The Apocalypse of Our Time and other writings 0275235203

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Contents Published in the United States of America in 1977 by Praeger Publishers, Inc. 200 Park Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017 © 1977 by Robert Payne

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Library of Congress Cataloging In Publication Data Rozanov, Vasilil Vasil'evich, 1856-1919. The apocalypse of our time, and other writings. CONTENTS: Solitaria.-Fallen leaves.-Fallen leaves: a second basket. [etc.] I. Title. 73-11780 AC65.R619613 1976 087'.1 ISBN 0-275-23520-3

Printed in the United States of America

Introduction, by Robert Payne

1

Solitaria 19 Fallen Leaves 81 Fallen Leaves: A Second Basket

183

The Apocalypse of Our Time 225 On Rozanov, by George lvask

295

Introduction

If we look at the general composition of the Apoca­ lypse and ask ourselves, "What is it all about? . . . Whence the anger, the rage-indeed the roaring of the Apocalypse (for this book indeed roars and groans), we find ourselves all at once in our own times . . . It is terribly apocalyptic ("mysterious''), terribly strange that men, whole peoples, humanity --all are living through an apocalyptic crisis. The Apocalypse of Our Time

In the nineties of the last century there could sometimes be seen in St. Petersburg newspaper offices a rather small, thin, nervous man with a heavy reddish mustache stained with tobacco and a short beard, who resembled in his general appearance a provincial schoolmaster or a railway booking-office clerk. No one seeing him would guess that he was among the masters of Russian literature. This drab, nondescript man possessed an extraordinary intelligence, a robust and penetrating wit, an intense religious feeling, and a command of Russian prose that induced Prince Mirsky in his classic history of modem Russian literature to call him quite simply "the greatest prose­ writer of his time." Rozanov himself would have been a little puzzled by this claim: He did not regard himself as a stylist but as a man who threw style to the winds, wrote 3

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Introduction

strenuously and colloquially, and possessed a formidable impatience. At various tirnes he was called "a savage," "a fool of God," "an arch-reactionary," "a revolutionary," "a champion of the Orthodox Church," "a pornographer," and worse. The philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev described him as "an old Russian peasant woman of genius, a mystical peasant woman." The Communists detested him and banned his books. For a man who wore his cloak of invisibility with a kind of rugged nonchalance, Rozanov would scarcely have regarded this reductio ad absurdum with any amazement. Long before he died, he knew that his ideas had "got thqough." He had entered the mainstream of Russian literature and Russian thought. In the Soviet Union he is still read secretly; his works are pondered and debated; and there are some who regard him as the bearer of a message that will be heard again in the future. For Rozanov-in spite of all his faults, errors of taste, coarseness, even his vulgarity and perhaps especially his vulgarity-was a very rare phenomenon: a pure thinker who never forgot his humanity, and indeed reveled in his human qualities. To be a man, to have a wife and children, to belong to the Orthodox Church, which he alternately loved and hated, to smoke endless cigarettes, to

talk to cab-drivers and philosophers, to collect ancient coins and to study ancient religions, to be alive in the exciting years before Russia drifted into war this was exhilaration enough for a lifetime. He was a very ordinary and

-all nearly invisible man who possessed

extraordinary gifts, and the chief of his gifts was the power in his writings to bring you immediately into his presence.

His rough, gravelly voice is inimitable. In his four great works- Solitaria; Fallen Leaves; Fallen Leaves: A Second Basket; and The Apocalypse of Our Time-4e attempts by means of aphorisms, diary notes, ejaculations, and memos addressed to himself to portray his own innermost nature, and in the process he succeeds in conveying the atmosphere of his time, and the very disjointedness of his thoughts has the effect of giving him a reality that no amount of formal explication would have su&ea"O in giving. By revealing himself he reveals his age; and we become hi$moanions on a iournev to catastrophe.

Very few writers have succeeded in conveying the innermost essence of their thoughts. The most successful have been diarists, letter-writers, and those rare authors like Leonardo da vinci whose scattered notes written for no other eyes but their own bring us abruptly into the presence of that remote powerhouse where their thoughts are generated. We hear the thoughts almost before they become thoughts, almost before they are clothed in words. Sometimes, reading Montaigne's Essays, we have the feeling that we are listening to the heartbeat of his thoughts while they are still in the womb. From pascal's pensAes rhe thoughts emerge naked, bloody, and crying at the top oftheir lungs. Suddenness, discomfort, awkwardness, immediacy, a sound like splintering wood or breaking glass-such are the characteristics of these thoughts that spring out

Introduction

5

of the human soul, out of its deepest recesses. And always there is the sense of being at the ultimate naked edge of things, overlooking the abyss. These are the thoughts that Rozanov valued most, and more often than he dared to hope he was able to capture them before they vanished. He wrote them down as they came to him while sitting by the fire, or in his bathroom, or as he was driving home in a cab, or as he was walking through the streets of St. Petersburg. Sometimes, of course, they were only the sounds of the soul muttering to itself. At other times the thoughts have a purity, a freshness, and an authenticity that proclaim their origins. "Man is a mystery," wrote Dostoyevsky. "The mystery must be solved, and even if you spend your whole life attempting to solve it, do not say you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man." Dostoyevsky attempted to solve the mystery in his immense, chaotic novels, which reflect the immensity and chaos of the human soul. Rozanov, deeply devoted to Dostoyevsky and quite incapable of writing novels, hoped to solve the mystery by contemplation, by watching and listening to the soul's sudden illuminations and questionings. Rozanov never succeeded in solving the mystery, but he succeeded in mapping whole regions of the mysterious territory that had never been mapped before. He was an existentialist long before existentialism came into existence. He obeyed the existentialist rules: you approach the mystery empty-handed, and you are permitted to use only your own native strength, your native intelligence. Ruses are permitted; you enter the lair without being observed; your task is to trap the mystery into revealing itself. All theologies may be used, for theology is simply the road men have traveled before you. You may use any weapons that lie within reach: wit, invective, poetry. Rozanov's most effective weapon was his common humanity. Hence his interest in sex, fatherhood, prostitution, homosexuality, ritual baths, circumcision, blood sacrifices; and on all these subjects he shocked his readers by his outspokenness. "Is nothing sacred to Rozanov?" they said, and he answered that everything was sacred, but a special sanctity was attached to sex and procreation. He despised reactionary politicians as much as he despised revolutionaries and their dreams of a heaven on earth achieved through endless suffering. He loved Russian priests not because they were priests but because they were patriarchs with long beards and large families. He liked old coins because they enabled him to hold history in the palm of his hand and because their lntricate designs raised wonderfully complex numismatic problems. He liked his creature comforts, adored children, and was warm toward. women. Profoundly religious, he attacked Christianity vigorously; and, while he was sometimes mistakenly regarded as anti-Semitic, he celebrated Judaism fervently. Paradoxes delighted him. His wildly disorganized brain was attached to a body that traveled to the office as regularly as

Introduction

clockwork; he possessed all the bourgeois vices and virtues. He was "the ordinary sensual man," l'homme moyen sensuel, raised to the pitch of genius. The test of genius lies in originality, the capacity to make or say completely new things. Rozanov said new things in a new way, reshaping the Russian sentence for his own purposes..He threw grammar away whenever it suited his purpose to do so, italicized, underlined, added quotation marks for emphasis, spaced out words, employed diferent typographies, and in general acted as though he were the master, not the servant, of the Russian language. He wanted the music and flavor of the human voice to rise off the page, and to a remarkable degree he succeeded. The music is always orchestrated, for Rozanov was a conscious artist who knew what he wanted to say and also the exact pitch of voice in which he wanted it said. Generally the voice is gruff, grubby, earthy, rumbling in the throat, almost visceral. One of the most famous passages of The Apocalypse of Our Time describes the coming of the Bolshevik Revolution: With a clang, a creak, and a scream the iron

qurtp-i4.d1op-s.g4,.Russian

history

"The performance is over." The people get up from their seats. "Time to put on your coats and go home." They look around. But the fur coats and the houses have all vanished.

In Russian the first sentence reads: S iyazgom, skripom,

visgom opuskayetsia

y.yy1esrltis impossible in English to convey the muffied stridency of lyazgom, skripom, vizgom or the force of zheleznyi

,

made to work in the orchard and vegetable garden, carrying heavy buckets of manure and drawing water from a pond. He hated carrying the buckets because their weight "tore his arms apart," and he hated going to the pond because he always succeeded in getting his trousers wet. He disliked his two older brothers and older sister because they refused to help and laughed at him. He grew up to be an awkward, pasty-faced boy, indolent and dreamy, without any grace of manner, who suffered terribly from loneliness, for the three older children were too old for him and the two younger children were too young, and his rather grim-faced mother showed him little afection. He hoarded his bitterness and took refuge in his imagination. He was especially bitter toward a certain Voskressensky, a painter who had studied at the Academy of Art in St. Petersburg, came to live in the house "as a sort of step-father," and regarded it as one ofhis chiefduties to flog Vasily whenever he misbehaved. Voskressensky was an authentic populist of the kind described by Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, and Leskov, a former seminarian and a man of radical opinions. The widow yearned for him, and the boy was fascinated and

terrified by him.

In Rozanov's memory the

house in Kostroma was always "dark and evil." was not that the house itself was dark, but the tensions accumulated, arid there were always hatred and fear. There was a large vegetable garden, and one of the boy's tasks was to take vegetables, raspberries, gooseberries, and cucumbers to sell in the neighboring houses. He also sold the milk from the family cow. He had developed a great affection for the cow, and one day, sitting on a hay rick, he watched in horror a butcher tying the cow's horns to a cart and then slitting its throat. "Then the cow fell down, and I, too, fell from the

lt

nad Russkuyu Istoriyu zhele-zn-yi

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Introduction

zanavyes, which coming at the end ofthe sentence reinforces the awful sound of the curtain falling. Here, long before Winston Churchill, Rozanov had seen the iron curtain, using the Russian word for "iron" as much for the sound as for the meaning. Even at such moments of hopeless despair Rozanov remained the conscious artist, and those six short sentences are wrought and shaped into poetry. Above all, he was a poet-a poet who wrote from the edge of the ?byss.

Vasily Vasilievich Rozanov was born on April 20 (Old Style), 1856, in the small town of Vetluga in Kostroma province, the son of an obscure forester and a mother who claimed descent from the noble family of the Shishkins. The father died when Vasily was about five years old, not long after the family moved to Kostroma, the provincial capital. The widow was left with six children, a house, a small piece of land, and a pension of 300 rubles. The family was poor but not poverty-stricken. Vasily's earliest memories were of being

hay rick." He was glad when the time came to go to school, at first in Kostroma and then in Simbirsk, nearly four hundred miles away to the southeast. He was not a very bright student, detested his teachers, and did not get along well with the other students. He read widely and was especially attracted to Buckle's History of Civilization and the works of Dmitry Pisarev, a nihilist, who wrote about the coming victory ofscience over all things, even governments. But he soon came to the conclusion that the materialism of Buckle and Pisarev was ultimately meaningless, and from materialism he turned to its direct opposite: the world of fantasies, which he discovered in the mythological stories retold by August Griibe, in poetry, and in romantic novels. At all costs it was necessary to escape from himself. Sometimes he caught sight of himself in the mirror in the school corridor and was horrified by what he saw: a round, reddish face under a bush of flaming orange hair. To add to his difficulties he developed a profound distaste for his name; for while Rozanov appears to an American ear to possess a joyous and characteristically Russian resonance, in Rozanov's ears it sounded like the name of a baker, commonplace and vulgar. In spite of his growing self-hatred he was doing reasonably well at school.

I

Introduction

From Simbirsk he went to the gymnasium at Nizhni Novgorod, and from there to the University of Moscow as a student of history and philology. He complained that the professors taught him nothing, but this was a familiar compl"ittt. Ott" day, at a friend's house, he met Apollinaria Suslova, the former mistress of Dostoyevsky. She was a formidable wOman, quick-tempered, insatiable. She had a long face, snapping eyes' a wide mouth, a firm chin, thick' glossy black hair. She was about forty years old, but still desirable. Rozanov, *ho *ut twenty-four and on the eve of graduating from the university, fell hopelessly in love with her, loving her all the more because she had known Dostoyevsky and could tell stories about him that only she knew. She told stories well and was sometimes gay and lighthearted. Rozanov married her,

'

and almost imrnediately regretted it. Dostoyevsky had called her the "infernal Polina," because she was fundamentally cruel and heartless, and the time would soon come when Rozanov took to calling her Katka de Medici, after Catherine de M6dicis, who coldbloodedly massacred the Huguenots. Their life

together was one of unrelieved misery. Her one redeeming feature was that she always asked him kindly to remove his spectacles when she was about to slap

his face. For the next six years Rozanov lived in purgatory and hell: purgatory during

his working hours as a provincial schoolmaster, hell when he returned to polina. There were incessant brawls. Polina expressed her dissatisfaction with her uncouth and undistinguished husband with vigor and passion, while Rozanov suffered in silence or exploded in helpless rage. To keep himself from going insane, he began to write the closely reasoned philosophical work On Understanding, designed to demonstrate the errors of positivism and agnosticism' He hoped the work would establish his fame or at the very least provide him with an important post in the government or in a university. On Understanding was 737 pages long and printed at his own expense in an edition of six hundred copies. No one paid the slightest attention to the book.

It

was a catastrophic

faiiure. But during the same year there occurred the first of the "happy

accidents" that from time to time interrupted the monotony of the provincial schoolmaster's life-Rozanov's wife left him. He asked for a divorce, but she refused to give it to him. Technically he was married to her for all the remain-

ing years of his life.

H" *ur no longer in hell but remained in purgatory. He lacked the gifts of

a schoolmaster, loathed discipline, and especially loathed giving lessons in geography and the empty recital of the Kings of France, the rivers of South lmirica, and the capitals of Canadian provinces. Mikhail Prishvin, who became a renowned naturalist, explorer, and storyteller and was one of his pupils, wrofe in his memoirs about the extraordinary impression produced by Rozanov in the classroom: red-faced, with blackened teeth, drooling at the lips, his hands jerking nervously, totally incapable of keeping a class in order, and sometimes using a pen or some other sharp instrument to silence a particularly

Introduction

9

him "the goat" behind his back and enjoyed nothing more than reducing him to a state of outraged incoherence. But the pupils did not find him wholly bad. Sometimes he would abandon the curriculum altogether to tell them stories from the mythologies of ancient Greece and Egypt and the fabulous East, and they listened spellbound. Finally, in 1889, three years after the departure of Apollinaria, Rozanov found the happiness he had despaired of finding. In the small town of Yeletz in the far south of Russia he met the twenty-four-year-old Yarvara Butiagina, the daughter of a deacon. She was a widow with a five-year-old daughter, Alexandra. Yarvara had not been educated at a university; she had no exciting stories to tell; she was not chic; she was deeply religious, warm, loving, and sensible. Rozanov called her a moral genius, and in his diaries he refers to her as "my friend." In June l89l a friendly priest secretly blessed their union, and thereafter they lived as man and wife. For Rozanov the long years of misery offensive pupil. They called

were now over.

In her own way Varvara was quite

as formidable as the "infernal Polina."

