No one understands that the Russian soul is a very dark place. The language, the violence, the cannibalism, the necrophilia, Fedka the Convict, the broken skull on a dirt path, it's all there in the poetic writings of Dostoevsky, Mamleev, Sorokin, Petrushevskaya, Sharov, Nabrikova, Pelevin, Victor Erofeyev - my favorite of the moderns... as it remains indicative of the same rupture, the same open vein and black-blooming flowers that can be perfumed and beautiful, but entirely evil, that is the Russian soul, it is like kissing a name with cold lips written in the icy Baltic water, it is not like the others.