Yevgeny Zamyatin, We — The Benumbed Waves—Everything Is Improving… (1924)
“ What if today’s accident, although in itself not important, is only a beginning, only the first meteorite of a shower of burning and thundering stones which the infinite may have poured out upon our glass paradise? ”
Yevgeny Zamyatin, We — The Benumbed Waves—Everything Is Improving… (1924)
“ We continued to walk as usual, rhythmically, in our Assyrian manner. I watched the graceful zigzags of the electric sparks and thought: “Human society is constantly improving, as it should. How ugly a tool was the ancient whip and how much beauty there is—” At that moment, like a nut flying from a wheel revolving at full speed, a female Number, thin, flexible, and tense, tore herself from our rows, and with a cry, “Enough! Don’t you dare!” she threw herself straight into the quadrangle. It was like the meteorite of one hundred and nineteen years ago ”
Yevgeny Zamyatin, We — The Benumbed Waves—Everything Is Improving… (1924)
“ Everything Is Improving I Am a Microbe Please imagine that you stand at the seashore. The waves go rhythmically up, down, up. . . . Suddenly, when they have risen, they remain in that position, benumbed, torpid! It was just as weird and unnatural when everything became confused and our regular walk, which is prescribed by the Tables, suddenly came to an end. The last time such a thing happened was one hundred and nineteen years ago, when according to our historians a meteorite fell hissing and fuming into the very midst of the marchers. ”
