Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov (1856-1919) is probably the most remarkable writer among Russian thinkers, who had an excellent command of style and knew the magic of words. He did not create any specific philosophical system, and he did not strive to do so. But Rozanov became the founder of an original style of philosophizing, which some researchers call philosophical impressionism.

V.V. Rozanov was born in the town of Vetluga, Kostroma province, into the family of a forest department official. In 1861, after the death of his father, the Rozanov family moved to Kostroma, where Vasily Vasilyevich in 1868-1870. studied at the gymnasium. After the death of his mother (1870), Rozanov lived and studied in gymnasiums in Simbirsk (1870-1872) and Nizhny Novgorod (1872-1878). After graduating from the Nizhny Novgorod gymnasium, he entered the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University. After Rozanov completed his studies at the university, he worked as a teacher in provincial gymnasiums.

In 1886, the first philosophical work of V.V. was published. Rozanov "On understanding. Experience in studying the nature, boundaries and internal structure of science as integral knowledge." This work, written in a classical style, went completely unnoticed.

In 1893, Rozanov and his family moved to St. Petersburg, where Vasily Vasilyevich entered the public service in the excise department. In the 1890s, Rozanov wrote many articles and published in central newspapers. In 1899, the famous publisher A.S. Suvorin invited Rozanov to work for the newspaper “Novoe Vremya”. Vasily Vasilyevich accepted this offer, left government service and from then until the end of his days devoted himself entirely to literary activity. In addition to his service in "New Time", he was published in various, often opposing, publications - in the magazines "Questions of Philosophy and Psychology", "Russian Messenger", "Russian Review", "Russian Labor", "New Path", "World of Art" ", "Scales", "Golden Fleece", in newspapers - "Russian Word", "Birzhevye Vedomosti", "Citizen", "Zemshchina", etc.

In addition to working in newspapers and magazines, Rozanov actively participates in literary and philosophical life. He was one of the founders of the Religious and Philosophical Meetings (1901-1903), transformed in 1907 into the St. Petersburg Religious and Philosophical Society.

As a writer and philosopher, Rozanov was very fruitful. At the beginning of the 20th century, almost every year he published one, or even three books per year, devoted to various literary and philosophical problems, as well as on issues of socio-political life. It was not for nothing that shortly before his death he was going to publish a collection of his works in the amount of 50 volumes. The most philosophically important works of V.V. Rozanova - “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor F.M. Dostoevsky”, “Near the Church Walls” (in 2 vols.), “Solitary”, “Fallen Leaves” (boxes one and two), “Fleeting”, “Sugarna” .

Many works by V.V. Rozanov caused mixed reactions. Thus, for the publication of the book “The Russian Church” he was subjected to prosecution. In 1910, the book "In Dark Religious Rays" was destroyed by censorship. In 1912, censorship seized the book “Solitary.” In the fall of 1913 V.V. Rozanov published a number of articles in the newspaper of right-wing Duma deputies "Zemshchina", in which Rozanov spoke in support of the charges against M. Beilis at the famous trial. In 1914, for these articles, Rozanov, on the initiative of D. Merezhkovsky and A.V. Kartashev, was expelled from the Religious and Philosophical Society, despite the fact that his position found support among many public figures.

In the summer of 1917, Rozanov and his family moved to Sergiev Posad, where he created his last significant work, “Apocalypse of Our Time,” in which he expressed his bitter thoughts about the death of Russia and its culture in the flames of revolution. In 1918, Vasily Vasilyevich repeatedly, but unsuccessfully, tried to get a job and find any means of subsistence. In November 1918, he suffered an apoplexy. January 23 (February 5), 1919. V.V. Rozanov died of exhaustion. The prayer of departure was read over him by his friend, Russian philosopher and priest Father Pavel Florensky. January 25 V.V. Rozanov was buried next to the grave of K.N. Leontyev at the cemetery of the Chernigov monastery near the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. In 1923, this cemetery was razed, the black granite monument to Leontyev was smashed into pieces, and the cross on Rozanov’s grave was burned... Nowadays, the tombstones of Leontyev and Rozanov have been restored at this site.

