need because they couldn't handle the behavior.
You know, we're in a we're in a crisis of doctor shortage in the UK and.
If Kenny was on benefits when when he could have been working with working for patients and to help them. So he's been through a lot.
Unfortunately, I think someone like you have Kenny, he shows people up. He's so incredibly well read and well educated that unfortunately the reaction of many people is jealousy.
I don't personally feel jealousy, but I had to kind of reeducate myself that a lot of people do.
They're driven by jealousy and they will attack people like you have Kenny and anyone who stands out and does the right thing because they're showing those people are showing those bastards up.
That's that's correct. Yes.
And so they may quickly just respond to several there in the chat.
There are several remarks, for example, that people don't see Camus in my list.
So, yeah, we can say there are books.
There are books beyond this list.
Camus.
I think Camus should come after this one hundred.
I think I like Camus all the time.
If I want to update my French, I'm just reading his stanger.
Yeah.
So I'm trying to get to see this like phenomenon of this like alienated person.
And at the same time, I'm just revising French Camus definitely.
Then somebody mentioned Stephensweig.
I will say that his huge novels like huge novels, they're not great.
He was a master in short novels, although there are like around 40, like 40 or 50 of short novels.
There are pearls there, just fantastic pearls like Leporello, for example, or the letter of unknown lady.
Again, it's like beyond the list.
But guys, it's like if we go to the country, to Austria, we'll see several great writers there at the same time, at the time of Freud.
Hoffman's style with his plays and short stories.
Stephensweig.
Robert Musil.
You can't say Robert Musil in my list, but again, it's sort of essential because the great literature is beyond this like very concise list.
I will not agree with the Atlas, Chuck, the shoulders.
I know that many people admire this book, but I think this book is flawed from the point of view of topic, the idea, and also as a literary product.
Do you know there are certain books in my list which are not perfect from a literary point of view, for example, Cyrano de Bergerac, but it's listed great in this prophetic and great ideas of utopia in the moon.
I'm just looking.
I'm just looking through the things.
So, again, what I like about your list is you cast the net very wide indeed.
And there's no room for people like George Orwell and Aldous Huxley.
And I can't believe it, but I can't remember the author's name of Lolita.
Who was that?
Nabokov.
Nabokov, yes, of course.
So I will just comment quickly.
I didn't put it in the list because it's in the compulsory reading.
I will say they use just the propaganda of the Western democracies.
So everybody like Riddho know them.
They are culturally important.
I will just say that in this way, you need to read the novel that influenced this and to utopias.
And it's the novel by Evgeny Zemmetin-We, where he described like the things which we already see in 1984, some sort of this totalitarian state.
There is a comment, Wuthering Heights is a fantastic read.
Yeah, I agree that Wuthering Heights is a marvelous piece.
It's beautifully constructed, I will say.
There is like a composition which is just amazing like this, the composition of the novels.
And it's good, guys.
You know, it's like the meat.
Yeah, you can't put everything.
Wuthering Heights, I agree.
Yeah. But do you see my...
What I want to do in this list, I put the writers maybe whom you never heard even the names of, yeah, from different continents.
So don't forget that great literature doesn't exist only in the UK.
In my opinion, by the way, all great English literature ended up in the past.
It's Shakespeare.
It's 18th century.
Fielding.
Stern.
Goldsmith.
19th century.
Dickens.
You know, Wuthering Heights, Thomas Hardy.
Everything great in the past.
I will add maybe that at some point I thought that William Golding, his greatest novel is, I thought, The Spire.
I think it's called Spy or The Spire.
Everybody knows William Golding by his A Lot of the Flies.
These boys on the uninhabited islands who turn into some sort of barbaric state.
But The Spire is very good.
It's very poetical, I think.
It's like a stream of consciousness.
And it requires several readings so you can see this vision of this main character and what's going on.
It's very good.
I will say that maybe from my point of view, maybe The Spire or Spire is the best English novel in 20th century by William Golding.
This, I think, must be.
It's like poetry, imagery and again like innovative modernistic technique of Virginia Woolf or James Joyce.
Yeah. And he had a very good hold on cults, which was what...
Yeah. I'm trying to look through the list.
And again, I always say don't forget the literature is a well thing.
I will give you just one example.
Several years ago in one anthology, I discovered the Pillow Book.
It's called The Pillow Book and it's written by the lady in medieval Japan.
It's, I think, the ninth century.
She is a lady at the emperor's court and her name was Say Shonagon.
Say Shonagon, The Pillow Book.
It's not about some plot or adventure.
