Translated material
"Writing is misfortune"
Vasily Rozanov about disgust for literature, dislike for Tolstoy and vodka
About love
After printing, love became impossible. What kind of love “with a book”? ( getting ready for a name day ).
On the uselessness of literature
Literature, in essence, is not needed: K. Leontyev is right here. “Why, when listing the glories of the century, will everyone name Goethe and Schiller, and not Wellington and Schwarzenberg?” Really, “why”? Why was the “age of Nicholas” the “age of Pushkin, Lermontov and Gogol”, and not the age of Ermolov, Vorontsov and others. We don't even know. We are so spoiled by books, no, so overwhelmed with books, that we don’t even remember the commanders. Maliciously and far-sightedly, the poets called the commanders “Skalozubs” and “Betrishchevs.” But this is one-sidedness and lies. What is needed is not “great literature” at all, but a great, beautiful and useful life. And literature can. to be “some kind” - “in the margins”.
About writing
Writing is Rock. Writing is fatum. Writing is a misfortune. (3 May 1912).
...and perhaps this is the only reason why writers should not be judged with terrible judgment... They should still be judged strictly . (4 May 1912).
About Otto Weininger
From every page of Weininger you can hear the cry: “I love men !” - “Well, you are a sodomite .” And we can close the book on this.
About disgust
I carry literature as my coffin, I carry literature as my sadness, I carry literature as my disgust.
About the writers
The writer needs to suppress the writer in himself (“writing”, literaryism). Only having achieved this does he become a writer; not “did”, but “did.”
About the false essence of literature
It seems that the essence of literature is false; It’s not that “now” and “these writers” are bad: but this whole area is bad, and, moreover, in its essence, from the “grain from which it grew.”
- Let me write and everyone will read it ?..
Why “me” and why “read to them”? It includes “I am smarter than others”, “ others are smaller than me” - and this is already a sin.
About who to marry
Don't marry writers or scientists, girls. Both writing and scholarship are selfish. And you will not get a “friend,” even if he calls himself a friend. Marry an ordinary person, an official, a clerk, a merchant, preferably a craftsman. There is nothing more sacred than craft. And such a one will be your friend.
About Tolstoy
In terms of his great mastery of words, Tolstoy is only slightly inferior to Pushkin, Lermontov and Gogol; he does not have creations of such mintage as “The Song of the Merchant Kalashnikov”, such a variety of “echoes” as the whole of Pushkin, such devilish power as “Dead Souls”... In Pushkin, even in fragments, trifles and, finally, in crossed out lines - nothing flat or stupid... Tolstoy has a lot of flat places...
About Turgenev
Turgenev's jokes about religion - how pathetic they are .
About Gogol
Shchedrin is near Gogol as a groom near Alexander the Great.
About talent
A writer's talent involuntarily consumes his life. Eats up happiness, eats up everything.
About the Octobrists
A cigarette after swimming, raspberries with milk, a lightly salted cucumber at the end of June, with a string of dill stuck to the side (no need to remove) - this is my “October 17th”. In this sense, I am an “Octobrist”. ( in the bathhouse ).
About myself
I don't understand why people hate me so much in literature. I consider myself a “very nice person.” I love tea; I like to put a patch on the cigarette (where it is torn). I love my wife, my garden (at the dacha). I never worry and am not in a hurry. May God grant such a “peaceful resident” to every state. Sins? So who is without sins? I don't understand. Anger, ardor, lumps of dirt, sometimes a cobblestone. Just a whole “whirlpool” around a fish dozing near a sunken log. And the fish is clear. Both water and air. What do they want?
About desires
I don't want truth, I want peace. ( after the doctor ).
About life and death
Man lives like trash and dies like trash.
About literature as pants
I feel literature like pants. Just as close and generally “like your own.” You take care of them, appreciate them, “always be in them” (I write constantly). But why stand on ceremony with them???!!!
About secrets
The secret of writing is in the tips of the fingers, and the secret of the speaker is in his tongue. These two talents, speaking and writing, are never combined. In both cases the mind plays very little role; this is a reference library, office, bureau, etc. But not pathos or talent, which is purely physical .
About a real Russian person
It was not universities that raised a real Russian person, but kind, illiterate nannies.
That books should be expensive
Cheap books are uncultured. Books should be expensive. This is not vodka. The book should turn away from anyone who shrinks at the sight of its price. “Come on by,” she must tell him and, nodding toward the “newsboy on the corner,” add: “Take them.” In general, a book should be proud, independent and independent. For this purpose, it must first of all be expensive. ( for newspapers in the morning ).