Excerpt:
But an invisible force was crushing him. He could feel its weight, its hypnotic power; it was forcing him to think as it wanted, to write as it dictated. This force was inside him; it could dissolve his will and cause his heart to stop beating; it came between him and his family; it insinuated itself into his past, into his childhood memoires. He began to feel that he really was untalented and boring, someone who wore out the people around him with dull chatter. Even his work seemed to have grown dull, to be covered with a layer of dust; the thought of it no longer filled him with light and joy.
Only people who have never felt such a force themselves can be surprised that others submit to it. Those who have felt it, on the other hand, feel astonished that a man can rebel against it even for a moment—with one sudden word of anger, one timid gesture of protest.
- Life and Fate, Vasily Grossman, translation by Robert Chandler (New York Review Books), page 672.
The person being figuratively crushed is Viktor Shtrum, a Soviet physicist exploring the workings of the atom. Crushing him is the power of the state, directly and indirectly.
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