It's just the personal diary of a person who was writing for herself, her observations about the nature, events in the courts, relationship with people.
When people compose some poetry, she like put it down.
But this is, I think, the first example in the world literature where we got personal sort of diary.
We got something like that in Marcus Aurelius in his reflections.
I don't know how you translate Marcus Aurelius' book where he wrote these things for himself.
But her account, her diary is more personal.
I just believe that after her death, somebody found that and they saw that this is of great literary quality and they rewrote that.
And that after this, it influenced the whole strain of certain books in Japanese literature where Buddhist monks were trying to write like this self.
I always say if you want to learn how to meditate and to go into this Zen thing, start to read Say Shonagon.
She was translated into English and Penguin published this Pillow Book.
It's not very thick.
And again, it's very slow meditative reading where there are sort of days or events.
And it's like interacting with the person who is just alive beside you.
It's amazing.
It's like immediate emotion.
And it's amazing.
Evgeny, can we take a question from Hans Benjamin Braun?
So he's in Switzerland and he's a professor of theoretical physics.
And he has proved in 11 different ways, I think it is, that the Nord Stream pipeline explosions were thermonuclear explosions.
Secret.
Yeah, my question is not exactly related to that.
Can you hear me?
Yeah, yeah.
Can you hear me?
Okay.
Yeah, that's unrelated, but it may be a subject to another time discussion.
No, that was a wonderful overview.
And I think what also, I mean, A, I want to join Stephen in the suggestion that you would write something.
Just actually how you explained it to us, because I think it's wonderful to see a personal opinion.
Now we have all this streamlined stuff which you can, which essentially agrees with everybody else, but actually an individual opinion on these literary works.
That would be wonderful.
And then, of course, also thank you for your, you know, apparently I've heard that you had your difficulties relating your career.
And I've witnessed similar things.
So maybe we could exchange privately, you know, or even.
But now back to the scene.
What is so impressive about your list is that it encompasses essentially all cultures.
And I think in these times, that's very, very important where there are forces which try to drive and to divide and, you know, and single out one thing over another thing.
And in this context, actually, what did strike me when you were talking, I also learned Greek and Latin at school.
Even though I try to pursue physics.
So and we read actually Homer original and we read Virgil and his original.
And then, but in recent times in schools, at least here in Europe, there has been this push to eliminate classics from from the curriculum.
And actually, if you see, there is practically nobody doing this and, you know, at school anymore.
And that takes us maybe to the topic of these conversations, you know, over the past few years organized by Stephen is, you know, how exactly and why exactly did the Roman Empire collapse?
And I think some of the Roman and Latin texts, and even if you actually look at it, so, you know, legal stuff, I mean, now, apparently, even in discussions, even in blogs, you know, one of the most frequent snippets in Latin is Cui Bono.
Right. And that is Cicero's phrase.
And I mean, another thing is which comes to my mind is part of the elder right.
Parking in a set of end, which is, you know, somehow this obsession of powers to eliminate their competitor, no matter what.
So, but I think even functionally, the decline of the Roman Empire, I mean, some voices say that it was a detached elite, which essentially, you know, was enriching themselves and leaving the great mass on their own.
It's, of course, hard to see because, you know, the average people didn't write books, you know, maybe you find some paintings in Pompeii.
But I think it's a very, very, very important thing and aspect which we should not realize in, you know, in these times, in these current times, which are indeed very challenging.
So thank you very much.
Just quick. Thank you for your contribution.
I think I believe Seymour Hersh who published his version of events in regards to Nordic pub pipeline.
The thing is, it doesn't even matter how they did it because they're...
Well, I think it did. Just a second, because you came back.
Actually, Seymour Hersh was via contact of mine at MIT.
He was in possession of my analysis.
So about a month before mid-January, he got what I wrote and I just, I didn't, you know, it was not contact or rumors.
I just analyzed the seismic data and plus many other signature, you know, satellite data.
And actually in the next few weeks, perhaps there will be kind of an update of a talk which I gave also based on this English synchronization, maybe online.
So we can then look at it, I think, as a, you know, scientifically educated person, you can follow.
I mean, in the audience there were actually lots of physicists and engineers and captains.
So I didn't get any kind of valid objections to what I presented.
And I mean, this has been going around since a year.
I mean, it went up to White House, Kremlin, Ben Hark.
So no, just to reply to your remark.
No, no, indeed it's how one did it is indeed it matters.
Because if you look at all the, you know, now the tenor and accusing, oh, they are threatening with nuclear weapons.
And I just say, wait a minute, this is long gone.
