To my children. Memories of yesteryears

1916.IX. 7 Night. After preparation for the service: Eve of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I am writing on a lectern, under a lamp. – In a revised form I write 1916.IX.20. 1 Our family (I mean my parents and aunts who lived with us, as well as us children), our family was a closed little world. Both her father and mother, especially her mother, led her to seclusion from everything external. Exceptional affection of parents to each other; the father’s disgust towards the everyday aspects of social life and the mother’s proud fear of life; the father’s worldview (and the mother’s too, probably), which, if not denied, then infinitely belittled all social relations and all aspects of human activity before the family principle; perhaps the family’s insufficient wealth at a time when it was still developing; disgust from all conventions, from “tinsel” and false shine, which was the main mood of the father and, probably, became strong from him in the mother; some kind of incomprehensible, but undoubted aristocratic pride of the family, especially the mother, and this with all her constant statement that “we are the most ordinary people,” which she seemed to want to convince herself of more than she actually believed; perhaps a thin stream of spiritual charm - based on detachment from life and a peculiar, non-church and non-religious asceticism - all this together led to the fact that our life was life on a secluded island, if you like - on a desert island, for we did not particularly like people and tried to stay aloof. People would be the thieves of the purity, equanimity and rigor of this island paradise, and therefore they only tolerated it, and only for the time being. I said the word “paradise”, because this is exactly how I understand my father - to grow a paradise on the open field of family life, which would not be afraid of either external bad weather, or the cold and dirt of social relations, or, it seems, death itself. Yes, death, as far as I can understand my father, was never included in his calculations, just as sin was not included in his calculations, although he admitted, being a pessimist, that “people are people everywhere, with their passions and weaknesses.” Consequently, the task of this experiment with life, on which the father really spent his life and many, many rich and excellent talents and efforts, was to isolate the family as thoroughly as possible from everything else, from everything that could disturb the smooth surface of this cloudless existence. The father bore all the hardships of life, but did not want to bring them into the family; and, unable to bear the burden of bearing labor alone, and grief, and the troubles of life, in order for the family to be spared them, he broke down and, when he saw the unfulfillment of his life, he lost his balance, both physical and spiritual. It was truly a drama: everything that he had tried to create all his life and for which he had sacrificed himself was crumbling before his eyes. Yes, as a sacrifice, for the family was his idol, his god, and he was its priest and its victim. The family’s task was to isolate itself from the environment. Our life was a life “in itself,” although hardly “for ourselves,” an existence cut off from the social environment and from the past. Both in space and time we were a “new race”, a new generation – on our own. Of course, this depended not only on the desire of our parents to lead us this way, but also on many circumstances that arose apart from anyone’s intentions. But one way or another, we children hardly knew the past of our family, not to mention our kind. My parents looked at the present and, mainly, at the future. And the past... the past was theoretically denied, in fact it was not known or almost not known, and since it was experienced by the parents themselves, it was not sweet. I will have occasion to talk about all this later. And now I will only say that both my father and my mother fell out of their families; and it is clear that the thread of living tradition fell out of their hands, and in part was simply released. We children knew almost nothing about her. Then I learned something. But this was only later, and even then - through questioning, to which, by the way, I never received a willing and open answer from my mother, through conversations with strangers, through archival and book research. This knowledge of mine was not knowledge absorbed with mother’s milk, it was not a vital impression, forever inseparable from my mind, but it was an archaeological restoration of the past, a scientific work, similar to any other scientific work. I am sad and sad that this is so; but that's how it is. I pray to God, my dears, that I will be able to raise you in a more full-blooded, more grounded life; God grant that everything that I have found for you through long efforts and many labors will benefit you and that you will not feel the difficulty of breathing in an ahistorical environment that your father experienced. My parents were ascetics and righteous in their own way; but their worldview, which was an attempt by the family to overcome the nihilism that surrounded them in the days of their youth, itself harbored the poisons of nihilism. I don’t blame my parents, because they did too much not only for us, but also for themselves, in the sense of immanently overcoming positivism through the creation of a family in the depths of its positivistic religion. But, I repeat, there was such a terrible period in Russian history, and how many souls were crippled by it, how many pure hearts became unhappy and homeless! To be without a sense of living connection with one’s grandfathers and great-grandfathers means not to have a foothold in history. And I would like to be able to determine for myself exactly what exactly I was doing and where exactly I was at each of the historical moments of our homeland and the whole world - I, of course, in the person of my ancestors. I was deprived of this knowledge, although I always felt, I don’t know why, that our family is very ancient and that the possibility of such historical self-determination for us, the Florenskys, is not excluded in essence. But be that as it may, I grew up without a past. That is why, when I am about to tell you, my sons, about my life and my life impressions, I deliberately limit the content of my story to the range of information that was familiar to me and absorbed into my consciousness since childhood. I will present other information that I subsequently received to you in a special work, this time of a scientific nature; and if anything slips through here from that information, then only insofar as it is absolutely necessary for understanding my story. This way it will be easier for me to give you an idea of ​​the spirit of our family, the way of our life, my original interests and the activities of our family members. And besides, this is the only way I can portray to you the seclusion of our “island.” I tell you all the time about our family. But it’s time, finally, to more accurately determine its composition. 1916.IX.20. Sergiev Posad Our family consisted of my father (and your grandfather) Alexander Ivanovich Florensky, my mother (your grandmother, “Baba Olya,” as Vasya calls her) Olga Pavlovna, my aunt, my father’s sister, Yulia Ivanovna Florenskaya, us children, who appeared sequentially in this order: I (Pavel, born January 9, 1882), Lyusya (Yulia, born July 1, 1884 g.), Lilya (Elizabeth, born May 7, 1886), Shura (Alexander, born March 7, 1888), Valya (Olga, born February 19, 1890), Gosya (Raisa, born April 16, 1894) and Andrey (born December 1, 1899) - and my mother’s sisters who lived with us for a long time or visited us. Most of all, Aunt Remso lived with us (Raisa Pavlovna, as her dad called her, or more precisely, Repsimiya Pavlovna Tavrizova, and then Konovalova, after her second husband); Aunt Sonya (Sofia Pavlovna, later Karamyan), left us abroad, then got married and visited us quite rarely, living in other cities. Aunt Liza (Elizaveta Pavlovna Melik-Beglyarova) and her children Margarita and David sometimes visited us and were generally close to our family, like her husband Sergei Teymurazovich Melik-Beglyarov, but they did not live with us constantly. As for Aunt Varya (Varvara Pavlovna), she, poor thing, died early, and I remember her very vaguely. That's the whole circle of our family. Here we can also add my mother’s brother Arkady, who visited us very rarely, or, more precisely, Arshak Pavlovich Saparov, whom we called “Arshak the Uncle,” and his children - Elya, Tamara, Nina, Pavel, Lyalya and Marusya, who sometimes visited our house. But, I repeat, these were not particularly close relationships, and the family was confined to their aunts. We also had acquaintances. Of these, the closest families are the Novomeysky and Androsov families. They will be discussed in their place. Now, for a better understanding of our family, I will tell you, my sons, some information about its members, so as not to return to the same thing later. My father, Alexander Ivanovich Florensky, was the son of Ivan Andreevich Florensky (and, as I later learned, the grandson of Andrei Matveevich) and his wife Anfisa Uarovna, Solovyova after his father, Uar Efimovich Solovyov. However, I learned the middle name of my grandmother, and even more so of my great-grandfather, much later. By the way, I will add that from my investigations the names of my great-grandmothers also became clear: Vassa Timofeevna, mother of Ivan Andreevich, and Katerina Afanasyevna, born Ivanova, mother of Anfisa Uarovna. My father was born on September 30, 1850, “at 10 o’clock in the afternoon,” as it appears in my grandfather’s notebook. We celebrated his name day on November 23; and from my grandfather’s notes I learned that they fell on October 22. According to my calculations, September 30, 1850 falls on a Saturday. His father was a military doctor. But, I think, my father did not have time to accept anything from his parents, since his mother died when he was a little over a month old, on November 7, 1850, and his father on November 11, 1866, but my father lived very little with his father, since he studied outside his home. 1916.X. 15. Sergiev Posad Namely, he studied at the Vladikavkaz classical gymnasium, and then transferred to the Tiflis 1st classical gymnasium, on Golovinsky Avenue; He studied well, the first student, but due to the story with the director Zhelikhovsky, whom he and his comrades were chosen by lot to beat up, he had to leave the gymnasium, and he got rid of the wolf ticket only through the intercession of public opinion. Then he took the exam as an external student and entered the Institute of Civil Engineers in St. Petersburg, from which he graduated in 1880. In the same year, 1880, on August 20, he married my mother, Olga Pavlovna Saparova. Her real name is Salome (Salome). But then it was customary to replace Armenian names with equivalent or supposedly equivalent Russian names. And so she turned out to be Olga, and so firmly that absolutely none of her acquaintances suspected her real name, and even she herself probably remembered it only when she was deliberately reminded of it. She was born on March 25, 1859 in the city of Sighnag. Her father’s name was Pavel Gerasimovich Saparov, and her mother’s name was Sofia Grigorievna Paatova. However, here I will not talk about what I learned later. I’ll just write briefly that my mother went to St. Petersburg in 1878 or 1879... So, in 1880, our family settled in the Transcaucasian steppe. Our chosen place of residence was the town of Yevlakh, Elisabeth-Polish province, Dzhevanshar district. Currently there is a station of the Transcaucasian Railway with a buffet, houses have been built, trees are growing. At that time it was a pure steppe, in the most predatory of places in Transcaucasia, among Tatar villages, near the swampy bank of the Kura. In the feather grass, capetuv, licorice and other herbs of this steppe there were abundant pheasants and - the best of game and the rarest - turkeys. Kura abounded in salmon, sturgeon and all kinds of fish, so ours always had fresh fish and game, and they prepared fresh caviar for themselves. But there were also enough dangers of all kinds: poisonous snakes, scorpions, phalanxes and tarantulas, mosquitoes, mosquitoes - there was a lot of all this in the virgin steppe. My parents told me how one day dad, going to bed, lifted his pillow to turn it over and found a coiled snake under the pillow. The snake, of course, was killed, but the impression of horror is still alive, even with me. As for scorpions and poisonous spiders, they constantly crawled into our home. Well, of course, there is nothing to say about turtles, goitered gazelles and other innocent creatures - there were quite a lot of them there, who were not yet frightened by people. I said “to our home.” Yes, because at first my parents lived in a boxcar, or in boxcars upholstered with carpets, and then a barracks were built from corrugated iron, lined with felt inside. This barrack served as the beginning for the later railway station. It had three rooms and, in addition, a separate extension - a kitchen. The reason why we settled in Yevlakh was the appointment of my father to the position of head of the corresponding section of the Transcaucasian railway. d. This site was built by my father. On the other hand, this coincided with our desire to be closer to the Melik-Beglyarov estate (then owned by the father of Sergei and Alexander Teimurazovich Teimuraz Fridonovich Melik-Beglyarov) - Karachinar. My mother’s sister Elizaveta was married to Sergei Teimurazovich, and Yevlakh was the train station closest to Karachinar. d. Aunt Lisa often visited us with other sisters; and our people visited her, and then lived for some time, when dad fell ill with a fever. But in order to more clearly imagine the place of birth of your father, you, my boys, should read “Essay on the Transcaucasian Steppe,” written by Aunt Yulia. I put it among her letters to the Pecocks because I think she must have written them something of this kind. And besides, in a different edition, he entered her diary. Aunt Yulia arrived in Yevlakh at the end of 1880 or January 1881, later than mom and even more so later than dad. And so, in the middle of the steppe, in the wilderness, I was born on January 9, 1882, in the evening, around seven o’clock - at the hour that has always been my favorite. This evening hour, between six and seven, has always been my hour, and to this day there is nothing sweeter, sweeter and more mystical for me, in a good way, than this hour of transparency, peace and the coming coolness. Lighting Evening Star, fire at dusk... A midwife was brought from Tiflis for my birth. In addition, her sisters came to visit my mother - Aunt Lisa and Aunt Remso, who was then 17 years old, and maybe Aunt Sonya. They named me Pavel, in honor of the holy Apostle Paul - if they only thought about the holy Apostle, and in memory of my grandfather Pavel Gerasimovich Saparov, who died shortly before. But they called it at home, without a priest (and, by the way, there was no Orthodox priest closer, as in Tiflis): they baptized very slowly, which partly corresponds to Caucasian custom, and partly was probably due to the parents’ indifference to the sacraments. Of course, I don’t remember anything about life in Yevlakh. But both my parents and my aunts told me almost nothing about this time, or if they did, I didn’t remember anything. I remember only one incident. It was told to me by Aunt Sonya, who saved me from threatening death by drowning in water. This is how things stood. Mom and aunts swam in the Kura, and the shore was a steep slope. They laid me on the edge of the bank, confident that I was still small and therefore would not be able to move. But somehow I got to the very edge and rolled down the slope. Already at the very water, Aunt Sonya caught me. Then I know that dad fell ill with malaria and as a result he had to take leave. The whole family settled in Karachinar, where they spent the summer of the year. In the fall we moved to Tiflis. This was the year. We lived in Yevlakh for only a year and a half: one winter, a summer and another winter. From life in Tiflis I still have very distinct, but scattered impressions. And since the first childhood impressions determine further inner life, I will try to write down as accurately as possible everything that I can remember from the impressions of that time. But this entry is unlikely to correspond to chronological order. 