Dribbles of Rozanov: Fifth Droplet

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.

Dribbles of Rozanov: Fourth Droplet

Стоят два народа соседние и так и пылают гневом:
— Ты чему поклоняешься, болван??! — Кумиру, содеянному руками человеческими, из меди и дерева, как глаголет пророк (имя рек) в Писании. Я же поклоняюсь пречистым иконам, болван и нехристь...
Стоит “нехристь” и хлопает глазами, ничего не понимая. Но напоследок испугался, снял шляпу, и со всемордовским усердием земно поклонился перед Пречистым Образом и затеплил свечку.
Иловайский написал новую главу в достопамятную свою историю:
“Обращение в христианство мордвы”, “вотяков”, “пермяков”.
Племянник (приехал из “Шихран”, Казанской губ.) рассказывал за чаем: “В день празднования вотяцкого бога (кажется, Кереметь), коего кукла стоит на колокольне в сельской церкви, все служители низшие, дьячок, пономарь, сторож церковный, запираются под замок в особую клеть, и сидят там весь день... И сколько им денег туда (в клеть) вотяки накидают!!! Пока они там заперты, вотяки празднуют перед своим богом...” Это — день “отданья язычеству”, как у нас есть “отданье Пасхе”. Вотяки награждают низших церковнослужителей, а отчасти и со страхом им платят, за то, что они уступают один день в году их “старинке”... В “клети” православные сидят как бы “в плену”, в узилище, в тюрьме, даже (по-ихнему) “в аду”, пока их старый “бог” (а по-нашему “чёрт”) выходит из христианского “узилища”, чтобы попраздновать со своим народцем, с былыми своими “поклонниками”. Замечательный обычай, сохранившийся до нашего 1911 года.

Two neighbors stand near each other, they are aflame with fury.
--“What are you worshiping, you fool??!
An idol, made with human hands, out of honey аnd wood, like the prophet [?] spake in the Scriptures. Whereas I am worshiping a holy icon, you fool and non-christian heathen…”
The “non-christian” stands and bats his eyes, understanding nothing. But then he got scared at the last minute, and having snatched off his hat, bowed deeply, with Mordvinian zeal, to the ground in front of the Holy Icon and lit a candle.
Ilovaiskii wrote a new chapter in his memorable history:
“The Conversion To Christianity of the Mordvinians, the Votyakians and the Permians.”
My nephew (came from “Shikhran” in the Kazan Region) told me over tea: “On the day for celebrating the Votyakian god (apparently called Keremet’), whose doll stands on the bell tower of the village church, every lower church attendant-- sextons, watchman, etc.--lock themselves in a special cage and sit there the whole day…And the Votyakians throw so much money into it (the cage)!!! While they are locked up in there, the Votyakians celebrate their god…” It’s a day of “Pagan Salutation”, just like we have an “Easter Salutation.” The Votyakians reward the lower church attendants, partly paying them out of fear, so that they will be allowed one day a year for their “tradition”…In the “cage” the Russian Orthodoxy sit as if “in captivity” in prison, almost (as they call it) “in hell”, and all the while the old “god” (who we call “devil”) is let out of Christian “captivity” to celebrate with his people, with those who were once his devotees. A noteworthy custom, preserved all the way to our year of 1911.

***

How many times have you heard that old argument that “pagan” traditions are re-coded under Christianity, and allowed to persist in ritual practice? That story is ubiquitous, clichéd, and, as VR shows us, not entirely accurate.

Yes, in his first story, about the Mordvinians, VR tells the clichéd tale: Christian meets non-Christian. Christian tells non-Christian to switch idol for icon. Non-Christian switches objects and transfers his old spirituality [his “zeal”, or усердие] relatively intact to a new Religion.

In his story about the Votyakians, however, passed down through his nephew, VR shows us something different: Christians lock the Votyakian deity “in the closet.” Votyakians bribe Christians to allow them to “let him out” once a year. Christians accept money and pretend they aren’t looking.