You know, this ship has sailed and probably never actually stopped sailing ever since this, you know, really thing started.
And that's what people just do not understand.
They don't want to see it because they have been brainwashed.
And it's actually a very, very, very important thing.
And if we are not doing something, we're doomed.
Really. I mean, that's my that's now my personal opinion, but it comes from a really strict scientific analysis.
And I mean, all all.
And I know actually, in the meantime, I've heard of cases people have been working on this along similar lines than myself.
And I've been told they are not allowed to pursue their research in this direction.
So now you can actually make your own, you know, you can make your own story, your own conclusion about that.
And also why my results are just silenced.
I mean, it's just kept on the cover and it keeps on increasing.
I mean, every every couple of weeks I come up with another package, which is even more outrageous in its in its implications.
So so that is just, you know, to whoever is still here at the time.
I'd have like to give an update on that matter.
Thank you.
So, Evgeny, I can put you in touch with Stans Benjamin if you want.
Yeah. OK. Just quick comments to the chats.
So people asking about translation into into English, I don't know, to be honest.
I can say about Russian translations, maybe Penguin Classics.
But I will always say that maybe it's worth to read with two translations.
I think there is another translation in Oxford University Press like Oxford Classics.
So when you read them in two different translations, maybe then.
But again, I'm not a specialist. You need to read certain reviews.
And also, it's difficult to see honest reviews from they're just publishing enterprises when they want to sell something.
But I noticed, for example, when I was preparing today, this scene with the prisoners, which were going like through the desert,
which Don Quixote like freed from all the crimes and let them free.
By the way, after this heroic deed, they stoned him.
So the beginning of the chapter, they write that Don Quixote put down his eyes.
And there was a group of people who were connected by the iron chain on their necks like beads.
So in the original Spanish, there is a word, this word like Quentus, it's beads.
But the thing is that if I'm a translator and because when he's writing beads, I see the Rosary.
So we are living in the modern world. It means like in the times of Cervantes, this metaphor was obvious.
These people, they are like the beads in the Rosary in this line connected like to the necks.
So the way he writes it for the modern English reader, I will translate them that were like beads in the Rosary.
If I was a translator, you know, sort of chew up this thing, because I doubt that you will notice this thing.
Do you know? Borges, he wrote a book, like a very short story about like the guy who is trying to translate, I think, Don Quixote,
I think in the modern Spanish. And actually he writes it again because you need to go back into this context.
People write about Shakespeare in the list. Yes, Shakespeare.
I think for British speaking people, you need to read it.
For English speaking, you need to read it in a bilingual translations where there is a literal translation of all these archaic words,
unusual use of grammar and the stuff and the decipherment of his metaphors.
Otherwise, what's the point? Yeah, it's a beautiful music to recite against the winds and fortune of outrageous fortune.
But the thing is like, what's the point if you don't understand what actually he's trying to say?
Yeah, because the good literature is about two things.
It's about emotion, which could be because of the beautiful consonants and rhythm, which is on subconscious level.
But there is also some idea there.
OK, then people write about Epictetus. I totally agree. Like Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus.
But again, it's like beyond the list. It's like further reading. Yeah.
But I think it's essential reading, actually.
The death of Socrates or the trial of Socrates.
If people mean the account by Xenophon or Xenophon, definitely.
Or one of the plate dialogues where there is a description, because I think both pupils of Socrates give this
good luck. So I will not waste my time for that, to be honest.
And I'm honest and I will explain why.
So from one hand, Solzhenitsyn, he got a great literary talent like Tolstoy.
He is a great master of the word how to put the sentences on the page.
Here in Glasgow, he created a dictionary of Russian root words, which used in different villages.
And the funny way, it's like the thing with the Russian language where we got the word, but with different variations.
So it's fun to read it.
But another thing, it's a huge, huge novel.
I recall it like five, six pages at times.
And people think it's some sort of documentary thing.
This is not a documentary account.
This is like literary work with a certain purpose.
So it bears certain purpose.
Part of it, I will say it's like mostly it's propaganda.
So certain things contain truth where he called something or says something.
But some of this, it's like sort of myths or legends he's like putting down to appreciate the fact that
to appreciate sort of the thing about Gulag, it's worth to read just one short novel by Solzhenitsyn,
One Day Over Van Denisevich, I think it's called.
It just, I don't know, I don't recall exactly.
I think maybe it's 20 pages and you will save your life because there is no need to reread this tedious accounts from the trials,
which he just took from newspaper.
So for me, it's some sort of raw material combined with this sort of myths.
If he published separately the myths about Gulag, it's one thing.