1916.XI.18. Serg[iev] Pos[ad]. Night We lived in two apartments. One contained a dining room, a living room and some other bedrooms. I lived in the other one with my aunt Yulia - in the other one, that is, in the outbuilding. The communication between the two rooms was through a courtyard paved with stones through which grass grew. Usually I went accompanied by one of the elders, and maybe sometimes I decided to run alone. But one day, sitting in the dining room - it was during the day, I missed Aunt Yulia or my mother, who, perhaps for some reason, did not come from the outbuilding to everyone - and ran to her or after her. I remember everything that happened now. I opened the door and immediately, having gone down 2-3 steps, I found myself under a slightly dark canopy formed near the house. I remember that this canopy was supported by unpainted wooden poles with peeled bark, gray from the rain... Probably it was towards evening, or the weather was sunless, but I was left with a twilight impression. And on the stone pavement of the yard, overgrown with grass, perhaps already in the autumn - I see this pavement, as it is now - I saw something. Rather, at first I heard some kind of peculiar sound unheard of by me. I was already scared of him. But curiosity and courage won. I decided to sneak past and get to my goal. But... as I ran further with my eyes almost closed, I suddenly became dumbfounded. There was an unprecedented shell in front of us. Something in it was spinning quickly, squealing, creaking, and bright sparks were falling from the wheel. And, the worst thing is, some man, he seemed to me like a dark silhouette in the sky, probably evening - some man stood next to this shell, calmly, dispassionately and fearlessly, and was holding something in his hands... I stood as if fascinated by the gaze of a monster. The terrible mysteries of nature unfolded before me. I spied something that a mortal should not have seen. Ezekiel's wheels? Fire whirlwinds of Anaximander? Eternal rotation, noumenal fire... I was dumbfounded and amazed by horror, and captured by daring curiosity, knowing that I should not see and hear the visible and audible. But the living effectiveness of the mysterious forces of nature, Boehm’s primal principle, Goethe’s mothers was revealed to me. And the one who stood next to the mysterious sparkling projectile, that dark silhouette - it was not, of course, a person, it was not one of the creatures of the earth, it was the spirit of the earth, a great being, incommensurable with me. It probably didn't notice me... I don’t know how long this revelation and tetanus lasted. Whether for a second, or a few seconds; but, of course, not for long. And as soon as the intoxicating and terrible moment of merging with this fiery manifestation of nature passed, as soon as the consciousness of myself appeared, panic horror seized me. And here is a characteristic detail: the self-control that had never failed me in the moment of final horror appeared in me even then, and this was the first of the mysterious shocks of the soul that I remember. I was not at a loss. Almost with a jump I found myself again in the dining room, from where I ran out, and only then, as happened subsequently in such cases, already in a safe harbor, on the knees of one of the elders, did I give vent to the horror that had taken hold of me. I had something like a nervous attack. They gave me sugar water and calmed me down. “It’s the sharpener who sharpens knives, Pavlik,” the elders insisted. “Let’s go and have a look.” But, of course, I didn’t listen to anyone, but I didn’t argue with the elders either. I already understood then that they would not comprehend the mystery that was revealed to me and terrified me. They offered to walk me through the courtyard. But I didn’t give up on this either. And it’s hard to say whether it was only from fear of the stream of noumenal sparks or from another fear - not to relive what I had experienced, to see what the adults told me about - something ordinary and really not terrifying... And for a long time after that I was afraid to walk through the yard alone. This feeling of the revelation of the secrets of nature and the horror associated with it, Tyutchev’s Abyss and the attraction to it was and is, as I think, one of the most internal folds of my mental life. Looking into myself even more closely, I find something else that I learned from our living in two apartments connected by a courtyard. This is precisely a firm, organic conviction in the mystical “is” in contradiction to the empirical “seems”. 1916.XI.23. Serg[iev] Pos[ad], morning. Shchamyat] Alexandra] Neesk[ogo] Two apartments are separated by space, there are two of them; but spiritually they are one, one apartment is our apartment, which is in two. Home, family is a living unity, and my childhood consciousness would not have accommodated, even if it had arisen, an understanding of family not as a complete unity, inseparable even in abstraction. Not “I”, but “we” - this was the attitude towards the external, i.e., existing world outside the family. But this united, indivisible, organically connected family lived in two rooms. And since the premises, the form of a family’s existence, must necessarily be one according to the unity of the family, here I perceived the mysterious unity of two apartments separated by a courtyard. I remember well that this was not invented later, but it was then, it was then that the understanding was born in me that spatial separation can only seem and that, contrary to the evidence of external experience, there can be internal unity - not unity, but unity. But, in connection with the case of the knife sharpener described above, another, no less definite conviction arose that in order to experimentally recognize this mysterious unity, one must go into the region where there are all sorts of fears, where the mysteries of nature occur, where, although almost irresistible curiosity attracts, but where inhuman horrors guarding this mysterious region lie in wait. The human eye should not look at the secrets of nature, although they open the world from a completely different side, from the side of internal unity. But this unity can be revealed indirectly, by some more subtle perception, not only by direct experience, and that is enough. This is what was assimilated in my soul after that incident - of course, not so clearly, but also more immutably. And this assimilation remained with me throughout my life, although, of course, due to my irresistible research, I did not always fulfill this commandment about non-cognition. Another incident, also related to the mystical perception of nature, with its terrible protective guards, dates back to a more ancient time and therefore, probably, I remember vaguely. Although I know that I remember something about this incident from personal experience, I cannot distinguish between what I remember and what I learned from the stories of my elders. And the situation was like this: Aunt Lisa brought a lot of excellent grapes from her estate. They let me lick it, but they were afraid to give me more. And so that I wouldn’t ask, dad drew - I remember, with a blue and a red pencil - a monkey on a large sheet of paper and, putting it behind the grapes, said that the monkey does not allow me to take the grapes. As a child, I was very submissive and unconditionally believed every word of my elders. He was even less able to doubt the prohibitions of a mysterious nature, and even now he is hardly capable. And so, of course, knowing that this monkey was drawn, I imploringly extended my hand to it and asked: “Bazana, give me langata,” i.e.: “Monkey, give me grapes.” For some reason this request was very memorable for everyone in the house, and perhaps because it was repeated to me many times later, I still remember it firmly. But a pile of ripe grapes, golden-green, translucent, as if fluorescent in a ray of sun, I remember, and it stands, as it does now, before me as a living image of the inexhaustible, sweet abundance of nature. Maybe my taste for the golden-green tone, and especially for the fluorescence of glass in a Crookes tube, for example, or in Geissler tubes, which also fluoresce at the cathode with a greenish-yellow, grape or apple color - this almost my whole being trembles at the sight of such a glow, at the sight of autumn translucent green-golden hazels, at the sight of fireflies - its embryo had exactly that captivity with a pile of grapes. And - a ban: as now, I imagine a hastily sketched blue pencil, probably an orangutan, in German Conversations Lexikon Meyers 2 which, as I clearly understood then, stands as the absolute guardian of this delightful abundance, against which there can be no objections, about which there is no one to complain, which is above even internal discussion. Drawn - and alive, more, more powerful, more significant, more inexorable than the living. No, I didn't confuse him with just a monkey. But it was then that I grasped the basic idea of ​​my later worldview, that in a name there is what is named, in a symbol there is what is symbolized, in an image the reality of what is depicted is present, and that therefore the symbol is what is symbolized. This symbolized, this protective power of Nature stood before me in my father’s drawing, if I’m not mistaken – drawn by me. And I, before the insurmountable, humbled myself without complaint and without difficulty. This was a prohibition to assimilate the infinite productivity of nature, for I perceived the idea of ​​grapes as infinity. Subsequently, when I saw Somov’s paintings, where the same excessive, branch-breaking amount of grapes in huge, heavy greenish-yellow clusters, I half-consciously recalled my childhood impression of Nature as Artemis of Ephesus, as the Mother of Abundance; and, not existing in Somov, a prohibition instantly arose in his soul. Many, infinitely many... but not for me; “The monkey doesn’t allow me to touch this.” My father often took me on walks into the city, and, of course, they always ended with some interesting purchases for me, either sweets or toys. I vaguely remember how on one of these walks I was given my first doll. I vaguely remember that her legs and arms were dangling on thinly stuffed rags and that I loved this doll passionately. We lived high, on half of Mount David. The climb there even now would not be very easy in the Tiflis heat; Then I, who could barely walk, became sweaty and limp from the heat. I walked along Golovinsky and Dvortsovaya with dad, and returned home in his arms or sitting on his shoulder: dad loved to carry us little ones on his shoulder. The burning Tiflis sun, the heat breathing into my face from the heated rocks, walls and pavement, the stuffy air and heavy, as if evil, rays, pressing down with their weight on my back and head, as if pressing dust to the pavement, crashed into my consciousness, and since then the feeling of hostility of the Sun-Moloch, the midday Tiflis sun, ready to devour all living things, has been living in me. In these walks, a still mysterious and already definitely hostile force of nature was revealed to me. Whether it was very difficult for dad to contribute to the Davidic Rise, I don’t know. But for these carrying on my shoulder I still have the most grateful feeling towards him as a deliverer from the hostile and evil Destroyer Sun. Partly, perhaps, this is also because Lucy had not yet been born or was very young, I had no conflicts with her, my father belonged to me entirely, and I had not yet had any troubles with him because of Lucy, which began to darken my childhood later and thereby somewhat alienated me from my father. Then the unity of son and father, in my mind, was unconditional, and the father himself was an unconditional father for me, and I was his unconditional son. I never had this feeling of closeness and indivisibility of existence in relation to my mother. First of all, she didn’t bother much with me, being busy with Lyusya and then with the other children. Restrained, withdrawn, proudly shy in the manifestation of feelings, exaggeratedly and bashfully hiding from me since childhood - when she fed and carried children, she seemed to me from the first days of my consciousness to be a special being, as if a living phenomenon of nature, feeding, giving birth, beneficent - and at the same time distant, inaccessible. This impression of my mother - as of Mother Nature - was also facilitated by the cult with which my father, both out of a movement of feeling and out of conscious conviction, honored my mother, believing that a woman-wife in general is a special being, and his wife is three times special, which, however, was probably not unfair. I did not perceive faces in it; it completely surrounded our being, was felt everywhere and was somehow invisible. I could talk about my father, about Aunt Yulia, about brothers and sisters, and aunts, and cousins, but I could hardly say anything about my mother before; and even now I can say very little about her - only what others told me about her, but not my own. For the power of my analysis cannot dissect the amorphous, although very strong, impression from the mother; it cannot be objectified, cannot be expressed in words. I always talked to my father a lot; with Aunt Yulia, with the aunts, with everyone too. But it seems like never with my mother, or I got the impression that I didn’t talk to her. My relationship with her seems like the feeling of a lonely traveler in a large, cool grove. Sacred awe and silence, coolness and timidity... not fear, but... My mother was for me the native depths of existence, but clinging to her as if I were my own was strange, inappropriate. Of course, I'm talking about this in an exaggerated way. Of course, I pressed myself against her, kissed her, but I remember that every year she received these caresses either colder or more embarrassed, and I felt that I was violating some proper boundaries. And I, it should be noted, was a very affectionate child, I kissed one or the other all the time and could not live without these caresses, as if I could live without air, warmth and light. I remember a later story from my mother or Aunt Lisa to my wife Anna, that they weaned me extremely easily: I didn’t even notice it. And some vague half-memory confirms this story for me: somehow I was not partial to my mother’s breast, not to say that I was repulsed by it; and therefore, at the first occasion, he fell away from her, as if the moisture that had glued two pieces of paper had dried up. It fell away from the breast and was not noticed, i.e. it was never associated with the breast. How similar this is to my direct memory of these first events of my life. And this is all the more characteristic because I, I repeat, was an extremely affectionate child, extremely affectionate and gave myself to every love with my whole being. And even if my mother’s breast did not pull my heart towards itself, if with my mother’s breast something most dear to my heart and soul itself did not burst out of my mother’s breast, this means – here I cannot help but declare this decisively – that from the very beginning I did not have that attachment to my mother that every child has – a filial attachment. This last one was completely owned by Aunt Yulia. Based on what has been said, I do not want to say that I had no relationship with my mother. On the contrary, they were very powerful. However, they were not personal; they were of a pantheistic rather than moral nature. In my mother I loved Nature, or in Nature – Mother, Naturam naturantem1 of Spinoza. I knew that my mother loved me very much; and at the same time I always had a feeling of her mysterious greatness. And it seemed to me that she could stand up to her full height and, without noticing me, crush me. I wasn't afraid of it and I wouldn't protest against it. But at the same time there could be no distance, which was never the case in relation to the father or aunt. Aunt, on the contrary, represented the opposite pole of my childhood life. I did not deny the noumenal power in her, I was not surprised at her, but I loved her with a deeply personal love, I was probably in love with her with all the whole feeling of a child. She was my friend, comrade, and teacher; with her I shared my sorrows and joys; I received reprimands and punishments from her (although there were very few of them); in general, everything human was with her. She did not overwhelm me with her detachment from the little things in life; I could chat with her about elegant dresses, lace, bows and hats, which I was a big fan of; with it you could pick flowers and make bouquets; In general, one could live with her. The mother had to be worshiped. And not because she demands worship. On the contrary, nothing, if we take consciousness, beliefs, was so alien to my mother as the claim to attention and under [shared]. On the contrary, she was burdened by all attention, increased her modesty and her embarrassment to the point of making it impossible to live in human society... And yet, and perhaps even more so, there was an atmosphere around her that demanded worship, not life. My sister Lyusya was born when I was already 2 1/2 years old. But neither the birth of Lucy nor the first years of her existence left a trace in my memory. I vaguely remember that one morning my dad took me in his arms and told me about the birth of my sister. There was a very vague impression that he was pleased with this and told me the family news cheerfully; as if it happened in the cafeteria. But I didn’t experience anything significant in connection with this and I don’t remember Lucy as a newborn. I very vaguely remember that they took me to my mother and that my mother was lying among everything white. But I dare not say that I am not confusing the birth of Lucy with the birth of the children who followed her. It seems that I have nothing left from the baptism of Lucy, named so (short for Julia) in honor of Aunt Julia. But one event from our initial life is etched in my memory very vividly. This is exactly how Lucy and I were vaccinated against smallpox. I remember very well that the need for vaccination was repeatedly discussed with us, but from day to day the vaccination itself was postponed, it seems that fresh lymph was not received for a long time. I was trembling in advance with an unknown horror, but secretly hoped that they would put it off and put it off and maybe forget about it. And indeed, they stopped talking about the vaccine, perhaps noticing too strong an impression these conversations made on me. And I almost calmed down. But one day I was sitting on a bench near the house. Someone was sitting next to me, probably one of my cousins, or Datiko (David Sergeevich Melik-Beglyarov), or Sandra (Alexander Stepanovich Chrelaev). It was probably getting dark. There's a man walking down the street. My heart immediately skipped a beat, sensing some kind of misfortune, still unknown to me, but even more terrible. Approaching us, he asked if the Florenskys lived here, and perhaps asked to be told that a paramedic had arrived. As fast as I could, panting with excitement, I rushed home, into the half-open entrance right there, running away not so much for the sake of the assignment given to me, but from an evil man. Whether I told my parents about him or, as I vaguely remember, my cousin, I