At Intellectual Takeout, we often wish that people would be more passionate about ideas.

But this might be taking it a bit too far…

In 2014, the Independent reported that a teacher in Russia killed his friend over a dispute about… wait for it… the merits of poetry versus prose.

“A Russian teacher allegedly killed a friend in a drunken argument over literary genres, investigators have said.

 

The pair engaged in an animated discussion on the merits of poetry over prose during a drinking session, which soon escalated into a lethal brawl, after the suspect stabbed his friend insisting that poetry was superior.

 

In a statement, federal police in the Russian region of Sverdlovsk said: ‘The host insisted that real literature is prose, while his guest, a former teacher, argued for poetry.’

 

‘The literary dispute soon grew into a banal conflict, on the basis of which the 53-year-old admirer of poetry killed his opponent with the help of a knife.’”

At the time, the Independent also pointed out that

“The incident comes four months after a similar argument over the theories of German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who argued that reason is the source of morality, resulted in a man being shot in a grocery store in southern Russia.” 

As G.K. Chesterton said, one should try to never let a quarrel ruin a good argument.