But again, if you want to know about Gulag, I will recommend another writer who wrote short stories and in five, six short stories
from his personal experience and of great literary merit,
you will get more from this like six or seven volumes of Archipelago Gulag.
And this is, I think, just the time waste.
We should be more like sort of concise in the way that we can get the same, but like in a shorter text, which has more literary qualities there.
Then Tomas Snesh.
Yeah. So the Picaresque novel, which is in my anthology of Picaresque novels is Tomas Snesh, this writer from...
I forget to include in my list Voltaire, so I should admit, because I was in April, I was telling Karam, Karam, have you read Candide?
You know, read it immediately.
You know, in the time of these conflicts in Palestine and this like strife, just look at this text about tolerance, Candide and his philosophical place by Voltaire.
Yeah, Voltaire, philosophical novels, I should include in my list, but I need to remove somebody from this list.
Yeah.
Kafka.
What I will say, everybody knows Kafka, you know, everybody knows.
I will say that maybe it's worth to reread his Metamorphoses, just from time to time to reread the same short novel and not to go into the huge, because the theme is the same.
The theme is the same.
But before Kafka, guys, I will suggest to read Metamorphoses by Ovid.
Yeah, just to go to this image, to see what Metamorphoses was in Ovid, because it's more culturally important than Kafka Metamorphoses.
Images of Ovid, they go everywhere in literature, in poetry, in music.
They're like ballets, operas, you know, suites and also paintings like everywhere.
So what's the point to see the painting if you don't understand that that's the subject?
And the descriptions of these transformations in Ovid, they are quite innovative.
Some of the scenes there of bad taste in Ovid, where he describes how centaurs like destroys each other and what traumas they sustained.
It's like almost reading an orthopedic textbook.
It's like disgusting, but it's in poetry.
And then Metamorphoses by Apuleos, this great novel where there are certain erotic scenes there, but they are described.
He uses sort of language and words, which are sort of detached in some sort of Hemingway way.
He describes like the atmosphere, how this servant girl was preparing like something in the pot and there was something boiling and it was like a pathos in smell.
And she was moving with her thighs. So he creates sort of atmosphere, erotic atmosphere without actually describing a sex scene.
But it's like very erotic. I don't know. This is maybe unique experience like in the world literature, how you write about like sort of forbidden things,
but in a pristine language, because the fathers of church, all the St. Augustine and the guys like St. Thomas, they adored like the Golden Ass Metamorphoses by Apuleos.
This forbidden literature, they adored it. They adored it to the point that they copied the style of Apuleos.
If you manage to read it in Latin or in good English translation, you will see how beautifully he constructs the sentence and everything apart from the topic itself.
So it's a great book. So Kafka. I don't know who was the writer for Kafka.
I think he was describing his like struggles in this bureaucracy like in Austria.
You know, OK. But if you read Kafka, Metamorphoses, that's enough. That's enough.
But actually it's very important to write about bureaucracy. So Kafka is the master of that's my opinion anyway.
But the thing is that if you take some of the plays by Gogol, Nikolai Gogol, some of the stuff, that's Kafka or Hoffman.
Do you know this sort of thing? Do you know there is like a spirit of that?
Yeah, Kafka just went on to this level where somebody is going to approach this castle or somebody is like falsely accused and this like thing with a person is transformed to something or panel calling like a very short story like two or three pages.
Yeah, I will say that Kafka is good for when you revise in your German.
So then the next one, Polish writers. I will say that I don't know the writer which was mentioned in the chat.
I know better Polish poets. Obviously, they are classic poet of 19th century Adam Mickiewicz, who was just a genius, I think, and wrote a beautiful poem Pan to Deusz.
Then I write classical like Polish writers like Sienkiewicz, Boleslaw Proust-Ferrow and from 20th century Jerzy Anzijewski, The Gates of Paradise and I think it's called Ash and Diamond.
But again, and there is a great writer, by the way, in Poland who wrote, we can say, the first proper Polish novel, although he wrote it in French.
Jan Potocki, the manuscript found in Saragossa. This is for Kanaswas. This is for people who like sort of literary game.
He uses the technique of Thousand and One Nights, Russian doll, where one story is inside another story and another one story. It's just mind blowing.
I read it several times and it's fantastic. The action, by the way, takes in Spain, but he goes like inside of the story, he goes into another one and they link together.
You cannot describe it in this book. The manuscript found in Saragossa. Yeah, this is I think that will be on the maybe Lem is possibly the greatest.
And the second place I will put this one manuscript found in Saragossa. Tolkien. Yeah, Tolkien, I think is great.
