The four names are not a freedom — they are four renunciations. The book titles them: Knowledge, Renunciation, the Way, Rest. Each new self is bought by killing the previous one, and the whole arc is a житие — a saint's life with a predetermined sacred shape. The narrative that makes the suffering meaningful (a life lived as a hagiography) is the same structure that removes the freedom to be anything else. Vodolazkin's own framing says it: 'one cannot help being surprised that all these people bear a single name' — the single name is the cage that forces the several selves into one predestined story. Ripped from the novel (translated from the Russian by the cutter): «В таких случаях нельзя не испытывать удивления, что все эти люди носят одно имя.» — "In such cases one cannot help being surprised that all these people bear a single name."

— In our words · Source: Laurus (Eugene Vodolazkin)