Как будто этот проклятый Гуттенберг облизал своим медным языком всех писателей, и они все обездушелись “в печати”, потеряли лицо, характер. Мое “я” только в рукописях, да “я” и всякого писателя. Должно быть, но этой причине я питаю суеверный страх рвать письма, тетради (даже детские), рукописи— и ничего не рву; сохранил, до единого, все письма товарищей-гимназистов; с жалостью, за величиной вороха, рву только свое,— с болью и лишь иногда.
Газеты, я думаю, так же пройдут, как и “вечные войны” средних веков, как и “турнюры” женщин и т. д. Их пока поддерживает “всеобщее обучение”, которое собираются сделать даже “обязательным”. Такому с “обязательным обучением”, конечно, интересно прочитать что-нибудь “из Испании”.
Начнется, я думаю, с отвычки от газет... Потом станут считать просто неприличием, малодушием (“parva anima”) чтение газет.
—Вы чем живете?— А вот тем, что говорит “Голос Правды” (выдумали же!)... или “Окончательная Истина” (завтра выдумают). Услышавший будет улыбаться, и вот эти улыбки мало-помалу проводят их в могилу.
Almost as if that accursed Gutenberg had run his bronze tongue over all of them, writers have become soulless "in print", lost personality, character. My "I" is only in manuscripts- as, indeed, is the "I" of any writer. That's how it should be, but for this reason I have a superstitious fear of tearing up letters, notebooks (even childhood ones), and manuscripts— so I don't tear anything up; I've saved every last letter of my comrade-schoolmates; and with greediness, owing to the size of the pile, tear up only my own— painfully, and only occasionally.
Newspapers, I think, will pass just as the "endless wars" of the Middle Ages did, women's "crinolines" did, and so forth. For the time being they uphold a "universal teaching", which they even intend to make "obligatory". With this kind of "obligatory teaching", of course, it would be interesting to read something "from Spain".
It will begin, I think, with an anti-habit for newspapers... then reading them will begin to be considered simply improper, pusillanimous ("parva anima").
—What do you live for?— Whatever's said in the “Voice of Veracity” (they actually thought this up!)... or “Definitive Truth” (they'll think this one up tomorrow). The listener will smile, and with this very smile will little by little will lead them to their grave.
* * *
What would dear Vasily Vasilievich think of our present state? What do we think of his?
There is again something strangely partial and ambivalent in his protestations, and all his talk about piles of letters merely a distraction. By his time the press was already a dusty old friend with a long and glorious past. One can easily imagine him in another context waxing lyrically over the men at home between pots of thick ink, piles of greased rags and discarded, smeared broadsheets... Instead we find a monstrous, metallic Gutenberg perfidiously licking the day's littérateurs into homogeneity. His complaint is with this odious sameness, the attempt to create lasting, goal-oriented structures that span individuals and time through the transparent medium of text. The leftist newspapers of his time are not faulted for ideological deviation, for that would be sinking to their level, discussing facts instead of feelings. They earn his contempt for aesthetic reasons, for they multiply humorless texts that strive to minimize and transcend the personality of their authors- an abomination twice over.
Like many gut feelings, Rozanov's aesthetic reflexes are predictable. There's no doubt we'd find him running back to the printer's shop in a second if we presented him with blogs. Indeed, our present soap-box has already heralded the end of many a printed newspaper, but in a very different way than he imagined. Instead of retreating from the prospects of strident ideologies cavorting gleefully through dematerialization and multiplicity, they serve this function far better than their predecessor. Blogs are just more of the same foolishness as newspapers, albeit much more offensive for their exemption from the editor's hand. Again flaunting expectations, even the immense ironic cloud of the blogosphere has not given the nauseating earnestness of ideologues much pause. What now?
Pushing past blogs... if one fragmented this dematerialized multiplicity... after all, here we are reading his complaint about printing in a printed book... perhaps one could domesticate it? With texts too small to be anything but frozen moments of intimacy with their author? With a fad so ridiculous its existence was more obviously transitory?
One imagines a latter-day Rozanov sitting in a dingy diner, moleskin set out on the table in front of him, striking his blackberry merrily, another packet of 140 characters flying off into diarrheal temporality's apotheosis...
VaselineRose just had great coffe! cant smoke in here tho... unbelievable. countrys going to shit
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