But you will appreciate him if you read Beowulf, if you read Kaliwala, if you read Son of Nibelungen, if you read all these all Germanic and Finnish epic poems and Icelandic sagas,
because we will appreciate how Tolkien managed to recreate the poetry and the style of these old guys.
Because when you read in it, it's not just the thing which he's doing for money. He's doing it from the heart.
It's like Umberto Eco writing The Name of the Rose. He's specialist in this in medieval ages. He lives in them.
He knows all the literature of the time. He can recreate the thinking. So that's what Tolkien, I think he has achieved.
It's like this ancient poet who is composing Beowulf when he believes that Beowulf is a real dragon.
That's the fun in Beowulf. You know, apart from these alliterations and the descriptions and the economical rhymes,
you can also amaze that potentially these peoples, although they were on the brink of Christianity and they adopted Christianity and he's Christian, still there are pagan elements there.
They are just they're hidden there and they believe that he believes that they were dragons because they believed in that.
They believed in that till I don't know 13th, 14th century. Bodleir, yes. But again, the poetry, it's like huge continents.
I've already mentioned Africa or Latin America. So and you take it by periods.
For example, we take separately the Renaissance poetry and it goes country by country, not only Germany, not only Germany.
I mean, like all these duketems, not only France or England or Spain or Italy.
There was great poets in Dalmatia or in Iceland or in Hungary or in Poland.
So we need to look at the best poets in these countries at this period.
18th century, the same principle, country by country, 19th century, country by country like that.
So otherwise, we'll just miss some poets who just wrote one poem, which is like great.
When I'm reading this Spanish poets, I found one guy and in Russian anthology, there is just one poem to his father.
And it's like that that our life is some sort of Johnny. Our life is like a river.
Our life is like a river that goes into the stream of the ocean. It was sort of infinity.
Oh, my God. And the thing is that the images, they repeat another poet as well, because, you know,
it's like they don't exist in a vacuum. Somebody is writing almost like similar to that.
And again, it's interesting like how when you mentioned Badler, I recall in one of his poems, I think it's Badler, if I'm not mistaken.
So he's writing about the character that the character looked at them at despise.
At this point, I'm thinking, is he referring to the Divine Comedy to Inferno, where in one of the cycles there is Bertrand de Bourgh.
And he was a poet, a real poet, whom Dante placed in Inferno. And this poet, so he keeps in front of his head.
So his head is so weird and he's keeping his head in front of him like a like a torch, like showing the way like in the darkness of Inferno.
And Dante is describing that in this like sort of statue, this poet, he sort of defied the even Inferno.
He defied everything, you know, in his punishment. And when I'm reading Badler, I'm just like, and it's not obvious.
And I'm thinking, is it some sort of quotation from Dante? Because Dante or Don Quixote, they influenced 19th century like romantics, definitely, like Shakespeare.
So there are a lot of these hidden sort of connections and we don't see them at the first time as like as a quotation.
Candide, Thomas Nash. Yeah.
That's if you're coming to an end or you're feeling a bit tired.
I think I think we should come to the end. I think people are just overloaded.
The thing is that the only advice will be don't rush like allocate the time for every day.
It's like food, the food for your brain. Do you know the food for your intellect?
You're taking food every day, right? I don't know.
Every day. It's like it should be like a habit.
Nothing should stop it unless you are in coma or dead.
Allocate the time. I think it's.
Can you really come back to talk to us?
Yeah, certainly.
The thing, it will be lovely at some point if we read the same text to reconvene and discuss it.
Yes, one of the greatest thing is Russia, which maybe I hinted at that we discuss the same thing in the same circle.
Do you know we have topic for discussion and I want to mention another thing in my funny thing in my school.
There was a hooligan hooligan who was like he got bad marks in all subjects,
but he got his parents got like the largest library like in our class where we borrowed his books and he was reading certain books.
Even we read before them. We read not only what it was compulsory, but not also compulsory like Gorky,
which wasn't some of his novels were not compulsory, but we learned about from this novels about like what is love, what is sex.
And we were like as adolescents. It was I will not say that this is a pornography.
It's not exciting, but do you know it's the knowledge about the life I will say introduction into adult life through the great books.
This is the best way.
Well, if everybody is like you in Evgeny, if everybody is well educated as you in Russia, then the West has got a big problem.
Because apparently the UK is at war with Russia now and Rishi Sunak said that he didn't want to be a wartime prime minister.
I don't know whether that was a joke, but that's what I heard this week.
We're living in very frightening times.
Actually, I think the danger of nuclear inhalation is real.
