Volume 48, Number 5 · March 29, 2001
The Possessed
By Viktor Erofeyev
The Rasputin File
Edvard Radzinsky, translated by Judson Rosengrant
Nan A. Talese/Doubleday524 pp., $29.95
Rasputin slumbers in the heart of every Russian. But sometimes he doesn't slumber. If you awaken the Rasputin in yourself, life suddenly overflows its banks: you begin to experience a fierce, incomparable joy from being in a state of outrageousness, dissipation, restlessness, suffering, and desecration. 'Violence is the soul's joy,' Rasputin taught.[*] I may defame him, hate his blissful face; I may dream of putting out those piercing, infernal, heavenly eyes, cutting him into little pieces, drowning him in the acid of obscenities—but he is my man. Blood kin. Rasputin wears the ancient mask of the shaman.
Review, 4683 words
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