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Yuri Vynnychuk
not dealing with a complete
panorama of literary life back
then, but just with fragments
that miraculously managed
to make their way to us,
that miraculously had been
decoded and read, but not
all of them, because no one
had grasped the Arcanumian
language, and an opinion
about their literature had
been formed from Hittite and
Hurrian sources. And it was
the latter issue that excited
Yarosh so much that he
cast aside all the remaining
ones and took to decoding
Arcanumian texts. Many
scholars had tried to do
this before him, but failed.
Arcanumian cuneiform was
unlike any other.
Finding time for his scholarly
work just in odd moments,
Yarosh seriously began to
contemplate the sense of his
family life. The stupid routine
of work in school oppressed
and tormented him; he was
surprised at how it came to
be that he had become a
teacher despite the fact that
he had hated that profession
when he was still in school.
He would come home tired,
and the only thing that could
motivate him to do scholarly
work was wine. The first
glass took away his daylong
tension, the second freed
his thoughts, tore off all the
chains from them, and then
his pen would begin to fly
across the paper as though
it were mad. Only it lasted
for not more than about
two hours, but then tedium
would fatigue him, and he
would lie down to sleep with
his head filled with ancient
hieroglyphs, clay tablets and
papyruses; the complete
disdain of his wife and in-laws
of his scholarly work added to
this feeling; they considered
his work nonsense, a waste
of time, but he would never
complete his scholarly work,
so hewas, therefore, destined