Yevgeny Zamyatin, We — The Great Operation—I Forgave Everything… (1924)
“ It is clear, therefore, that happiness is when there are no longer any desires, not a single desire any more. What an error, what an absurd prejudice it was, that we used to mark happiness with the sign ‘plus’! No, absolute happiness must be marked ‘minus’—divine minus! ”
Yevgeny Zamyatin, We — The Great Operation—I Forgave Everything… (1924)
“ No, now we knew where we were flying; planets were following me, planets sparkling with flame and populated with fiery, singing flowers, and mute planets, blue ones where rational stones were unified into one organized society, and planets which like our own earth had already reached the apex of one hundred-per-cent happiness. Suddenly, from above: “And don’t you think that at the apex are, precisely, stones unified into an organized society?” The triangle grew sharper and sharper, darker and darker. “Happiness . . . well? . . . Desires are tortures, aren’t they? ”
Yevgeny Zamyatin, We — The Great Operation—I Forgave Everything… (1924)
“ You, had you not read all this in my records—which look like an ancient, strange novel—had you, like me, held in your trembling hands the newspaper, smelling of typographic ink . . . if you knew, as I do, that all this is a most certain reality—if not the reality of today, then that of tomorrow—would you not feel the very things I feel? Would your head not whirl as mine does? Would there not run over your back and arms those strange, sweet, icy needles? Would you not feel that you were a giant, an Atlas?—that if you only stood up and straightened out you would reach the ceiling with your head? ”
