#vasily rozanov

[finita--la--commedia]

With regard to Dostoyevsky you can’t say: ‘I don’t care about him’. Everyone cares about Dostoyevsky, because no one can be indifferent to one’s soul

Vasily Rozanov (1856-1919)

[tamsoj]

“No one, not even a ‘friend,’ can make us better. But it is a great happiness in life to meet a person of quite different construction, different bent, completely dissimilar views who, while always remaining himself and in no wise echoing us nor currying favor with us (as sometimes happens) and not trying to insinuate his soul (and an insincere soul at that!) into our psyche, into our muddle, into our tangle, would stand as a firm wall, as a check to our follies and our irrationalities, which every human being has. Friendship lies in contradiction and not in agreement! Verily, God granted me Strakhov as a teacher and my friendship with him, my feelings for him were ever a kind of firm wall on which I felt I could always lean, or rather rest. And it won’t let you fall, and it gives warmth.”

Vasily Rozanov’s note to a letter of Strakhov dated January 5, 1890, in his book Literary Exiles

[allesandersen]

[russolitude]

Why can’t I bear death? accept the ephemerality of earthly joys. Tsars died. Alexander III died. Why can’t I bear this? I don’t know. And still I can’t. “I will die” – is not the same as “he dies”.  With “I die” only “mother dies” compares; even more appalling. Yes, here is the point: I also am for the whole world – “he dies”, and also - “nothing”.  Everyone is only for oneself “I”. For the others is - “he”. So how does one not cry in despair.

Vasily Rozanov, Fallen Leaves

[black-canvas]

I choke in thinking. And how good it is to live in this suffocation. Because of this my life, through all thorns and tears, is still a pleasure.

Vasily Rozanov

[russolitude]

I choke in thinking. And how good it is to live in this suffocation. Because of this my life, through all thorns and tears, is still a pleasure.

Vasily Rozanov

[russolitude]

In my thoughts there has always been some kind of petrifaction. I have never been guessing, I have never been seeking, I have never been prying, neither have I ever been thinking. These completely ordinary abilities were totally vanished from my being. Something could hit me though. A thought or a thing. Or ‘this light that is thrown out of nowhere’. ‘Astonished’ I stared with wide eyes and looked at that thought, the thing or ‘the nowhere’. This could last for years and it mostly did. What about things, thoughts and ‘the nowhere’ - I was always charmed. It would not be a mistake to say I lived this life under some kind of enchantment. Life was quite happy. And it also was quite sad.

Vasily Rozanov, “Fallen leaves”

[russolitude]

Revolutionaries are indeed repugnant people. Not because of their small faces, but because of their nature. And here’s why: They do not understand PAIN. They do not understand DEATH. They do not understand BIRTH. Pain they consider an empty stomach. It’s vulgar and witless. There’s cancer. There’s a spleen. A liver. There’s Cain killing Abel not because of hunger. You “smash a bug on the wall”, then “enter the Kingdom of Heaven”. I can’t trust this kind of socialism. About death: if they had understood it, they would have never carried princesse de Lamballe’s head on a pike. “Because she’s an aristocrat”. Because it’s just as painful for an aristocrat to die as for me. And they don’t understand birth. Marie Antoinette had a child. And while being pregnant she was just as happy as your wives and lovers. Bastards.

Vasily Rozanov,  20.VI.1915