It is extremely difficult to give a brief description of the worldview of Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov. And the point here is not the vastness of the creative heritage or the abstruseness of Vasily Vasilyevich’s reasoning, but just the opposite - the apparent simplicity, a certain grounding of his works. But when you carefully read his works, you suddenly discover extraordinary depth, extraordinary significance of every line, every word that came from the pen of this Russian thinker.

As a philosopher, V.V. Rozanov undoubtedly appears as a religious thinker, for all his works were necessarily connected with the theme of the incarnation of God in the world and man. But the basis of Rozanov’s philosophical method is not systematic analysis, not a positive or critical presentation of philosophical views, but personal experience, personal doubt, in other words, the philosophy of feeling, that same philosophical impressionism. He once described his method this way: “And I always wrote alone, essentially for myself. Even when I wrote roguishly, I seemed to throw it into the abyss, “and there will be laughter,” somewhere far underground, but all around nobody here". In another place he noted: “Actually, we know well - only ourselves. About everything else - we guess, we ask. But if the only “revealed reality” is “I”, then, obviously, talk about “I” (if you can and can )". Thus, the subject and object of V.V.’s philosophical reflections Rozanova - himself. This subjective, existential and impressionistic approach to the philosophical understanding of the world, one way or another, manifested itself in all the works of V.V. Rozanova.

Of course, such a personal approach gave rise to a certain historical pessimism, which the Russian thinker expressed as follows: “Man does not make history, he lives in it, wanders without any knowledge - for what, to what.” This frank admission of the limitations of personal perception of the world also explains the fact that Rozanov’s philosophical views were changeable. Moreover, sometimes this variability surprised him. For example, Rozanov characterized his rather contradictory thoughts about the Church as follows: “To devote my whole life to the destruction of the only thing in the world I love - has anyone had a sadder fate?”

In fact, being a religious thinker, Rozanov doubted the power of Christianity and the Church. In the initial period of his work, he acts as a Christian apologist, and he gives a special role in Christianity to Orthodoxy, as opposed to Western Christianity: “No one has yet comprehended the depths of Christianity - and this is a task that the West has not even dreamed of, perhaps it is an original task Russian genius,” wrote V.V. Rozanov in the book “In the World of the Unclear and Unresolved” (1901). But later Rozanov’s personal doubts lead him to a different view: first he begins to criticize the Church, and then Christianity itself.

The reason for the criticism was the incorrect, according to Rozanov, perception in Christianity of the problem of gender, family, and continuation of the human race. “Nothing from the existence of Christ is taken into such a great and permanent symbol as death. To become like relics, to stop living, moving, breathing altogether - is the general and great ideal of the Church,” he wrote in the book “Near the Church Walls.” And in other works the following statements are scattered: “The Church has no feeling for children”; “From the text of the Gospel, only the monastery naturally follows”; “All around us is the spectacle of an essentially icy Christian civilization”; Christ is “the mysterious Shadow that brought emaciation to all grains”; Christianity is “powerless to arrange human life.”

But it is important to remember that Rozanov, despite all his critical attitude, did not deny Christianity as such. Rather, he posed questions to Christian thought that needed to be answered. After all, he, as a religious person, was tormented by the discrepancy between the official Christian doctrine and the problems of modern life. And Rozanov sought to show these painful points, to reveal them in order to revive Christian teaching, give it a new impetus, and bring it into a person’s spiritual existence precisely as a saving teaching. Therefore, in principle, Rozanov’s criticism of the Church and Christianity should be considered positive, aimed at strengthening the role of Christian doctrine in the life of modern society. And he suffered from the fact that in order to achieve this goal he had to take the path of criticism. After all, it was not at all by chance that he said the phrase already quoted above: “To devote my whole life to the destruction of the only thing I love in the world - has anyone had a sadder fate?”