If

she was the "heavenly Yarvara," Rozanov was to learn that heaven has many mansions. She was understanding and forgiving, but only up to a point. She was strong-minded when she observed him paying attention to other women. She sometimes read his manuscripts, which were filled with his wild theories about sex, and she would reprove him gently. The poetess Zinaida Hippius remembered that she was a woman of considerable presence and a will of her own. The "marriage" with Yarvara revived in Rozanov the ambition to live and work in St. Petersburg, then the capital of Russia. He had spent many years in the provinces eating his heart out; he was mortally tired of teaching schoolchildren who did not want to be taught; he believed he could make a living as a writer and journalist. By good fortune some of his occasional articles printed in conservative St. Petersburg journals had attracted the attention of Nikolay Strakhov, an influential critic, who had been a close friend and confidant of Dostoyevsky's and was a close friend and confidant of Tolstoy's. Strakhov was much more than a critic: He was a trained biologist, a Slavophile, an anti-Darwinist, and a philosopher. He had connections with the government, and in 1891 he was able to arrange for Rozanov to be given a minor post in the State Control Office in St. Petersburg at a salary of 100 rubles a month. It was not a very large salary, but it enabled him to live quietly and modestly

in his favorite city. Strakhov had a genuine affection for Rozanov but was disturbed by his lack of mental discipline. Rozanov could think powerfully, but usually there was a breaking point, and then his mind would go racing of at tangents. One day, not long after his arrival in St. Petersburg, Rozanov received a photograph of Strakhov with the inscription "I love your talent very much, Vasily Vasilievich, but I am afraid that nothing will come of it."

ri

t. r

I IO

Introduction

In 1894 Rozanov published the first ofthe books that give him an enduring claim to fame. This was his Commentary on Dostoyevsky's Legend of the Grand Inquisitor, the first concrete examination of what Dostoyevsky meant when he wrote "The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor," a story inserted almost by main force into the pages of The Brothers Karamazoi Rozanov discusses the legend line by line, finding its sources in many other books by Dostoyevsky and most of all in The Revelations of St. John. Today the legend is generally regarded as among the greatest of Dostoyevsky's works, but it was not so in Rozanov's time. He was the first to point out that the legend was crucial to Dostoyevsky's oeuvre and is addressed to the present time: "The l-egend" is man's bitter cry when, having lost his innocence and being forsaken by God, he suddenly realizes he is now quite alone with his weakness, with his sin, with the struggle of light and darkness in his soul. To overcome this da.rkness, to help the light-this is all that man in his earthly wanderings can do. And this is something he must do to soothe his anguished conscience, which is so heavily burdened, so sick, incapable any longer ofenduring its sufferings. A clear knowledge of the sources of this light and this darkness is man's best weapon in the struggle between light and darkness, in the hope that he is not destined to be the everlasting battlefield. On this somber note Rozanov concluded his long discursive essay, the most penetrating account of Dostoyevsky's ideas that had yet appeared. He saw Dostoyevsky as the prophet, with the Grand Inquisitor throwing his immense shadow on the future. By removing the legend from Seville, by examining every word spoken by the Inquisitor, and by insisting on the relevance at the present time of the threats posed by the "spirit of death and destruction," Rozanov was doing a service to Dostoyevsky, to his own contemporaries, and to those who came after him. Rozanov wrote with a sense of overwhelming urgency, without illusions, without in any way exaggerating the dimensions of the legend; and yet the efect is to magnify the legend by demonstrating that it is not a legend at all, but the simple truth about the human condition in the last years ofthe nineteenth century and perhaps for all the foreseeable future. But Rozanov's essay is not only about Dostoyevsky and the Inquisitor- To prepare the ground, he goes back to Gogol and shows that this supreme master of Russian prose failed completely to understand the nature of the problem, because instead of portraying people of flesh and blood he contented himself

with portraying puppets, caricatures, grotesque manikins so wonderfully painted that they seem to be alive although they are dead. Gogol stood outside the mainstream; he watched life passing, as though from a distance, and wrote brilliantly about the odd, contorted characters he thought he saw. Dostoyevsky, with a far greater sense of reality, described men as they are- Some of Rozanov's best pages are devoted to a discussion of Gogol's weaknesses.

Introduction

11

Gogol, in Rozanov's view, was playing a game of Grand Guignol, with imitation blood spilling over the stage. Dostoyevsky-and this was especially true of the legend-was waging a real war with real blood, a real Christ, and a real Inquisitor. Rozanov published the book at his own expense, and, though it was well received, it was not a commercial success. His debts mounted, and as a result he spent his early years in St. Petersburg in a state of tension and unhealthy excitement. He continued to work in his government office, about which he rarely spoke, as though it was too terrible to talk about, and in the evenings he wrote articles for any magazine that would pay for them. His debts to the butcher and grocer were never far from his mind. It was the time of the Symbolist poets, with their fin de siicle refinement, of Chekhov's plays, and of Diaghilev's emergence as the arbiter of elegance. It was a time of rapid industrialization, of growing social consciousness, and of vigorous debate. They would say later that Russia was riding for a fall, but in fact the intellectual life of Russia had never been more robust. Dmitry Merezhkovsky, philosopher, poet, theologian, and novelist, was one of the leading figures of the intellectual life of St. Petersburg. He was influential in founding the St. Petersburg Religious and Philosophical Society. The society met twice a month, with prominent writers and intellectuals debating with Orthodox priests and theologians on the subject of the "new religious consciousness." Rozanov was a frequent visitor and a very active member of the group. He was an impressive figure, spoke well on his feet, and invariably upheld the life-affirming energy of pre-Christian religions while denigrating Christian philosophy. He liked to shock, he liked to play with paradoxes, and he liked to discuss the mystical aspects of sex and procreation at length and in great detail to the consternation of many of his sedate listeners. The priests, who were skilled in argument, presented opposing views. Tempers flared. After denouncing Christianity, Rozanov would invite the priests to his house for a

well-cooked dinner, while the other members of the society went

of to a

fashionable restaurant. The meetings of the society showed Rozanov at his best and his worst. He had the provincial's awkwardness, the intellectual's self-assurar'ce, a flair for the right word, and an equally strong flair for the expressive wrong word. He could be very irritating and extremely stimulating. There was a mystical streak in him, and he sometimes spoke as if inspired by sudden revelations. As the years passed, he became increasingly absorbed in the subject ofsex and in the symbolism of ancient Egyptian religions and the mystery religions of the countries of the eastern Mediterranean. He was the first Russian writer to discuss sex openly, exalting it above all the other activities of mankind as a means to immortality-to the dismay of his family, who thought it was not a subject that needed to be discussed so frankly in newspapers and magazines. The farther Rozanov progressed with his theories on the "divinization of sex,"

12

Introduction

the more he sought out the company of Orthodox priests, the heavily bearded batiushki, who were often the fathers of very large families. If, as Merezh­ kovsky declared, it might be possible to form a bridge between paganism and Christianity, then, according to Rozanov, the bridge could be found in sex and procreation blessed by the Old Testament. On all these subjects-Christianity, Judaism, paganism, sex, Egyptian reli­ gion-Rozanov was desperately serious, studious, and uninhibited. He wanted to form a synthesis, but a synthesis proved to be stubbornly resistant. He was an immoralist who profoundly admired the Christian virtues of mercy, gentle­ ness, and peace. He believed in Christianity and with the same fervor believed in the "budding lotus" of the ancient Egyptians. But no amount of thinking could bring the Cross and the "budding lotus" together. Christianity cele­ brated the "eunuch for Christ"; paganism celebrated the bud and the flower, the womb and the phallus. Was it conceivably possible to bring such opposites together? In Commentary on Dostoyevsky's Legend of the Grand Inquisitor Rozanov wrote as a Christian, and indeed he remained a Christian to the end of his life. Leaming that his young friend Fyodor Shperk was a Lutheran, Rozanov set about converting him to the Orthodox religion. For a while they were insepara­ ble. In later years Rozanov said he had felt very close to only two men: Shperk, whom he saw daily, and the philosopher Konstantin Leontiev, whom he never met. He was heartbroken when Shperk died of tuberculosis in 1897 at the age of twenty-six, at the beginning of his career as a philosopher. Meanwhile life in St. Petersburg remained difficult; the bills kept mounting; he was the sole support of Varvara, her widowed mother, and her daughter, Alexandra, and now he had two daughters of his own. His official salary was quite insufficient for his needs, and to make ends meet he wrote far too many poorly paid articles. He wrote about everything and anything that came to his mind-politics, art, sex, religion, Tolstoy (whom he professed to find insin­ cere), and Dostoyevsky (who was sincerity personified). He cared very little about politics and was quite capable of writing in favor of a politician one day and on the next day in another newspaper turning around and lambasting him. His articles were vivid, careless, and biting, and soon he had a small following. His work attracted the attention of Alexey Suvorin, the former serf and provin­ cial schoolmaster who owned the influential right-wing newspaper New Times. In 1899 Rozanov became a columnist for the newspaper, free to write on whatever subject he pleased, with a handsome salary. His financial troubles were over. He worked for Suvorin's newspaper for the next eighteen years, until the Bolshevik Revolution put an end to all private newspapers. Children came every two years: first Tatiana, then Vera, then Varvara, then Vasily, then Nadezhda. Because he was not legally married, he had to adopt his children in order to give them his name. What might have been a complex

Introduction

13

and difficult process was made easier by the fact that he was always on good terms with the local priests even when he was bitterly attacking the Church hierarchy. More and more Rozanov began to write about the Egyptian gods, adopting the pseudonym "Ibis," after the beautiful long-legged bird with the downward­ curving beak that was sacred to Osiris. Over the years he amassed an extraor­ dinarily deep knowledge of the Egyptian mystery religions, accumulated a large library of books connected with Egypt, and in his imagination lived in a fabulous eastern land, where the animal-headed gods were alive and walking among the people, where rituals were even more elaborate than those of the Orthodox Church, and where the people lived in perfect contentment in har­ mony with nature. In this imaginary land he warmed himself during the long St. Petersburg winters. And though Suvorin sometimes protested against Rozanov's too explicit arguments concerning the sexual basis of Egyptian religious life, he never censored them. Government censorship was light, and only one of his books, In the World of the Obscure and the Uncertain, pub­ lished in 1901 and based on his newspaper articles, was banned by order of the Procurator of the Holy Synod a month after publication. The ban was quickly lifted. The abortive revolution of 1905 placed Rozanov in a quandary; he admired the vigor of the revolutionaries while detesting their violence. He regarded the Tsarist government as tired, outworn, incapable of ruling except as a faceless bureaucracy; and at the same time he rejoiced in the stability of the monarchy; at least as an ideal. Without the least cynicism he found himself cheering both sides of the conflict-he acclaimed the established order in the conservative New Times, and in the liberal periodicals, writing under the pseudonym "Var­ varin," he celebrated the revolutionaries. It was a completely untenable situa­ tion, and inevitably he was accused of the crassest cynicism. When a young revolutionary reminded him that Russia was in a terrible state and something had to be done, Rozanov answered, "I'll tell you what has to be done. If it is summer, pick berries and make jam. If it is winter, drink tea sweetened with jam." His "marriage" to Varvara was a profoundly happy one; he was happiest in his "nest" with his children around him, but in August 1910 Varvara fell ill and became partly paralyzed. It was the first of many illnesses. The shock drove Rozanov to despair, and thereafter he began to write more urgently, more powerfully, and more plaintively. Her successive illnesses became one of the principal themes of his notebooks, those miscellanies in which he put together his innermost thoughts, his wildest dreams, and. whatever else he wanted to write down, which were later collected in the three volumes called Solitaria, Fallen Leaves, and Fallen Leaves: A Second Basket. Confronted by a disaster that never happened-for she outlived him-he wrote at his best.

14

Introduction

, Suvorin's publishing company printed the books handsomely, and the public, buying them in large numbers, discovered a new sensation. The first was published in 1912, the second in 1913, and the third in 1915. Solitaria, which appears to have no center or circumference and at first glance resembles a hodgepodge of scattered thoughts, is in fact a highly orga­ nized and selective work. The dance has been carefully choreographed. Roza­ nov knew exactly what he was doing when he assembled these thoughts and put them in order. What concerned him most was to retain the rhythm of life, to collect the thoughts that most revealed the living voice of a man. He was attempting to discover himself, and at the same time he was attempting to unravel the mysteries of life with anguish of spirit and absolute determination. It was a heroic effort, but the heroism and the anguish do not preclude a conscious attempt to create a work of art. Nothing comparable to these notebooks exists in Russian or in any other language. Baudelaire's brief notes collected under the title Mon Coeur Mis d Nu move in the same direction but cover much less territory. Edgar Allan Poe declared that if anyone could write a book laying his heart completely bare, he would have written a masterpiece. Rozanov wrote such a book and went on to write three more. He won out, where nearly everyone else has failed.

111 On the night of November 7-8, 1917, in St. Petersburg, armed revolutionar­ ies under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky attacked the Winter Palace, overthrew the Provisional Government, and established a new kind of dicta­ torship remarkable for its absolute ruthlessness. On that night, without know­ ing it, the world entered a new dispensation of time, a new age. Exactly what the new rulers of Russia intended to do with the power that had fallen so easily into their hands was largely unknown, for they had not yet drawn up a consistent program, but one thing was known: All those ideas that formerly preoccupied most Russian intellectuals were anathema to the new rulers. Rozanov, who had spent a lifetime pondering the nature of God, destiny, sex, freedom, life, death, the family, fame, the Church, and the roles of the priest and the artist in the community, suddenly found himself living under a govern­ ment hostile to everything he had lived for. For Rozanov, and for many millions of other people, it was a shattering experience, wholly inexplicable except in terms of an apocalypse, a divinely inspired alteration of the ordinary laws of life as they had existed for so many centuries. Perhaps Antichrist had come; perhaps it was the time of the Last Judgment; perhaps the honors and miseries of the present were the precursors of a fuller and nobler life that would suddenly be revealed after a period of fiery trials and tribulations.

Introduction

15

Rozanov was not alone in the belief that he was living in an apocalyptic age. Alexander Blok's poem "The Twelve" celebrates the Second Coming of Christ, who marches at the head of the revolutionaries, a strange white figure crowned with white roses seen through the blinding whiteness of a snowstorm. "When I finished the poem I was astonished," Blok wrote some months later. "Why Christ? Is it possible it is Christ? But the closer I looked at it the clearer I saw Christ." Rozanov, who did not believe the revolutionaries were being led by Christ, saw just as clearly the coming of the Apocalypse. With the Revolution Rozanov's life as an author, a commentator, and the leading journalist of New Times came to an end. With his family and his few remaining valuables, including his collection of coins, he fled to Sergiev Posad, a small town near the great, centuries-old Troitsa-Sergievsky Monastery not far from Moscow. Here in a two-story house belonging to a friendly priest he spent the remaining months of his life. Here he wrote The Apocalypse of Our Time, which was issued in the form of pamphlets for a period of about eight months, until he became too weak and too ill to write any more. All together, ten pamphlets were published, badly printed on cheap paper and full of print­ ers' errors. It was not, in any real sense, a book, a commentary, or a work of journalism. It was an attempt to grapple with the Apocalypse by a man living in great poverty and spiritual distress. Writing in a style of quite extraordinary brilliance, at once harsh and tender, urgent and compassionate, he described the Apocalypse as he saw it and searched for its causes in the profound nihilism that swept over Russia during the nineteenth century and in man's failure to come to terms with the living earth and with Heaven. Above all, he wrote with a despairing passion. He hid nothing. We see the naked man and the Apoca­ lypse in its nakedness. So he wrote, week after week, like a geologist recording the cracks in the earth or a cosmologist recording the cracks in the Universe. The Apocalypse of Our Time is clearly related in style and method to Solitaria and Fallen Leaves, those earlier notebooks in which he had at­ tempted to grapple with many mysteries, wrestling with angels. But this time he was wrestling even more vigorously, on a scale incommensurably greater, with a greater agony than before. He was writing with his heart's blood, with all his nerves, all his intelligence. It was as though Dostoyevsky was suddenly confronted with the Revolution and was attempting in his profoundly analyti­ cal way to justify it, to extract some meaning from it, to discover what lay behind those terrible apocalyptic acts, which seemed to be destroying Russia, rending her apart and reducing her to a state of mindlessness. Of all Rozanov's works this one most closely resembles Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground in its curious combination of savagery and tenderness. A visitor to Sergiev Posad found him strangely changed, almost unrecogniz­ able. He was only sixty-two but looked like a much older man, thin and gaunt, worn out by his sufferings. His wife was very ill; his two daughters Tatiana and Nadezhda were working as housemaids in the city so that they could bring