cannot say for sure; but I remember that I was huddled in a corner somewhere in the bedroom. It seems that they didn’t find me right away, but they were in a hurry to look for me, not wanting to detain the paramedic and due to the approaching darkness. While they were looking for me, they inoculated Lucy with smallpox. I was led into the living room, dimly lit by the time of day, when the vaccination had already begun. They made a strong cut on her. The sight of blood, which I saw almost for the first time, struck me so much that I didn’t even resist when they started attacking me, and froze in horror. Out of horror, I did not notice either the pain or the vaccination itself, being in a daze, and the excitement and, probably, tears came much later. This first vaccination was a success, and even too much so. Maybe I was too big for her and itched my arm, but all three scars from the vaccine turned out to be in the form of three-kopeck coins and are still clearly visible on my left hand. Vasenka, my son, was very interested in them, and I explained to him that these are the buttons that fasten my human skin, and that as soon as I unfasten them, I will take off the skin and fly out of the skin in the form of a bird, break the window glass and fly beyond the far edges... Asking myself what idea the described incident revealed to me, and illuminating with my consciousness the lowest layers of my memory, I find that this idea was inevitable. It became clear to me that there is an inevitable thing that is higher than me, higher than everyone, even adults, higher even than parents, that it is not only externally, but also internally necessary, but that it does not correspond to our desires and tastes. Submission to the highest - I won’t say will, but inevitability. To the mind of the world, but impersonal, tireless and not warm, submission to this pantheistic providence appeared to me as a duty. Submissive by nature, I realized that submission is required, and is not my compliance, my unwillingness to fight. Recognition of the law over oneself determined my well-being from early childhood. Having played a prank, I knew that retribution must follow - not because the elders wanted it so, but because of the essence of things. But with such a consciousness it is difficult to be naughty, it is difficult to be naughty often. Having a large reserve of agility in my soul, from childhood I was shackled by the consciousness that I was not alone and that there was Truth above me. But you can play pranks precisely by forgetting about everyone and everything, in the rapture of your inner movement... And what later became: “not worth it” - not worth fighting, not worth polemicizing, not even worth arguing - then was a delay in pranks. Once I did something wrong and they put me in a corner. After a while, having forgotten myself, I did the same little prank. But, remembering the law of retribution, I myself approached the perplexed elders with the question: “Which one?” - i.e. in which corner should I stand? Then, when my question was clarified, cousin Datiko often made fun of me, asking: “Which one?” But I did not feel offended, such a question seemed so necessary to me - I did not understand the point of ridicule. My mother’s sister, Aunt Sonya, also lived with us. She was young then, almost a girl, and was studying music. I vaguely remember her music briefcase, it seems chocolate-colored with a gold inscription - probably “Muzique”, with which she ran to the music school. I also remember that in some way the warm milk that was carried into her room in a glass had something to do with her; maybe when she was sick or because she was developing tuberculosis. Milk, and warm milk in particular, aroused a feeling of disgust in me from childhood - perhaps this explains that I so easily fell behind my mother’s breast, or, on the contrary, I disliked milk because I could not become attached to my mother’s breast with all my soul: - and Aunt Sonya, to whom this warm milk belonged, aroused in me either surprise or condolences. And everything together seemed surrounded by mystery and mysterious. But, of course, I didn’t open up to adults. And not only because children never reveal their deepest perceptions to adults, but even more because my perceptions seemed to me so natural, common to everyone, ordinary, that they were not worth talking about; and how to find, not to mention - how was it possible to find words to express feelings and thoughts that covered the entire field of inner life, and therefore, with all their acute specificity in power, vague, elusive, inexpressible? As a child, the feeling of mystery was dominant in me; it was the background of my inner life, against which tenderness and affection for my parents were outlined. Everything around us, that which usually does not seem and is not recognized as mysterious, many familiar and everyday objects and phenomena had some kind of depth of shadows, as if in the fourth dimension, and appeared in Rembrandt’s prophetic shadows. Another incident reinforced the same feelings in me. One day I overheard adults talking about how Sonya’s aunt had involuted toenails and that she needed to have surgery. I was worried beforehand. The word “operation” seemed horror to me, although I did not understand it. I clearly remember how someone came, probably a paramedic, how all of us went into Aunt Sonya’s room, leaving me alone, how lukewarm water was needed and how they then brought out a basin with water mixed with blood. It seemed to me that the basin was full of steaming blood; her appearance struck me with mystery and horror. But this time there was an objective contemplation of horror, I realized that this time it was not me who was threatened by secret forces. 1919. III. 5. Serg[iev] Pos[ad] Spark. Something that seems ordinary and simple, the most ordinary in its frequency, often attracted my attention due to some special circumstances. And suddenly it was revealed that it was not simple. Truly, something was suddenly remembered in this simple and ordinary phenomenon, and something else, noumenal, was revealed to them, standing above this world or, more precisely, deeper than it. I believe this is the very feeling and perception in which a fetish arises: an ordinary stone, a tile, a stump reveals itself as not ordinary at all and becomes windows into another world. This happened to me more than once as a child. But while other phenomena always attracted my soul to themselves, never allowing it to be satiated, others, on the contrary, revealed their mysterious depth only in fits and starts, even individually, just once. One such perception was sparks. We then lived in Batum, in Aivazov’s house. I was about years old. Getting excited in the evening, I did not agree to go to bed for a long, long time; and when he went to bed, he still lay for hours without falling asleep, tossing from side to side and studying the pattern of the wallpaper or blanket for the millionth time. These were hours of almost torture as I lay awake in bed. And that’s why I really didn’t like going to bed early, despite persuasion. One day I'm with my aunt Yulia was sitting in the bedroom that overlooked the courtyard. At first my aunt kept me busy, read, told me stories, and then began to send me to bed. But I was particularly stubborn about something and didn’t go. Aunt said we had to go. It was dark outside. Aunt said that if I don’t go, then sleep might fly away and then I won’t fall asleep; I don’t know if she spoke, hypostatizing a dream, or if I just understood her. But I looked out the dark window - it was autumn - and I saw sparks flying; They probably lit a tagan or stove in the yard with coals. And the last one behind him, especially bright, flies somehow lonely at a distance, lagging behind. I said to my aunt: “Look, what is this?” And she: “It’s your dream that’s flying away. Now you won’t be able to sleep.” I saw sparks, as I, of course, had seen more than once before. But I felt that my aunt was deeply right, that my dream was really flying, having the invisible but undeniable form of an angel - and that, in flying away, it was doing something irreparable. I burst into tears. I felt that something had happened. I hurried to lie down, but my eyelids did not close for a long, long time. Years have passed since then. Somehow recently (1919.III. 19) I served an all-night vigil in the Church of the Red Cross. We have run out of chemical coals, we have to light the censer with simple ones from the stove, and when censing they sometimes spark. The spark from the censer flew, somehow lonely, in the dark space of the altar. And I immediately remembered how, with the same spark, “my dream flew away” in childhood. And that childish spark, in turn, awakened the memory of a fiery stream of sparks from under the grinder’s wheel, which opened to me another world, full of mysterious horror and attracting and exciting the mind. Sparks echo sparks and give news about each other. An invisible thread of sparks runs through my entire life, a fiery stream of golden rain, inseminating the mind, like Jupiter to Danae: Poisons. Since childhood, the deepest, the word “poison” has especially attracted me, even when I did not understand its meaning. The very sound of this word, “poison”, the very spelling and indeed the letter “I”, especially in its pronunciation seemed somehow insinuating, sweetish, insidious, destructive, but destructive mysteriously, without physical reasons, as if magically. Yes, I perceived poison as a kind of magic, natural, perhaps, but in its certainty, in its inevitability, in the rigor and inevitability of its action, especially mysterious and therefore especially flattering, especially alluring, promising special sweet-burning excitement. I associate this impression of the word “poison” with the word “Yankel”. Perhaps in some overheard conversations the name Yankel was mentioned - perhaps in some creepy application - I don’t know why, but Yankel, perhaps due to the presence of I and the sweet kel, seemed significantly ominous, somehow poisonous, flatteringly insidious and destructive. I think that there was an echo here of the conversation about Jewish smugglers who lived in our yard and then suddenly and mysteriously disappeared, leaving behind all their mysterious property. One day, Aunt Yulia and I were on the balcony surrounding our house in Batum. It was in Aivazov's house. As I remember now, we were on the inner balcony facing the inner side of the courtyard. Auntie, it seems, was planting flowers, which both she and I were big hunters for, in long boxes, ordered at her request by dad, along the railing of our balcony. I, on the other hand, did nothing and, out of idleness, took and put into my mouth a piece of green, like tissue paper, and, having chewed it, began to knead the lumps, attracted by the brightness of the green color. This green color, reminiscent of the green of emerald and the green of sea water on the pier, water playing with a greasy sheen and visible through the cracks of the pier, attracted me with its brightness and its secret, it seemed to me, hostility. Aunt, seeing what I was doing, pulled me back in fear: “What are you doing! Throw away this paper quickly,” I threw it away hastily, “and never put green paper in your mouth.” Remember, it is painted with green paint called Yankel - this Yankel paint is very poisonous and you can die from it.” “Yankel,” I shuddered. So here it is, “Yankel”, so I was in awe of this word. At least that's what I heard. Now I think that my aunt said not “Yankel,” but “arsenic,” because the green paint is really arsenic, but instead of the unfamiliar word arsenic, also with the mysterious yak-ja, I heard the more familiar Yankel, already colored with toxicity. And since then I can’t see this translucent, thin green paper, especially if it touches my lips, it seems like someone is about to get poisoned. And, probably due to the connection with her, I am strangely attracted and attracted by emeralds, but they seem poisonous and secretly destructive, very magical. And I feel that there is some kind of echo here, again, with the greenness of grapes, which was once not given to me. Tones around greenery, sometimes bluish, sometimes yellowish, nourished me as a child across the sea. I spent my childhood and adolescence in constant and insatiable, and always insatiable, contemplation of the sea. Rarely a day passed without us children, that is, Lyusya and I, not visiting the shore two or even three times. And the sea never got boring. The impression from him never slipped through the soul, it was always absorbed by the whole being. We walked in the morning, after tea, taking with us for breakfast sandwiches with cutlets and cheese, and sometimes also fresh or dried fruits, chestnuts, nuts or monpasiers, yellow or green - again some echoes of those exciting flowers. Nanny or Aunt Yulia brought us to the boulevard in a few minutes. Then, about thirty-five years ago, the sea was still at the first alley of the boulevard; Only later did it retreat so much from the plantings - thujas and cypresses - despite their almost daily addition, following the receding sea. We played in the sand of the alley or walked down the crisp gravel to the water itself. The pebbles were smooth, as if artificially ground. I knew from the adults that they were really ground by the sea surf, but I half believed it: didn’t these pebbles grow in the sea, like shells or corals? Are they not the formations of living beings? They dug in the fine gravel, near the water, looking for colored transparent pebbles - opalescent blue and violet chalcedony, mysteriously glowing throughout the entire mass with an internal flicker, as if filled with light. Ribbon agates, thin-layered orange and red carnelians with white layers, occasionally amethysts, yellow and green quartzites, and sometimes transparent topazes, like the Monpasier that we brought with us, and many others - it was rare that we came home not loaded with booty. These stones looked like artistically careless handmade beads scattered from an underwater necklace; in my mind they became related and almost continuously turned into Venetian beads that dad bought for us in a shop on the pier. The mysterious layers of carnelians and agates, their finest layered structure alarmed my thoughts: I felt some kind of hidden meaning of nature here, and it seemed that it was about to be revealed, a secret would be revealed. Sometimes we went to the sea with dad. Dad explained about our findings that these layers were formed from centuries of sedimentation in underground wells and caves. And I saw in these layers settled centuries, fossilized time. I could never comprehend time as irrevocably flowing away; always, as far as I can remember, the conviction lived in me that it goes somewhere, maybe it flows into these very wells and caves and hides there, falls asleep; but someday and somehow you can come close to it - and then it will wake up and come to life. The past has not passed away, this feeling has always stood before me more clearly than ever, and in early childhood it was even more convincing than later. I felt the viscous reality of the past and grew up with the feeling that I was actually touching what was many centuries ago and entering into it with my soul. What really occupied me in history - Egypt, Greece - stood separated from me not by time, but only by some kind of wall, but through this wall I felt with my whole being that it was still here. The layered stones seemed to me direct proof of the eternal reality of the past: here they are - layers of times - sleeping on each other, tightly pressed, in silent peace; but I will strain, and they will speak to me, I am sure, they will flow with the rhythm of time, they will rustle like the surf of centuries. Subsequently, almost because of this childish tender feeling for layering, I became interested in geology - specifically layered formations, and I trembled and felt cold delight at the sight of clear geological layers. After all, this is literally a book, just like a book - isn’t time settled? They occupied oval flat limestone pebbles, with which we filled our pockets full. Sometimes you came across pebbles with a natural hole; we put a strange stone on a stick and admired it, partly superstitiously worshiped it. The mysterious hole, with its smooth, as if sucked, edges, beckoned the mind and drew everyone into it. The holes generally seemed like the mysterious dwellings of the Unknown and echoed the coveted caves, dungeons, cellars and dark attics, with pits, ditches, tunnels and long corridors; behind everyone, or I recognized the forces of the primary darkness in which everything that exists was born, and I wanted to penetrate there and settle there forever. But other voids are too dangerous to be approached with impunity; and these holes in the stones, light, clean, smooth, warm in the sun, are quite within my strength. And I stuck my finger there and looked into them thousands of times, all with the same feeling of their mystery, which neither the accessibility of these holes nor the explanations of my father or aunt could dispel. As an adult, I learned about such stones that among the peasants they are called “chicken gods” and are hung in chicken coops as amulets for chickens against brownies and all sorts of diseases. How this answered my childhood thoughts and how I recognized my mysterious pebbles in these “chicken gods”! On the shore, with the help of sticks, they built sea bays; or they stuck sticks in the sand and, with the same sense of mystery, peered into the dark hole where the sea water was collected. It was nice to see the squeezed out and gray sand as if swelling and turning black from the influx of moisture. Sometimes they raked up the coastal gravel and found a wet layer, and below - rising and falling, living, breathing water there. Digging a hole, even a small one, has always seemed like a kind of magical action: the very essence