Rozanov himself endlessly loved life in all its manifestations. The symbol and sign of life for him were the problems of family and gender: “After all, my writings are not mixed with water and not even with human blood, but with human seed,” he wrote in the book “Solitary.” Gender, according to Rozanov, has a “creative” function. Moreover, gender, according to Rozanov, “is our soul,” and man in general is a “transformation of gender.” Thus, sex is the physical basis of being, mysteriously connected with all of nature. But sex is also a metaphysical category, for “sex goes beyond the boundaries of nature, it is unnatural and supernatural.” At the same time, as Rozanov notes, “the floor is not a body at all, the body swirls around it and from it...” But the floor is spiritual, just like the entire human body, all bodily qualities: “There is not a grain in us, a nail, a hair, a drop of blood , which would not have a spiritual principle in themselves." Consequently, gender is a mysterious divine gift, the metaphysics and mysticism of which a person must understand as one of the greatest mysteries of existence. That is why Rozanov wrote that “the connection of gender with God is greater than the connection of the mind with God, even than the connection of conscience with God.”

So, V.V. Rozanov introduced a new methodology and new problems into Russian philosophizing. But, besides this, Rozanov’s great merit lies in the fact that he created a new style of philosophizing. The fact is that Rozanov’s personal approach to philosophical issues is contraindicated in being systematic and conceptual. Rozanov himself internally felt this very keenly, and from book to book he increasingly moved away from the traditional style of presentation - his works begin to be filled with letters from his correspondents, which Rozanov accompanies with his notes or comments. Gradually, Rozanov's books turn into lively dialogues. But this form also ceases to satisfy Rozanov over time. And he finds a completely new form, which had not previously existed in Russian philosophical thought. It was in this style that the famous philosophical trilogy was written - “Solitary” and two boxes of “Fallen Leaves”, and then the books “Fleeting”, “Sugarna” and “Apocalypse of Our Time”.

Rozanov's style represents both a new literary genre and a new method of philosophizing. The core of this style was a “curious peering” into human nature. Rozanov expressed interest in the human personality, in its essence, not in the study of the biographies of great people, not in abstract reasoning, as is often the case, but in understanding the concrete existence of a specific person - a housemate, a literary friend, and finally himself. Therefore, his philosophy seems to dissolve in the little things of life, and these little things themselves acquire a philosophical sound. No wonder he once wrote: “I introduced into literature the most petty, fleeting, invisible movement of the soul, the cobwebs of everyday life... I have some kind of fetishism for little things. “Little things” are my “gods.” And I always play with them every day "And when they are not there: the desert. And I am afraid of it."

The basis of Rozanov's new style is everyday diary entries. These, at first glance, seemingly scattered and unrelated sketches, recordings of individual thoughts and conversations turned out to be internally unified, possessing amazing integrity. And what united them was not so much a successful composition as the personality of Vasily Vasilyevich himself, every day, every hour, intensely reflecting on the problems of existence.

Moreover, Rozanov strives to avoid distortion of any of his thoughts and therefore tries to capture it at the very beginning, during the moment of birth. Therefore, Rozanov’s philosophical works, created in a new style, often resemble rough drafts, written only for himself with constant abbreviations, omissions, parentheses, quotation marks and italics. But at the same time, each passage is already a captured moment of thought, and, thus, the conclusion, the result of thinking coincides with the thought process itself. Consequently, each individual aphorism, each individually recorded thought represents not “how I think,” but “how I thought just now.” And this immediacy, the transience of Rozanov’s notes is the author’s greatest find, which allows us to see the philosophical reflections of V.V. today. Rozanov in their, so to speak, most pristine form.

In general, the main value of V.V.’s philosophy Rozanova’s work is not about solving individual problems and problems, but about posing a huge number of problems and developing new approaches to solving these problems.

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He was one of the most brilliant and paradoxical philosophers and publicists of the Silver Age. He was called the Russian Freud and the Russian Nietzsche. He was hated by revolutionary democrats and disliked by liberals. He managed to be known as both a Judeophile and a Judeophobe at the same time. A cynic and paradoxist, he was afraid of pathos. His philosophy was dissipated in trifles, and trifles acquired philosophical status.