16

Introduction

a little money to the family; another daughter, Vera, had entered a nunnery; and his son, Vasily, had been conscripted into the army. He had no regular income at all and was sometimes reduced to picking up cigarette butts or begging a glass of tea from a friendly bookseller. Nevertheless he was intellec­ tually alert, talked endlessly about Dostoyevsky and about his own theories concerning the Apocalypse, and proved to be a charming host. There was very little to eat. His rooms were shabby. He complained of the cold. Yet the visitor had the impression that he was profoundly happy, bubbling over with excite­ ment, with a keen desire to live and a keen interest in people. In fact he was dying and had only a few more months to live. By the summer of 1918 it was no longer possible to produce the pamphlets: there was no money to print them. Rozanov continued to write letters to his friends until he became partially paralyzed in the winter. They were entertain­ ing letters, full of his reminiscences and his theories about the coming age, when life would be more vigorous and closer to nature than it had ever been and all the pressing problems of his time would be resolved. He seemed indeed to have reached at last a state of equilibrium, almost of a contentment, fore­ shadowed in the last pages of The Apocalypse of Our Time. On one of his last visits to Moscow, in the autumn of 1918, he accosted a passerby in the street and said, "Do show me, please, a real live Bolshevik. I should very much like to see one." Taken to the Moscow Soviet, he said, "Show me the head of the Bolsheviks-Lenin or Trotsky. I am awfully interested. I am Rozanov, the monarchist." He went back to Sergiev Posad, his sick wife, the cold, the misery. His collections of coins had vanished: It had been stolen from him one day while he was waiting for a train. In January, knowing that he was dying and too ill to write, he dictated to Nadezhda a farewell letter to his friends, mentioning them by name, speaking of his great love for them, and begging their pardon for any sins he had committed against them, and he particularly mentioned Victor Khovin, who had helped him to print The Apocalypse of Our Time, and Dmitry Merezhkovsky and his wife, Zinaida Hippius. On his deathbed he became finally reconciled to the Church, and he died comforted by the sacraments. Indeed, he repeatedly asked for the sacraments and received the last sacrament four times, extreme unction once, and three times the prayers for the dying were read over him. He had said long ago in Fallen Leaves, "I shall die in the Church, of course; of course I need the Church incomparably more than literature (I don't need literature at all); and the clergy is after all dearer to me than all the rest." He died peacefully on February 5, 1919, and was buried in the Chernigovsky Monastery close by the Troitsa-Sergievsky Monastery. Varvara, the mother of his children, survived him by more than four years. His daughter Vera, the nun, hanged herself shortly after his death, and about the same time his son, Vasily, died of the Spanish flu. The three remaining

17

Introduction

daughters lived on, one dying in the 1940s, another in the 1950s, and Tatiana, the eldest, survived until 1975, having lived through a long period of exile. Rozanov died, but like all geniuses he went on living. The Apocalypse of his time is also the Apocalypse of our time, for we live under the same dispensation. He saw it when it first burst upon the world and wrote about it freshly and cleanly, while others stammered. Zinaida Hippius said of this work, "Here is Rozanov once more, all of him, his voice, his speech, and for those terrible times, about which we had nothing to say, he found the words." In this way he becomes our contemporary. ROBERT PAYNE

A Note on the Translation This translation from Vasily Rozanov's notebooks has been made from the original texts. Solitaria was first published by Suvorin's press under the title Uedinennoe in 1912. The first and second installments of Fallen Leaves were published under the title Opavshie Listya by Suvorin in 1913 and 1915, respec­ tively. All three volumes appeared in St. Petersburg. The Apocalypse of Our Time (Apokalipsis Nashego ·vremeni) was published in the form of pamphlets by Rozanov in 1917 and 1918, when he was living in Sergiev Posad. The complete texts of these four books would amount to about nine hundred pages. We have, therefore, presented a selection, with Solitaria, The Apocalypse of Our Time, and Fallen Leaves virtually complete and Fallen Leaves: A Second Basket considerably abridged. The group photographs are from the original edition of Fallen Leaves. The translators are deeply indebted to Professor George lvask, Professor George L. Kline, and Dr. Janet Romanoff for their assistance, which went far beyond the claims of friendship or duty. The temptation to add explanatory footnotes has been resisted except in a few cases where it seemed that dates and a brief description of an author or a political figure might be helpful.

Solitaria

Preface

The wind blows at midnight and carries the leaves away ... So also life in the passing of time tears out of our souls exclamations, sighs, half-thoughts, and half-feelings . . . Which, being fragments of sound, acquire significance because they come straight from the soul without being refined, without pur­ pose, without premeditation, without anything external. Simply, "the soul is alive," that is, "has lived," "has breathed" ... For some reason I have always cherished these "sudden exclamations." They keep coming in a ceaseless flow, there is no time to write them down, there is no paper at hand, and so they die. Afterward there is no way to recall them. Yet sometimes I succeeded in jotting them down on paper.The jottings piled up, and then I decided to gather together these fallen leaves. Why? Who wants them? Merely myself. Ah, dear reader, I have been writing for a long time "without a reader." Simply because I enjoy it. For the same reason I publish "without a reader." . . . This suits me. I shall neither weep nor rage if the reader mistakenly purchases a copy of my book and throws it in the wastebasket. (It is more profitable if you don't cut but just glance through the book, tum the pages, and then sell it back to a secondhand bookdealer for half the price.) Well, reader, I shall not stand on ceremony with you-in the same way you do not have to stand on ceremony with me. "To the devil!" .. . "To the devil!" .. .

21

22

The Apocalypse of Our Time

Farewell then until we meet in the next world.Writing for a reader is much more tedious than writing for oneself. The reader opens his mouth and waits for something to be put into it. He looks like an ass about to bray. Not the most inspiring sight ... Forget about him! ... I write for my "unknown friends," and perhaps even "for .no one" ...

Solitaria

In those days the Decadents used to come to my house and I would let those barren people out after midnight, detaining the last guest, the gentle Viktor Proteikinsky (a teacher with fantasies) and point to a place in the ballway between the doors. Man has two feet; but if about five people leave their galoshes in the hall, it looks like a multitude. Behind the door stood a multitude of little galoshes, so many that I was always amazed. It took some time to count them. Both I and Proteikinsky would break out laughing: "That's an awful lot!" "Yes, an awful lot!" I was thinking proudly: Civis Rossicus sum. Ten people were sitting down at my table, including the servants. I was feeding them all with my labor. All of them found a place in the world round my labor. By no means is Herzen civis Romanus, but "Rozanov" is. Herzen was only "having a hell of a time." §

§

§

With regard to Proteikinsky I feel a profound and long-standing sense of guilt. He behaved irreproachably toward me, but I once said of him-it is true I spoke when I was feeling exhausted-something rude and mocking.And that was because "he never finishes what he is saying" (his way of talking), and I was tired and could not hear him out to the end ... And then there was the rude thing I said behind his back as he was walking out the door. 23

The Apocalypse of Our Time

24

§

§ §

We do not know where our ideas come from, or where they go. In the first place when you sit down to write something, you find yourself writing something altogether different. Between "I want to sit down" and "I sat down" a moment passes. Where do these thoughts with their new ideas come from, so altogether different from those I had when I was pacing the floor and from those I had at the moment I sat down to write? §

§

§

I opened the door into another room ... Luxuriously furnished. It belongs to General M--. In a chair, covered with magnificent black leather, sits Borya. He is in shirt sleeves, with vest and tie. Perspiration drips down his face .. . He remembers how Varya Panin sang and how Annushka danced. A long galley proof lies on his desk. "What are you reading, Borya?" "Letters from the provinces." "What are you hesitating for? Why not let them all go in?" "I can't. There's no space." "Then send them all to hell" . .. "I can't do that either. The readers will get mad." "An editor has a hard life. Who am I to go with them?" (At our editorial office) §

§

§

It seems as though that damned fellow Gutenberg has licked all writers with his copper tongue. They have all lost their souls in print, they have lost their faces, their character. My "I" exists only in manuscript, and so does the "I' of every other writer. It must be for this reason that I have a superstitious fear of tearing up letters notebooks (even children s exercise books), manuscripts -I can't tear up anything at all. I have preserved intact, to the very last one, all the letters I received from my high school friends; and with regret, for the pile keeps growing. I tear up only mine, and that only rarely, and very pain­ fully. §

§

§

ewspapers, I think, will pass away like the "interminable wars" of the Middle Ages, like women's "bustles,' etc. They are kept up by "universal education," which will soon become "compulsory. 'A person with a "compul-

25

Solitaria

sory education" is certainly interested in reading something "about Spain." It will begin, I think, when people abandon the habit of reading newspapers. Then they will come to regard reading them as indecent and cowardly (parva anima). "What do you live by?" "Well, by what The Voice of Truth tells me." (They have thought up a name like that!) Or The Ultimate Truth. (They'll invent someting like that tomorrow.) He who hears this will smile, and those smiles will gradually see them into their graves. If people must read newspapers, then, in my opinion, they should read Kolokol [J'he Bell], the name given by Vasily Mikhailovich to his paper, following the example of Herzen. Vasily Mikhailovich is picturesque in everything.At home (so I hear) there are standing orders that when his children return from school and ask, "Where is Papa?" the servants are not permitted to say, "The Master is not at home." Instead they must say, "The General is not at home." If I remember this on Judgment Day I shall burst out laughing. For some reason I have always been fond of Vasily Mikhailovich, and I defended him to Tolstoy. What amazes me is that he is so natural and sincere toward everyone, he is never fussy, never proud, and displays "the Christian virtues." There remains one unsolved problem: What is the earthly rank held by the angels? He is incapable of imagining a single creature without a rank. Like Pythagoras' saying: "Nothing exists without number." In Vasily Mik­ hailovich's case "without a rank" means without a position in some hierarchy. Note: the title "General" gives him an enormous amount of harmless plea­ sure. It costs Russia nothing. For the sake of Vasily Mikhailovich alone I would never permit ranks to be abolished. Do they hann anyone? There are plenty ·of "civilians," and certainly no one is forbidden to wear a "lawyer's badge." Why shouldn't the badge be a "title" or an "order"? It has been properly earned and gives one social standing. Permit Vasily Mikhailovich whatever badge he wants. What kind of despotism is that? People sometimes think V.M. is a "social climber." Not at all. He loves his rank, office, and title as if they were inseparable from his soul. A certain wise man once made the following profound observation: "Whenever we think about what a Russian is, we must always take Vasily Mikhailovich into consid­ eration as well." Thus a Russian is certainly not only "Skvortsov," but among other things he is also "Skvortsov." (Examining my coins)

§

§

§

"The end crowns the work" .. . shows how powerful it is. But should I conclude: "and also shows its truth"? What then became of the Russian

The Apocalypse of Our Time

26

Reformation?!! One man acquires a yacht, another collects coins, a third "travels abroad" ... The Bishops have hurried off to hold services, and it is said that, instead of the former "blessing," they faithfully refer to the latest circular from the Ministry of the Interior. Lord what has happened? Then some others have taken up sectarianism, but continue to send articles surrepti­ tiously to Novoye Vremya [New Times], in no way differing from that newspa­ per on the acute question of the Church versus Literature (on the occasion of Tolstoy's death). What does it all signify? What does it all mean? Are they to be punished? Or are we to say with Turgenev, "Thus ends everything Russian . .. " (Examining my coins, 1910) §

§

§

You look at a Russian with a sharp little eye . .. He looks back at you with a sharp little eye . . . And everything is understood. And no words are necessary. This simply cannot happen with a foreigner. (In the street)

§ § § I take a cab to the editorial office. I am in good spirits. "How much?" "Thirty-five kopecks." "Thirty is sufficient." I get in, nudge the driver's back, and say, "How could you-how could you ask such an exorbitant sum?" He drives on, still laughing and shaking his head. He is a boy of about eighteen. He turns to me, his face all smiles. "Sir, what makes you say I am asking an exorbitant sum? Thirty-five ko­ peck�xorbitant?!?!" He shakes his head and can't get over it. "You are still a young man, but I have a lot of work behind me.Thirty-five kopecks is a large sum if you have to earn it yourself. Some people have to work hard for a whole day to earn thirty-fi_ye kopecks." "Yes, I guess so," he says gravely and flicks his whip. "Heigh-ho!" His horse runs on. (In the street) §

§

§

Nina Rudneva (my relative,) a girl of about seventeen, when asked about

Solitaria

27

what was masculine, male, and strong in me, replied, "The only masculine thing about you . .. is your trousers" ... She cut her words short. Thus, apart from my clothes, am I feminine? I was never liked by women (except by 'my friend"), and this explains women's antipathy to me, some­ thing which has always tortured me terribly (from my school days).

§ § § Live every day as though you have lived all your life just for this day. (In the doorw.ay, coming home) §

§

§

The secret of being a writer consists in the eternal and involuntary music of the soul. If it is not there, a man can only "make himself into a writer." But he is not a writer ... Something flows in the soul. Eternally. Constantly. What? Why? Who knows?-least of all the writer himself. (Examining my coins) §

§

§

The pain of life is much more powerful than the interest oflife. That is why religion will always conquer philosophy. (Examining my coins) §

§

§

They say fame is 'desirable." Perhaps, in youth. But in old age and even in middle age there is nothing more repulsive, more unbearable than fame.Not "more boring," just more sickening. Napoleon, who '1oved fame,'' died quite young. Around forty. How I admire Pobedonostsev, * who, when he was told, "This will arouse unfavorable public comment," paused, did not really spit, but somehow let his spittle fall to the floor, ground it with his foot, and walked on without saying anything. (Examining my coins) §

§

§

With the idea of prostitution-"it is hopeless to fight against it"-there enters indisputably the idea: "I belong to all " And this also applies to the •Konstantin Pobedonostsev (1827-1907) was the procurator of the Holy Synod.

The Apocalypse of Our Time

28

concept of a writer, orator, lawyer, and official "who gives his services to the State." Thus, on the one hand, prostitution is the most social of phenomena, being to a certain extent the prototype of sociality-and it may even be said that rei publicae natae sunt ex feminis_publicis, "the first states were born of the instinct of women to prostitute themselves" . .. At any rate this is no worse than: "Rome became great because it was close to the Tiber River" (Mommsen) or "Moscow became great due to the geographical peculiarities of the Moskva River." On the other hand, certainly, there enters into the essence of an actor, writer, lawyer, even of a "priest who officiates for every­ one," the psychology of the prostitute, indifference to "all" and affection toward "all." "Funeral or wedding?" asks the priest, calm and vaguely smiling, when someone calls on him, and he passes readily from "congratulations" to "my condolences." A scholar when he is published and a writer when he is printed are certainly prostitutes. Professors are most certainly prostitues pe­ cheurs. Does it not follow that "prostitution is indispensable," like the State, the Press, etc., etc.? On the other hand, does it not follow that "they should be forgiven everything" and "they should be left alone"? Prostitution, which seems so understandable, cannot really be grasped by the mind for the reason that its motive and essence are so various. It was more deep-rooted in people and more metaphysical than, for example, an "associate professorship," and so this does not even need to be discussed. "Professorship" is only an insignificant sparrow ...while prostitution, damn it all, is perhaps like the mysterious bird Gamayun .. . Essentially I give to everyone what is most intimate is an utterly metaphysical idea . .. Damn it, it could make you murder out of sheer rage, or make you ... reflect about it endlessly. "As you like it," to quote the title of one of Shakespeare's plays.

(Examining my coins)

§ § § Tiptoeing, with a pleasant expression on his face, Schwartz or Schmidt used to come up to us and say in his German accent, "We have brains today." A change from the eternal "goose wing," a bone with a tough, tightly drawn skin, which we used to gnaw. Without adoration, without inspiration . . . We laughed with Konstantin Vasilievich (Voznesensky), when we ate the "brains." The proprietor of the restaurant was happy to treat us to something "elegant." The German proprietor thought he was giving us something fancy, but for us students it was misery. Anyhow, we ate the brains. Once in his restaurant I was nearly poisoned by a piece of meat (in the soup), which had gone bad.

Solitaria

29

No sooner had I swallbwed it than I felt something extraordinary: as though I had swallowed a toad. For an entire day, for several days, I felt sick.