Although some in this group, they think that or there are no jokes that this is like a bluff and whatever.
I don't think so. It's real.
And the danger is that there are some people in military on both sides that believe that if they destroy the systems of early like recognition that missiles are going, you know, this system systems, they can destroy the country without like retaliation.
And there are people on both sides who believe in that.
So and these people are dangerous because all their actions, not just the words actions, they're dangerous.
Yeah, because this this moment, if the F-16 or whatever plane who can carry nuclear weapons will go from Poland or Romania or Germany, I think Russia will respond to that.
They will destroy it on the territory of Poland or Germany or Romania.
There will be no hesitation in that.
And that will be the first act to the third world.
Well, of all the countries in the world, if you look at the size of Russia, even now, I mean, the Soviet Union was, I think, two million square miles more than it is currently, which currently is just over six million, I think, square miles.
It's the biggest country in the world.
So it's going to take a heck of a lot of invading to take over Russia.
And the notion that you can somehow beat Russia seems incredibly stupid to me.
But anyway, and and we've seen Napoleon fail and we saw Hitler fail if we can believe any history at all.
But anyway, you're going to thank you so much.
So you're incredibly well read, Evgeny, and you're incredibly wise, I imagine.
And how long did it take you to work out what was going on in 2020?
In the COVID-19.
How long did it take you to work out the COVID-19 pandemic, so-called, was a fraud?
Oh, I don't recall.
But at some point, I don't recall at some point I was thinking because there were several still there are several sort of versions in my head.
First of all, I've seen the movie called Contagion.
And I was thinking that what is that?
And I thought that the main thing which I noticed, I thought was like the dressage of the population.
If you know the word dressage, there is a French word dressage.
It's like when you take the horse and to take the horse like in a circus, you train the horse to do different movements, galoping or whatever.
I think it's called dressage.
So that was sort of dressage of population.
Because I was thinking like, how did they manage at the same time in most of the countries to install some sort of martial law and people abdicated from all their rights?
Is it just a pure coincidence that they were afraid of COVID or were they checking whether the population can deliberately do what the government told them?
Sit at home, don't do anything, don't work.
And then I said like after it finished and it showed that almost in all countries, the population is compliant because we live all, I believe, in all totalitarian states, not only like in China, in Russia.
Or Lukashenko, I think the UK.
It's the question how everything is masqueraded and how you just deal with your political opponents.
Sure. That's the question.
Just is it an open dictatorship or just in disguise?
And then I thought that potentially that if some social upheaval will start in the United States and if there will be a lot of protests there,
the government will just put army on the streets and will say that, oh, these are enemies of the country, we need to destroy them.
The people will just believe the government will listen to that because they already have done all these things and showed they can submit to the power during the COVID pandemic.
Yeah.
And now we can do everything.
Yeah, it was a stunning time to be alive, wasn't it?
And still is, actually.
But I agree with you, Yevgeny.
One of the biggest problems is the public's, people's addiction to mobile phones and computers and their absolute inability to control their wishes or their wants, you know, and no wisdom at all.
And no wonder because nobody reads.
And I think you're absolutely right that societies have become atomized and that's extremely dangerous when you've got no conversation taking place between generations, between husbands and wives, because of feminism and all the rest of it.
You know, they've sought to divide us and they've succeeded and we need to reverse this.
And I see you as providing the solution.
It's difficult to say what we can do.
We can think.
The thing is that it's like a huge question whether what kind of regime we're living in, like what kind of regime, like what regime is doing with the people, with the population, what's the purpose of it?
I see it in some sort of my Russian.
Psychopaths are in control, in my opinion.
Yeah, so I think I think I think like in the in the terms or in the categories of like Marxist sort of theory, if we look at the from the point of view of like capitalism, what for me it's obvious that capitalism as a system or regime, certain regime is just need modernization all the time.
So in order to survive it as a regime, when a few people will get an access to everything and will responsible for distributing of the goods in the society, you need to reinvent the system.
So at certain point it works as like Victorian labor factory where even the kids doing the jobs like 24 hours per day and there are no hospitals, nothing.
But then you go to the system where people are allowed to have eight hours work, to have rest that Saturday and Sunday, kids not to work, NHS.
So and all the time there's like reinvention of capitalism.
And it was definitely a project to reinvent sort of capitalism where you remove people from working places to put on androids robots like in their place where every many industries like state controlled and also to put everybody back on the public transport to reduce using private cars.
So all this stuff and to switch consumption from meat to vegetables or I don't know to insects.