He wanted to start literature “from the other end”, to glorify solitude, the warmth of private life. More than once he will be reproached for the apotheosis of triviality, called a philosophical philistine, “a poet of the interior.” And he protected and nurtured the “little” in himself. Answered the question “what should I do?” a phrase that is destined to become popular: “If it’s summer, peel the berries and make jam; if it’s winter, drink tea with this jam.”

Rozanov died in Sergiev Posad on January 23 (February 5), 1919, in hopeless poverty, exhausted by hunger and disease, trying to overcome despair and find solace in the Christian faith. He was buried in the fence of the Gethsemane monastery, next to the grave of K.N. Leontyev.

Vasily Vasilievich Rozanov

April 20 (May 2) 1856 - February 5, 1919

Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov is probably the most remarkable writer among Russian thinkers, who had an excellent command of style and knew the magic of words. He did not create any specific philosophical system, and he did not strive to do so. But Rozanov became the founder of an original style of philosophizing, which some researchers call philosophical impressionism.

Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov (1856 - 1919) left behind a great literary heritage. Among his largest works are: “On Understanding”; “About writing and writers”; “Literary Essays”; “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor F. M. Dostoevsky”; “Near the Church Walls”; "Russian church"; “In the world of the unclear and unresolved”; “When the bosses left”; “Secluded”; "Fallen leaves"; “In the Court of the Gentiles”; “Saharna”; “Fleeting”; "Last leaves"; “Apocalypse of our time”; “Literary Exiles”; “The family issue in Russia”; "Foliage".

The famous historian of Russian philosophy V.V. Zenkovsky noted: “Rozanov is perhaps the most remarkable writer among Russian thinkers, but he is also a genuine thinker... That is why he had such a huge (albeit purely underground) influence on Russian philosophical thought of the 20th century.” .

Sometimes Rozanov is considered a neo-Slavophile. He himself writes about himself: “I was a Slavophile only at certain times of my life.”

The peculiarity of V.V. Rozanov’s philosophy lies in the fact that when answering two key questions of philosophizing that stood in his time: “What is happening (Who is to blame?)? What should I do?”, he ignores the second question. He explained the reason for this this way: “I came into the world to see, not to do.”

According to the thinker“Philosophy is the refuge of silence and quiet souls, calm contemplative minds that enjoy contemplation.”

According to Rozanov, “the world is infinite,” it has a form and cannot exist without it. He considers the world to be real and manifested in being, which is opposed to non-existence. The forms of existence of being are: “non-existence, potential being, formed being and real being.” Forms of being, according to Rozanov, replace each other. He calls form and process the most important characteristics of being. The thinker’s ontological ideas, as well as the foundations of his philosophical teaching about man, are revealed in his first major work, “On Understanding” (1886). The ideas expressed in this essay became the basis for philosophizing in subsequent years.

Rozanov attached great importance to gender issues. He saw in love, family, and childbirth the source of the creative energy of the individual and the spiritual health of the people.

Rozanov believed that the development of civilization narrows the scope of freedom, which turns into an illusion, due to the fact that each person becomes more and more dependent on other people. A person, even in the United States, in his opinion, is not free “from his hairstyle to his faith, from the choice of a bride to the “style” of the coffin in which he will be laid.” Assessing European civilization, he writes: “This civilization cannot be normal for all humanity; it is not normal even for the European part of it if it ends in suffering.”

According to Rozanov, power is a means of organizing the efficiency of people. He believed that in order to establish effective work, we need faith in the value of our national work, but confirmed by peace of mind that what has been done will not be betrayed, abandoned, covered with contempt, or stolen next year. Without this belief in caring continuity to the understanding of labor as a value, according to Rozanov, only the continuation of the barbaric attitude towards work is possible. Addressing the people, the thinker emphasizes: “Don’t hope, people, that you will get wealth from anything other than labor, patience and frugality.”