(At the university)

§

§

§

What a false, pretentious life R. leads. What a false, pretentious, and unbear­ _ able personality he ha�! And yet he is a genius. I don't mention the pain; but how unbeara�le, physically unbearable, it is to see this combination of genius and monstrosity. Does it disturb him? I have never noticed it. He seems always happy. But _ _ how pamful 1t must be for his soul! With him is that pretty, fat woman who swallowed him whole, as the whale swallowed Jonah. She is ambitious, loves power, and is rapturously saccharine. Both of them adore democracy, and both dream only of receiving an order fr �m the Tsar. It would be more correct to say that their democratic ideals anse from the fact that they have not received any orders from the Court for a long time. (A few lines in her Memoirs.) A�d yet he is a genius beyond comparison with those who lived before him, or his contemporaries. How sad and terrifyi�g this is! No doubt there are a great many things I do not understand, but this seems to me terrible. "A funnel into the center of Hell."

(On the back of a lined sheet)

§ § § To give birth to a blade of grass is much more difficult than destroying a stone house. ''.�rom the heart of bitter experience"--during the many years of my literary actIVIty I _ ha�e observed, seen, noticed from my expense accounts (dealing with my pu�hcatl�ns), _ and also from press notices, that as soon as you write somethmg satmcal, spiteful, destructive, murderous, then everyone rushes out eager t? get ho!� of the book or the article. How vulgar! _ But 1f you wnte with love out of a pure heart, if the work has a positive _ content, it drops dead and no one takes the trouble even to glance at the article cut the pages of the brochure, or open the book. For example: "I don't want to. I am bored sick." "What are you sick of! You haven't read it." "Never mind. I am sick of it. I knew it all before." Or else: "We have to run. We have to catch a bus. Thank you." "But what are you 'thanking' me for? Surely it came down and crushed someone, or it will fall down and crush someone!"

The Apocalypse of Our Time

30

"Never mind ... We are in a good mood. It makes life more exciting." People love a fire. They love a circus. Shooting. Even when someone is drowning, people enjoy the spectable; they come running up. This is the whole point. And literature has become disgusting to me. (Examining my coins) §

§ §

Certainly not to make use of Chernyshevsky's* exuberant energy for the good of the State was a major crime. I never based my opinion of Chemy­ shevsky on bis merits. I always applied a different criterion. He was not a thinker, a writer ... not even a politician. He stands for nothing in particular, and at times he even appears ridiculous and pretentious. But this is not the point The point is: never since Peter the Great has the world seen such a man, whose every hour is breathing, whose every minute is alive, ·and whose every step is enveloped in "solicitude for the nation. ' All bis "foreign books" were nonsense; his rewriting of J. S. Mill's Political Economy is the bungling of an audacious seminarian. All this rubbish could have been and should have been forgiven him· and they should have used bis wings and legs, which were absolutely splendid and glorious, incomparable, and not his bead.More accu­ rately, only the exuberant Peter the Great, who did not know how to stop, possessed such "legs." It is beyond understanding how our languid, lifeless state machinery, which does not know where to find its energies and workers, did not avail itself of this "steam engine" or rather this "electric genecator." What are all the Aksakovs, Samarins, Khomyakovs, or the "famous " Mord­ vinov, compared with him as a worker, i.e., a potential worker, who was buried alive in the snows ofViliyusk? For this we must upbraid him. Why didn't he, since he felt such a store of energy in his breast, in order to make a break­ through in his work, kiss the hands of all the generals, and for that matter "kiss everyone's shoulder," so that they would allow him to help the people, let bim come close to the people, give him a department? I would have ignored his communist and social-democratic ideas. I would have permitted him to live with half a hundred girl students and even to choke himself on Madame Zebrikov. Because of his character and energy l would have placed him not only at the head of a Ministry but at the bead of a Cabinet of Ministers.I would have given him the role of a Speransky and the "rocklike position" of an Arakcheyev ... Such men are born once in a lifetime and to toss him into the snow and the wilderness, into the marshes and the forests ... that is ... that is the devil knows what! Reading his style (I read his Lessing, the beginning), *Nikolay Chemyshevsky (1828-89) was a revolutionary populist and the author of the novel

What Is to Be Done?

Rozanov as painted by Leon Bakst in 1902.

Rozanov's wife and his daughter Tatiana (center). The �oy on the left was a neighbor. This photograph was taken zn St. Petersburg about 1896. .l .,. Rozanov's family about 1904. "Gr andmother" is at the left, holding Vasily. Rozanov's wife, Varv ara, is the other adult, and his daughters are Vera, Tatiana , and Nadezhda, in descending order.

Solitaria

31

you feel he will never grow tired, he will never stop. He has only a handful of ideas, but he bas a whole lightning c.luster of ambitions. There are Peruns, gods of thunder in bjs soul. Now (after the publication of his correspondence with his wife and his relations with Dobrolyubov)* all is explained; he was spiritual with a capital S. Such eagles do not fold their wings; they go on flying until they are killed, until death or victory. I know nothfog about his experi­ ences, but this is of no importance. As a statesman (a socially minded states­ man), he was above Speransky, above any of Catherine's eagles, above the boastful Pestel, the ludicrous Bakunin and the vain Herzen. He was indeed unique. The absurd situation by which he was reduced to absolute impotence in public affairs forced him into literature, journalism, philosophizing, even into fiction: where, having no vocation al all (quiet, contemplative), he smashed all the chairs, knocked down all the tables, dirtied ail the comfortable living rooms, and generally committed "nihilism"-and could achieve nothing else ... He was a Disraeli who was not allowed to go farther than being a 'novel­ ist, ' or a Bismarck condemned to spend his whole life "fighting duels with swords' and "forbidden to do other work" simply because he had fought duels as a student.Damn it all! It was destiny, fate, and not so much his as Russia's. But why couldn't he have suppressed his nihilism and "seminarianism"? For the sake of the people. For the sake of the peasants, the horseless, cowless peasants ... It is amazing. Indeed, this is the straight road to Tsushima. Everi more amazing: If he had embarked on a practical life, he would not have suffered from theoretical nihilism. In this extraordinary life story we come upon the Tree of Life, and we immediately cut it down. We cut it down "in order to rip off the bark" and make slippers for the Oblomovs ... (Examining my coins) §

§

§

The secret of her suffering lies in the fact that with her astonishing intellec­ tual brilliance, she possessed only half-talents in everything. Neither a painter, nor a scholar, nor a singer, although also a singer, also a painter, also (mainly and most easily) a scholar (years of study in mastering languages). And so she faded away, faded irretrievably. (Examining my coins. On Marie Bashkirtsev)

§ § § Surprisingly repulsive to me is my name. I always have a strange feeling Rozanov, about 1910.

*Nikolay Dobrolyubov (1836-61) was an influential revolutionary critic of his time.

32

The Apocalypse of Our Time

it were "Rudnev," "�ug�yev," when I sign my articles: V. Rozanov. I wish when I was walkmg m the Once ." v anything. Or the common Russian "Ivano w: street ' I raised my head and sa "Rozanov, German Baker" are ar� "Rozanovs," and therefore all "Rozanovs" kers a well so be it. All b on e Th do? ) e m a n ic �y idiot an bakers.' What else could such idiots (with such ec�km St 0 . e m a n ful e c a disgr ly � name worse than mine is Kablukov-an utter tely disastrous. It is ternbly (the critic of Russky Vestnik)-that one is absolu e. I think Bryussov must be unpleasant to bear a repulsive name like min e refore, perpetually delighted to have such a name. Th ANOV" ROZ "THE WORKS OF V. V. s. ulou do not tempt me. It even sounds ridic "POEMS BY V. V. ROZANOV" em? is absolutely unthinkable. Who will "read" th ?" v no a Roz "What do you do, "I write poems." "Fool! You'd do better baking bread!" .. . Quite natural. ed on me m addition to a This unnaturally repulsive name has been bestow lboy (after the boys went miserable appearance. How many times, as a schoo l co�ridor �n� "how schoo the home), have I stood before a large mirror in comp sant ea Unpl �exion, �hmmg (not many tears I shed in secret." A red face. not ndi a st ), lboy! schoo a in t a �g strai��t up, dry).Hair of a fiery color (and th wa m ns but in a kmd of � :e , in the noble "hedgehog fashion" (a manly style), d it w1�h e r sme anyone. I � perfectly absurd. I never saw anything like it on ked m loo am g a nee and _ ve � grease, but it never stayed flat. Then I went home---: e r a such ke h bly �uls� the mirror, a small hand mirror: "Who could possi ss the boys at school did hke face?" I would be seized with panic. Neverthele (against the authorities, the r" e ad le "ring me a lot, and I was always the mirror, looking for beauty teachers and especially the headmaster). In the erve my ''.e xpr e�sion," my "even i� the protruding eyes," I failed to obs e ; yet I beheve this very part fac "smile," or any appearance of animation in my so many (as I always loved by loved y of me was alive and made me remarkabl absolutely in return). . But I thought in my heart: me-not a smgle one . No, that's final. Women will never fall in love with myself, for myself (not What remains? To withdraw into myself, to live with , in a round�bout and iously v Ob . e the futur egotistically, but spiritually), for of my mtrospeccause e th s a w ss e n ve racti "foolish" way, my outward unatt tion. e.I may add that from y es, it pleases me that "Rozanov" is a disgusting nam New clothes always s. e childhood I loved ragged, worn-out, threadbare cloth e wine : the older the lik Just me. to felt tight, embarrassed me, were unbearable

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be tter ... I thought the same way about boots, hats, and "what takes the place of a jac ket.' And now it has all begun. to please me. Quite simply, I have no sense of form (Aristotle's causa formalis). I am a "clod " a "loofah." But this is because I am all spirit, I am turned i.nward, the subjective is developed to an infinite extent, such as r cannot im�gine in anyone else. "We ll, then?" ... I a m the least "born" ma n, as though I were still lying (like a clod) in my mother's womb (I love her endlessly, 1 mean my dead mother) a nd bear "heavenly music" (I always seem to be hearing music)-this is my peculiarity. "Wel l, then, wonderful, excellent!" ... Then why the devil do I need an "in teresting face" or "ne w clothes,' when I myself (in myself, as a "clod") am infinitely interesting, and in my soul infin itely old and experi­ enced, a thousan d years old, and at the same time I am as young as a tiny baby ... Good! Wonderful! ... (Examining my coins)

§

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Sky-blue Love And every time I climbed the hill and came close to the high stone house I heard music. Much later I learned they w ere "playing scales." They seemed magical to me. Slowly, lost in thought, I walked along the spectacular drive­ way and entered the enormous hall, removed my school coat, and went to see my friend. My friend did not know I was in love with his sister. I saw her once-at a tea party, and once aga in outside the door of the Hall of the Nobility (a symphony concert w as playin g). At tea she spoke French with her mother; I blushed terribly and talked in whispers with my friend. After this, they would send the tea to his room. Through the wall, which was not very thick, I sometimes heard the girl's silvery voice-she was talking about the tea or something else . . . At the doorway of the H all of the Nobility it happened like this: I missed the concert, or something happened ... It does not matter. I stood near the door. Many, many people drove up. Suddenly the girl and her mother-a pompous, unpleasant old woman-stepped out of a sleigh. Beside her pale, thin face, her extraordinarily elegant figure, the marvelous shape of her ears, and her small, straight nose, which was very r efined, my heart "learned" that she always bent her head a little-and this, together with the contours of her breasts and of her back, formed an image that enchanted me. "A gazelle drinking" ... I believe the chief fascination l ay in her movements, which were magically light ... Yet for me the supreme fascination lay in her soul. What kind of idea could I have of her?

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I imagined she had a proud soul, and all her movements confirmed it. She was not arrogant,but was so absorbed in her own inner charm that she failed to notice people ... She passed people by, and it was the same with things; she took what she wanted from them,but had no other association with them. When she was alone, I suppose she sat down with her music ... I knew she took mathematics lessons from a local schoolteacher-higher mathematics,for she had finished high school. "Such a lucky fellow!" (the teacher) Once my friend was caught cheating: He forged the marks on his school report; and with absurd naivete, when telling me about it, he let these words escape from him: "My sister told my mother: 'I put it all down to this -Volodya is a friend of that fellow Rozanov ...This friendship has a bad influence on him.Volodya was not always like that.' " ... Volodya was a nice, silly little boy-somewhat "irresponsible." I wrote compositions for him in class, and afterward we "chewed the fat." ... I did not have a bad influence on him, for the simple reason that it was impossible to have any "influence " on him, because he was childish, naive, and silly. I listened in silence ... I wished I were dead. And not only "then." It seemed to me all the while-always-that "I was being run over by horses in the street." She drives past.The horses stop.When she sees it is "me," she says to her mother, "Poor boy ...Perhaps he was not as bad as he seemed to-be.He must have suffered. In spite of everything I feel sorry for him." §

§ §

One may fall in love with terrorism, and one can come to hate it from the very bottom of one's soul, as one would hate a week of Fridays, without any insincerity at all. There are matters that are dialectical in themselves, giving off (from themselves) now one kind of light,now another, having the peculiar property of having a certain color on one side and a different color on the other. We people are terribly unlucky in our judgments of these dialectical matters, for we are terribly helpless. "God has taken the ends of things and tied them into a knot that cannot be untied." You cannot disentangle them, but if you cut them they will die.Therefore you have to say: "blue,white,red." Because all these are there. No one will condemn Morozov's "Letters from Schliissel­ burg " (in Vestnik Evropy), but his "Thunder in the Storm " is ludicrously pretentious. Gessya Helfman is fine, but that bloodthirsty woman Frumkin is totally revolting to me, like Berdiagin, the man who was so enraged that he stabbed himself with a table fork. They are all consumptive Hippolytes [from Dostoyevsky's The Idiot) with consumption in their nerves. They have no harmony of soul,no grandeur, no spiritual "decorum," as the old man in The

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fdoles:;nt calls it. In the words of S. M. Soloviev, the historian, they lack finery (fine clothes).

(Examining my coins, 1909) §

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::so you critized everyone ... but are you yourself any better?" �o,but what I want to say is this-we must not bewail the circumstances of hfe but ourselves. " What concerns me is an entirely different idea, a different direction, a different literature. (Examining my coins) §

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In Russia all property arose from "he begged" or "he received a gift " or "h stole." There is very little property acquired by honest toil. That is wh; property has no very strong foundation and no respect is paid to it. (Luga-Petersburg, in a railway carriage) §

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Always dreaming and always one idea: how to avoid work. (About Russians) §

§ §

All literature is babbling ... Or nearly all. Exceptions are killingly few. § §

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Cynicism through suffering? Did it ever occur to you?

(191I) §

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Would I like to be famous after my death (the fame I feel I have deserved)? _ For many �ears ce�eless pams has been torturing my soul,stifling the desire _ for fame. This pam (if the soul is immortal) would become vastly greater if _ I achieved fame, or so I feel. Therefore I d0n't want it.

