I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen.
Perhaps I am doomed to retrace my steps under the illusion that I am exploring doomed to try and learn what I should simply recognize learning a mere fraction of what I have forgotten.