of the hole is mysterious. What then? - There is living water in the pit. Everything is on the water and in the water, and not in simple, understandable drinking water, but in mysterious, bitterly salty, attractive and inaccessible water. In Batum, this thought about water was especially natural, because Batum is really all in the water and on the water. They examined this water in the pits - they sucked a finger dipped in it - they were surprised at its bitter-salty taste. Totally tears. And doesn’t this mean that I myself am from the same sea water? There are mutual correspondences everywhere, no matter what you take on, everything leads again and again to the sea. We caught jellyfish with sticks. Beautiful flowers with opalescent cups, filled with light, swayed in the water, gently surrounded by a purple border. We knew that they were burning themselves, but we took it for granted: one cannot approach the mysterious with impunity. And if you take them out, they will melt on the warm stones into colorless mucus, and there will be nothing left. Someone told us that if you dry jellyfish between sheets of construction paper, changing them often, you will still be left with a beautiful, delicate mesh. I did not deny this, but it seemed like a distant fairy tale, and my immediate experience simply said: jellyfish are products of the same sea, the same water and nothing more, and that’s why they float into the water. There is water in the earth, there is water in me, jellyfish are also water... Different in appearance, but one in essence. Among the sea's emissions, it was always surprising to find horned chilim nuts, blackened from being in the water. We were afraid of them; their relationship with sea devils seemed undoubted, and therefore we tried not to touch these strange nuts with our hands, and when we picked them up, it was with caution and caution: who knows what they really are and how they will behave. The abyss of the sea is full of secrets and surprises. True, adults say that these are nuts, and adults, of course, are right, but adults in general do not touch the mysterious side of everything around them - either they do not notice it, or they hide it from us, probably so as not to frighten us; after all, they never tell us about such obviously existing things as devils, mermaids, goblins, they don’t even talk about cute elves. And we, I don’t know where, somehow found out about all this a long time ago, despite all the educational barriers put in place. So we chill: they, that is, the adults, think that we will not sleep at night, and therefore they deliberately say that they are just nuts. Or maybe it just looks like nuts? Why are they so black? Why are they with horns? Often the sea gave us white tubes. Dad said that these were the roots of reeds and that their deposit was probably the Chorokh River, the mouth of which is not far from Batum. But even here, such a simplification of the matter was both believed and not believed. Everything is too clear to dear dad. Why are these “roots” so white and fat, like worms? Why are they tubes? Something is wrong in the adults’ explanation: the strangeness of these “roots” is too obvious. White tubes, they are alive - and they will be, and then you shouldn’t go deeper and expose their secret, since they want to be in the unknown. They pretended to be roots - well, let’s pretend that we believe it, but we’ll just pretend so as not to offend or anger them. And it seemed undeniable: it was not for nothing that they were lying on the shore, but that they were brought to us, precisely to us, by the Sea. It gave us many other pleasures - it made us happy, knowing that we would come to it and that we love “surprises,” even that very word. Shards of bottle glass, worn by the surf into tender matte pieces, heated in the sun; also gently ironed by the same movement of the waves, sticks and pieces of wood, clean, light, warm; also smoothed cobs from corn cobs. Sometimes, after a storm, there was some fish, seaweed or shells on the shore - and then there was no end to the joy, I was filled with excitement, my heart was beating so hard that it seemed ready to jump out. I remember that sometimes, very rarely, they found a seahorse, and once after a very strong storm I even came across a needlefish, which was then kept in my collection of rarities for many years. Looking back now at my childhood, I see the exceptional poverty of the Batumi coast with waste and the excellent insignificance of our finds; Apart from the pebbles, which were really nice, we didn’t find anything valuable or interesting. But then these finds delighted me endlessly, even though I was a spoiled child, they pleased me like gifts from the great blue Sea, gifts, signs of attention, trust and patronage to me personally. It lived its own life before us, hourly changing its color, now covered with lambs or frowning, now, on the contrary, resting languidly, lazily, barely splashing on the shore. In another place our finds would be worth nothing; but here, on the seashore, it was special. Green-blue in the distance and green-yellow near, the colors that attracted my soul and captivatingly invited my entire being from the very first impressions of childhood, they comprehended everything and decorated everything. The gifts of the sea, like a bow, led through the soul and evoked a tremulous feeling - not a feeling, but like a sound bursting from the chest - a premonition of deep, mysterious and native depths, like news from the chrysoberyl and aquamarine depths of existence. After all, these green depths were a mysterious solution to the cavernous, obvious darkness, dear, dear to the point of constriction of the heart. And the pieces of wood, turned by the sea, were smooth, warm, like the warm smooth stones, everything had a salty taste and everything smelled of a faint iodine smell - it was dear to the heart, its own. I knew: these sticks, these stones, these algae are affectionate news and an affectionate gift from my, motherly, green twilight. I looked and remembered, I smelled and I also remembered, I licked and I remembered again, I remembered something distant and eternally close, the most cherished, the most essential, which cannot be closer. This iodine, inviting and ever-calling smell of the sea; this calling, ever-calling noise of oncoming and escaping waves, merging from an infinite number of individual dry noises and individual hissing sounds, rustles, splashes, dry blows, infinitely meaningful in its monotonous monotony, always new and always significant, calling and resolving its call, to call again and again, stronger and stronger; the sound of the surf, all consisting of verticals, all crumbly, like a Gothic cathedral, never viscous, never stretchy, never sticky, never, although with moisture, but not wet, never containing any chest and guttural sounds; this greenness of sea water, calling into its depths, but not sweet and not sticky, fluorescent and illuminating with an internal flicker, also crumbly and also infinitely fine light, spread throughout its entire substance, always new, always significant - all this together, calling and dear, merged forever into one, into one image of the mysterious life-creative depth; and since then the soul, soul and body, has been yearning for it, searching and not finding, not seeing again what it was looking for - even in the newly visible, but now differently, only externally perceived sea. I can no longer see that sea, the blissful sea of ​​blissful childhood - except perhaps in myself. It probably went where time also goes - into the realm of noumena. But this noumenon was once truly seen, smelled, and heard by me. And I know more firmly than I know everything else that I learned later, that my knowledge is truer and deeper, although it has left me, gone, but still forever with me. But sometimes individual phenomena will suddenly stir up this secret knowledge, and it will again be revealed and lead to awe. In fluorescent substances, especially in the apple-green glow of the Crookes tube, I see it again, just a little, the sea of ​​my childhood; in the smell of seaweed, even a bottle of iodine tincture, I smell that metaphysical sea, as I hear its surf in the oncoming and receding rhythms of Bach’s fugues and preludes and in the dry ringing noise of stirring heat. But I remember my childhood impressions and I am not mistaken in them: on the seashore I felt face to face with my dear, lonely, mysterious and endless Eternity - from which everything flows and into which everything returns. She called me, and I was with her. // In my soul there invariably stands the call of the sea, the crumbling sound of the surf, an endless self-luminous surface in which I discern sparkles, smaller and smaller, down to the smallest particles, but which never smudges. And my body cries out for the salinity of the sea, for air, salty and winnowed with iodine, also crumbly air, carrying tiny crystals of salt, and sometimes it feels sweet to touch at least a bottle of iodine tincture. I am painfully hungry for the taste of the sea, sea fish, lobster - I am hungry for sea food, and it seems that if I came across a bunch of seaweed, I would eat it all. But you “want” what you need and what your body lacks. I also lack those taste and nutritional substances that, according to evolutionists, according to Kenton, for example, were primary in life. True, I don’t believe the evolutionists at all; but, it seems, Kenton himself did not develop his theory not for rational reasons, but by telling himself a sweet fairy tale based on childhood sea impressions. If students and followers understood what the theories of their teachers were actually based on, what intuitions of childhood were alien to rationality, they would cease to be jurare in verba magistri3, but at the same time they would more deeply comprehend the hidden, child-genius personality of these teachers. And one more thing: in mathematics, the native Fourier series and other expansions speak to me internally, almost physically, representing every complex rhythm as a collection, as an infinite collection of simple ones. They tell me native continuous functions without derivatives and discontinuous functions everywhere, where everything falls apart, where all the elements are placed upright. Listening to myself, I discover in the rhythm of my inner life, in the sounds that fill my consciousness, these forever remembered rhythms of waves and I know that they are looking for their conscious expression in me through the scheme of those mathematical concepts. Yes. Because the rhythmic sound of the wave is cut up by smaller and more frequent rhythms, rhythms of the second order, these - in turn - are dissected by rhythms of the third order, those of the fourth, etc., etc., no matter how far we go, the ear does not hear the last dismemberment, already further individuated, inarticulate, like a chest sound given to consciousness, but the sound always seems to be loose, and the continuity of the wave is still more and more indented, ad infinitum dissected and therefore always providing food for mental comprehension. Subsequently, when I heard the famous Rostov ringing, where increasingly frequent rhythms are intertwined, overlapping each other, I again remembered the rhythmic structure of the sea surf and Bach’s fugue, the primordial rhythms of my soul. In fact, the sound of the surf is made up of the noise from the falling of individual drops of sea water. Leibniz claims that we do not hear these individual falls and only the total noise reaches us. But this is not true, we hear them, we hear the fall of a drop, and the fall of parts of a drop, and so on to infinity, when we listen, when we enter into the impression formed from the surf in the very heart, in the depths of our soul: there we discover the endless flow of sound, always flowing, always clear and dry in its smallest elements. The mysterious, endless surface of the sea is infinite in its content, in its sound, just as it is infinite in its granularity, the finest granularity of its glow. The murmur of the sea is an orchestra of an infinite number of instruments. There is one sound that is related to it in content and also arises in the birthing depths of existence. This is a pattern of rhythms catching up and overtaking each other, when drops fall - also drops - in caves where water oozes from the arches and walls. And there – in the rhythms – one can hear more and more rhythms, and also ad infinitum. They beat like countless pendulums, setting the time of all world life, different times and different pulses of countless living beings. And when you enter the watchmaker’s workshop, you can again hear a similar noise from many pendulums, also native, also reminiscent of the bowels of the earth and the depths of the sea. Pier. In a different way, more invitingly, closer, but more mysterious and attractive, this depth drew my being on the pier. Large wooden piles and beams driven into the seabed seem to be carved with mysterious hieroglyphs - the exits of woodworms. And I remembered well that it is in such holes that unknown creatures, beech trees, live, about which my nanny once told me, when I was completely absorbed in looking at the dark passage in the balcony post, she said: “The beech tree lives here,” in response to my overly persistent questions. I understood perfectly well, even then I understood that only a simple person would reveal the truth to me, and, having learned it from the nanny, I immediately internally agreed that this was exactly so, but, of course, in order not to get into unnecessary conversations, I hid my discovery from my parents and only remained meaningfully silent when they told me about worms. So here, on the pier, there were countless of these beech trees, and, moreover, they were no longer hiding and had written very mysterious letters on the stilts. Thick boards were laid on these piles, and there were wide gaps between them. The boards are always clean, as in general everything related to maritime affairs is always clean. The dead, rotten and flabby layer is always wiped off from them, but in some places tar, oil, and tar are spilled. It smells of tar, resins, sea and various exotic goods, bales of which are stacked right there. Strange roots are scattered - madder, turmeric, and some others. In different places, whole towers of - according to the estimate at that time - thick, extremely thick ropes were stacked, vigorously smelling of tar and resin, like the coils of giants. Through the cracks of the flooring, dark green shiny water is visible underfoot, the surface is undisturbed, slowly and lazily swaying, oily, and along it there are oily, barely noticeable movements, forming a large sliding network of green snakes. What are these golden-green snakes? Where are they from? This question has always been in my head, and, my God, how much I thought about it! Many times I asked it out loud, but received a perplexed answer that it only seemed to be due to the movement of the water. But the answer did not satisfy me deeply. I felt that the question itself was not understood, that they were perplexed at my question. And I am not understood because what I saw was not seen. I saw snakes playing on the surface, shimmering with emerald and chrysolite, enchantingly beautiful and affectionate, kind gentle snakes that want to enter into communication with me. I saw them, I felt them and knew that they were gentle, kind and beautiful snakes. I just wanted to get confirmation of my feelings, to hear in detail, to find out how to get closer to them, how to touch them, kiss them and explain things to them. And they simply denied their existence to me, and not only their existence, but in general the existence of anything special that I saw in the play of water. And then for a long time I hid my question and what I saw within myself. Then, after a while, I asked it again, but again - the same misunderstanding. I heard the answer I needed about cute green snakes and confirmation of my acquaintance with them only much later, already as a student, from student Anselmus in Hoffmann’s “The Golden Pot”. Here, at the pier, the water was especially mysterious. Transparent, rich green, like a huge emerald: and everything glowed, filled with light, poisonous and full of threat, but also filled with creative powers. Slowly, glossy, barely visible waves slid across its oily surface, lazily caressing the pilings of the pier and the side of the steamer. With their cups and tentacles outstretched, large and small jellyfish basked in the water. Their bodies, opalescent with a bluish light, floated slowly by, swaying and swaying in the emerald moisture. Schools of small fish swam by, and occasionally the silhouette of a larger fish could be seen in the depths. Here and there the surface of the water shimmered with rainbow oil stains. Bales were carried out from the steamer, from which mysterious roots or seeds fell; They carried cages with parrots, bunches of bananas, coconuts, bags of American triangular nuts, ground pistachios. All sorts of languages ​​and dialects were heard. On the pier one could see people of various nationalities - Greeks, Turks, Armenians, Georgians, French, English, Belgians, Germans, Italians, etc., etc. etc., even the blacks, whose colony was located not far from Batum - who weren’t here! And everyone is in special clothes. Everything was unusual - everything: smells, sounds, and colors - supported one another, arousing a feeling of the mysterious. And most importantly, there is a lot, a lot, a lot of everything... There is no end to the productive power of nature. And all this “a lot” is brought by this transparent, green, fluorescent surface of the sea. In its depths lurk countless lives, strange and at the same time beautiful animals and plants, each of which is internally connected with me, internally correlates with my personal life, sends outflows of its being into it and recognizes it as an equal among equals, as