He advised his fellow tribesmen to learn from the Germans how to save, make money, and not “squander” people’s wealth. He writes: “The Russians have neglected their fatherland, there is nothing to hide. But he was terribly neglected by both... the government and.... Russian society".

Reflecting on the fatal role played by democracy in the fate of Russia, Rozanov notes: “The fact is that it was Russian “democracy” that knocked its nurse to the side, robbed her pockets and threw her to the enemy’s mercy.” Addressing his fellow tribesmen, he writes bitterly: “We are dying from a single and fundamental reason: disrespect for ourselves.”

Discussing the connection between philosophy and religion, he notes: “The pain of life is much more powerful than the interest in life. This is why religion will always prevail over philosophy.”

The thinker believes that Russian literature has become the misfortune of the Russian people. And it is unsuitable for educating younger generations, since it is saturated with curses and ridicule against one’s land, one’s home, one’s own threshold. “In terms of content, Russian literature,” writes Rozanov, “is such an abomination—an abomination of shamelessness and arrogance like no other literature.” He called Kantemir and Fonvizin traitors. The answer to them, in his opinion, should not be critical articles, but the gallows. Griboyedov, according to Rozanov, was a writer who was looking for dirt. He made a mockery of something that should not have been mocked. The thinker regretted that Russian literature “passed by Sergius of Radonezh.” Rozanov sharply criticized N.V. Gogol, V.G. Belinsky, A.I. Herzen, N.M. Dobrolyubov, V.S. Solovyov for their disrespectful attitude towards the fatherland.

The result of this attitude of Russian writers towards their Motherland and their people was the deepening of immoralism in society, the increasing disrespect of people for each other. There are more and more people ignoring the fulfillment of their public duty. Moreover, it doesn’t even occur to them that their neighbors might demand something from them. And there is nothing to be surprised, wrote Rozanov in 1916, that “now the Chichikovs began not only to rob, but they became teachers of society.”

A significant problem in the philosophy of V. V. Rozanov is the problem of purpose. By purpose he means that which becomes actual through another. The idea of ​​a goal is considered by the philosopher as an internal subjective act, which is embodied in reality through an expedient process. Considering the goal, he identifies three aspects in it: a) as a decisive link in the chain of expediency; b) as the final form of everything developing; c) as something that is desirable and what should be strived for. Based on this, the philosopher divides the doctrine of goals into three parts: the doctrine of goals in general; the doctrine of goals as final forms; the doctrine of goals as expressions of what is desirable.

According to Rozanov, the purpose of human life is to serve other people. A person should not forget that he is only part of society. A person, realizing the purpose of his existence, strives to know the truth, remove obstacles on the path to good and preserve his freedom. These are its three purposes.

Rozanov teaches: “Live every day as if you had lived your whole life just for this day.”

The philosopher believed that human life is determined by three ideals that lead him to the moral, just and beautiful. The individual must also strive for peace of his conscience. A calm conscience when achieving what you want and satisfaction with what you have achieved mean, according to Rozanov, a state of happiness. Fame is not a condition for happiness, since, according to the thinker, “fate protects those whom it deprives of glory.”

In conclusion, it should be noted that V.V. Rozanov did a lot to establish the diagnosis of the disease in his fatherland. He left the choice of treatment methods to philosophers of future generations.

Asiliy Rozanov is a Russian religious philosopher and impressionist writer. He wrote more than 20 books, numerous philosophical articles, and created a new literary form.

“I came into the world to see, not to do”

Vasily's parents died early, and the boy was left in the care of his older brother. During these years, he has to work hard to improve the family's plight. "I came out of the abomination of desolation", - Rozanov said about his childhood.

In 1878, the future philosopher entered the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University. In his third year, he married Apollinaria Suslova, the lover of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Rozanov was 24 years old at the time of the wedding, and his bride was 41. In his diary, the philosopher wrote: “Acquaintance with Apollinaria Suslova...<...>This is the most wonderful woman I have ever met...” However, the philosopher's first marriage did not work out. After some time, the family broke up, although Apollinaria Suslova never gave her husband a divorce.

