Quotes About Imperfective

M. Jacques Rivière appears to know no Russian and says no words of 'aspects', but what he explains as his meaning is simply this, that the Russian novel is written in the imperfective, written from within not without, lived not thought about. This modern Russian method is to M. Rivière the exact opposite of symbolist work, where everything is known beforehand, everything achieved then thought or felt about from outside and above.

It is part of the great spiritual riches of the Russian that, because he sees or rather feels things living from the inside (imperfective) he sees or rather feels things whole (asyndeta). It is a corollary from his living into things, for life is durée unanalysed, undistributed. These asyndeta , these bits of life so closely bound together that they refuse conjunctions, are countless in Russian, specially in epic and peasant Russian.