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may they praise I should like a few people to remember me, but by no means also remember they me, ber me, and only on condition that when they remem those close to me. I do not want Unless they, their goodness and their honor, are remembered, ed. to be remember §

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guilt, but also from Where does this feeling come from? From the sense of m n. God gave me the deep and true knowledge that I have not be� n a goo� � is-was I a good on talent, but that is something else.The more temble questi man?-and the answer is No. (Luga-Petersburg, in a railway carriage) § §

§

the angel of tears. Two angels sit on my shoulders: the angel of laughter and Their eternal quarrel is my life. (On the Troitsky Bridge) §

§

soul.There appeared a "technical soul"-a contradictio in adjecto. And inspi­ ration died. (On the press and everything "modern'') §

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§ § §

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er? Why? ...They are all running, running ...in monstrous crowds. Whith . "You ask why the universal vo/o?" . No one 1s "But there is no volo here: only legs skidding, bellies shakmg. attached to anything. It is a skating rink, not life ..." (In bed at night)

§ § § And patience Laughter cannot kill anything. Laughter only squeezes you. overcomes all laughter. (On nihilism) §

§

Satan seduced the Pope with the offer of power, and he seduced literature with the offer of fame ... But Herostratus had already shown the surest way "to preserve a name for posterity" ... And literature, which only lives by the desire "to preserve a name for posterity" has, to be sure, in our time been permeated through and through with Herostratuses. No one finds it so easy to burn down Rome as Dobchinsky. Catalina would hesitate. ManiJov would feel sorry. Sobakevich wouldn't budge, but Dob­ cbinsky would run his legs off. "Heavens, Rome was only waiting for me: surely I was born to set Rome on fire. Look, good people, and remember my name!" The essence of literature ... her very soul ... her precious little soul. (Examining my coins)

§

Literature soared up like an eagle into the skies. And then � rop?ed �ea� _ ; So it is quite clear to me that literature is not the "longed-for mv1s1ble city. (On the back of a lined sheet)

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Technique, applied to the soul, gave it omnipotence.But it also crushed the

I have been reading (in Russkaya Mys/, 1911) about Gleb Uspensky's* life, which was terrible and full of suffering. He was crushed by a debt of I, 700 rubles, and wrote, "This female moneylender went after me and left me no peace in either Moscow or Petersburg." He was a friend of Nekrasov and Mikhailovsky. They obviously not only respected him but loved him. (As Mikbailovsky wrote to me.) But why didn't they help him? What a dark mystery it is! Just like the attitude of the almost-millionaire Alexander Herzen toward Belinsky. I am no defender of the bourgeois. I care nothing about the bourgeoisie, or about its fate. But plain morality and common sense cry out, ''Why should manufactur• ers hand over their factories and machines to workmen-when Herzen handed over nothing to Belinsky,t nor did Mikhailovsky,i and Nekrasov hand over anything to Gleb Uspensky?" It is a kind of "Last Judgment" on all proletarian doctrines and all proletar­ ian ideology. *Gleb Uspensky (1843-1902) recorded the lives of peasants and slum-dwellers. tVissarion Belinsky (1811-48) was an influential philosopher and journalist who bitterly at­ tacked Gogol. tNikolay Mikhailovsky (1842-1904) was a materialist philosopher who introduced Marx to

Russia.

The Apocalypse of Our Time

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Yes, but the dreamer walks away; for he loves his dream more than he loves food. In revolution there is no room for the dream. . . . Perhaps just because revolution has no room for the dream, 1t will fail. There will be a lot of broken crockery but no new edifice �ill be erected. He alone builds who is capable of an overpowering dream. Michelangelo, Leonardo-­ _ _ they were true builders-but the revolution will "play a dirty tn�k on them" and will strangle them in their youth, at t�e age ?f ele�en or th1rteen, when , they suddenly discover "something of their own m their souls. . "So you are proud? You don't want to be mixed up with us, or share with us or come clean with us ... You think you have a soul of your own, not a co�munal soul ...The community that gave life to you and your parent�­ for without the community both you and they would have died of starvation -this community is now taking back what you owe it. Diel" . . And "the new edifice," with its donkey face, will crumble to pieces m the third or fourth generation.

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But the hungry are so hungry, and the �evolution is ri�ht. It is not ri�ht _ ideologically, but it is right as power, as wzll, as despatr. I am not a samt, and perhaps I am worse than you; butl am hungry, I am a wolf, lam hungry and nimble, and my hunger has given me courage. You have be�n an ox for _ a thousand years. Once upon a time you had horns to kill me with, but now you are feeble and old, and I will devour you." . .. Revolution and "the old order" are nothi�g more than "as yet und1mm�she� strength" and "old age." But it is noi an ideal, not by any means an ideal. . . All social-democratic theories are reduced to this thesis: "I must eat • " WeU , the thesis is correct. Against it even the Lord Almighty has nothing to say. "He who gave me a belly must provide me with food." Cosmogony. §

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Every movement of the soul in me is accompan�ed b� ut�erance. I w�nt to write down every utterance without exception. It 1s an mstmct. Surely 1t was from such an instinct that (written) literature was born? For the concept of print does not arise in me, and so Gutenberg cai:ne "l�ter." With us literature has become so confused with pnnt that we forget al­ together that it existed before printing, an� w� n�t conceived as �omething to be published. Literature was born "by itself' (silent!�) and for itself; �d only afterward did it begin to be printed. But all that 1s merely a technical matter.

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Remove prayer from the very substance of the world-remove it so that my tongue, my mind shall unlearn the words of prayer, the work of prayer, its essential nature; so that I shall not be able co pray and people will be unable to pray-then with protruding eyes and a terrible scream I will run out of my house, running, running, running, till I fall down. Without prayer it is utterly impossible to live ... Without prayer all is madness and horror. You can understand all this when you are weeping . .. But how do you explain this to someone who does not weep, who has not wept? He can never understand it. And surely there are many people who never weep. A husband does not love his wife; a father does not love his children; his wife is unfaithful to him, and he "shrugs his shoulders"; his son is expelled from school. So he blames the school and sends the boy to anothe r school.Tell me, what can religion say to such a "positivist"? He will shrug his shoulders and smile. "Yes, but he is not everybody. " Positivism is true, necessary, and even eternal, but only for a certain group of people. Positivism is necessary for 'positivists"; the essenti al thing is not in positivism, but in the positivist. In this case, as in everything else, man comes before theory. Yes .. . A religious man comes before all religion, and the "positive" man was born long before Auguste Comte.

(Examining my coins) §

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In "my friend" there has been given to me a guiding star ...And for twenty years (ever since 1889) I have followed this star; and all the good I have done, and whatever was good in me during this time, all came from her, while all that was bad in me came from myself. And I was stubborn. Only my heart always wept when I turned aside from her ...

(Examining my coins) §

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And mere bragging only, and everyone has only one question: "What role shall I play in this?" If he doesn't have a "role to play," then the hell with it.

(Examining my coins. On politics and the press)

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How much goodness you find in a man when you least expect it. Also how many vicious things-also when you least expect them. an the street) §

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Create spirit, create spirit. Look, it has all crumbled away • • • (In the Zagorod11y Square at night, prostitutes everywhere) §

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The heart of the matter is that our talents are somehow linked with our vices, and our virtues-with everything that is dull. Well, just try and get out of that "hole." In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred virtue is simply �is: "I d� n t want to " "I have no desire,' "I want to only a little bit" ... A virtuous biography, 0; an age of good morals (in history) is merely a personality with no desire to be original or a time when "nothing happens." They all "wanted so very little." Thanks! (Driving in a cab in Zelenino) §

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I am happy when I am alone and also with people.I am neither solitary nor When I am by myself I am complete, and when I am with others I am incomplete. I am, after all, happier when I am alone. Alone I am happier because when I am alone I am with God. I could surrender my talents, literature, the future of my "I," fame, p opu­ larity-I could do all this rather too readily; but happiness , well-being ... I wonder. But I could never give up God.To me God is "th e warmest." With God I am warmest. With God I am never bored or cold. After all, God is my life. I only live for Him, through Him. Apart from God I a� nothing : What is God to me? Am I afraid of Him? Not at all. Will He pumsh me? No. Will He grant me a future life? No. Does He feed me? No. Do I exist through Him, and was I created by Him? No. Then what is He to me? My perpetual sadness and j oy. A special mood related to noth ing. Is not God then "my mood"? I love the being who makes me grieve and rejoice, who speaks to me, reproves me, comforts me. sociable.

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My God is special to me. He is mine and no one else's. If He is also "someone else's" I do not know it and am not interested in knowing. "My God" is infinite intimacy, infinite individuality. This intimacy resem­ bles a little funnel, or even two funnels.From my "socia1 r• goes out a funnel, narrowing down to a point. Through that point only one ray passes: from God. Beyond that point exists another funnel, which does not narrow down but widens into infinity: this is God. Here is God. Thus God is (1) my intimacy, and also (2) infinity, of which the universe itself is but a part. § §

§

I always abuse the Russians. In fact, I do very little else. "I am a mo st unbearable sort of Shchedrin." But why do I hate everyone else who abuses them? The only people I hate are those who hate and especially those who despise the Russians. Yet there is no doubt that I despise the Russians to the point of loathing. Anomaly. §

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From my polemics with that fool P.S. I have finally made three hundred rubles. This is a third of the price charged for a tetradrachm of Antiochus VU Grypus, which shows Pallas Athene encircled by phaJli (francs 2,400). At Nuribey's [coin shop) they had on sale a tetradrachm showing Aphrodite between a lion and a bull. She is seated on a throne and smelling a flower. r could not buy it. (Both were unique.) §

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From the foundation of the world there have been two philosophies: the philosophy of the man who desires to give someone a flogging, and the philoso­ phy of the man who is flogged. All our Russian philosophy is that of the man who is flogged. From Byron's Manfred to Nietzsche the Western philosophy has been suffering from a "Sologubian itch"; "Whom shall I give a little flogging to?" Nietzsche was respected because he was German and also because he suffered (illness). But if a Russian, in his own name, h ad started out in the spirit of: "He is falling, let us give him a shove!" he would have been called a scoundrel and nobody would think of reading him. (After reading Pertzov's Between th e Old and th e New)

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The Apocalypse of Our Time

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I am suffocating with ideas. How pleasant it is to live in this state of suffocation. This is why my whole life, in spite of all the thorns and tears, is after all a joy. (At Zelenino) §

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I am like a baby in the mother's womb, who does not in the least want to be born. "I'm quite warm where I am" . . . (In a cab at night)

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Abraham was called by God. In my case God was called by me ... There's the whole difference.

§ § § Not a single Biblical scholar has ever noticed the strangeness and singu.larity of the Biblical story, that it was not Abraham who sought God, but God who sought Abraham. The Bible demonstrates clearly that Abraham rejected the covenant. He fled, and God caught him. Only then did he say: " I will be true unto Thee and my seed after me." (Examining my coins)

§

Even a fool can "lead me by the nose" and-although I may know he is a fool and is leading me to harm and ultimately to "eternal perdition"-yet I shall follow him. "To my credit" it must be observed that my "being led by the nose" half relates to my profound and total incapacity to say to the man: "You are a fool," and "You are deceiving me." In all my life I have never said such a thing, simply because I never wanted to place my "fellow man" in an awkward position. I pretend, sometimes over many years, that he is giving me good advice, or that he is comme i/faut and looks after my interests. A quarter of these instances relate to my profound (from childhood) indifference to affairs outside myself(if there is no danger). But one quarter are manifestations of sheer minus and a lack of will-without any outward or subsidiary reasons. Quite different is my dream (life). Here I have not budged one iota, however strong the pressme exerted on me. Never. It was the same in my childhood, too. 1 was a perfectly "un-brought up" person, utterly unyielding to "cultural influences." Almost in proportion to the absence of will to live (to achievement) I possessed a subborn will to dream. I may say it was even more constant, more persistent ... I never "budged one iota or yielded in anything." To look at me-I am "all-declinable." In myself (subject}-absolutely undeclinable. A sort of "adverb." §

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My God! My eternity! Why does my soul leap up when I think of Thee? . .. And all is held in Thy hand, and I know that it holds me. (Night of December 25, 1910) §

Solitaria

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I longed for nothing so much as humiliation. Sometimes fame made me happy, but with a purely piggish happiness. It never lasted any length of time (a day or two); and then once again there would come to me the old longing -to be humiliated. (On the back of a lined sheet) §

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About my death: "This garbage should be swept out of the world." When "should" comes about, I shall die. (On the back of a lined sheet) §

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Dear, lovely ones! How many of you, precious ones, have I met on my way. The first was J. (Ju.lie).Simple, self-denying. Like a star among them all is my "nameless" one ... "God has not given me your name, and I do not want to use my former name, because .. .'' And so she became nameless by signing her letters only with her Christian name. I laughed, saying: "Only Tsaritsas and Grand Dukes sign like that." She did not see it in this way, said nothing, and continued to sign her letters with only her first name, "V-- I made it one of my noms-de-plume. (On the back of a lined sheet) §

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In the course of a few days humiliation is always transformed into a radiance

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of soul that cannot be compared with anything else. It is true to say there exist _ some forms of spiritual illumination, the highest forms, which can�o� be . obtained unless you have suffered humiliation; and there are certain spmtu� absolutes forever concealed from those who have always conquered, tnumpbed, attained the heights. What a miserable, coarse person Napoleon was ... After Jena he was more pitiful than the righteous beggar to whom the servants of the rich man say: "God will provide." It seems to me that the human soul depends upon the mystery of universal psychology (s upposing that universal psychology exists), wherefore we conclude: "He desires to suffer." • .. . How very much better we are after suffering! ...Sure�y democracy s. gam without loss" derives from this? Democracy was certamly not born m the golden swaddling clothes of morality; it was born from ''a bi� of sin," like everyone else. Democracy remains "in a lowei: case,' and yet its moral halo has attracted everyone ... (On the back of a lined sheet) §

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Truth is higher than the sun,higher than the heavens, higher th�n God; for if God did not begin with truth, then He is not God, and Heaven 1s a morass, and the sun is a brass plate. (On the back of a lined sheet) §

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G. [God] has demonstrated to man for all eternity where it is possible to

meet Him.

"Look for Me not in the woods nor in the fields, nor in the wilderness, nor on the mountain summit, nor in the valley beneath, nor in the waters, nor under the earth-but ... where I made the covenant with Abraham your father" ... Astonishing. But where does this lead one who thinks, searches, imagi�es? So it becomes easy to understand how asexualists are at the same tune atheists: they do not meet God, do not see Him, do not hear Him, do not know Him ... § The soul is passion.

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Hence, remotely and sublimely: "I am the fire that consumeth." (God speaking about Himself in the Bible.) Hence also: Talent increases when passion increases. Talent is passion. (In a cab at night) §

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"Vasily Vasilievich, do vote for the Octobrist party," cried Borya, puffing at his pipe. "Your Octobrists,Borya, are numbskulls; but since your wife has ad-or-able shoulders and since your sister is chaste and inaccessible, I shall vote for the Octobrists." So I voted for them (in the Third Duma): since I could not find the address of Dr. Sokolov (the leader of the Petersburg Social-Democrats-somewhere on the Grechesky Prospekt), and of course I lost the damned ballot paper the very same day I received it.

§ § § "So much is happening! Vasily Vasilievich, you ought to write something about all these events!" said the secretary of "our paper," the kindly N. I. Afanasiev, as he crossed the room. His wife is French and speaks no Russian at all.I don't understand how they converse "in moments of strong emotion." Surely it cannot be done in utter silence. "What events, damn at all?" I thought. I was searching for "subjects for articles." When reading the newspaper,I have the custom of reading the small type-usually the most amusing part. Who wants to read the leading articles and feuilletons, thus wasting a whole day? "What 'events,' Nikolay Ivanovich?" "Why," he answered almost from the doorway, "such events as freedom of worship, the abolition of the poll tax, and the more or less complete revision of our laws." "Yes, indeed, they are events! With some effort one could write any number of leading articles around them." This was about the time when Father Gapon* and Wittet were in the *Father George Gapon (1870-1906) was a revolutionary priest and agent-provocateur. tCount Sergey Witte (1849-1914) was a conservative minister and statesman under Alexander III and Nicholas II.