After graduating from university, Vasily Rozanov worked as a teacher in several cities in Russia. While working at the Yelets school, he published in the Russian Bulletin and the journal Questions of Philosophy and Psychology of the Moscow Psychological Society. Together with his teacher Pavel Pervov, he translated Aristotle’s Metaphysics.

Here, in Yelets, Vasily Rozanov met his second wife, Varvara Butyagina. In 1891 they secretly got married. The church did not recognize their marriage, but this did not stop the couple from living together for almost 30 years and raising six children.

Vasily Rozanov with his daughter

Vasily Rozanov with his daughter

“Immortalize every moment of existence”

While Rozanov was studying at the university, he developed a pessimistic worldview, for which his fellow students called him “Vasya the cemetery.” In Yelets, he wrote philosophical articles that brought him fame. Thus, after his article on the work of Dostoevsky, “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor,” the writer began to be interpreted as a religious thinker. In the collection “Twilight of Enlightenment,” Rozanov criticized the school system and the basic principles of education: “Our education is sad and persistently takes a person away from thoughts about the lofty, offering him occupation with the gray, everyday, pragmatic.<...>It orients not to tomorrow, but to yesterday, even to the day before yesterday, the world of ideas, illusions, and hopes. It debilitates".

Vasily Rozanov looked at many things through the prism of his philosophy: family, art, faith and religion. According to the thinker, Christianity incorrectly interpreted issues of gender, family and procreation. Rozanov raised these topics in order to “revive Christian teaching” and he himself was deeply worried that he was criticizing religion: “To dedicate my whole life to the destruction of the only thing in the world I love - has anyone had a sadder fate?”

In 1900, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Zinaida Gippius, Nikolai Minsky and Vasily Rozanov founded the St. Petersburg Religious and Philosophical Society, but in 1911 Rozanov left the association due to differences in views with other participants.

“Rozanov wrote - “pronounced” - everything that he felt, and everything that he saw in himself, and he looked into himself constantly, intently.”

Zinaida Gippius

"Style is the soul of things"

The style of presentation of Rozanov's thoughts became both a new method of philosophy and a new literary genre. It is based on the author’s personal experience, doubt, and fleeting impression: “One minute passed between “I want to sit down” and “I sat down.” Where did these completely different thoughts on a new topic come from than those with which I walked around the room and even sat down to write them down ... "

If Leo Tolstoy first tried to introduce elements of the “stream of consciousness” into his works, then Vasily Rozanov, using this form of narration, wrote a literary and philosophical trilogy - “Solitary” and two parts of “Fallen Leaves”. In the texts, the author tries to reflect his thoughts and feelings without editing, without reference to a specific goal. This literary form would reappear in the 1920s and 1930s, for example in James Joyce's Ulysses.

The philosopher's opinions on many issues are contradictory. He considered it necessary to illuminate the phenomena from several positions: “You need to have exactly 1000 points of view on a subject. These are the “coordinates of reality,” and reality is only captured after 1000.”. This is how Rozanov assessed all the events taking place, including political ones. He wrote about the revolution of 1905–1907 in the magazine “New Time” as a monarchist and a Black Hundred member, and in other publications as a populist or social democrat.

“I consider V.V. a brilliant person, a remarkable thinker, in his thoughts there is a lot that is completely alien, and - at times - even hostile to my soul, and - together with this - he is my favorite writer.”

Maksim Gorky

After the October Revolution, the philosopher’s books were not sold, and the family lived in poverty for a long time. Vasily Rozanov died on February 5, 1919 in Sergiev Posad.

