6 ms·

didn't understand it

• pavel_lishin 17y ago
  Same, although it partially reminded me of Anathem.
• hristov 17y ago
  It has a lot to do with Christianity. And by that I mean the real hard core Orthodox Christianity Russians used to believe in back then and not the watered down Calvinist stuff that is more popular nowadays. IT seems that he gained wisdom by reading all kinds of philosophers and learning languages , and after that he was able to truly understand the bible. And then after studying the bible for a couple of years he truly understood the meaning of it. Then he indiscriminately read a bunch of random literature and scientific books trying to find if there is any earthly thing that is worthwhile at all and found none. So in the end he discovered that the entire argument of whether to have fifteen years of your life to enjoy your youth or to have 2 million rubles but not your youth is pointless because neither of these things amount to anything in view of the infinite universe and the fact that time always moves on and everyone dies, etc. So he saw all earthly pleasures pointless in comparison to attaining admission to heaven so he gave away the two million to presumably live a simple God fearing life and join Heaven. And of course, ironically, he would have never gotten the money anyway, if he did not forsake the money he would have been dead.