In Shestov�s In Job�s Balance , there is an essay on Tolstoy�s latter writings. LI wants to say there is a brilliant essay on Tolstoy�s latter writings, but one of the effects of the essay is to cast in doubt such unthinking terms as �brilliant.� It is just this kind of flattery, that critical blank of praise, which is a way of turning the reader aside, keeping him from entering the empty room at the heart of the heart of it all. Modern criticism, after all, originated in the royal courts, or at best among the circle around powerful families in Italian city states � and it still retains a lot of the courtier�s arts. Why else do critics feel called upon to praise, to like, or to dislike? It is a way of reconstituting the circle around the patron.
So I won�t say use the word "brilliant." I will say this: Shestov is a philosopher � and hence, a writer of death threats. This essay is one of them.
He quotes a letter written to Tolstoy by Dostoevsky�s official biographer. I
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