ROZANOV, VASILY VASILIEVICH, Introduction to "Solitaria" Васи́лий Васи́льевич Ро́занов, «Уединённое»

 

Where did I, U.R. Bowie, get the idea of putting together my latest book--HERE WE BE. WHERE BE WE?-- a book out of aphorisms, quotations, bits and pieces of wisdom and silliness, idle thoughts? From the Russian writer, philosopher, gadfly, eccentric, Vasily Vasilievich Rozanov (1856-1919), whom I first encountered in a graduate seminar at Vanderbilt University in 1969. In addition to his many works on philosophy and religion, Rozanov published several such small books of sententiae: Solitaria, Mortality, Fallen Leaves I, and Fallen Leaves II. In my novel Hard Mother I first used the form—see the sections titled “Ruminations of Ivanushka the Shoot”—and later in Sama Seeker in the Time of the End Times: the parts titled “Prof. Benson’s Ponderings.”

 Here are the opening lines from Vas. Vas. Rozanov’s Solitaria («Уединённое»):

                “The wind whistles at midnight and blows leaves about . . . So does life in the swiftness of time tear exclamations from our souls: sighs, half-thoughts, half-sensations . . . Which, in that they are acoustic fragments, are significant because they have ‘stepped straight out’ of our souls with no prior processing, with no aim, with no premeditation—devoid of anything extraneous . . . Simply, ‘the soul lives,’ i.e., ‘lived,’ once ‘breathed’ . . . For a long time now I for some reason have been fond of these ‘involuntary ejaculations.’ The fact is they flow within you incessantly, but you don’t manage (no paper is within reach) to write them down—and they die. Later on, you can’t for the life of you remember them. I have managed, however, to jot a thing or two down on paper. The stuff has accumulated now. So I’ve decided to rake up those fallen leaves.

                Why? Who needs them?

                Well, it’s just that I need them. Oh, my dear kind reader, it’s ages now that I’ve been writing ‘without a reader’—simply because I like to. And I’m not going to cry or get angry if a reader buys my book by mistake and then throws it in the trash (of course, it would be more to your advantage to take a look at it, leaf through it without cutting the pages, and then sell it at a discount of 50% to a used book store).

                Anyway, reader, I won’t stand on ceremony with you, and you can feel free not to stand on ceremony with me:

                --Screw it (you).

                --Screw it (you)!

                So then it’s au revoir until we meet again in the next world. Actually, with a reader it’s a lot more boring than writing alone. He’ll gawp open his mouth and stand waiting for you to put something in it. In such a case he looks like a mule right on the verge of braying. Not the most lovely spectacle imaginable . . . Well, the heck with him . . . I’ll write for some sort of ‘unknown friends,’ or even ‘not for nobody whatsoever’. . . .”

Excerpt from Here We Be. Where Be We: In the Shitstorm Year of 2020