Zachem mrachnaja kosnost' razbila to, chto vsego dorozhe? [...] Kosnost'! O, priroda! Ljudi na zemle odni—vot beda! [...] Vse mertvo i vsjudu mertvecy. Odni tol'ko ljudi, a krugom nich molkhanie-vot zemlja!
(Why did gloomy inertia smash that which was dearest of all? [...] Inertia! O, nature! People on earth are alone, that’s what’s wrong. [...] Everything is dead and there are corpses everywhere. People, alone, and around them, silence-such is the earth!) - F.M. Dostoevskij, “Krotkaja”, in Polnoe sobranie sočinenij v tridcati tomax (Leningrad: Nauka, 1982), XXIV, 35.