a member of the infinite kingdom of a mysterious, flickering fluorescent light of life. My father told us about travels to distant countries and, it seems, he himself was fascinated by pictures of exotic or far-northern nature. My aunt also told me. The humid, salty and resinous air, together with the stories beckoning into the distance, turned all attention, all the soul to the steamships and lucky people sailing along the ridge of the sea to distant countries where elastic palm trees rise, burdened with coconuts and dates; where red and green parrots sway on the branches of extraordinary trees, and mysterious, triangular and dark, American nuts click, and they speak, of course, in Russian, strange sayings full of mysterious meaning; where cute hummingbirds flutter among huge bright and fragrant flowers; where giraffes stretch their necks higher than the tallest trees, where giant Rafflesia Arnoldi grow and float on the waters like pillows, one and a half, two arshins across, lush Victoria Regia, on which I so wanted to sit and lie. Broad-leaved bananas burst under the weight of the bunches. Variegated and mysterious orchids sit like birds on the branches of trees, sending down their roots like white fat worms. Monkeys feast on bananas and throw skins at clumsy elephants. Spicy and warm breezes blow between the thick vines: these are countless fragrant trees - cloves, cardamom, nutmeg, star anise - I thought star anise was a tree - and curly lashes of vanilla dissolve in the air and fill it with their smells. The very word aromas seemed so full-bodied and meaningful. Huge prickly cacti bloom with white and red corollas. And all these sounds and smells are against the backdrop of the surf of the blue-blue sea, like pearl waves flowing onto the golden sands of the flat shore. In the sea, wonderful corals bloom, strange fish swim, monstrous lobsters and crabs crawl. Of course, right there, but somewhat further away, in the shadow of consciousness, as not very pleasant, are whales, sperm whales, and sharks, and especially hammerfish, sawfish, and narwhal. Here, here in Batum, everything conceals its mysterious essence; there, in distant overseas countries, it appears in overwhelming splendor and grandeur. And all this endless wealth of colors, flowers, smells, which made my mind numb and spiraled my spirit with excitement - all this fullness is produced by the sea. This whole overseas world seemed in my imagination as if it had grown, as if rising from the blue, deep blue sea, this world washing and feeding it. // There, under the rays of the burning sun, the sea is more frank, there it shows its ebbs and flows, which I wanted to see almost to the point of nausea, to the point of palpitations. There, columns of water rush across the sea - tornadoes, there the waves rise high, as tall as five-story buildings. But here, too, it is the same sea, but hiding its strength and its life in the mystery of its waves. I listened to the waves. The waves come languidly, like leading distant countries out of the unknown, one, two, three... But then suddenly the wave is stronger and, when you swim, it can knock you off your feet. Then - again waves, lazy, caressing, several of them, and then again stronger. I asked why the waves are not the same. They told me something, that I don’t remember. But even without an answer I knew why: when someone is irritated and restrained, he speaks as if calmly, but suddenly he will insist on some word, and irritation will be revealed. So is the sea. It wants to hide its power, but from time to time it speaks out in a strong wave. Lying on the sun-warmed pebbles and gravel, I spent hours looking at the sea. It was furrowed with blue-steel stripes, its surface was not uniform. Why these stripes and spots? The color of the sea instantly changed, as soon as the slightest cloud crossed the sun: the sea frowned, clearly dissatisfied. Sparks flashed like goldfish on the sea surface - was it possible to doubt that something significant was happening in the sea? In response to my questions, the elders explained something to me, but these explanations went past the questions, and I did not even consider it necessary to challenge them: the elders loved me so much and so little, it seemed to me, understood the true meaning of my questions. Every question already presupposed some answer, or at least some direction of the answer. But the adults’ explanations did not take into account this meaning and simply did not recognize what, in fact, constituted my question: they destroyed the question, my main question about the life of the Sea. Yes, I saw, I felt that the sea lives, and I accepted its life as a primary fact that did not need further explanation - I accepted it on a par with the self-awareness of my own life. When I asked “why?” about green snakes, about the changeable color of the sea surface, about the breaking rhythm of the surf, about sticks sharpened by the sea and about many other similar phenomena, then, firstly, I wanted to receive confirmation of what I myself knew at the very core - that the sea lives, that it is a living and mysterious creature; I wanted to hear the same thing from those around me, a kind of amen to my experience. And secondly, already by the general recognition of this fact, I sought details about the meaning of individual phenomena of his life, about flashes of light, about smiles and threats of the sea. They answered me in the spirit that there was no such thing as a living phenomenon that attracted me: the adults made this phenomenon something random and external, dependent on random and external causes. They answered me that it was “just a reflection of light,” “just a current on the surface,” “just waves,” etc. I wanted to delve deeper into the life of the sea, which, I repeat, was a fact for me; I searched for those secret forces of inner life that produce this phenomenon. And the adults brought the phenomenon to the surface, saying that it was very simple and superficial. “I know better that it is not simple, that it is not without reason. I will be convinced of this more than once. And I ask you to tell me what place this non-simple occupies among the various particulars of the primary fact, which is also not simple.” Translating my thoughts at that time into a later language - and I know that I am correctly conveying the essence of my feelings and vague thoughts - I would say by example: “I see a man; his life is a fact for me. So, without denying this fact, explain why he smiled, as if for no reason, and now frowned. Explain what impressions or thoughts caused the play on his face?” In response to me: “It was his such and such muscles that contracted, because the corresponding impulse passed along such and such nerve pathways,” something like this. But would this really be an answer to my question, an answer that would deny the very question about the meaning of the phenomenon: after all, I have no doubt that this man’s smile expressed some kind of internal movement. This is how I perceived the adults’ answers about the meaning of certain phenomena in the life of the Sea. Of course, I stuck to my guns and tried to feel these phenomena myself. I spent hours listening to the complex rhythms of the surf, to the play of sparkles and colors of the sea surface. I was especially interested in the sea foam. What is this white mesh that constantly appears on the surface of the sea, only to melt again? Doesn't she really live? It seemed to me like a huge creature floating on the sea surface, and I wanted to catch this creature and look at it closer. But it was not given into the hands, and only some uninteresting air bubbles remained in the palm. Foam, like jellyfish, was not amenable to research and could only exist in its own element. Didn’t this teach us to think that there are many phenomena and creatures that will turn into nothing, extracted by the researcher from their living environment, but that this does not indicate their non-existence? For example, dreams. They appear while you sleep and disappear when you wake up. But does this mean that they do not exist? Isn’t it more accurate to say that they disappear, pulled into wakefulness, just as jellyfish and foam melt in the air. Hotel "France". Venetian shops. Visits to the pier are associated in my memory with shrimp. Usually, after the pier, dad took us to the embankment hotel, the best in the city; A Frenchman held her and gave her the sweet name “France.” “Hotel “France” - “Hotel de France” - was listed on the sign. It seemed to me that France was the limit of sophistication and cultural acuity; in France everything is elegant, everything is consistent, and nothing can be more significant than the French language, in contrast to German, which I despised, and Germany, which I did not want to hear about. Philistinism, bad taste, pedantry, eccentricity, stinginess and hoarding - Germany in my mind consisted of only this. True, from an early age I knew, knew, and spoke by heart “Faust” from Vronchenko’s translation, and the names and music of German classics constantly sounded in my thoughts. More on this later, however. But I did not relate these phenomena to Germany and considered them simply human. Culture is France. And therefore the Hotel France, although not France itself, but only a hotel, also seemed something worthy of recognition: the sense of the reality of names and faith in names meant a lot here. In front of this hotel, on a wide asphalt terrace, under a canvas canopy, among tubs with orange trees and boxes with climbing plants, there were tables, right on the street. We would sit there, and dad would order us our ever-favorite shrimp. Sometimes we took them home with us in paper bags, especially for me and especially for Lucy, of course. Her main pleasure was - outrageousness, which mom would never allow, but dad encouraged - eating on the street. It was so entertaining, in view of the pier and the sea, to gnaw on small crustaceans that smelled of the same sea. Our outrage, however, was very innocent, because Batum was not much larger than a decent village, and walking along its streets in those ancient times was not very different from a country walk and a picnic. Sometimes we walked further along the same embankment and, having reached the end of it, turned into a narrow alley to the right, and then to the left. This was the Turkish quarter. There were fishermen's taverns and small shops in booths that could barely accommodate a couple of visitors. On the street, with their long legs stretched out, Adjarians, Turks and Greeks sat on small pebbles, playing backgammon or phlegmatically sipping a hookah. The whole quarter was considered dangerous because in those days it was inhabited by smugglers. But it was extremely unique and firmly etched in my memory. It seems that dad did not come here entirely without fear. They say that people were robbed here in broad daylight, and it was not recommended to go here in Batum. But there was a shop here, the goal of our aspirations, and we entered this shop as old acquaintances. She was kept by an air-hardened and browned man who was either a Venetian or a Greek. He traded in threads of red coral, various pink and red coral things, shells, Venetian beads and, at the same time, thick ropes soaked in tar, ropes, twines, and fishing equipment. The little shop was fabulously good. Hastily knocked together from barely hewn boards, covered in tar, small, so that you couldn’t move there, all smelling of a thick resinous smell and the sea, algae and seafood, in this rough shell it contained so many beautiful mysterious things - like the splintered shell of a pearl. However, this shop really did have pearls. The corals attracted me with the brightness of their abstract color and the strangeness of their angular outlines - like paraffin deposits on a red Christmas tree candle, my sister and I said then, and this closeness of the corals to the Christmas tree made them especially tempting. They felt a mysterious life and their own magic; I didn’t like the color red, but because of its abstraction and non-stickiness, I couldn’t resist it. The seller - he was probably a smuggler - was pulling out huge tridacnas from under the counter, where dried and smoked fish were laid out, and I remembered that a tridacna can even capture an eagle in its grip and it will not escape, dying with the tide of the sea. The branched white corals looked like sea plants; although I knew that this was the home of small animals, I didn’t really believe it in my heart. It’s proper to speak like that, I thought, when you’re talking to adults; like many other natural-scientific explanations, it seemed to me a kind of conventional courtesy, a euphemism to avoid touching on secrets, but in fact not relevant to the point. But the best of all were the Venetian beads. // They were all handmade. Ever since I can remember, with unmistakable clarity, I immediately, almost without looking, distinguished between hand-made and machine-made production. And although machines and their products occupied my mind greatly, directly, either aesthetically or more viscerally, I despised machine things: in my perception the whole world was permeated with the life diffused in it, organizing it, the whole world had an internal play of depth, and machine things seemed soulless, somehow flat, not at all mysterious, thoroughly understandable and had the appearance completely according to Mill and Bain. In the work of a human hand, whatever it may be, in the roughest, there is always a mysterious flicker of life, just as this flicker is directly felt in some shell, a stone ground by sea waves, in the layering of agate or carnelian, in the finest plexuses of the veins of a leaf. A machine-made thing does not flicker, but shines, gleams dead and impudently. And it would be in vain to think that children do not notice this difference; no, they feel it at a very early age. As for me, in my experience there was a line of division between manual and machine even deeper than later. It was extremely discriminating, like between yes and no, like between white and black. This is how I used to think with a feeling of complete confidence since childhood. I clearly remember, although I was not always able to say clearly, but directly, almost physiologically, as the state of my body, I felt with complete vividness the qualitative difference between manual and machine. Subsequently, on this feeling of being tame, a penchant for Ruskin appeared, but, being busy with physics and mathematics, I learned about Ruskin very late, when the most important spiritual crisis had already occurred in me, which will be discussed later. And now I turn to Venetian beads. They were extremely truthful and therefore beautiful; each revealed exactly what it is in its primary essence, while processing served only to reveal this essence; it was an exposure, not a vestment of the essence. Each of the beads breathed life and merged with all of nature, surpassing nature in its own way. Some are made from paste, rectangular blocks, cubes, and round or flattened ones - interspersed with paste of other colors. It was nice that they were not painted, that their surface was not given a special look, but that their material was visible in them as genuine. Loves and their forms, which in their outlines had nothing mechanically correct, were purposeful - all suitable to a certain type insofar and to the extent as and to what extent this is required by the deed itself; these beads did not have mechanically sharp edges, mechanically straight lines, or mechanically identical patterns. The beads made one feel the hand shaping them and were direct imprints of creative power. And that’s why I wanted to touch them with my hand, touch them with my fingers and palm, I wanted to toss them in my hand, I wanted to suck them in my mouth. Other beads were glass, mostly dark green and dark blue. And I want to say about them too. Their color was perceived precisely as the color of the glass mass, as an essential property of the material, - not as something decorative externally, arbitrarily and accidentally. Their unpolished surface with naturally formed parallel irregularities in the form of the finest strokes; their internal, color irregularities parallel to these strokes revealed the deepest structure of the very substance of the beads; you could feel how the softened glass dough stretched viscously during the making of these beads, how the forces of surface tension acted, giving the semi-liquid mass its shape - in general, you could feel the imprinted struggle and interaction of the forces that formed the beads. These beads were imprinted in the consciousness as frozen first appearances, as the deep truth of matter exposed by an ingenuous artisan. It was clear to me: beads are less artificial than random pieces of matter, for art here led not to concealment, but to the revelation of the will of the material itself, helped it become what it itself wanted, while the machine rapes this will. Through these beads, through them, the substance of the world taught to love itself and admire itself. And I fell in love with it - not the matter of physicists, not the elements of chemistry, not the protoplasm of biology, but the substance itself, with its truth and its beauty, with its morality. I felt with trepidation that the beads of this Venetian smuggler were not beautiful, but truly beautiful, just as the perceived depth of being is generally beautiful, how beautiful everything that is genuine is. They were noumenal in my childhood consciousness. And this noumenon of beads merged with the noumenon of the sea, reminiscent of its pebbles, its shells, its sometimes blue, sometimes blue-green and green water. And now I ask myself: was it not this feeling of the sea among the half-sea inhabitants of Venice that inspired them with the art of these beads, so akin to the works of the sea? Abundance. I loved the sea for its mystery - the mystery of its color that fills the entire mass, the mystery of its alluring smell and noise, the mystery of its bitter-salty water, so strikingly similar to tears, the mystery of the strange creatures living in it. There was an inner closeness between him and me. The main thing is that it did not overwhelm with abundance. That overseas world was also transcendental, it seemed almost unearthly. But in the sea itself, right next to the shore, there was no excessive productivity, and, rather, it should have been called “barren” with Homer. Qualitatively complete, it did not overwhelm with the number of its cases. I saw his creative power, but this restrained power was only a possibility and did not torment the spirit. But the coastal productivity of tropical countries and here, on the Black Sea coast, had its differences. 