This is really two stories: The first is a story about censorship, where certain practices, objects and people, need to be actively [and even ritualistically] EXCLUDED in order for the dominant narrative to function smoothly. This story should be familiar to us. Here in America we don’t learn about Native American history for the same reason. And in contemporary Russia, for example, homosexuality is politically and culturally repressed so that reprosexuality can flourish [got to birth those babies, now!]. Same kind of story.

The second story is about carnival, where the entire system of exclusions and closetings are suspended for a few moments of decadent, dissident release. These moments of return, of “unleashing the demons” are necessary to keep the system of oppression functional for the rest of the year. These stories aren't as familiar, but they are just as factual. After all, didn't Rozanov himself keep some demons “in the closet?” Demons that he sometimes “released?”

Organized religion seems pretty illegitimate when you think of it in these terms…just a bunch of overly-performative rituals [of exclusion and release, absorption and displacement]. Practical, strategic, but totally silly.

Dribbles of Rozanov: Third Droplet

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

Dribbles of Rozanov: Second Droplet

Ах, добрый читатель, я уже давно пишу “без читателя”, — просто потому, что нравится. Как “без читателя” и издаю... Просто, так нравится. И не буду ни плакать, ни сердиться, если читатель, ошибкой купивший книгу, бросит ее в корзину (выгоднее, не разрезая и ознакомившись, лишь отогнув листы, продать со скидкой 50% букинисту).
Ну, читатель, не церемонюсь я с тобой, — можешь и ты не церемониться со мной:
— К черту...
— К черту!
И au revoir до встречи на том свете. С читателем гораздо скучнее, чем одному. Он разинет рот и ждет, что ты ему положишь? В таком случае он имеет вид осла перед тем, как ему зареветь. Зрелище не из прекрасных... Ну его к Богу... Пишу для каких-то “неведомых друзей” и хоть “ни для кому”...

Когда, бывало, меня посещали декаденты, — то часу в первом ночи я выпускал их, бесплодных, вперед, — но задерживал последнего, доброго Виктора Петровича Протейкинского (учитель с фантазиями) и показывал между дверьми...
У человека две ноги: и если снять калоши, положим, пятерым — то кажется ужасно много. Между дверями стояло такое множество крошечных калошек, что я сам дивился. Нельзя было сосчитать скоро. И мы оба с Протейкинским покатывались со смеху:
— Сколько!..
— Сколько!..
Я же всегда думал с гордостью “civis romanus sum”. У меня за стол садится 10 человек, — с прислугой. И все кормятся моим трудом. Все около моего труда нашли место в мире. И вовсе civis rossicus — не “Герцен”, а “Розанов”.
Герцен же только “гулял”...
Перед Протейкинским у меня есть глубокая и многолетняя вина. Он безукоризненно относился ко мне, я же о нем, хотя только от утомления, сказал однажды грубое и насмешливое слово. И оттого, что он “никогда не может кончить речь” (способ речи), а я был устал и не в силах был дослушивать его... И грубое слово я сказал заочно, когда он вышел за дверь.

Oh, my dearest reader, I’ve been writing for a long time without a “reader”—simply because I like to. And so I publish for no “reader”…Simply, the way I like. And I will neither cry nor get angry if a reader, having bought this book by mistake, throws it into the trash-can (without cutting-open and getting to know—certainly not bending down--the “leaves,” which will be more advantageous for the bookinist, who can sell it at a 50% reduction). But, reader, I’m not being ceremonious with you—so you won’t be be ceremonious with me:
--To hell with it…
--To hell with it!
And au revoir until we meet in the other world. It much more boring with a reader that it is by oneself. He opens his big mouth and waits; what are you going to put in it? In such a case he looks like a donkey who is about to howl. Not one of the prettier sights. But God be with him…I write for some kind of “unknown friends” and sometimes “not for anyone at all.”

