Um momento desnecessário de elevação cultural

Este excerto de O Arquipélago do Gulag vai em inglês porque não é qualquer um que se atreve a traduzir o que este indivíduo escreveu, ainda por cima traduzindo a partir de uma tradução. Aliás, não é qualquer um que escreve sequer o nome dele, porque com nomes russos nunca se sabe qual é a versão certa (aguardo esclarecimentos do irmão Vostra). Então aí está (os itálicos estão no original):

"When the great literature of the past — Shakespeare, Schiller, Dickens — inflates and inflates images of evildoers of the blackest shades, it seems somewhat farcical and clumsy to our contemporary perception. The trouble lies in the way these classic evildoers are portrayed. They recognize themselves as evildoers, and they know their souls are black.

And they reason: "I cannot live unless I do evil. So I'll set my father against my brother! I'll drink the victim's sufferings until I'm drunk with them!" Iago very precisely identifies his purposes and his motives as being black and born of hate.

But no; that's not the way it is! To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good, or else that it's a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions.

Macbeth's self-justifications were feeble — and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strenght of Shakespeare's evildoers stopped short of a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology.

"