1923.IV.8. I had a tender and ardent love for my family, and, in fact, mainly for my elders. More precisely, tender love and a kind of infatuation were directed towards Aunt Yulia. Although older than me, she, by the nature of her character, responded to many of my feelings and, as far as I can now understand, with me she lived a life that would not have found satisfaction among adults. It was she who willingly told me touching stories about some withered plant or dead bird and, as at least it seemed to me then, she mourned the dead with me. My feeling is that in front of her I did not need to particularly hide my thoughts and feelings. True, she did not formally support them, probably at the request of her parents and for fear of upsetting her father, who was the subject of her burning and only love. But I guessed her sympathy and internally considered her a like-minded person. My mother’s sisters later told me that Aunt Yulia was sentimental. But I know very well what they mean, and I know how wrong it is. There could be no real understanding between Aunt Yulia and the other aunts, despite friendly relations. This is clear to me with all my gut. Nature is alien to them, although they are accustomed to living in luxurious gardens, they are not interested in the Caucasus, although their roots are there; in them is old age and at the same time the spiritual decrepitude of former cultures, the achieved elementaryity of interests, in some centuries distant generations the accumulated fatigue from everything sublime, a semi-conscious disappointment in the heroic embedded in the blood, the disdain of old people for the broad plans of youth. This is some kind of winglessness, but, however, until the case when you need to show real determination and real feat; here they all, I know examples, turned out to be firm and did their duty as a matter of course. // They are all kind, friendly, try to surround you with warmth and attention and know how to do this. However, this is precisely warmth; there is something blind in it. Its effect dries up almost immediately, outside a small space, there is no sonority in it, no light. When from such a warm nest you see distant mountains sparkling in the sun, then you cannot tear yourself away from this warmth. But if the nest, for the sake of greater convenience, is closed on all sides, then in the name of light you will rebel against this comfort. Aunt Julia understood this attraction to the light. Perhaps if she had lived to see my later years, she would have ceased to understand my desires, but then, in childhood, we corresponded to each other. My perception of nature was somehow approved by her. And my feeling for my aunt was probably similar to the feeling that there were no dividing barriers and there was a mutual diffusion of personality, which happens with shared and very spiritual love among adults. But, however, I am writing something not about what I wanted to write about, even seemingly the exact opposite. I allowed my father to love me, I felt a semi-mystical reverence, with a feeling of some kind of incommensurability, perhaps, in front of my mother, I had affection for my aunts and in general for many people, but I loved, tenderly and passionately, only Aunt Yulia, but also her - not as her, that is, without internal motivation, but for her attitude to nature. It’s strange for me to think now, and even more so to write, that in such a family saturated with mutual recognition and mutual love as ours, so impressionable and tender, too tender, as I was, I, in essence, perhaps, did not love anyone, that is, I loved, but I loved One. This only beloved was Nature. Maybe people hurt me as a child. Our house was too warm, full of affection, and most importantly, full of decency and cleanliness. Everything came together here. Never a single vulgar word, not a single belittling interest, no manifestation of selfishness; the constant mutual consideration of everyone towards each other with the broad, active kindness of the father towards those around him, strangers. And from those around him - recognition, respect, almost reverence for the father, for the whole family. Strangers told me about my father’s nobility, generosity, generosity, intelligence, and honesty. The nannies on the boulevard often raised a lively debate about whose lady in the city was more beautiful and better, and, after discussing all the candidates, the primacy of beauty and all merits was affirmed by the chorus of nannies invariably with the lady Florenskaya. Dad often expressed sincere admiration for Aunt Liza, in particular for the autocratic scope of her character and the rare beauty of her eyes, and in his teasing of Aunt Sonya, then still just a girl, approval was again felt. Some of the elements of this goodness are listed here at random. In fact, everything was imbued with this, or so I perceived it, in this case, both do not make a difference. But even if no one said anything in this direction to us, the children, we could not help but see the special attitude of the servants, the special recognition of acquaintances, subordinates, and colleagues. It seems to me that Dad’s character was not particularly light, and times of gloom in him were replaced by gaiety and animation. It seems to me that he could and did say something sharp, too truthful, sometimes teasing, both in one and the other stripe. But his recognition was so great that quarrels and troubles never occurred because of such excesses in words, and the same, in its way, happened with regard to his mother. Proudly shy and possessed by moral purity to the point of unsociability, she barely fulfilled the usual social requirements, she almost never visited, paid visits in such a way that she almost did not pay, in a word, despite her secular upbringing, she walked on the edge in life. And yet the ruptures, insults and quarrels that naturally should have arisen did not arise here, undoubtedly due to the force of personal recognition. We've seen it all. We not only did not see the negative properties of other people’s lives, but we could not even suspect them. In our house, it was impossible to hear the most distant hint of not only gossip and gossip, but even the communication of completely innocent news about other people’s affairs - what I’m saying is undoubtedly heard, no one could think of anything like that. I repeat again, it doesn’t matter how correctly the structure of our family is covered here, but what is important is that I, in any case, perceived it that way. Maybe the adults, being alone in the evening and laughing merrily at something, and dad was especially amused, maybe they said something else. But it didn’t reach us, it didn’t reach me. Even a number of words around which gossip usually crystallizes were decisively excluded from the home vocabulary: service, superiors, orders, awards, governors and ministers, money, salaries, brides and grooms, husbands and wives, births and deaths, funerals and weddings, priests and all sorts of theological terms, Jews and various sensitive national issues, etc., etc. etc. – you can’t list everything – these concepts, along with many others, were, at least in my childhood consciousness, taboo. No one formally forbade us to use such words and discuss corresponding concepts - except for only two: money and salary, which were considered absolutely indecent. But even without such a prohibition, from some elusive family currents, I felt from the very glimpses of my consciousness the half-decentness of some of these words and the indecentness of others. Children have an absolutely correct instinct, a dog's sense for assessing what is decent and what is indecent. There is no deep difference between bad and good, and to do bad is, of course, not good, because it will upset your parents; but, in essence, why not do it. But indecent and decent are an absolute division, and doing something indecent is worse than dying. And even worse than doing something indecent is saying it. A bad deed, bad speech, an indecent act, an indecent word - such is the gradation of the unacceptable; worse than an indecent word, more shameful, destructive, more irrevocable - nothing can be except one thing: the thought of it. In the darkness of the night, covering your head with a blanket, you don’t even dare to think such a thing, otherwise you will be crushed by some violated categorical imperative, you will burn and die of shame, even the thought that you can accidentally think such a word causes a complete shudder and stops all life for a moment. But, I repeat, indecent is not something bad or anything special; He, this indecent one, does not have such external signs to determine his indecency and explain it. Most likely, it is akin to mystical concepts, it is taboo; and only with an upper intuition did I comprehend what was taboo and what was not taboo, but, of course, no force in the world would have prompted me to ask adults what is decent and what is indecent and why this is so. True, from early childhood I was extremely shy and even more bashful. But I remember well that I assessed this feeling of indecency not as my shyness, bashfulness, or at all as my personal property, but as a right and proper feeling, exactly as they usually talk about conscience. The slightest violation of this verbal taboo, the slightest opening of a forbidden area, was inwardly severely condemned by me, because it seemed shameless, naked, rude, if we use this word in its original meaning. Being is fundamentally mysterious and does not want its secrets to be revealed in words. The surface of life about which it is righteous and permissible to speak is very thin; the rest, the roots of life, perhaps the most important thing, befits underground darkness. True, one is drawn to know it, but this must be done precisely by looking, and not blatantly examining with a close gaze - to reach the unknown “by some kind of illegitimate reasoning,” as Plato spoke about the knowledge of the primary darkness of matter, but in no way intelligible, and, in addition, together, by syllogisms. This is the meaning of my feelings of decent and indecent at that time. I remember well, he was exactly like that, although I could not have said it in these words then, and it seems to me that this is not an individually random feeling of mine and not an arbitrary subjective circle of words - a taboo established in my consciousness, but something incomparably more universal to mankind. It also seems to me that these same words are taboo among savages, whose psychology to this day I feel familiar to me? In any case, in our family there were some objective reasons, perhaps not fully recognized by the parents themselves, for the establishment of such taboos. In any case, there were two kinds of motives here: one was a moral pruderie, and the other was the same as mine, a sense of the mysteries of life, especially the life of the family, and an instinctive fear of coarsening these secrets by putting them into words and allowing conversation about them. But be that as it may, in my mind the structure of family life was exquisite. And I didn't know anything else. The child's consciousness became accustomed to this sophistication, accepted it once and for all, but accepted it as something implied, natural. It cannot be otherwise. Personal relationships cannot be other than affectionate and polite, external relationships - disinterested, honest, etc. People in general cannot be other than well-mannered, not petty, knowledgeable. A lie, even a shade of untruth, is impossible, etc., etc. No one can say a rude, naked, indecent word. In general, the whole world is built, just like our island paradise. True, from the side of my hearing I learned from somewhere that there were disturbances in the heavenly silence. But such violations did not even seem indecent to me. They were too far from the visually perceived, and if I was interested in them, albeit very weakly, it was in the order of natural science: the way adults can be interested in Siamese twins or, rather, a boa constrictor. An ill-mannered man who allows himself to talk about salary or does not answer his son’s geological or astronomical questions at any hour of the day or night seemed to me like Jack the Ripper or criminals for whom killing is like drinking a glass of tea. If someone had told me about such people, I would not have condemned them as non-humans, although in human form. Rough treatment, notorious stepmothers, inattentive fathers - really, I didn’t think about them at all, and when children’s fiction started talking about them, I related to these mythical images with much less sense of reality than most adults do to the devils of Arabian fairy tales. Everything that could be ignoble, ill-mannered, morally insensitive, rude in word and in action, became for me exactly what teachers want to make for a child in the world of mystical fauna, that is, nothing, practically nothing, words and images devoid of any reality. There is, it simply is, it goes without saying exactly what surrounds me, what cannot not be around me - these people, these relationships. I was attached to this being and to these people organically, as to my body, and moving away from them—I mean spatial distance—caused a feeling of almost bodily soreness, a stretching of some organic connections with them. This feeling is probably best compared to how one feels when one's hand is pulled strongly: it is very unpleasant, but it has not the slightest relation to a moral feeling. My sense of my body is so natural to me that I notice it only when it suffers damage. I am not grateful to my body for all its life's service, for its labors, its sufferings, its efforts, but its slightest ailment when it fulfills my will; weakness, pain, his own needs always arouse in me and in everyone annoyance, dissatisfaction, indignation. None of us thinks that, since he does not absolutely identify himself with his body and places himself in some sense above the body, he bears a moral obligation to this servant, assistant, in general, something real and living, and not a soulless machine. So, the complete moral well-being of our secluded island instilled in me an attitude towards people similar to the one described. Good people, good manners, delicacy, every kind of decency, intelligence, etc., etc. - this is implied, there is nothing to talk about, there is nothing to notice, it is even monstrous, at least in oneself, to say about a person that he is such and such, in a good sense, just as no one states that a person has two eyes, and one head. But the opposite is true - it cannot fail to be noticed. However, the one about whom it was noticed is almost not a person, and internally it would be absurd and disgusting to consider him. So, you almost don’t take some into account, because they are implied, while others are at least strange to take into account. And I, in the warm nest of the best - at least that’s how I assessed them - people, imbued with love and tender care for myself, find myself extremely lonely; only Aunt Julia, with her dull suffering and with a character less majestic than that of her father and mother, gives me a thread to the Man. I don't know how to explain my thought. Then, in a completely different sense, no longer in relation to the family, I will talk about a somewhat related state, from which I broke away with great loss of blood: I will call it somewhat approximately pharisaism. But what I want to say about our family cannot be called that. Moreover, this is neither complacency, nor American health and satiety, and, finally, least of all a sectarian sense of righteousness. This is not the same at all. But there would be no place for Dostoevsky in our family. He would have stopped short with his hysteria, I’m sure of that. A secular house, or a self-righteous house, or a godless house he would overcome and turn his entire well-being upside down. But ours was by no means prosperous; on the contrary, it was based on fatalism and a sense of the doom of all that is beautiful. That is why chaos was once and for all blocked from accessing this island: it could be destroyed, but not outraged by a scandal. Formal secularity and coldness in external relations would be indecent in our house. But the pathetic would be no less indecent. Sobs, screams, exclamations - I absolutely can’t imagine anything like that in our house. And if Dostoevsky had burst into the house with this, then I can clearly imagine that my mother would have told us children: “Go run around in the yard, Fyodor Mikhailovich is sick.” Then all the adults would look at each other and, out of delicacy, would go to their rooms. In a quarter of an hour, dad would have said to mom or aunt: “II faut lui donner un verre d’eau avec sucre,”5 and they would have sent Aunt Sonya, as the youngest, also out of delicacy, with a tray on which there would have been a tea glass—certainly faceted—with sugar water on a saucer. Aunt Sonya would have quietly left, and after a few minutes they would have decided that now it was all over, dad to mom, or vice versa, would have said: “Pauvre homme, il est tres nerveux”6, - and, pretending that nothing had happened, they would have gone