Моя душа сплетена из грязи, нежности и грусти.
Или еще:
Это- золотые рыбки, "играющие на солнце", но помещенные в аквариуме, наполненном навозной жижецей.
И не задыхаются. Даже "тем паче"... Неправдоподобно. И однако- так.
Б. всего меня позолотил.
Чувствую это...
Боже, до чего чувствую.
Каждая моя строка есть священное писание (не в школьном, не в "употребительном" смысле), и каждая моя мысль есть священная мысль, и каждое мое слово есть священное слово.
-"Как вы смеете?"- кричит читатель.
-"Ну вот так и 'смею',"- смеюсь ему в ответ я.
Я весь "в Провидении"... Боже, до чего я это чувствую.
Когда, кажется на концерте Гофмана, я услышал впервые "Франческу Да Римини", забывшись, я подумал: "Это моя душа".
То место музыки, где так ясно слышно движение крыл (изумительно!!!).
"Это моя душа! Это моя душа!"
Никогда ни в чем я не предполагал даже такую массу внутреннего движения, из какой, собственно, сплетены мои годы, часы и дни. Несусь как ветер, не устаю как ветер.
-Куда? зачем?
И наконец:
-Что ты любишь?
-"Я люблю мои ночные грезы,"- прошепчу я встречному ветру.
My soul is woven from filth, tenderness and sorrow.
Or else:
It's like goldfish, "playing in the sun", but lodged in an aquarium filled with liquid sewage.
And they don't suffocate. Even "all the more so"... improbably. And even so... like this.
God has gilded all of me.
I feel this...
O God, and to what extent I feel it.
Each line of mine is holy scripture (not in the scholastic sense, not in the "usual" sense), each of my thoughts is a holy thought, and each of my words is a holy word.
-"How dare you?" - cries the reader.
-"Well, I 'dare' like this," I laugh at him in answer.
I am wholly "in Providence" ... O God, and to what extent I feel this.
When I first heard "Francesca da Rimini", at the Goffman concert it seems, I forgot myself and thought: "This is my soul."
That place in the music, where the movement of wings is so clearly audible (marvelous!!!).
"This is my soul! This is my soul!"
Never in any way did I ever expect such a mass of inner movement, from which, essentially, my years, hours and days are spun. I hurry about like the wind, I don't get tired like the wind.
-Where to? What for?
And ultimately:
-What do you love?
-"I love my night-dreams,"- I whisper into the oncoming wind.
* * *
We may have been in awe before, but now Rozanov lays bare his soul and deigns to reveal to us that we are in the presence of the Holy, in the presence of one gilded by the divine.
Plainly, this is a transgressive sort of Holy- it shimmers in a tank of sewage, manifesting itself without regard for hygiene, social mores or prior revelation.
However else it may glitter, Rozanov's Holy is essentially a tool for ordering life, amplifying certain feelings and transfiguring reality. It is a technology of the self modeled on religion, but without any disagreeable need for Others. (Clearly the most odious part of religion, alongside other such external irrelevancies. The mockery of the reader's ignorant piety deftly displays his superiority to this nonsense.)
Rozanov seems concerned here to take one thing from religion in particular. For those who find themselves looking back wistfully at religion from a meaningless world, Providence is among the most painful absences- the sense that a larger order adheres, that a higher logic or purpose governs everything for the best. Providence promised limited responsibility. At most this was responsibility for our own personal salvation or damnation (and perhaps not even that), while the plot as a whole rested safely beyond human control.
In this sense, providentialism is the opposite of existentialism. Instead of forcing the encounter with the brute fact of one's mortality, irrelevance, but paradoxically universal responsibility, it offers a soothing tapestry that relativises the importance of individual choice. Anything and everything becomes part of the larger plan.
But Rozanov isn't immersed in Providence per se- this "Providence" is of his own creation.
When he encountered those snatches of music at a concert, he detected in them the sound of his own soul flapping busily away- the same fluttering that constitutes all meaningful phenomena that make up his life. He protests he "never expected" or "never supposed" such a thing, and indeed, it is this that allows him to be so enraptured with his own ingenuity over and over again.
He whispers to the wind that he loves his "night-dreams"... and this is a strange thing. The word for "dream" he uses usually means day-dream. So it seems his love is for day dreams that happen at night, without the harsh light of day to interrupt them, or more directly, without reminding him that there is something outside of himself.
His "Providence" is a dream spun from and against the world around him, whose best moments are credited to the creative activity of his own soul. Even the God he prays to is just another costume adopted for the sake of a more interesting show.
Rozanov's is a structure of fantasy for the most part kept hidden, emerging only occasionally to flaunt itself to those forever on the outside.
On wings of filth, tenderness, and sorrow, Rozanov and his soul live a life apart.
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