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limelight. But to me it seemed that nothing particular was going on. But that talk of his"What events!"-how it excited me! §

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People, would you like me to reveal a stupendous truth that not a single one of the prophets ever revealed to you? "What? What? . .. ha, ha ..." Here it is: Private life is above everything. "Ha-ha-ha! He-he-he! Ha-ha-ha!" Yes, indeed! No one ever said it before.I am the first ... Just sitting at home, picking your nose, and looking at the sunset. "Ha-ha-ha!" I swear to you: This is more universal than religion. All religions will pass, but tfiis remains. Simply sitting in a chair and looking into the distance. (July 23, J9ll) §

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How extraordinary it is that when I have observed something happen_ing and write articles about it full of profundity, with clear and significant meaning, touching the very heart of the matter, I am completely oblivious to it, I have no knowledge of it and have no particular thoughts about it. I cannot say whether I desire it or not. For example, 1 was elated when I heard my very own words: "Gentlemen, we must rejoice not so much because the Manifesto was granted to us, but because it could not have been otherwise-and so we accept it." §

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Lord! Lord Why has Thou forgotten me? Dost Thou not know that every time Thou forgettest me I am completely lost? (On my experiments) §

§

§

Dear Lord, I have solved the riddle of the tetragram, I have penetrated the mystery. It was not a name like "Paul" or "Jobn"-it was an invocation. It was not always pronounced exactly in the same way by the same person, but was slightly, ever so slightly, modified in its nuances, in its guttural breathings . . . And not absolutely in the same way by the various high priests. Because

So/itaria

47

of this variety of sounds the secret way of pronouncing the word has been lost in the course of time. But sometimes even now pious Jews pronounce it accurately, but they do not know when they do so. And so it follows, according to my surmise, that "he who knows how to pronounce the tetragram has dominion over the world," i.e. through God. Indeed, the mystery of the invocation lies in the fact that God cannot help responding to it and when He hears it, then "He appears in all His glory." On the Jewish consciousness there appears, like a shadow, the mysterious idea that not only do they need God, but also God needs them. Hence arises their religious and ethnological pride, so that they not only pray to God but make demands on Him. And all this is contained in the invocation, in the breath ...For the invoca­ tion consists only of vowels and aspirates.

§ § § Strictly speaking, Tolstoy led a profoundly banal life . .. But he never realized it. No suffering, no "crown of thorns," no heroic struggle over his convictions, and also no particularly interesting adventures. Absolute banality. Well, he had adventures "with his ideas" ... But this is a mere literary entourage-it is the same banality, but sprinkled with perfume. §

§

§

It occurs to me that Tolstoy was little loved, and he knew it.After his death, and even during his life, there was not a single "spontaneous" agonizing cry, and not a single rash act was committed-such are the signs by which genuine attachments reveal themselves. "Everything was reasonable in the highest degree"-and this is the mark of banality. §

§

§

I am not yet such a scoundrel as to think of morality.A million years passed before my soul was allowed to enter the wide world and enjoy it. So how can I suddenly tell it: "Now don't let yourself go, precious one, always enjoy yourself in a moral way." Instead, I shall say: "Enjoy yourself, precious one, have a good time, dear one, enjoy yourself, darling, in your own way. And toward evening you will go to God." For my life is my own day, and it is my day, and not the day of Socrates or Spinoza. (In a railway carriage)

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§

§

§

lly It is good to move about with a stock of gr�t qui�t in ?ne's soul, especia cted, constru ently mteU1g bnght, seems then hing Everyt when traveling. shaped to a good end. of great Sitting in one place is also good, but only w�en �o� have a stock was so there down; s1ttmg hfe whole his spent movement in your soul. Kant he though worlds move to able was he that soul his in much movement remained "sitting." §

§

§

Happiness lies in energy-says youth. Happiness lies in peace-says death. I shall overcome everything-says youth. Yes' but everything will end-says death. (In the railway carriage, Eidtkunen-Berlm) §

§ §

I do not even know how they spell "morality"-with two l's or one. §

§

§

and And who her father was-I know not; and who her ,mother_ was,. idea. t famte the t haven is-I � whether she had children, and what her address (On morality. St. Petersburg-Kiev, in railway carnage) §

§ §

sense Merezhkovsky* always builds on other people's material, but with a magand honor his consist of discovering what is native to himself. In this naniinity. . · r1"d"1cuWhy did my ideas produce on Mikhailovsky the impression of bemg Merezh­ on and ich's," Mokiev Kifa like stuff is "This lous so that he said: as kov;ky they made a tragic impression, so that _he said: "It is _as wild danger Nietzsche· it is the end of Christianity, or at least 1t presents a ternble to Christi;nity." Why? Merezhkovsky (obviously) with his �trong and honest the intelligence saw what Mikhailovsky failed to gr�p, an� th�s bec�use of to mdolent too is which mmd his of s tiousnes impotence and lack of conscien novels and a life of *Dmitry Merezhkovsky (I 865-1941) was the author of many historical poet. the Hippius, Jesus. He was married to Zinaida

Solitaria

49

labor with ideas that are not his own or do not belong to his coterie. Yet the idea of "the family" and "procreation," on which I base everything, are more remote and unnecessary to Merezhkovsky than to Mikhailovsky; they are even hostile to Merezhkovsky. But Merezhkovsky has grasped with his soul-not with his heart or intelli­ gence but with his whole soul-this idea of mine, and he has made it his own. He opposed it to the world of Christianity, to the core of this world-to asceticism; and he has grasped the whole cosmos. In this way he "discovered the family" for himself, inwardly discovered it-under my impulse, under my direction. And this is completely his own 'discovery," new to him, entirely and completely his own independent discovery (why did not Mikhailovsky discover it?). I offered him a compass, and it was as though I had said: "There is land in the West." And he discovered America. In this ability to relate to other people's ideas lies his magnanimity. And God has rewarded him. (Luga-Petersburg, in the railway carriage) §

§

§

Alas for my sorry "experiments"! Why did I want to know everything? Now I shall not die in peace, as I had hoped. (1911) §

§

§

"Men talk amusingly about a great many things, but they only relish talking about themselves" (Turgenev). At first we .find ourselves smiling at the idea, delighting in its felicity. Then later (in a year's time) we wonder sorrowfully: Poor man, they want to deprive you of the right to talk about yourself. You must not only suffer pain and misery, but-you must also keep your mouth shut. Thus Turgenev's witty remark, intended to convict mankind of cynicism, is itself cynical. I, on the contrary, have observed that good people can only be distinguished from bad people by the way they listen to a man talking about himself. If he listens wholeheartedly, showing no sign of boredom, this is a true sign that the listener is a good, upright, straightforward person. One can be friends with him. One can trust him. But do not hope to be friends with a man who is bored listening to you; he is only thinking about himself, preoccupied with himself. Then, too, it is a good sign when a man talks about himself: He knows he has friends around him. When you talk to someone about yourself, you are ex­ pressing your sympathy toward him. It saddens me to confess that I never liked to listen to such talk or to talk about myself. I am quite incapable of doing so. This signifies that I regard myself as a bad man.

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§

§

§

Shperk told me once: "It is not intentional on your part, and it has nothing to do with your ideas, but in you as a man there is something wrong, the alloy is impure, there is something murky in your blood or in your organism. I can't tell you what it is, but I sense it." He was very fond of me (fonder, I believe, than anyone except my own family). He was extremely perceptive and knew "the roots of things." If he said so, it must be true. §

§

§

The bad in us is our fate. We need to know the measure of our fate, its direction, and to record "the degrees," as we do with thermometers. They all lie, every one of them, but learned men cope with it and make corrections. Do I want to be only good? It would be so boring. But for nothing on earth do I want to be evil or harmful. If I were these things, I would want to die. But I was always clumsy.There is in me a terrible monstrosity of behavior to the point of not knowing "how to get up" or "how to sit down." I simply do not know the way to do these things. I never know when it is best to sit down, stand, speak.No awareness of standards of behavior.Throughout my life the closer I came to people, the more uncomfortable I became to them; my proximity to them made them uncomfortable. Very many have suffered through me, some have suffered greatly, and it was always without the slightest desire on my part. This too is fate. §

§

§

On the problem of being out ofplace. Once I was standing in the little chapel by the square near the Vladimir Church on the Petersburg Side (of the Neva). I think I was standing inside the church-I forget now-it all happened fourteen years ago. I noticed I was not listening to the chanting or the reading, even though I had come with the intention of listening and worshiping. A thought flashed through my mind: "I am like a stranger-everywhere, at all times, whenever and wherever I am." Everything is strange to me, with a peculiar and seemingly predestined strangeness. Whatever I do, whoever I meet-I cannot relate to anything or anyone. A noncopulative man-spiritu­ ally. A man-solo. All this I expressed in the word "stranger," which came from me in a whisper, as if it were the greatest condemnation of me, the greatest grief for myself and in myself. That, too, is fate.

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51

"As we are born, so we go down into the grave." A strange law of conception must bring this about. Heredity. When my parents conceived me, there must have been a mental lapse, an eclipse of intelligence, a hiatus of the mind, and the child was irreparably affected. "The inevitable" ... "Stranger." .. . "Where you are hurt, you feel pain"-perhaps it is for this reason that I have this infinite love for human intimacy, for close relationships, for mutual tenderness. My feeling for people breaks down all barriers. I hate nothing so much and I am the most determined enemy of everything that separates people, everything that prevents them from being joined together, from being united, "becoming one." Whether for a long period or for a short while-I do not even raise the question.Certainly it is better that they should be joined forever; but when this is impossible, then let it be for a brief while. This, of course, shows goodness on my part; and oddly enough this springs from my badness, my vices, my personal misery. Observe the connection of things. And how can one help saying: Fate! Destiny! ... §

§

§

Do you realize that religion is the most important, the most essential, the most necessary of all things? Unless a person realizes this, then it is impossible to entertain the least argument or conversation with him. All you can do with such a person is to ignore him. He is passed over in silence. Yet who does realize this? Do many people realize it? This is the reason why in our time there is almost nothing to talk about, nor anyone to talk to. §

§

§

The relationship of God to sex is closer than the relationship of God to mind, and even closer than the relationship of God to man's conscience. We know this because all asexualists reveal themselves as atheists. Such gentlemen as Buckle, Spencer, Pisarev, and Belinsky have discussed "sex" as little as they have discussed the Republic of Argentina; they are, in fact, amazingly atheis­ tic· it is as though they never approached the subject of religion, which has no existence for them. They are literally "unbaptized' in a strange and peculiar way. The "Maeterlinckian revolution" during the Jast twenty or thirty yea.rs consisted in the fact that many people began to look at the root of things: Sex, one's personal sex, became interesting. Probably something happened in the semen (or the ovum); it is a remarkable fact that human beings very different from those born sixty or seventy years ago are being born today. A ' new generation" is coming to birth ...A sensible woman, the wife of a priest, once told me: "The crisis among the clergy is manifested in the fact that a great

52

The Apocalypse of Our Time

number of young wives of priests remain barren." She did not finish her thought, but a year later I heard her say: "The priests' wives are not responsible for their barrenness· their husbands have not the strength to conceive in them." Amazing. Well, something of this kind·took place during the entire "Maeterlinckian generation." It took place not in their way of thinking, but in their sex; and only afterward did it affect their thinking. §

§

§

Do I want my teaching to be widely known? No. There would be great turmoil, and I love peace so much-and the sunset, and the quiet evening tolling of the bells. §

§

§

§

§

§

§

§

§

§

For twenty years I have been living in a continuous poetic state. I am very _ observant, although I am silent. I do not remember when I did not see in "her" something profoundly poetic; and when I see or hear anything of her (with one ear-while I am working), there comes to my eyes tears of ecstasy and wonder­ ment. That is why I am happy. That is why I write well (or so it seems). (Luga-Petersburg, in a railway carriage) §

§

§

§

§

§

Your Mother (to my children) We have lived peacefully, day in and day out, for many years. And it was the best part of my life. (February 25, 1911) §

§

I feel rather sad (and terrified) at the thought that when I am dead people will start praising me as "an author." Perhaps the praise will be well founded, but their appraisal will not take "the regrettable incidents" into account. Because I shall not be judged according to my deserts, I shall be ashamed, tormented, and guilt-ridden "in the other world." §

§

Always doing something, planning something ...

errors and "accidents" (accidents have happened even in the history of the Church), the family is nevertheless the only aristocratic form of life.

§

What is finely wrought in my writing does not come from me. I conceive and bring it forth, like a woman.Everything belongs to a person much better than myself. My understanding and heart showed themselves in the fact that I always regarded another person as superior to me, and this was always easy and fortunate for me. Thank God, I have absolutely no envy, and "rivalry" was always alien to me, unnecessary and pointless. §

53

Do I want to be in command of my life? To have influence? Not particularly.

§

The defects I lack are indeed revolting to me. My own defects, when I meet them in others, are not in the least revolting to me. And I would never condemn them. Here is the limiting factor in any judgment: whether it is "competent' or "incompetent," and how far "it can be relied upon." We all have "little tails," but they all point in different directions. (Examining my coins) §

So/itaria

§

§

If someone loves me after my death, let him keep quiet about it.

(About the Jews)

§

The most aristocratic form of life is the family! . ..Yes! Despite misfortunes,

(Luga-Petersburg, in a railway carriage) §

§

§

My soul is woven of filth, tenderness, and sadness. Or:

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54

It is like a goldfish in the sun in an aquarium filled with dung-impregnated water. Yet it does not suffocate.Quite the contrary ... It does not sound like truth, and yet it is so. §

§

§

God has gilded me all over. I feel it . .. Lord! How I feel it!

Solitaria

To me at least the idea of "duty" began to occur toward old age. Previously I always lived by "my moods, ' i.e., by appetite, by taste, by what [ wanted and what I liked. I cannot imagine even sucb a 'lawless" person as myself. The idea of "law" as "duty" never once occurred to me. I did not know what it was, and I was never sufficiently interested to learn. "Duty was invented by cruel people to oppress the weak, and only fools obey it." Something like that ... But I always had pity. This, too, was my "appetite," my gratefulness, my mood. §

§

§

§

y Every line of mine is holy writ (not in the scholastic, nor in the ordinar mine of word every and t, though sense), and every thought of mine is a holy a holy word. "How dare you?" shouts the reader. "Don't you see, I dare," I laugh back at him. All of me is "providential" ... God, how I feel this! §

§

§

at When I heard Francesca da Rimini for the first time-I believe it was Hoffman's concert-I thought in a trance: "This is my soul." h­ The musical passage where you can hear the movement of wings (astonis ing!!!). "This is my soul! This is my soul!" I never dreamed I would hear the inner movement out of which are woven my years, hours, and days. I rush like the wind. Like the wind I am never tired. "Whither? Why?" And finally: "What do you love?" "I love the dreams I have at night," I shall whisper to the wind as it passes. (Late at night)

§ § § The slow pace of old age brings with it a loosening of attachments. And death is final coldness. Approaching old age, a man finds himself worried above all by the irregular life he has led, not in the sense that "he did not find much enjoyment" (such a thought never enters his head), but in the sense that he failed to do what was needed.

§

§

It surprises me how I managed to accommodate myself to !i.§, They never bothered me, for a strange reason: "What business is it of yours exactly what I th_ink? :Vhy am I obliged to_ tell �ou i:1Y real thoughts?" My extremely deep _ s_ubJecttvtty (the pathos ofsub1ecttv1ty) 1s the reason why I have lived my whole life as though behind a curtain, an immovable curtain that cannot be torn. "Nobody dare touch this curtain." Behind it I lived, and there I was truthful with myself ... As for the truth of anything I said "on the other side of the curtain"-it seemed to me that it did not concern anyone. "I must say what is useful. Your criticism should go only as far as this: Am r saying what is useful? And then only on condition: "If it is harmful, don't do it." My motto when I was thirty-five: "I refuse to write on paper that bears an official stamp." By which I meant: It can always be torn up. Nevertheless, while I wrote sincerely most of the time (even always, or so it seems to me), it was not out of a love for truth-a love r not only did not possess, but "could not even imagine"-but out of indifference-. Indifference is my n�gative pathos. To tell a lie-for which purpose it is necessary "to invent,' "to construct," "to put the pieces together"-is more difficult than to relate the "actuaJ circumstances." I have simply laid down on paper the "actual circumstances." This constitutes my truthfulness. It is done naturally, and is not moral "I grew up like this," and if you don't like it, don't look at it. Therefore it often seemed to me (and perhaps it is so) that I am the most truthful and sincere of writers even though I have not a grain of morality in me. "So God has made me." §

§

§

The fusion of my life, fatum, especially of my thoughts and above all of my writings, with the divine volo was in me from the beginning, from my very youth from my boyhood. From this came my indifference. l was indifferent because there was an inner voice, an invincible inner conviction, which told

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me that everything I said was what God wanted me to say. This conviction �as not always equally intense, but sometimes this belief, this conviction, reached a kind of incandescence. It was as though my being intensified, my soul grew heavy, my thoughts moved in a completely different order, and "my tongue spoke of itself." I did not always have a pen beside me--I "uttere�l'' whatever was in my soul ... I felt that my "utterances" were propelled (with such "intensity") that walls would not endure, and that laws, institutions and the "convictions" of other people would not remain ... At such times I felt I was stating an absolute truth "exactly under the same angle of inclination" as in the universe, in God, in truth as truth. In most cases I did not write these things down (there was no pen). §

§

§

57

Nekrasov, who was a member of the English Club and played cards with millionaires, incited them more than anyone else with his poem: "Let me enter the side of those who are perishing ..." Yes, the poem is soaked in blood. It is impossible to imagine any group of pe ?ple mo �e ?nfortun�te than our young people. Therein lies all our present existence (m its absurdity) "like a dream," which sustains this dark and bitter idea among our young people."We are abandoned by everybody." What have our young people seen and heard from our cast-iron generals, our frozen State Cou �cillors, our dry goods merchants, and (almost) the entire population of Ru�s1a? But perhaps they will come to remember their old grandmammas, thetr old aunts.There is some hope to be found in them, perhaps. Lord, how terrible our life is, and how gloomy.