to announce: “Fyodor Mikhailovich, dinner is already on the table,” and at dinner there would definitely have been a shish kebab of salmon or sturgeon with slices of tomato and onion, fresh caviar and wine, and after dinner dad would bring Dostoevsky some special Havana cigar and start talking about the latest book “Revue des deux Mon-des”, “Deutsche Rundschau” or about the new volume “Histoire Universelle par Lavisse et Rambeau” that he had just received. I have no doubt that Dostoevsky could not help but feel that this was done unintentionally, and this is the case in the family, and, harboring embarrassment, he would sincerely condemn the hysteria in himself. So, there was no place for Dostoevsky, and even his novels, although they were in the closet, were, at least openly, not read by anyone as something dubious - in contrast to the popular and proclaimed Dickens, Shakespeare, Goethe and Pushkin, which were recognized as completely and thoroughly decent. Dostoevsky, indeed, is hysterical, and complete hysteria would make life unbearable, and complete Dostoevsky would be unbearable. But, however, there are such feelings and thoughts, there are such breaks and such knots in the path of life when you can only speak out with hysteria - or not at all. Dostoevsky is the only one who fully comprehended the possibility of extreme sincerity, but without the shamelessness of exposure, and found ways to open up in words to another person. Yes, of course, this word will be hysteria and foolishness, and it is ugly and will of itself freeze in the midst of goodness, genuine goodness, but clogging the pores of the deepest human communications. Of course, for Dostoevsky to speak out, our house is not suitable, a monastery is not suitable, at least a good monastery, maybe even a church is not suitable. Dostoevsky needs a tavern, or a brothel, or a flophouse, or a criminal gathering, at least a train station - in general, where decorum has already been destroyed, where it is already so indecent that no word, no indecency can no longer increase this infinity of indecency. Then you can do what is permissible, pour yourself out, without desecrating a peaceful shelter, without offending the atmosphere itself. Dostoevsky again discovered, after the antinomies of the Apostle Paul, the salvific nature of the fall and the blessing of sin, not just some sin, according to human condemnation, of an act, but actual sin and genuine fall. Dostoevsky would have nothing to do with us. But this is a reproach not only to him, but also to the house. Unexpressed, pathetic feelings lived within the family members, to which, in fact, like an underground wind, everyone secretly listened, but each at his own expense and hiding it from others. The Beethoven knock of fate on the window was keenly felt, and mortal horror squeezed the heart of each of the members, starting from the father and ending not only with us, the children, but also with the dog, who became a member of the family. And everyone understood that this knock was heard by others, but tried by his appearance to assure everyone else that he had not heard anything. Family members who were exceptionally close to each other and in this closeness believed the purpose of life, precisely for the sake of this closeness, out of delicacy and the desire to give others a harmonious life, separated from closeness and hid within themselves in the most important, most responsible matters. I started talking about my loneliness, but in different ways, everyone was lonely. But for now I’m returning to myself. I did not like people, that is, I did not experience hostile feelings, but accepted the good as one breathes air, and did not deign to indignate the bad, since I encountered it more abstractly than vitally. I was rather indifferent even to animals and mammals - in them I felt too close a kinship to humans. And I loved the air, the wind, the clouds, the rocks were dear to me, I felt spiritually close to myself with minerals, especially crystalline ones, I loved birds, and most of all, plants and the sea. This statement, of course, must be taken restrictively: everywhere there were their exceptions, their favorites. But the general direction of my affections was precisely this. To explain my unrest around nature and the feelings that devoured me, like a furious love, like a passion, irresistible and captivating everything, I must, firstly, firmly say that, even if it seems monstrous, let it be seen as a lack of moral feeling, but it was so, without ill will, with all the strength of my being - I did not love man as such and was in love with nature. And, secondly, the very kingdom of nature was divided in my mind into two categories: one – graceful, the other – special. Every object of nature belonged to one class or another, although the basic character of this class could be expressed in it with varying degrees of certainty. I was attracted mainly by objects and creatures that were either captivatingly graceful or sharply special. The elegant somehow correlated with Aunt Yulia, and the special – with my mother. 1923. IV10. The graceful thing was filled with air and light, it was light and cherishedly close. I loved him with all the fullness of tenderness, admiring to the point of constricted breathing, to the point of acute pity, why I could not completely and completely merge with him, why I could not forever absorb him into myself and enter into him myself. As far as I understand myself, I have never been hysterical and have been mentally strong. But I had heightened impressionability, a never-ending inner vibration of my entire being from cherished impressions. This is an almost physical feeling of being like a string, or rather a Chladniy plate, along which nature leads with a bow: not in the soul, but in the whole organism, almost audible to the ear, a high and elastic pure sound vibrates, and in thoughts schematic images are formed, well, simply – Chladniy figures as symbols of world phenomena. I write and am almost sure that I will remain incomprehensible. In these words they will want to hear comparisons and attempts at poetry, but I want to say - to squeeze out of myself - the most sober, most literal description, some kind of physiological picture. It consisted in the fact that everything in me, every vein, was filled with ecstatic sound, which was my knowledge of the world. This sound, this trembling of everything internal gave rise to patterns, most likely of a mathematical order, and they were my categories of knowledge. Not only now, in hindsight, assessing my perceptions as heightened, but even then I have repeatedly heard instructions from adults in this sense. I had extreme visual acuity, and, as often happens, it was precisely due to the excessive susceptibility of the eye that my vision was then severely deteriorated by myopia. I remember how, in the distance of the sea or on the mountains, I saw details that were accessible to others only with the help of strong marine binoculars; and adults often used me, without themselves suffering from a lack of vision, like with eyes or binoculars. “Pavlik, look who’s riding there,” “How many people are on that boat?”, “Can’t you see the birds over the sea?” - such invitations still sound to me as a constant motive on walks. When a needle or some small thing was lost among the stones, in the forest, or in the room, the same Pavlik was sure to set out to look for it: “You have good eyes.” I don’t remember a time when something lost, some small screw, hook, etc., escaped my eyes. I had an inner confidence that since there was something, I could not help but see it. Our walks were for me continuous observation and constant discoveries. The smallest plants, pebbles, and bugs could not remain out of my sight. I constantly caught penknives, coins, and various things in the forest, from stones, and on the streets. Of course, here, in addition to optical, so to speak, vigilance, constant attention had a lot of power: my mind was never relaxed and sluggish and idle, it was interested in everything, and therefore my gaze was fixed on everything. And now, with severe myopia, on the streets and on walks I constantly see a lot that my companions with good vision do not see, although now this visible thing is not always interesting to me. And then everything was always extremely entertaining, that is, in such a way that the overflowing consciousness could not contain more. This vigilance was not analytical, it did not exaggerately highlight individual elements, and the main thing that I saw was the form. Some inexplicable inclinations in me produced subtle shapes of objects, barely perceptible from rational schemes. There were such forms in relation to which it seemed that some kind of indescribable undulation in the world, a slightly anticipated elastic bend, was so close to the soul that they lived in it, like the soul of the soul, and that one could rather tear oneself away from oneself than these inflections of forms would become, albeit a beautiful, but external spectacle. My inner life in such forms and other similar impressions rested more firmly and gathered into more dense centers than in myself. The perception of colors was very bright, with a subtle discrimination of color shades. But at the same time, I remember that my favorite elegant color was predominantly blue, while in green, when it is warmed by yellowness, I felt the fullness of everything special. This yellow-green color was for me something like infrared, and my spectrum of beauty and mysticism no longer extended beyond it. Of course, I saw and distinguished yellow; orange and red; but these colors belonged to the realm of indecent. To love them, to admire them, to delve into them, and even to notice them and talk about them seemed to me rude, ill-mannered, clear evidence of bad taste. I do not think that the reason for such condemnation was any overheard judgments of elders; in any case, not only such judgments were valid. Yes, if I had listened to my elders in this regard, then the color green would have been banished to a much greater extent, regarding which I firmly internalized the life rule that it is easier to throw myself into the sea and drown than to wear a green dress. I knew that light blue and dark blue were acceptable, pink was half decent, and green was completely unacceptable. But in nature I recognized blue and green. As for the opposite end of the spectrum, there I foresaw the connection and symbolism of such areas, affects, uplifts and excitements that would tear the heavenly azure of my incessant ecstasy. By staying away from the red end of the spectrum, I unconsciously, but not mindlessly, protected my life in the primordial Eden from threats and dangers. Was it not the same self-preservation that forced me to impose a cruel taboo on all words and concepts, completely innocent and even seemingly indifferent, but about which I had a presentiment, vaguely but confidently, that, having become entangled with them, I would inevitably pose to myself the question of some kind of knowledge of good and evil and about expulsion from paradise? In fact, for example, a word like money or orders doesn’t lead to questions about service, official prose, subordination and humiliation, to struggle and intrigue? Funerals - don’t they confront you with death, with old age, with evil, with the unbearable suffering of a breakup? And so it is, everything “indecent” is sealed in a jar with evil genies, not without reason planted there by the wise king. “Indecent” is a sign of those destructive to Eden, destroying the serene azure of the spirits of nature. Let no one dare think that at that time, three, four, five, six years old, I did not understand all this. Both I and everyone else at that age are infinitely wiser than the wise king, and they understand through and through all the most complex relationships in life, and, understanding, they seal and prudently prohibit the entrance into their imperturbable and cloudless azure with a fence of taboos. Of course, over the years we all, once geniuses and saints, become rude, stupid and vulgar. One sooner, the other later, indifference appears: to fall or not to fall - and the destroyer snake is assessed simply as a snake, well, if not so much. Sin, sinful falling away from this heavenly earth - well, so, I did it - and nothing special. And it seems to me well that Adam and Eve, after the Fall, also probably said to each other: “Nothing special,” they said because they had already become coarse, had already lost contact with that Eden that had just shone before them with unearthly beauty. But while this connection is alive and while vision has not faded, panic horror and instinctive disgust, frantic and uncontrollable, shake the soul and body near the taboo warning of danger. With some kind of hindsight, the child knows not only about the dangers guarding on the other side of the fence, but these very dangers; he knows their essence more fully and accurately than the most seasoned and inveterate sinner. No fall reveals anything new to him, always turning out to be only a decrease in life, but not its increase. The child has absolutely precise metaphysical formulas of all transcendentalities, and the sharper his sense of Edenic life, the more definite his knowledge of these formulas. For myself, at least, I can say that the entire subsequent life did not reveal anything new to me, except for one thing - which will be discussed below - but even that - it was revealed not to knowledge, but to death, after which I was no longer me. Yet the knowledge of life was preformed in the earliest experience, and when consciousness illuminated this experience, it found it already fully formed, a bud, full of life and waiting only for favorable conditions to blossom. And I, like any child, but perhaps with more tenacity, protected my immaculate land from destruction and firmly knew that if I allowed even one or two cracks in the fence, the whole garden would perish. With hindsight I knew everything, but the wisdom of life lay precisely in the separation of this knowledge from the direct contemplation of heavenly Beauty. The concerns of the parents and the children's instinct supported each other, and perhaps that is why I even exaggerate in my memory the work of the parents in this sense and transfer part of my own efforts to them. I had to come up with these thoughts about flowers. But many other childhood experiences could have given rise to the same thoughts. As in flowers, one part of them, captivating and airy, evoked delight and the feeling that we experience in a dream, flying, while the other was assessed as poisonous fire and death, the same is true in most other sensations: some drank into me greedily, rapturously, ecstatically, others were stamped with prohibition. But a healthy organism does not allow the forbidden to become tempting - it simply does not notice the forbidden, wills not to notice it, and passes it by as something indifferent, almost non-existent. Dad smokes his nasty cigars, and Mom puts on a funny corset and bustle. I understand through and through how absurd this is, and I am firmly convinced that they themselves secretly think the same thing, finding nothing good in either one. But that’s why they are adults, to do stupid things and poorly understand their absurdity. I don’t blame them, because I am lenient towards adults who no longer understand much. But it would be strange to interpret my reluctance to smoke cigars and wear a bustle as a victory over temptation. I just don't need them, and if I touched them I would suffer a lot of damage. In essence, both cigars and corsets are disgusting to the point of horror and, secretly, scary. I know too clearly that they are demonic things (I will say in my own words) not to understand their destructiveness for me, not covered with the bark that adults are covered with. Yes, however, the adults themselves do not want to ruin me: cigars do not allow me to touch, and the corset does not even allow me to remember my name. Clearly, the matter is dirty, and I’m quite right. Cigars, however, have two justifications for their existence: the first is a box of cypress wood, which, of course, goes to me and goes under the sea pebbles; the second is the smoke rings that dad deftly blows, imitating a steam locomotive. Well, as for the corset, its only justification is that sometimes, with the help of dad, I can beg a plate of whalebone out of it and, having softened it on a candle, I bend it into hooks. True, I don’t need these records for anything, but they have an attractive origin - from a whale. So I turned the filth of the world to my advantage; in the same way, there was a useful use for sealing wax and my father’s government seal with a double-headed eagle, drawing supplies and surveying instruments, coins, a wedding ring, etc. But in the depths of my soul I recognized these activities as something shallow, unreal. The real thing seemed to me to be contemplation of nature. In addition to vision, I had a very developed sense of smell and hearing. As for the first, I probably inherited it from my maternal grandfather. Since childhood, smells have been for me an expression of the deepest essence of things, and I have always felt that through smell I merge with the thing itself. Flowers, essential oils, and especially fragrant resins were perceived by me as undoubted breakthroughs in this world and passages to another. From a very early age I was addicted to perfume. First, I prepared fragrant flowers - mainly pink petals, asked the elders to buy me orris root and made sachets out of all this as a gift for my mother and aunts for name days and other holidays. Then I began to make smoking candles, scented paper, cologne and perfumes (I can no longer judge their quality, but adults winced at my perfumes, and, to tell the truth, I only liked them during preparation). Sometimes, having prepared some potions, I poured them, to my mother’s displeasure, into the