Yeah. So but the thing is that I believe that there is no I believe there is no universal government.
Even so there are corporations and there are different like groups of interest in every country.
Like if we take the United States, there are certain like I don't know how many groups which are competing with each other.
Some of them like purely military industrial complex.
Some of them could be a financial financial like circles.
One center of power now is emerging looks like is this digital power with the social media where people who owns Twitter, Instagram and this stuff, they got their capitals just selling us as like the base for the marketing to the companies who like produce the stuff which appears like in advertising.
So there and also there are old elites, especially in Europe.
There are old elites connected to the royal families in the UK royal family in the UK and associated banks with it and the aristocracy.
So aristocratic families. And I think there is a competition with them at certain points.
They go together, but at some points there are like a fight with them.
I think some of the groups of these groups, they actually sabotage in this plan, you know, of how call it of restart or like reinvention of capitalism because they know that everything will end with social revolution.
So they need to do something.
Possibly it will be just state state regulation in all spheres.
In this group, you're going to were incurable rebels.
And we like big stakes and fast cars, the faster the better and the bigger the better and caramels to say something now.
Yeah, I just wanted to kind of maybe agree with you a little bit on some of those points and challenge.
I think that I can agree with you that those those, you know, those different groups might have disagreements from time to time where they their their goals or their their desires go against each other.
I think for me, a great example of that was when you saw, I think a lot of people think that the the revelation of Prince Andrew with Virginia Guifa and and Jeffrey Epstein was like, like some sort of like white knight campaign to out him as a as a as a sex
pest or, you know, inappropriate guy.
For me, I know I have a feeling for how the media work in the West.
And I think that when all of the different channels were and I'm going to use this word were in lockstep with each other on this on this this bit of news, I my first thought wasn't, oh, Prince Andrew's done this.
It's what else is Prince Andrew done that they're holding back on that they're now using hangouts?
Yeah, exactly.
Well, actually, for me, I said, what do these people need from the royal family that they're willing to blackmail them on the international stage and disgrace them?
So I said to myself, this is this is actually the royal family being blackmailed.
And then we found out about, you know, Epstein's honey pot operation and whether Mossad is involved.
I don't know.
But so what I would say is that, yes, they do probably have their own, you know, their own interests in it.
And maybe they're not all completely, you know, on song all the time.
But I think that the state where is Kate Middleton?
Someone's written.
I think that she may be dying.
Yeah, she may already be gone.
Who knows?
But the I think that Covid was almost like I feel a bit foolish after Covid because I feel like you look back in history on things that came before and you think, oh, how did I miss that?
Because I think Covid was the great revealer because you saw every single one of these countries marching lockstep with each other.
And that's that's Russia, Ukraine, roughly the same policy, Texas, roughly the same policy.
All of these different nations who are allegedly enemies somehow managed to come up with exactly the same policies and potentially barring China.
Who knows what exactly what was happening there?
But even Iran, allegedly the enemy of the West, managed to pull off the fanciest, swankiest vaccine passport that linked to payment systems.
So are they our enemies?
I'm not so sure.
And Yevgeny was making a cheeky remark about me not believing in nukes.
And when he said some people in this chat don't believe in this.
Thank you for that, mate.
It's not that I don't believe in nukes.
I don't believe in nukes.
It's just that I don't believe that people that are going to such extent to organize things are about to detonate the switch on all of their hard work over the last 100, 200.
Yeah, I agree.
Well, so you mean that it's a big play.
Who was it who said all the world's a stage?
Yeah, yeah.
You know, I personally I think that I need to be careful what I say here because I haven't outed myself from my profession yet, Stephen.
But I know for a fact that the European Union had eight eight slots on their vaccine passport digital app.
And most of the population haven't come anywhere near eight.
And that means that we had an operation that was incomplete.
And that means that we have loose ends that need tying up and whether that means that this is a distraction for the cancers that are happening or the other issues that are taking place.
I mean, this is just an exercise in imagination.
But is it possible that we have a lot of people that need to be hushed and that a war between the biggest powers would achieve that?
I don't know.
But I get the impression that we're being pushed into war.
So from that point of view, yeah, destruction is coming.
But I don't think it's going to be with with and I don't know much about nukes, but I think of nukes.
I think of, you know, big fucking bombs.
I don't think it's going to be that it should be more tactical because lots of effort has gone in before this.
So but yeah, what do you think about that?
Again, because I think I think that covid was the great revealer.
And I don't think you can I don't think you can like absolutely say they're not all working together.
There isn't one world government.
There isn't one one guy pulling the string on everything because actually we've got a great deal of evidence that says there is somebody that there is a whip for every single country.
