MYSTICS OF PETERSBURG

Vassily Rozanov and his "unkempt thought"

Vasily Vasilevich Rozanov was born on May, 2nd, 1856 in a forester family. In 1861 Rozanov' father has died, and the family moved to Kostroma. In 14 years old Rozanov becomes an orphan.

In 1893 Rozanov has moved to Petersburg. Here really begins the epic feat of "the collegiate adviser Vasily Vasilevich Rozanov writing the compositions" - revolt against all system of a byzantic-western civilisation with its laws, rules, values, morals and "public opinion".

The statement and consecration of a deep link between sex and God is, by Rozanov, a secret kernel of the Old testament and all most ancient religions. Anyway, from this point deduces Rozanov sanctity of family life in the Old testament and a Judaism; from here - and blessing of a life and love in the paganism which has reconciled the person with all universum.

However to a civilisation of Christian nominalism Rozanov opposed not silence, but a word, - always personal, always strongly rooted in "life relics". The person, despite cosmocentricity, isn't lost in a Universe, it is included "in a nature order, and the point of this inclusiveness is a sex, as secret of a birth of a new life".

The sex, by Rozanov, is our soul.

For Rozanov - a person is sacred, and, first of all, the baby who has come into the world, and the civilisation, which destroys a family life, undermines also itself.

There was a article of Rozanov in "The Russian bulletin" for 1891 about "the Legend about Great Inquisitor by F.M.Dostoevsky" which has played exclusively big role both in destiny of the writer, and in the literary criticism of Russia.

"The spirit of our church, - wrote Rozanov, - is, undoubtedly, a spirit of freedom, the highest, not realizable on the earth..., but it supposes freedom only under condition of merge to self, instead of freedom wipe about this relic".

October, 1917 has beaten soil out from Rozanov feet. "An apocalypse of our time" - a narration about economic and moral disorder of Russia.

Rozanov was shaken by the heard story that one "such serious old man" has expressed a wish that from the former tsar have broken a skin "a ribbon behind a ribbon". Last letters of Rozanov are tragic. At this particular time him excite not only destinies of the native people, but mankind as a whole.

"... Seems the world breaks up, decays, incinerated ... It so is terrible, so is new, special cosmogony of the Christ or is more exact full cosmicy that we can remember only that in presentiments of all people and religions really it is necessary that "to the world there should be an end" and that "the world is in very inperfection mode now"...

"The Christ carries us away in an Eternal night where we will be "with It alone".

But I am simply frightened, in deadly horror, and I speak: I do not want ".

Exhausted, constantly rushing about in search of work and means for livelihood of a family, Rozanov has broken a stroke. The money sent by Gorkiy from abroad on maintenance of dying away forces of the writer, was late.

Rozanov remained the writer on the deathbed as well - hurried up to tell about how he died, tried to outstrip those hearings which will spread across Moscow and Petersburg in the very first days after funeral.

Rozanov daughter wrote in that days: "His all death and his agonal days were one Osanna to the Christ. I was with him all time and days of his illness, and its last days. He spoke: "As it is joyful, as it is good. Why round me such pleasure, tell?

He has died on January, 23rd (old style), on Wednesday at 1 o'clock in the afternoon. Without any tortures..."

Source: Vassily Rozanov