Rozanov Vasily Vasilyevich (1856-1919), Russian thinker, prose writer, publicist, literary critic. Born on April 20 (May 2), 1856 in Vetluga, Kostroma province. in the family of a forester. He was orphaned early and spent his childhood in poverty. Dependent on his older brother, he graduated from a gymnasium in Nizhny Novgorod and entered the philological faculty of Moscow University, from which he graduated in 1880. Until 1893, he was a teacher of history and geography in gymnasiums in Bryansk, Yelets and Bely (Smolensk province). The teaching environment turned out to be completely alien and even hostile to Rozanov; teaching burdened him and interfered with writing - a natural consequence of his mental development even in his university years.

According to Autobiography (1890), the most important impetus for this development was the writings of D.S. Mill, D.I. Pisarev, N.A. Dobrolyubov and Western European vulgar materialists. Rozanov’s first article, Study of the Idea of ​​Happiness as the Idea of ​​the Supreme Principle of Human Life, was written entirely in this vein, which in 1881 was rejected by the magazine “Russian Thought” “due to the heavy syllable.” But his other “small study” On the foundations of the theory of behavior was awarded a university academic prize and was the embryo of “a continuous argument on 40 printed pages” On understanding. Experience in studying the nature, boundaries and internal structure of science as integral knowledge. It was published in Moscow in 1886 and did not have the slightest resonance in scientific and philosophical circles - apparently, it was considered amateurish speculation, since it proposed a complete revision of cognitive activity as a complex intellectual experience.

Only when you end your life do you see that your whole life was a lesson in which you were an inattentive student.
(LIFE)

Rozanov Vasily Vasilievich

Rozanov's philosophical aspirations gradually gave way to religious ones, as evidenced by his controversial articles Organic Process and Mechanical Causality (1889); The Abdication of a Darwinist (1889) - against prof. K.A. Timiryazeva; The place of Christianity in history (1890), The purpose of human life (1892), Beauty in nature and its meaning (1894). They did not create Rozanov’s reputation as a philosopher, but they helped him make acquaintance with N.N. Strakhov and K.N. Leontiev, and they opened the way for him to conservative journalism - he became one of the leading authors of the newly founded magazine “Russian Review” in 1890, published on personal funds of Alexander III under the supervision of K.P. Pobedonostsev. Rozanov called his journalistic work of the 1890s the “Katkov-Leontief period.” He regularly published in "Russian Bulletin", "Questions of Philosophy and Psychology", "Birzhevye Vedomosti", "Moskovskie Vedomosti" and especially in A.S. Suvorin's newspaper "New Time" - Rozanov became a staff member of this publication in 1898. Before that He, having left gymnasium teaching and moved to St. Petersburg, served for several years as an official of the Central Administration of State Control (“The service was as disgusting to me as the gymnasium”).

By the early 1900s, Rozanov had built a strong reputation for himself as a prolific and colorful conservative journalist. Most of his numerous articles from this period are collected in the books Twilight of Enlightenment (1899), where, based on his own experience, Rozanov denounces the Russian school education system; Nature and History (1899), Religion and Culture (1899), Literary Essays (1899). However, his main and most famous work was the Legend of the Grand Inquisitor by F.M. Dostoevsky, published in 1891 in the Russian Bulletin and published in several separate editions (with the appendix of two sketches about N.V. Gogol). Experience of critical commentary. The creativity and personality of Dostoevsky initially attracted Rozanov, and this predetermined not only his critical reputation, but also his personal fate: in order to better understand his beloved writer, Rozanov married his former mistress, A.P. Suslova (1839-1918), who, having disfigured his life husband and abandoned him, she did not want to give him a divorce, and Rozanov’s second - happy - marriage remained illegal in the eyes of the church and state with all the ensuing regrettable consequences. The legend marked the beginning of the study of the religious aspects of Dostoevsky’s work, although it is not about the works themselves, but about the perception of their content (about the “understanding” of literature that shapes the worldview), as in other literary critical articles by Rozanov, starting with the sensational program cycle Old and New (1892), where the rejection of the “inheritance of the 60-70s” is polemically motivated.

