To: Haim R. Branisteanu who wrote (169975 ) 3/28/2021 4:56:39 PM From: sense Respond to of 219353 For me poetry is like an inside song and usually after some important personal event It is definitely preferable to let it out that way, rather than just exploding. As to the Norse story nothing much has changed with the Varangians and Kiev Russ and I find it quite amazing , Russians share the Swedes taste in literature, wallow in it... particularly the sad, hopeless, dark elements ? That perhaps a chicken or the egg issue in relation to the cultural choices... but, still producing Solzhenitsyn both in the sense of as an author... and as a reflection of the choices made in that culture. I find it rather less amazing than a natural consequence of circumstance. The reason for the serial waves of emigration / invasion ? How desperate do you have to be to want to invade England as a "more suitable climate" for human habitation ? Those willing to take the chance that a bit of travel might help... means leaving behind those who'd rather stay and wallow in it ? Humans are not immune to the influence of environment in how and why we make choices as we do ? Life in places where you don't have to work to survive... differs from that in places where you do ? Life in places where work alone is not enough to survive... differs from that in places it is ? Defined by our struggles... broader in meaning than some seem to understand ? No physiological ecologist or socio-biologist would be confused by it, I'd think. Culture, of course, also carries with the people... its adaptive value is not altered at its core with emigration, alone, often for many generations... but, "melting pot" societies break down those barriers in time... unless you can demonstrate a genetic persistence of that cultural angst in second and third generation Russians living in Miami ?