The Agent by Ivan Turgenev is one of the stories in The Sportsman’s Notebook, ranked 873rd on The Greatest Books of All Time site – a few hundred of those books are reviewed on my blog, where the best gig is https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html your feedback is welcome - 9 out of 10

 

The Agent by Ivan Turgenev is one of the stories in The Sportsman’s Notebook, ranked 873rd on The Greatest Books of All Time site – a few hundred of those books are reviewed on my blog, where the best gig is https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html your feedback is welcome

 

9 out of 10

 


At the beginning of this narrative, I thought there is a character that seems a lot like me ‘He has a positive distaste for doubtful society—he is afraid of compromising himself; in his lighter moments, however, he will avow himself a follower of Epicurus…’ and there is more there, to identify with, only there is a paradigm shift

 

‘Distaste of doubtful society’ sends me to a story told by our majestic luminary, the brightest mind around, and one of the greatest in the world, Andrei Plesu https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2023/11/despre-bucurie-in-est-si-vest-aka-about.html who was blacklisted...

Back in the communist days, and there was an opportunity to publish, which came with strings attached, he had to include some praise for Ceausescu and ergo he asked three friends for an opinion, the first was Alexandru Paleologu, who said something like ‘you know the times, there is nothing we can do, everybody does it, you have to…’

 

The second might have been Tudor Vianu – no, he was not, I checked, but let us move on – this other friend was thinking of the Golden Mean of Aristotle, on the one hand, he was looking forward to see Andrei Plesu published, but he could not encourage him to compromise, he did not know what to say about this

Nevertheless, the third man, the magnificent Constantin Noica, was radical about this and said ‘you do not mix with the hooligans’, or words to that effect – now back to The Agent, this fellow who appeared to be a replica of yours truly gets ruthless very quickly, mind you, these are short stories we are talking about

 

Arkady Pavlitch is proud of the way his property is managed, and takes the narrator there, to show off, telling him about The Agent, how there are no debts, the peasants pay the rent – the system had changed at some point in Russia – what am I saying, nothing really changed there, they just have another Ivan the Terrible in charge now

Boyars used to have serfs, people who lived in some state of slavery, which was not exactly the same as what we know from Ancient Rome, Greece and other places, but not far from that nonetheless, but then some improvements were made, thus peasants could rent, pay the owner and benefit, keep some profit, or food

 

-          Presumably

 

In practice, as we can see in this story, Agents and/or nobles would just abuse the hoi polloi, who could hardly get food on the table, and what happens here is the paradigm – as they walk with The Agent, Sofron Yakovlitch, a man is coming, with his son, to try and get help form the boyar, explaining his outrageous ordeal

The Agent is abusive, exploits the peasants, in this case, he had sent the sons of the poor father to the army, out of order, overall, he had brought them to destitution, beats and abuses them and others, this is like The Orange Jesus of the Russian fields – I am exaggerating, but for me, this idiot who sists on top of the free world (again, as if we did not learn anything from the other time!) is the standard for stupidity, cruelty and so much more

 

This Orange Hyena is now trying extortion in Ukraine, where they have sent three negotiating teams, the first one with the Secretary of commerce, telling the hero president, Zelensky, that he has one hour to sign away the riches of the country, all because the Mafia boss thinks he has to get ‘back’ 500 billion sent by Biden

This is nonsense – that orange head is made of shit really – it was just over 100 billion, with the weapons the US wanted, not what Zelensky asked for, such as fighter jets – it is like in that communist joke – question for Radio Yerevan – ‘is it true that Mr. Ionescu has been given a white car, a Dacia? And the official answer is ‘no, it was not a car, it was a bicycle, it was not white, it was black, and it was not given to him, it was taken for him’ this Orange fool is a jackass  

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html 

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

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