Paul Biryukov

“ When, idle in the dark, most keen I feel The stinging serpent of my heart's remorse: Reflection seethes--and on my o'erwhelmed mind Rushes a multitude of woeful thoughts, While memory, her unending roll unfolds In silence, and with sick recoil I read The story of my life, and curse myself, And bitterly bewail with bitter tears-- But not one woeful line can I wash out! ”

“ I am calling to mind all the infamies of my former life--these reminiscences do not pass away and they poison my existence. Generally people regret that the individuality does not retain memory after death. What a happiness that it does not! What an anguish it would be if I remembered in this life all the evil, all that is painful to the conscience, committed by me in a previous life. And, if one remembers the good, one has to remember the evil too. ”

“ What a happiness that reminiscences disappear with death and that there only remains consciousness, a consciousness which, as it were, represents the general outcome of the good and the evil, like a complex equation reduced to its simplest expression: x = a positive or a negative, a great or a small quantity.
Yes, the extinction of memory is a great happiness; with memory one could not live a joyful life. As it is, with the extinction of memory we enter into life with a clean white page upon which we can write afresh good and evil. ”