And you saw it happen.
And you can't rule out.
First time in history, all the nations in the world agreed with each other or damn nearly all the nations.
Yeah, just just quick reply to the comment in the in the chat.
Somebody mentions, I think, and if mentions their time.
Tamil poet, medieval poet, T. R. Kural.
I will say, yes, I got it at home here in in the anthology of the medieval Indian poetry in Russia.
By the way, this poet, he was there was a separate book of all his poems.
But again, there were so many points that, you know, it's only like a Babylonian library or Alexandria Library can like have like all all these books like all these translations.
Yeah.
But again, you can find the you can find the like masterpieces and the pills like everywhere, everywhere.
And quite often apart from the poems, we need to know the historical and cultural ground.
What was going on there?
Because again, like it's a huge ocean.
I didn't mention that in India, apart from the medieval drama by Kalidasa and the rest, there were I think in 12th, 13th century,
there were several anthologies of tales like we can say similar in the similar to in certain way 2001 nights composed by some endeavor.
And this is something, guys.
I mean, like the world the world treasure is just full of like of pearls.
And they want you to to waste your time for a plan.
A plan shrug the shoulders, you know.
Yeah.
And there and there is so much wisdom like in all these guys from the past that, you know, what else?
What else?
Yeah.
There's certainly not much wisdom in the in the in the people these days.
Yeah.
The people are purporting to lead us.
Yeah.
The thing is that we're dealing with this when we're analyzing certain like events, it's difficult to get it because there's so much informational noise.
Yeah.
And as we know, the same fact could be like shown like in different ways, like manipulated or whatever.
But the certain crucial information and I always say it will be interesting like to search and to look into power.
We can say people in charge or how call them today ruling class, which is in shadow.
Whom we see on the surface is like the king and his family or certain people like in the parliament or whoever.
But we don't see people in shadow because they are in shadow.
All these guys like in every country.
So we don't we see Putin, but he's like on the surface, just a symbol of the system.
But there are definitely several competing like, I don't know, seven, eight groups with the different people.
So and I know that in Russia, in Russia, it's impossible to predict what does it mean.
For example, the former Minister of Defense, Sho Yigo, he's now promoted or fired, whatever, to the position of the secretary of this defense committee.
So what does it mean?
Does it mean anything in the past?
A lot of people, they try to make some sort of predictions or make any conclusions.
It's impossible in this sort of Byzantine system, which I believe exists almost in every country where there are a lot of actors with whom we don't see.
Yeah. So you're getting that's a good place, maybe to end.
And well, not least because I think you need a rest.
You've been going for three hours and 45 minutes almost.
That's pretty good.
I feel I feel guilt and shame because I thought that we will do everything we should do everything like in two hours, 15 minutes.
But I went just on gentle for everything.
Yeah. Well, we were encouraging you, Yevgeny.
So all I hope and I'm not a very good interviewer.
I never thought I'd be doing.
Well, it wasn't an interview, was it?
But but I just tried to create an atmosphere in which you felt comfortable because I thought that you well, I was convinced before you even started that this was going to be a special call.
So anyway, you haven't had the letters down.
Thank you so much.
Don't mention it.
Okay. Thank you so much.
You'll get to all the invitations for future meetings now, Yevgeny, as a past guest.
Let me just check with Hans Benjamin.
Hans Benjamin, do you get the all the invitations still?
You muted Hans.
Yeah, I think I get most of them.
Sometimes I wonder.
So you'll get all the future invitation.
We have meetings twice a week, Yevgeny.
You don't have to come, but you're very welcome if you do come.
And especially if you like asking good questions.
Okay.
Thanks so much.
Thanks for everybody who stayed.
Thank you.
Yes.
Oh, by the way, we'll send you the chat.
Oh, maybe I should save that.
And we will send you the link to this video, which is recorded.
The only thing I just noticed, somebody asked the question in the last moment.
Do you read in the original languages?
I will say that, first of all, and I am getting everything in my head in Russian translations, in good Russian translations.
I read in the original languages only in the case if I want to revise the language, if I want to revise like Spanish or French or Italian or German.
So in this case, all Latin.
So that will be like the month or two months where I will read the same extracts, the books I'm reading, like in parallel.
I enjoy reading in Russian because Russian, they have more associations with my like what I read.
But your list, we should be able to find at least in English, shouldn't we?
All of them.
But of course, the translations may not be as good.
But anyway, we'll try to wade through all those books.
Thank you so much.
OK, bye for now.
Brilliant presentation.
Thank you.