Book: Diary of a writer. Page 3

But here is what should be especially noted: these are these poorly educated people who have already had time to cultivate themselves, to cultivate at least only weakly and outwardly, only in some of their habits, in new prejudices, in a new costume - these are these - they always begin with the very fact that they despise their former environment, their people and even their faith, sometimes even to the point of hatred. This is what happens to other top "county lackeys", small officials who have jumped into the nobility, and so on. and so on.

And now, now... right, you don't know how to define our current architecture. There is some kind of carelessness, absolutely, however, corresponding to the carelessness of the present minute. This is a set of extremely high (the first case of high) houses for tenants, extremely, they say, thin-walled and sparsely built, with amazing architecture facades: here and Rastrelli, here and the later Rococo, Dozhev balconies and windows, certainly ol-de-beufs and certainly five floors, and all this in the same facade. "Dozhevskoe window you me, brother, put irretred, because I'm worse than some of their naked doge; well, five floors you still take me out the tenants to let in; window window, and floors to floors; I can't decide because of the toys of all our capital."

The modern "writer-artist", who gives types and dissociates himself with some specialty in literature (well, to expose merchants, men, etc.), usually walks all his life with a pencil and a notebook, eavesdrops and writes down characteristic words; ends up picking up a few hundred numbers of characteristic words. Then the novel begins, and a little bit of a merchant or a cleric will speak to him, he begins to pick up his speech from the notebook according to the recorded. Readers laugh and praise, and, it would seem, true: literally from nature is recorded, but it turns out that it is worse than a lie, precisely because the merchant or soldiers in the novel speak in essences, that is, as never before, no merchant and no soldier speaks in kind. He, for example, in nature will say such and such, recorded by you from him phrase, from ten phrases to the eleventh. The eleventh word is characteristic and ugly, and ten words before that nothing, like all people. And in the typist-artist, he speaks in characteristics completely, according to the recorded, and it turns out to be untrue. The derived type speaks as if from a book. The audience praises, but you do not inflate an experienced old writer.

What surprises me the most is that I could not, even out of twenty-eight of his letters, reveal what direction he was and what, in fact, he was trying to achieve? It's kind of a mess... Next to the rudeness of the receptions, with the cynicism of the red nose and the "upset smell" of the frenzied syllable and torn boots, there is some hidden thirst for tenderness, something perfect, faith in beauty, Sehnsucht for something lost, and all this goes out somehow to the extreme in it disgustingly.

Without ideals, that is, without specific in any way desires the best, can never be any good really.

Listen: we should not exult over the children, we make them worse. And if we teach them something, to do their best, and they teach us a lot and also make us the best with only our contact with them. They humanize our soul alone its appearance between us.

It may well be that... the goal of all modern leaders of progressive thought - humane and majestic. But to me, that seems certain: let all these modern higher teachers full opportunity to destroy the old society and build anew, will be such darkness, such chaos, something so rude, blind, and inhuman that the whole building will collapse under the curses of mankind, before it is completed. Once having rejected Christ, the human mind can reach a surprising result. It is an axiom.

Believe me, that nowhere in the West and even in the whole world you will not find such a wide, such a humanitarian toleration, as in the soul of the Russian man.

The Russian people in the vast majority is Orthodox and lives by the idea of Orthodoxy in its fullness, though not understand this idea clearly and scientifically.

Russian man above knows nothing of Christianity, and can not imagine... hearken to Christianity: it is not only one of ecclesiasticism and ritualism, it is a living feeling, addressed the people of our one of the major living force, without which we cannot live nation. In Russian Christianity, truly, even mysticism not at all, it is one humanity, one of Christ's way - at least, this is important.

Love for humanity - even quite unthinkable, incomprehensible and impossible without a common belief in the immortality of the human soul. Those who take away a person's faith in his immortality, I want to replace this faith, in the sense of the highest goal of life, "love of humanity", those, I say, raise their hands to themselves; because instead of love of mankind implanted in the heart, lost faith only the germ of hatred for humanity.

Without higher ideas can not exist neither man nor nation. And the highest idea on earth is only one and that is the idea of the immortality of the human soul, for all other "higher" ideas of life, which can be man alive, only one of her flow.

Before you preach to people: "how to be" - show that. Execute on themselves, and all you go for.

What is talent? <...> A literary talent, for example, have the ability to say or Express well, where mediocrity will say and Express wrong.