Mark Phillips' Pages: Workbook: 7/17/03: Dostoevsky believed, with the Romantics, that wisdom is the fruit of suffering.

Jacob Lawrence, "Depression" (1950) — Jacob Lawrence, *Depression* (1950)

July 17, 2003:

Dostoevsky believed, with the Romantics, that wisdom is the fruit of suffering. It's hard to imagine anything more naive. Suffering is like a cover of gray cloud. Colors fade, contours bleed, sounds are stifled, the only voice is that of your suffering and of course that voice makes complete nonsense. It's like saying your vision is clearest with a blanket over your head.