... the time has come for the heroic: everybody needs something stimulating, something striking, something, you know, that shouldn’t be like life but should be higher than life, better, more beautiful. It is absolutely necessary that contemporary literature should start to embellish life somewhat, and as soon as it will start doing so, life itself will be embellished, that is people will start living more energetically, more buoyantly. And now — have a look at their wretched eyes, how bored, dull, frozen they are...