§

I was never aware of a feeling of criminality (like Dostoyevsky). Instead, I had a feeling of illimitable weakness ... I felt this weakness from the age of s1:ven or eight .. .A peculiar loss of will power over myself, my actions, my "choice of activity," my "position in life." At the university I entered a faculty because my brother was in the same faculty, although I had no intellectual or any other connection whatsoever with my brother (at the time). I always walked through "the open door"; it did not matter to me which door was open. Never in my life have I made a choice, never was there a moment of hesitation. It was a strange failure of nerve, a strange indifference.Always I thought: "God is with me." Whichever door I entered, it was not because I hoped God would stay with me, but merely because of my faith in "God who was with me"; hence arose my total indiffer­ ence to "which door I would enter." I walked through the door where there was "pity' and "gratefulness." Thanks to these two ideas, I still think I was a good man, and that God will forgive me much. §

Solitaria

§

In Russia, how many reputations are soaked in the blood of the young.Not that there are any literary reputations, but there exist journalistic reputations. Oh, if only the young were able to believe that the people who have never urged them into this bloody business (political terrorism) loved and respected them -their immortal and precious souls, their dark and lovely "future" (the whole world)-more than the hypocrites to whom they have entrusted themselves ... Yet they will never bring themselves to believe it! They believe they are alone, they have been abandoned by the world, and their only "friends" are those who whisper in their ears: "Go forward, we are already old and useless, but you-you are heroic and noble." This diabolical whisper is meaningless.

§

§

§

Man is attached to two anchors. His parents, "home," childhood-that is one anchor. "First love," at the age of thirteen or fourteen, is a crisis, an intimation that "the other anchor has begun to pull" ... Departure and anchorage: the port from which you "set forth" and the port where you are "anchored." The final "anchorage" is the grave; and it is remarkable that love is �lready leading up to it. Love is: "I give birth again," and shall be for my children the port from which they are "cast off." If we accept this design of life, then it is evident that our genitalia are more . important than our brains. "The brain" is the captain, the navigator. But for "navigation" what is important is not so much the captain, who may be replaced and another one hired, as the eternal "setting forth" and the "anchor­ ages." The East India Company, at any rate, did not exist for the benefit of the captains, neither does the Volga exist for the sake of river navigation and the grain trade. ''.B�auty offeatures" is more important to a girl than "intellectual capacity." So 1t 1s.They know it, but only they know it. What about school? The whole system of education? "Learn by heart equations of the second degree." Also "the rivers of South America, not forgetting the tributaries of the Rio de la Plata." How understandable and how nice that girls "simply don't lis­ ten."

(Luga-Petersburg, in a railway carriage)

§ § § Like a "savage old wolf' he gorged himself on Russian blood and' satiated' fell into his grave.

(On Shchedrin, in a railway carriage)

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§

She gave birth, therefore she had the right to give birth. Nowhere else does "can" coincide so well with "I have the right to," as in giving birth.

How sad, I am ending by beginning to hate everything Russian. ing. It is especially sad at the end of my life. §

§

how terrify­

§

roads . . . Disgusting, Those sleep-worn faces, unswept rooms, unpaved disgusting. (Luga-Petersburg, in a railway carriage) § § § sleep never tell the Always that slyness. Why does the man who is half-a truth? (Russians. Luga-Petersburg, in a railway carriage) §

§

§

? No, I write for Why have a reader for a friend? Do I write for a reader myself. "Then why publish?" Because they pay. . The subjective has coincided with the external circumstance Thus literature exists. And only thus. (Luga-Petersburg, in a railway carriage)

§ § § , in fact, came What was the arrow I always felt in my heart? From which all my writing. It is my sin. (repentance) Through sin I got to know everything on earth, and through sin earth. on I felt an affinity with everything (Luga-Petersburg, in a railway carriage)

§

§

Every love is beautiful. And it alone is beautiful. For the only thing on earth "true to itself' is love. §

§

§

§

59

§

§

§

Solitaria

§

§

Love excludes falsehood; the first "I lied" means: "I no longer love," "I love less." If love is extinguished, truth too is extinguished. Therefore "to be truthful on earth" means to love always and truly. §

§

§

Fame is a serpent. May her bite never touch me.

(Examining my coins)

§ § § To lie in the warm sand after bathing is in its own way equal to any philosophy. An� the lazzaroni always lying in the sand, are they not a splendid school of philosophy? (Examining my coins) §

§

§

The Russian Church is a remarkable phenomenon. In many respects Lu­ _ theramsm and Cath?licism are more remarkable, but there are aspects of the _ Russian Church which are even more extraordinary. Consider men like Bus­ _ layev, Tikhonravov, Klyuchevsky, S. M. Soloviev-an of them men of intelli­ gence, and how i� never �cc�ed to them to correct anything in it, and they �ere �erfectly satisfied with it. And yet they were believing and religious men, pious m the b�t sense of th� �ord, in the quietly Russian sense. They never thought espec1ally about r��gion; they worked all their lives, behaved nobly, _ and went on crea�g. Rehgion provided them with a kind of lateral support for al} the �o�n�s ?,f work they acc-0mplished Quite obviously, if they had , been lacking m faith, they would have been neither so noble, nor so creative. They would confront religious skepticism with the utmost contempt. "Cross­ examination" of Orthodo�y started from below (away from) that particular threshold-by more caustic, unsteady, and petty minds. Tolstoy, Rozanov,

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wi th bis calm sunset. They are Merezhkovsky, Herzen are no longer Buslayev there is somethin g remar k­ aps Perh gy. all storm turmoil, malice, nervous ener harmony. able in them, but they lack calm, clarity, and te to a harmon ious spirit, but opria appr e degre ghest i h Orthodoxy is in the ically speaking, there is Zeus or it is not appropriate to a troubled spi rit. Alleg lly) it even i ncludes "Mars." orica alleg n y (agai i n it. And in Alexander Nevsk of the Slavophiles) they kept on During "the Petersburg period" (the time "Mars" who was also the building churches to Alexander Nevsky, this saints of Kiev. Thus Mars and "Romulus" of Russia, having superseded the is no Aphrodite, no Juno, "the Zeus (their elements) are Orthodoxy, but there mysticism. ay mistress of the house," no Saturn, no faraw (On the back of a letter) §

§ §

Even if you fail to give a If you fail in giving, there is anguish in the soul. present. Kiev. I wanted to gi ve her a (About the little girl in the railway station at hesitated, and sire and her grand­ present of a pencil and a pencil-holder; but I mother went on their way.) il. She had never seen one The li ttle girl came back and I gave her the penc derful" it was. She was so "won how her like it, and I could hardly explain to happy, and so was I. §

§ §

how much we need to be Who goes with a pure soul into the earth? Oh, purified. (Winter, J9Jl) §

§ §

) perhaps even a "crook'.' I may be a "fool" (there are rumors to that effect ensity of "revealed hon­ imm the ght, (as some say); but the breadth of thou I possess it. It all comes way the n i me e befor zons"-no one possessed this from anyone. Wonderful. I from my own mind, without borrowing anything am a simply wonderful man. (On the sole of my slipper, while bathing) §

§

§

My mind became confused, utterly confused ...

61

Solitaria

I have devoted all my l ife to the destruction of what I love most on earth. Has anyone had a sadder fate than this? (Summer, 1911) § §

§

Fate preserves those whom it robs of fame. §

§

(Winter, 1911)

§

They th�nk "I was pla�ing up to the authorities." In actual fact, my peculiar psychological character ts such that I have a strong feeling of void around me -a void of silence and nonliving all around me-and thus I scarcely know, _ scarcely believe, scarcely admit to myself that there exist other people contem­ poraneous with me. It seems impossible and absurd. But so it is. §

§

§

Why do I �ave "so little desire for fame and influence"? I feel (at times) so sad about this (although there are moments when i t makes my soul glad), . remembenng that nothing has come out of my literary activity' that I have · no following, that I have no "school." . Simply because of a strange desire that people should be happy. One always Judg�s ?t�ers "b� oneself" (t�ere is no other way). And "by myself" I judge that 1t 1s 1mposs1ble to be happy if I did not have the ideas I have. I would ?e very glad if "I could be dispensed with." In that case, I would have written 1t exactly the same way, but I would not have cared in the least whether people read me or not. §

§

§

In �his sense "the �esire for influence" is a very noble feeling, personally speakmg. To be the fnend of everyone and to have the whole world as a friend. §

§

§

He was not intelligent, or educated; to be more exact, he had not matured; but he was amazingly talented. Whether he "took" money from Witte I do not know. But he was an absolutely honest man; for with one-tenth of his talent others have become "Privy Councillors" and lived comfortably on their invest­ ments and pensions. And he died, if not a pauper, a poor man.

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But not only for these reasons was he absolutely honest; there was in him something indefinable, such that even if I had caught him with a handkerchief just picked from my pocket, I would have shaken hands with him and said: "Seriozha, there must be a mistake somewhere.The fact is that I always knew and still know you are one of the most honest people in Russia." And he would have burst into angelic tears, ·which the "honest" Kutler, enjoying a pension of six thousand rubles, could never have shed. (About Sharapov, at his death)

I am not one to argue with God, and I shall not betray him for not answering my prayers. I love Him, and am devoted to Him. Whatever He does; I shall not utter blasphemy against Him. I shall only weep over myself. (The sad summer of 1911; her hand does not move) §

§

§

The heart of Orthodoxy is the gift of prayer. The body of Orthodoxy consists of the rituals, the cult. But whoever thinks that apart from the rituals there is nothing in it (Harnack, the professor)-such a man, with all his cleverness, understands nothing about it. §

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Whoever loves the Russian people cannot help loving the Church too. For the people and the Church are one.And only with Russians are the people and the Church one. (Summer, 1911) §

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Not in the least interested in self-realization, total lack of external energy, of "the will to live." I am the most unself-realizing person. §

63

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':7orky's fate was to become famous and to reach the heights. But by nature he 1s a fighter. Whom can he fight against, if all the others are knocked out? Surely not with Gringmut, nor with Katkov? Nor with Count Meshchersky whose very existence Gorky hardly suspects.* And his arms hung down at his sides. The fighter has died, but not on the battlefield. I have written to him about this, but oddly enough he has not understood anything I wrote.

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Solitaria

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I received some superb letters from Maxim Gorky this year.He is a splendid person. But if all the other "leftists" saw things in that light, then first of all, compared with our view of things, how limited their view is! Is it really true that the difference between radicalism and conservatism is the difference be­ tween a narrow and a wide view, between shortsightedness and farsightedness? If so, does it mean that we shall be the victors? And yet it is quite hopeless. (Summer, 1911)

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I have met three men who were more understanding, or rather more gifted more ?riginal, mo�e unusual than myself. Shperk, Rtsy, and Florensky. Th� first �1ed when sttll young (at twenty-six), not having expressed himself in anythtng; the second was "Tentetnikov," who warmed his belly in the sun. "Ivan Ivanovi:h, who plays the fiddle," as he once called himself (metaphori­ _ cal�y, m an a�icle). The extraordinary thing about their intelligence, or rather �hetr souls, m the metaphysical (prenatal) experience, was that they were mcapable of error. Their judgments could be accepted "blindfolded " without verification, without reflection. Their words, ideas, opinions, eve� the most summary ones, sometimes illuminated whole regions of the universe. They were almost Slavophiles, yet essentially-not Slavophiles, but-"loners," "I's." ... Of the other famous men I met-Rachinsky, Strakhov, Tolstoy, Pobedo­ nostsev, Soloviev, Merezhkovsky-none was stronger than I. I felt something very strong and independent in Tigranov (his book on Wagner). We met only once. And then I was in trouble and could not listen or look at him attentively. Of him I would say that "perhaps he was more gifted than myself" ... S_tolpner was very wise, and in individual opinions he was stronger than myself, but on the whole he was not stronger than I .. . Yes • ..I also felt that Konstantin Leontiev (my corresponsence with him) was stronger than myself. O�er all those men I have mentioned I had one advantage-my cunning (the Russian "keep your own counsel")-and perhaps it was because of this that I �id not perish (in the literary sense) like those unfortunate people ("the fadur�s"). From t�e ti�e of my terrible and tortured childhood, I adopted the _ practice of remammg silent (and continually thinking).I remained silent and went on listening . .. and thinking ...and listening to fools and the words of the wise ...And it went on ripening within me, slowly and silently . .. I never *Gringrnut, Katkov, and Meshchersky were extreme conservatives, active in publishing and letters.

The Apocalypse of Our Time I

hurried, I let things slide ... And because I never hurried-although for them everything "broke away" or "failed to ripen"-with me it did not br� away, and I believe it ripened.Compared with Rtsy and Shperk, how extensively has my literary activity unfolded, how many books I have published ... But throughout my life there have been no critical opinjons in the newspapers, no dithyrambs (in the press) that gave me the same calm, just pride as did the friendship and (I felt it) the respect (and from Sbperk also love) of these three men. But what a destiny awaits literary men! Why are they so unknown, forgotten, rejected? Shperk, who seems to have anticipated his fate, used to say: "Have you read Gruber (I believe)? You haven't? I am so anxious to find something by him. I am especially fascinated by unknown authors who have n�t been noti�d. What sort of men were they? I am so delighted when I find m them an idea that is new and before its time." How simple, profound, and beautiful this is! I also remember his aphorism about children: "Children ctiffer from us in perceiving all things with a power of realism unknown to adults.To us a 'chair' is a piece of 'furniture.' But the child does not know the category 'furniture,' and to him a chair is huge and alive, as it cannot be to us. That is why children enjoy things so much more than we do ... Another wonderful idea: "The rule that children should respect their parents and that parents should love their children should be reversed. It is the parents who must respect the children-respect their strange little world and their excitable nature quick to feel hurt at any moment. Children should only love their parents and they will certainly love them when they feel they are being respected." How profound and how new. Tolstoy ... When among other things I spoke to him about marriage and the family, and about sex-he was just as confused as a schoolboy wh? is not sure of his spelling and mixes up the letters of the alphabet. Essentially he understood nothing -at all except "the need to abstain.' He did not even know how to disentangle the little thread-abstain- from the fabric into which it is woven. No analysis, no ability to bring ideas together, no thinking. Mere exclamations. Impossible to have any reaction· it was o 'imbecile' ... In Soloviev there was only one interesting thing: "the little devil sitting on his shoulder" (on the Baltic Sea). That was something worth talking about. Mysterious and profound is his nostaJgia, about which he kepi silent. And his writings what he bas written, consists of nothing but the most ordinary jargon. He carried his pride before him. It was worth nothing. And he kept silent on what was best in him, his sadness. Pobedonostsev was a splendid person, but he never revealed in anything that

Solitaria

he had a splendid, distinguished Russian mind. He was so ordinary that he never stopped being a professor. In respect to Pobedonostsev I feel guilty.I should not have written evil of him after his death. Objectively I was correct in what I wrote, but it was ignoble of me. Rachinsky had a dry and neat mind, with nothing new or original. §

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... And essentially-0 God! My God!-there was always a monastery in my soul. §

§ §

Did I really need the marketplace? Brrr ...