By the beginning of the 1900s, Rozanov’s worldview was fully formed: “understanding” as a whole was predetermined and was constantly expanding thematically, in principle having no limits. However, this “understanding,” in his own opinion, lacked organicity, which required the merging of thinking with everyday life: it was he who was recognized as the “sphere of the holistic existence of the individual” (N. Rozin). Life was animated by the elements of gender and family ties were cemented. Rozanov’s corresponding reflections and considerations, often spontaneous, inspired his articles collected in the two-volume book The Family Question in Russia (1905), as well as, in his own words, the “main ideological book” In the world of the unclear and unresolved, which was published in two editions by 1904.

His own painful family situation (marital cohabitation, according to church concepts, was considered fornication) provoked intense reflection on the meaning and role of Russian churchliness (two-volume book Near the Church Walls, 1907). An attempt at a decisive generalization of religious issues is represented by Rozanov’s books The Dark Face (1911) and People of Moonlight (1912), where the “metaphysics of Christianity” is revealed and assessed in a sexual way and the inconsistency of the Christian religion is proved from the point of view of arranging everyday life. However, apparently, it is unlawful to declare Rozanov, as D.S. Merezhkovsky did, as an “anti-Christian” like Fr. Nietzsche. One should take into account both his deliberate attraction to extremes and the characteristic ambivalence of his thinking. Thus, he managed to be known as both a Judeophile and a Judeophobe at the same time; he considered the revolutionary events of 1905-1907 not only possible, but also necessary to cover from various positions - speaking in “New Time” under his name as a monarchist and Black Hundred member, under the pseudonym V. Varvarin he expressed in other publications left-liberal, populist, and sometimes social democratic point of view.

The natural culmination of Rozanov’s work was his writings of an unusual genre, eluding a strict definition, but rooted in his journalistic activity, which presupposed a constant, as immediate and at the same time expressive reaction to the topic of the day, and focused on Rozanov’s reference book, The Diary of the Writer Dostoevsky. In the published works Solitary (1912), Mortal (1913), Fallen Leaves (box 1 - 1913; box 2 - 1915) and the proposed collections In Saharna, After Saharna, Fleeting and The Last Leaves, the author tries to reproduce the process of “understanding” in all its intriguing and polysyllabic pettiness and lively facial expressions of oral speech - a process merged with everyday life and contributing to mental self-determination. This genre turned out to be the most adequate to Rozanov’s thought, which always strived to become an experience; and his last work, an attempt to comprehend and thereby somehow humanize the revolutionary collapse of Russian history and its universal resonance, acquired a proven genre form.

His Apocalypse of Our Time was published in an incredible number of two thousand copies in Bolshevik Russia from November 1917 to October 1918 (ten issues). It is characteristic that this requiem for the Russian state and Russian culture was initially conceived as a periodical publication of articles on political, religious and general cultural topics under the general title Trinity Birches: “so, some nonsense, and suddenly - once, a thought, two - a thought. The monster has grown..." (Rozanov - Tkachenko, 1918, March 31). The genre justified itself: Apocalypse turned out to be a rare and priceless artistic and historical testimony of an eyewitness and thinker buried under the rubble of a collapsed empire.

Life has completely passed... There are only a few gloomy years left, old, dreary, unnecessary...
(LIFE)

Rozanov Vasily Vasilievich

The central philosophical theme in the work of the mature Rozanov was his metaphysics of gender. In 1898, in one of his letters, he formulated his understanding of gender: “Sex in a person is not an organ or a function, not meat or physiology - but a creative person... For the mind, it is neither definable nor comprehensible: but it is and everything that exists - from Him and from Him." The incomprehensibility of gender in no way means that it is unreal. On the contrary, sex, according to Rozanov, is the most real thing in this world and remains an insoluble mystery to the same extent that the meaning of existence itself is inaccessible to reason. “Everyone instinctively feels that the mystery of being is actually the mystery of being born, i.e. that this is the mystery of the birth sex.” In Rozanov’s metaphysics, man, united in his mental and physical life, is connected with the Logos, but this connection takes place not in the light of universal reason, but in the most intimate, “night” sphere of human existence: in the sphere of sexual love.