When some Decadents happened to visit me, I sent them, the barren things, on their way at one o’clock—but I detained the last one, the kind Victor Petrovitch Proteusky (a teacher with an imagination) and showed him to the doors…
A person has two legs: and if five of them remove their old boots, and set them down—then it seems like an awful lot. Between the doors there were so many tiny boots that I was surprised myself. It was impossible to count them quickly. And Proteusky and I roared with laughter:
--So many!..
--So many!..
I have always thought with pride that “civis romanus sum”. My table seats 10 people – with servers. And everyone is fed by my labor. Everyone near to my labor has found a place in the world. And the civis rossicus is surely not “Herzen” but “Rozanov.”
Herzen only “strolled.”
I have deep and long-lasting guilt with regards to Proteusky. He always behaved impeccably towards me, it was I who, although only out of tiredness, once said a rude and derisive word about him. And it was because he “never can finish a thought” (a way of speaking), and I was tired and didn’t have the strength to keep listening to him…that I said this rude word in his absence, when he had gone out the door.

***
What does Rozanov think about me? Why do I care what Rozanov thinks? What do I care what this hateful-crazy-genius, this 19th century philosopher thinks about me? Wiki-pedantic tells me that he starved to death in a cloister during the revolution in 1919. So he really can’t do me any harm. But that’s not the real reason why I shouldn’t care. The real reason is that Rozanov tells me in this, his first aphorism, that he himself doesn’t care what I make or take of him. The strange thing about this abnegation of the reader? He tells me that he isn’t adressing me in the form of a direct address. “I want to tell you that I don’t want to tell you anything.” A bit paradoxical? Certainly, at first glance.

Rozanov understands that his text (like his own Self) relies on an Other—a reader, an audience, and interlocutor. That is why he must address me. But Rozanov also understands that the Other for whom he actually writes (like the Other for whom he lives) is not a real reader but an imagined one. And that is why my living person doesn’t matter. The добрый читатель “dearest reader” is the fantasy that constructs the text and the читатель “reader” is me (the living, deferred, powerless real reader). I am disposable. “Dearest reader” is not.

For Rozanov, it is not factual interractions with the Other that define the Self—but the sum of all possible interractions. Thus an interraction with Proteusky, that Proteusky isn’t himself aware of, haunts Rozanov. Thus Rozanov prepares himself for every possible kind of reader (that he imagines in his mind). It is for this reason that Rozanov can write off the real reader. For him, the Other that creates the Self is always created by the Self.

So what does Rozanov think of me? Everything. Or rather, Rozanov has already thought everything possible of me. And has written it into his book. Or so he claims. So where do I regain my agency? Perhaps the only recourse I have, the only possible way to suprise Rozanov, to become a real (an not “potential”) reader, is to turn this same tactic back on its author...And so we begin to think everything about a possible Rozanov, заочно (“in his absence”). In this process, the reader becomes the Self and the author—Other. And the question “What does Rozanov think of me?” becomes relevant once again.

Dribbles of Rozanov: First Droplet

Так и жизнь в быстротечном времени срывает с души нашей восклицания, вздохи, полумысли, получувства... Которые, будучи звуковыми обрывками, имеют ту значительность, что “сошли” прямо с души, без переработки, без цели, без преднамеренья, — без всего постороннего...

Thus, life in this fast-flowing time tears from our soul exclamations, exhalations, half-thoughts, half-feelings... which, being shreds of sound, possess the meaningfulness of that which has "alighted" straight from the soul, without reworking, without a goal, without premeditation, - without anything foreign...

* * *

We open with what must be predictable perversity: a programmatic statement of diarrheism, the anal retention of scraps that would otherwise vanish in the torrent of diarrheal temporality. Why diarrheal, and not simply flowing? "This fast-flowing time" is a deleterious condition, as if time itself has consumed something disagreeable. As a result, time is in some hurry to divest itself of its contents, ejecting them summarily- fully digested or not.
Rozanov's diarrheism lies in embracing this condition, and his perversity in embracing it because it is malformed and incomplete. One can almost hear his gleeful winces as the digestive process miscarries, knowing that it makes whatever scraps of used toilet paper he sets aside the precious synechdoche of a much larger unknowable process of inestimable quality. The background sense of inescapable loss gives these scraps value as "the ones that made it", reflecting the well-honed and propagated habits of antiquarian culture.
Rozanov demonstrates his virtuosity in this transcription of transitoriness, his mind constantly expelling a stream of content not intended for us, some of it smearing onto the page for others to examine, as if by accident. Manifestly, Rozanov is a divine creature, the few traces of his faeces an object of fascination to the benighted, confused modern.