§ § § People, you should enjoy the evenings when the light still glows.Life passes quickly. It will pass, and then you will say, "I would like to be enjoying it," but it is no longer possible: there is pain, there is sadness, there is no time! Collecting old coins is all right-enjoy your coins! Books are good, too.Enjoy your books! Only write nothing; do not "make the attempt." You will miss life, and what you have written will turn out to be "unneeded," "foolish."

§ § § My head is rocking under the clouds. But how weak my legs are!

§ § § In many respects I understand paganism, Judaism, and Christianity more fully and more essentially than they were understood by their own followers during the classical age, when they were in full flower. Yet I am just "an ordinary contemporary man," with all his weaknesses and with all his great antihistoric "I don't want to" ... But there is a dialectical mystery here: My "day-to-day," to which I cling with such force, as no one, I believe, has done before me, gave me all my strength and penetrating intelligence.Thus "out of weakness came strength," and "out of that strength crune weakness."

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§

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Not only does "the present generation" have no great importance, but it has no importance at all. Sixty years will pass-"a breath of history"-and of all this there will remain no more than remains of the mummies of the age of Sesostris. What do we know of 'the men of the twenties (of the nineteenth century)? Only what Pushkin told us. We know all his poems, we remember them and ponder them. But his "contemporaries" existed only for their own time, and to us they have no existence at all. Hence: Live and work as though no one else existed, as though there were no "contemporaries." If your ideas and your work are valuable, they will triumph over all who hate you, despise you, and try to trample you underfoot. The strongest is truly strongest, and the weakest truly weakest. My friend's mother used to say: "Truth is brighter than the sun." Live for the truth. As for the people, let them do their damnedest. §

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§ §

"What do you really love, you silly man?" My dreams. (In the railway station, about myself)

This is what I absolutely and finally do not know: "Am I something or nothing?" A vapor puffs me up, and then I seem to be "something." But . .. "when the long scroll is unrolled" (Pushkin), then I seem to be "nothing." (Petersburg-Kiev, in a railway carriage) §

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Why are you always thinking about yourself? You ought to be thinking about others." "No, thank you." (Petersburg-Kiev, in a railway carriage) §

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Yes, perhaps the "architectural plans" are defective.Nevertheless, the build­ ing protects us from the rain and the mud. How can we start pulling it down? (In a railway carriage, about the Church)

§

When I go to the doctor, I always sit on the edge of my chair and find myself mentally whispering, "If you would like to pull my ears, please do so" or "If you want to slap my face, you are welcome, I can stand it, even enjoy it: Only after this you must try to cure us." For some reason I have an idea that all diseases are incurable, and this is why I am always so afraid to call a doctor. A high temperature delirium-"Well, it's nothing, just a cold, five grains of aspirin, vinegar rub, mustard plaster, a purge," any "home remedy" as a matter of fact, and "it will go away." "Calling in the doctor" means a disease, and with me that means "incurable." When I went to see Dr. Renteln just before my wife's third operation, I only bent down to give myself the appear­ ance of sitting, quite close to the door, and did not touch the seat. He spoke slowly: "It's a fistula ... the neck of the uterus has to be cut away . . . The uterus must be made smaller, cleaned out (by surgery?!!)" But, 0 my God, cancer always appears on the "cervix of the uterus," and if it has to be cut away, it means cancer ... I don't remember how I dragged myself home. §

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And now my life has completely passed by .. . There remain a few dismal, sad, old, unwanted years ... Now everything is becoming unnecessary. This is the chief feeling of old age. Especially things, objects, clothes, furniture, the domestic scene. What is the sum total of life? Terribly little. I lived. Once upon a time I was happy. That's the main thing. "And what has come of it?" Nothing in particular. I feel it is not especially necessary that anything should "come of it." To faIJ into obscurity is almost the most desirable. §

§ §

What is the best thing that happened in one's past life and in the distant past? A good deed, even if it is ever so small. AJso, a good meeting, i.e., getting to know a fine, kind, congenial person. In old age such things shine like a stream of light, and one looks with such comfort at these lights, but alas, they are so few. And what about those boisterous pleasures (I did not have many)-all that "running about." They are only momentary pleasures, and "in later years" fade into insignificance.

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Only in old age does one realize: "I ought to have lived a good life." This does not even occur to you when you are young.Nor does it occur to you when you are grown up. But in old age the memory of a good deed, of a tender relationship, of sensitive consideration-this is the only "bright guest in the room" (in the soul). (Late at night) § § § What is precious in Russia apart from the old churches? Surely not the government offices? Nor the editorial offices? The church is old, so old, and the sacristan is "not up to much," we are all weak, we are all little sinners. But only here is it warm. Why is it warm here and cold everywhere else? Here they buried my mother and my brothers.Here they will bury me, and here my children will get married.Everything is here ... All that is important ... And people have breathed warmth here. § §

§

In my friend God granted me a person I have never doubted, in whom I was never disappointed. It is curious that not a single day passed but we "shouted" at one another. But our differences never outlasted an evening. Usually, within half an hour, I or she would apologize for our rudeness (shouting). Never, never was there anger or disrespect between us. Never!!! Not for a single whole day. Not once in twenty years did our day end "in separation" ... (Late at night) § §

§

Quiet, dark nights ... The terror of crime ... The anguish of loneliness ... Tears of despair, of fear, and the sweat of labor ... Here thou art, religion ... Help to the downcast ... Help to the weary .. . Faith of the sick ... Here are thy roots, religion ... Eternal, miraculous roots. (Correcting the proofs of an article)

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§ § § "It all happened because of the placenta," said Dr.Chernval.This happened when she was seventeen and a half, and in these matters she is still a child at the age of forty-seven."Why is my arm stiff?" -and all she is concerned about is her arm.The doctor said laughing: "She is most worried about her arm.But it doesn't matter, does it? Only the left arm is stiff" ... And he smoked his cigarette thoughtfully. §

§ §

My soul is aching, my soul is aching, my soul is aching. What to do about the pain-I don't know. But only with the pain can I go on living ...This is the most precious thing to me and inside me. (Late at night) §

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About three years before 1911 my nameless and faithful friend, to whom I owe everything, said: "I feel I shall not live very long. Let us live those few years well" ... My heart sank within me.In a scarcely audible voice I said: "Oh, yes, yes!" But in fact the "yes" was never realized. § §

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Your Mother (to our children) "I have cut off my braids-I don't need them." Those wonderful chestnut-colored braids, and now her hair sticks out like a mouse's tail. "Why have you done it? Without asking me! I am hurt It's exactly as though you threw away something of yourself, the something that made others happy." "I've lost everything. What do I need the braids for? Where is my neck? Where are my arms? There is nothing left. And so I got rid of my braids." (On communion day, late in the evening) §

§ §

But it seemed to me, as everything seems to me now, a kind of premonition of death. (February 25, 1911)

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§ § § At the age of fifty-six I possess 35,000 rubles. But my friend is ill ... And it all seems so useless.

§ § § Her "friend," after all, is only myself: and only in me are the tears flowing, flowing, and I cannot stop them ... Children ... How little they need their parents when they are growing up. Their friends, their own lives, their future-all these things excite them so ... When my mother died, I suddenly realized I could now smoke cigarettes openly. I lit a cigarette at once. I was thirteen. § § § For twenty years like a "babbling brook" I have been running beside the coffin ... I used to get into a temper: Why is no one happy? Why are no flowers blooming? And to learn it all so very late ...

§ § § Yes, I have achieved "fame" ... Oh, how I long to tear it apart with my teeth, tear it to shreds with my fingernails, and sink my last rotten tooth in it ... And it is all too late ... Oh, how I would like to live again, with the one aim-of not writing any­ thing. My columns have robbed me of everything; they have taken me away from my friend, for whose sake I should have lived and wished to live, and now wish to live. And all the time my talent drove me to write and write. (Late at night) §

§ §

My lame one comes hobbling down the stairs, putting her right leg forward. There is a bend in the stair and she cannot see me, though I can see her. Her face is flushed, and she is saying excitedly to the maid who is supporting her, "I have to take a hundred rubles to pay the doctor today. I am completely robbing my Vasily Vasilievich." I am at the top of the stairs, and I run down. "Completely robbed!" I laugh. "What is this hundred rubles you are talking

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about? It is I who will go and pay the doctor, not today, but some other day this week." This is her only worry, which she meets seven days ahead, thinking about all the money that is spent on her illness.Then she laughs, and we happily and sorrowfully enter the hallway. Oh my lame one, my dearest lame one: If you could only walk well, I would give thousands . ... And for your complete health I would give everything.

§ § § Terrible loneliness throughout my life. From childhood. Lonely souls are secretive.And this secretiveness springs from viciousness.The terrible burden of loneliness. Is not one's suffering due to this? No, not only to this. §

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On November 27, at the age of eighty-five, there died in Eletz "our granny," Alexandra Andrianovna Rudnev, nee Zhdanov. Throughout all her seventy years she labored for others-having at the age of fifteen made up her mind to embark on a marriage advantageous to a young brother who was in her care. Both were orphans. She was always merry, "running to church," teaching local children "to read and write, serve God, the Tsar, and the country." Like the undying candle in the catacombs, she illuminated, warmed, caressed, labored, cried----cried a great deal-and only at "church services" did she dry her eyes (consolation). Let this book be dedicated to her, and along with her -to my own poor mother, Nadezhda Vasilievna Rozanov.

§ § § My mother was quite different. Always tormented by helplessness and storms of confusion ... She did not know that when she slipped quietly out of bed, where I was sleeping with her (about the age of six-seven--eight), I was not yet asleep and saw her praying for all of us, at first silently, then whispering ... louder, louder ...until her prayers came like a kind of (slight) hissing. In the daytime she was again stern, always stern. Throughout our house I never remember her smiling.

§ § § Monotonously but not loudly, the fan hums in the little corridor.I (almost) wept: "Just to hear it, I want to live longer, and above all my friend must live

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longer." Then the thought came to me: "ls it possible that she (my friend) won't hear the fan in the next world?" and I was seized by the hair with such a _longing for immortality that I almost fell to the floor. (Late at night) §

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A religious man is greater than a sage, greater than a poet, greater than an orator or a conqueror. He who prays will conquer all, and saints will be the conquerors of the world. I am going to church! I am going! I am going! (December 9, 1911) § § § Never shall I put my foot on the same floor as the positivists-never! Never! I never want to breathe the same air they breathe, never want to be in the same room with them! Better superstition, better stupidity, better ignorance, but with prayer. Reli­ gion, or nothing.It is the struggle and the cross, the staff and the club, the spear and the grave. And I believe the saints will conquer ... Prayer--or nothing. Or: Prayer-and play. Prayer-and feasts. Prayer-and dances. But at the heart of everything-prayer. If "someone is praying"-everything is permissible. If not-nothing is permissible. This is my credo-and may I go down with it to the grave. I shall begin the great dance of prayer. With long trumpets, with music, with everything; and everything will be permissible, for everything will be forgiven through prayer. We shall do everything, for afterward we shall bow down to God. But we shall do nothing "Karamazovian," nothing extreme; for even while we are dancing we shall remember God and shall not want to grieve hi"!· "God is with us" -this is everlasting. §

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Men are trading everywhere: in literature, in politics-they trade in fame; they trade in money; and yet the priests are criticized for selling "wax candles " and "holy oil." But their "trade" forms only on-tenth and they are not enlight-

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ened, while the laymen's trade forms nine-tenths, even though they are "en­ lightened." (December 13, 1911)

§ § § Why am I so angry with the radicals? I don't know myself. Do I love the conservatives? No. What's the matter with me? I don't know. I can't understand it. (December 14, 1911) §

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On August 26, 1910, I became suddenly old. For twenty years I stood in "the sunlight." All of a sudden it was nine o'clock at night. Now I need nothing, wish for nothing. I think only about the grave. §

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No concern whatever for the future. Concern for the future cannot be shared with my friend. Concern is possible only for two; for one alone--not interesting. For "one" there is only the grave. (December 14, 1911) §

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I am much too monstrously lazy to read books. For example, I read only the first page of Filosofov's article* about me (in the Annual); and only this year, looking through my books (to dust them and arrange them) I found the book, opened it, and read the rest of the article, without getting up from the floor (he says many true things). I ask myself why I read so little. A thousand reasons, but the main reason is this: Reading prevents me from thinking. My brain is "dizzy" and I have not the powe.r to escape from my dizziness. I was always reading in school, greedily (madly), but at the university I only read the first few pages of a book (Mommsen, Bluntschli). In actual fact I was born a pilgrim-a pilgrim-preacher. In Judea "a whole *Dmitry Filosofov was Diaghilev's cousin, active in the World ofArt group.

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street would start prophesying." I am one of these, i.e., one of the men in the scree£ (average men) and yet "a prophet" (although without the mission to change the destiny of the people). Prophecy, as far as I was concerned, had no hing to do with the Russians; it was a privare concern; and it was not an event in our people's history. It concerned only myself (having no significance or influence). It was a part of my biography. I absolutely cannot stop, cannot abstain from making speeches (writing) and everything that prevents me from doing so I impatiently brush aside (business matters), or I let them drop from my hands (books). This speech (whispers) constitutes my "literature." In this way I make many mistakes: For me to reach for a book and open it in order to consult it is much more difficult than writing an article. "Writing" is pure pleasure, but "looking up things' disgusts me. When writing, "my wings ar� soaring,' but when I look things up, I am working-and I am bone-lazy. I found comfort in the accepted conclusion acknowledged by everyone that "the world, as a whole, is my idea." According to that premise I am definitely not bound to "ensure accuracy" and to write history and geography correctly, but only write it "as I know it." lf there had been no Schopenhauer, I might feel ashamed, but since Schopenhauer exists I am "all right. ' Of Schopenhauer (Strakhov's translation) 1 have read only the first half of the first page (price of the book three rubles); but the first line reads: The World as my Idea. "That's fine," I thought, like Oblomov. "Let us conclude that it is very difficult to read any further, and for me altogether unnecessary." (December 14, 1911) §

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The grave ... did you know that its meaning will conquer a whole civiliza­ tion? ... Here is a plain ...a field, with no one, nothing there ...Only a liitle mound of earth, and a man buried beneath it .. . and these two words "man buried," "man died" with their great meaning, their overwhelming significance, their sad significance ... they overcome whole planets-and are more important than all the Attilas and their historians. All they did was to trample the earth .. .But a man has died, and we don't even know-who. This is so terribly sad, so desperate ...it is as if our whole civilization turned upside down in our minds, and we don't want "Attilas and their historians." All we want is to sit down on a little grave ('t) and howl humbly, like a dog. Yes, pride vanishes here.

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A diabolical quality. It is not for nothing that I have always hated you. (December 14, 1911) §

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A coffin was being carried along, and the crowd was stepping over "puddles" and over the flowers that fell from the hearse. They hurried and jostled along. And I, who was driving by in a cab and also being jostled, thought: "This is how they will carry you too, Vasily Vasilievich." I imagined vividly my rather stupid face, very pale (now it is always red), and my parched lips, and my straggly beard with its miserable hairs, and the public trying to "step over the puddles" and cursing when they stepped into them; and one of them is dread­ fully upset because he is not allowed to smoke; and from my coffin I sympa­ thize deeply with him for "not being allowed" to smoke; and if there had been no funeral and if it had not been an official occasion when it was "incumbent upon me to lie down," I would have placed a cigarette in his hand. From personal experience I know how terribly necessary it is to smoke at a funeral ... And the hearse drove on and on. "Well, good-bye, Vasily Vasilievich.It is bad underground, brother, but you led a bad life.It would have been easier for you to lie under the ground if you had led a better life. And to be lying there in a state of error" ... Oh, God, how can I die in a state of error ... And I am in a state of sin. (December 14, 1911) §

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Yes, perhaps we live out our lives to be worthy of the grave. We become aware of this only when we are coming near to the grave.Before that, "it never even occurs to us." (December 14, 1911) §

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Sixty times only-and then only if I was very lucky-