bathtub of water in which I bathed. It seems to me, however, that my mother frowned not so much at the quality of my essences, as at the thought whether the passion for luxury inherited from my grandfather was manifesting itself in me. Ready-made perfumes - although we had very good French and English perfumes in the house, in particular, my mother's constant perfume "Lilas Lians" from the Parisian company "Viollet" with a finely engraved bee on the stamp - ready-made perfumes attracted me less. By the way, Aunt Lisa’s perfume was “Ess bouquet”, Aunt Yulia’s was “Muquet”, and some other perfumes – but I don’t remember their name – were worn by other aunts. But in the field of smells, as in all other fields, what really excited me and shook the roots of my being was only the touch of raw materials, raw materials, primary sources. Only the unmixed, but internally complex, fluctuating multi-quality, further indecomposable and indivisible, attracted me. As I sensed a mechanical structure in something, my heart left him. This is not an instilled thought, not Ruskinianism or Tolstoyism, as those who get to know me as adults tend to interpret it, but my own fundamental will, which is sometimes forced to yield, but never gives up. It is very likely that there is something hereditary here, for in this respect I recognize my father in myself. But whatever the origin of this taste for primary matter, it manifests itself in all areas and in all areas it seeks sensations that can only be characterized by two or three adjectives combined by means of dashes. Among the primary substances, I was very interested in spices as a child. And as soon as my mother opened a large provision closet to give out provisions to the cook, I sniffed out this circumstance, crawled between my mother and the cook into the closet itself and, despite my mother’s protests, admittedly weak ones, managed numerous glass and tin jars with spices. While the cook managed to get what he needed, my pockets were already full of exotic goods. Then I went to examine, sniff and taste my prey. When I typed it, I announced that I wanted to cook such and such - perfumes, smoking candles, etc., and sometimes I actually made attempts in this direction. But he examined the raw substances more—gnawed them, burned them on a candle, and soaked them in water. There was usually a strange-looking and spicy-hot, smooth and white ginger root, which we never put in our dishes, but for some reason the supply never ran out, despite my thefts. There was also a yellow nutmeg color, like an egg in a bag, which aroused my attention with its flatness and elasticity of its fabric. I certainly brought myself cardamom, which attracted me with its triangularity and the whiteness of its fine-fibered husk; It was she who worried me, and I mostly threw away the black grains. Sometimes I would get half-ground nutmeg, which seemed to me like a brain. English pepper and bay leaf were also allowed among the spices, but for completeness and without excitement. Most of all, I valued the pretty, sour-smelling stars of star anise - and its sonorous name, which in my mind came close to “Indian woman”, was of no small importance in attractiveness, and the latter, of course, was fine fleur7 of grace! – and a piece of vanilla. Everything about vanilla made me shiver: like a varnished black skin, in which you can feel the finest, but extremely strong fiber; and almost microscopic, countless seeds, which I resolutely distinguished from the structureless, smearing black mass and, on the contrary, saw as separate and granular; and the strange shape of this pod, which in my mind came close to the peacock pods that hung in our street plantings in Batum. And even the smell, languid and dark, I did not blame vanilla, because it mixed with the warm Batumi air and took me somewhere, either to Brazil or to another country, but with an equally sonorous name. Having examined my vanilla and thoroughly licked the crystalline vanillin needles from it, I then squeezed its seeds into my mouth, and after them I ate the skin itself. As for the rest of the spices, I gnawed some of them, lost some of them, but each time they filled my entire being with the warm fullness of being and a sense of the reality of other worlds, and I myself did not clearly know whether these worlds were on the other side of the ocean, or on the other side of the forms of rational knowledge. The fragrances filled me with warmth. On the contrary, the sounds made me feel cold, sometimes so cold that I was shaking all over, as if in a severe chill, and I felt that listening any more was beyond my strength and that something might happen. If adults were present, they sometimes gave me something to calm me down or stopped the music. So memorable is this feeling of a cold whirlwind spiraling along the spinal cord, starting with the first bars of music and ever expanding, so that it permeates the whole body, and legs, and torso with arms, and head, and then begins to blow rapidly, furrowing the entire space of the room, blowing through me, like my body is muslin, and chills with ethereal delight, lifting itself to selfless ecstasy. I loved music fiercely, and felt it almost to the point of enmity; it shocked me too much and demanded too much from me to be treated as a pleasure. As a child, I had a subtle and true ear, as the musical people who visited our house said. Probably, from the age of four, I already climbed to the Blüthner piano in our living room, when no one was there, and with one finger picked out the melodies I heard, or, on the contrary, tried with some masses of sounds, as I feel, in the same way that Scriabin sounded, to express the feelings that tore me apart. But more than melody, I always felt musical rhythm, on the one hand, and the coloring of sounds, on the other. I wanted sounds of irrational timbre, rustling, sliding. The richness of the sound has always been disgusting to me. Sounds as dry as blows, sounds like cracks, sounds like noises, a harp, for example, or sounds that I didn’t know in music, or that don’t exist in music, my imagination was looking for them. On the contrary, singing, unrestrained singing in a full voice, especially low voices - around the baritone, as Vasily Ivanovich Androsov sang with us, for example, frightened me, seemed the height of obscenity and shamelessness, I absolutely did not understand how such disgrace could be tolerated in the house. It seemed to me that between the obscene bawling of drunken sailors staggering along the street and similar baritones, if there was a difference, it was not at all in favor of the baritone. From this singing, wherever it was, I ran away and hid in my favorite places: behind the closet or under the bed. I did not condemn restrained singing, and in a high voice at that, although it never seemed to me like real music, but only a seasoning for some household chore. But I recognized the singers, whom, however, I had not heard, with the exception of Nikita. There were many reasons for this: firstly, they are beautifully dressed, and, moreover, with a low neckline, that is, they somehow approach fairies, queens and brides, and these categories of female creatures were for me categories of graceful; secondly, there are a lot of precious stones on them, and in my eyes a lot of things could be done positive with precious stones. Third, Aunt Yulia’s relative, Alexandra Gotlibovna Pekok, Aunt Alina, as we called her, was a semi-mythical creature for us, known to us from Aunt Yulia’s stories. And this Aunt Alina sang on the Milan stage under the pseudonym Alina Marini and was very famous in her time. The name of this aunt extended threads from us to Moscow, to Milan, and to Italy in general, and even to the opera stage. In addition, Aunt Alina’s personality was shrouded in mystery; it was mysteriously impossible to find out anything really about her, and one felt that this was not without reason. For the sake of Alina Marini alone, I had to recognize the singers. The main thing is that when men sing, they are likened to some kind of roaring hippopotamuses, and it is difficult to believe that anyone could like such disgrace. And the singers - a real singer for me, of course, was a soprano and, moreover, a coloratura soprano - they are headed by the queen of all singers, Adelaide Patti, whom I heard about from my aunt. She is not a hippopotamus, but a nightingale and a lark. She dissolves in the air with the purest trills, and she herself is almost no longer a person, but a bird. All the other singers shone in my eyes with her reflected light. I so clearly imagined in my imagination the unearthly freshness and ethereal purity of Patti’s voice, and, in particular, of Alyabyev’s “Nightingale”, that I would have been afraid even if I had had the opportunity to actually hear her: it would have been too rough, too material a touch on the demigoddess of birds, as I dreamed of her in childhood. In general, my musical fantasy was so exciting and alive that I almost did not need physical sound. Remembering my childhood, I thought many times that music, and specifically composition, but in no case personal performance, perhaps the activity of a conductor, was my true calling and that all my other activities were for me only surrogates for that musical one. I was always full of sounds and played out in my imagination complex orchestral things in a symphonic manner, and streams of sounds asked to enter my soul incessantly, day and night, and as soon as I remained without a very pronounced interest in another area, my orchestras began to delight me, and I conducted them. Sometimes the poorest rhythm was enough—the tapping of fingers on the table, the falling of drops, rhythmic noise, the ticking of a clock, even the beating of one’s own heart—for this rhythmic island to undergo involuntary orchestration and turn into a symphony of its own accord. In one of the rooms of our house, Aunt Sonya studied German classics, mainly Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven; Bach, it seems, was not yet exalted in the musical world. These sounds, especially those of Mozart and Beethoven, were perceived by me closely, not as good music, not even as very good, but as the only one. “This is the only real music” has been ingrained in me since early childhood. What I played to myself in my imagination belonged to this type, but it was even more empty, even more objective, even further from the rawness of experience. “Almost the final thing is what Aunt Sonya plays - but not quite. One more step - and the limit will be reached, the final depth of sound,” - so, but, of course, not in such words I thought. And I took this step for myself and freed music from the last taste of psychologism; it sounded in my mind like the music of the spheres, like a formula for world life. Its material was the ecstatic sounds inside me. When many years later, having already graduated from the University and the Academy, I touched Bach, I understood what I was looking for in childhood and in what direction it seemed necessary for me to take another step in musical development. In Bach I recognized approximately what had been ringing in my being throughout my entire childhood—approximately that, but still not quite. Perhaps that ecstatic music cannot be expressed at all by the sounds of instruments and the overly rationalized rhythms of our culture. I spent my days in constant ecstasy. 1923.IV. 15. But the house itself was filled with sounds. Her mother and sisters, especially Aunt Sonya, had very clear voices and an extremely pleasant timbre, in which there was something crystalline and lacked a hint of languor and passion. At one time, my mother studied singing, as did Aunt Sonya, who later entered the Leipzig Conservatory in singing and piano classes. Her musical career, as well as her mother’s musical education, was suddenly interrupted by a ban from doctors who threatened her with rapid consumption. In general, this combination of great musicality, a good voice and tuberculosis is inherent in my mother’s entire family, and therefore many brilliant performances, musical and vocal, were cut off at the very root, if not by a doctor’s prescription, then by the word of fate. Here, by the way, I would like to remember my cousin Nina Saparova, who studied in Moscow, who amazed everyone with the absolutely exceptional, unearthly crystalline quality of her voice and died after the first or second performance. Two other sisters, daughters of Aunt Sonya, also began to sing and also died by the same fate. On the other hand, on my father’s side, my musical inclinations were ambivalent. Like all extremely decent and moral people, my father did not have any hearing. Aunt Yulia loved music very much, she often played, but, I think, she was not distinguished by any special abilities or hearing. However, in my father’s family, musical heredity undoubtedly extended from my father’s mother, Anfisa Uarovna Solovyova, who was a good musician. On both her father's and mother's sides she had to be musical and moved in musical circles; By the way, both Gurilevs, father and son, were very close to her parents’ house. And in the sense of the attribute that accompanies musicality - spontaneity - she probably received enough data: the Solovyovs were distinguished by a stormy temperament along with talent, and her mother’s family - the Klin landowners Ivanovs - produced many notable people, but were distinguished by licentiousness. But be that as it may, musical inclinations actually penetrated into our house after some kind of filtration, leaving behind its walls all the passionate elements and filling the house with transparent sounds, partly related to my inner sounds. Of the instrumental works in the house, only the most severe ones were heard, while salon music always caused a slight change in the face, expressing displeasure, or even a word of disdain and disgust. As for vocals, I remember the relatively few romances of Schubert and Glinka that have taken root in the house - by the way, even now they seem to me to be the most perfect works of this kind that I know. Mom never sang in front of everyone, and her voice usually came from the bedroom when she was busy with one of the little ones or doing needlework. I understood little of the words, which, moreover, were not fully understood, and what I understood verbally did not reach my consciousness. But the words and phrases, both in the music and in their own sound, told me something completely different from what they mean logically, and this otherness was incomparably greater than the logical meaning. It’s not that I couldn’t, but rather I didn’t want to delve into this logical meaning and destroy with it the unspoken meaning of the primordial sound that reached me through this singing. Subsequently, as an adult, when I heard the same things, I was disappointed: yes, okay, my childhood taste did not deceive me, but this is not at all what I remembered from childhood and that, somewhere very deep, still sounds in me now, although muffled. In some expressions one could hear a special significance, some kind of personal word addressed to me specifically, to my innermost being; and this word came not from the mother, although through her, not even from the author of the work, but from the noumenal world, from the being that I discovered in myself, beyond myself. “Why does the moon shine so much?” - he asked me about it." This “timidly asked” from some abyss spoke to me about myself. It was as if I had asked, and it seemed a strange penetration into me to be able to say so definitely about me. Suddenly there was an awareness of awkwardness, how such a verbal exposure of me sounds out loud. In other cases, this penetration involved others. When silver sounds gurgled from the bedroom: “A mountain stream in a thicket of a forest,” I clearly knew that this was said about my mother herself, that a mountain stream in a thicket of a forest was herself, but, of course, she would not have sung so openly about herself if she knew what she was singing, and I know. Often, although I understood all the words, I could not or did not want to understand the whole song, so as not to rationalize it. This was the case, for example, with the then-famous romance “O Holy Mother, take me: I have tasted all earthly happiness.” Its logical meaning was completely excluded from my consciousness, perhaps as indecent, since it contained something religious; but some other meaning was extremely clear, and I was always internally embarrassed for my mother when she sang this romance. The most worthy of attention and the most attractive for me was the clearly irrational - that which I really did not understand and that stood before me as a mysterious hieroglyph of a mysterious world. This was my favorite romance by Glinka to the words of Pushkin “I remember a wonderful moment.” I didn’t understand anything about it, but I acutely felt that here was the focus of all grace, that this was the pole of the concentration of those manifestations of grace that delighted me separately in the world around me. Particularly significant was the word in which I, not without reason, foresaw the very pinnacle of everything captivating: “Like a fleeting vision, kagyoni of pure beauty.” What this means, this “kageni”, I not only did not know, but also did not try to find out, because I felt that no explanation would increase my understanding of this hieroglyph, which surpasses any earthly measure and any earthly understanding of beauty. “Kageni” was a symbol of the infinity of beauty, and, as I well understood, any explanation would only weaken the energy of this word. And in fact, isn’t the artistic perfection of poetry, music and everything else based on the fact that their super-logical content, without destroying the logical, nevertheless surpasses it immeasurably and, like the language of spirits, is accessible to a child’s perception, which does not rationalize at all, even more than to an adult. In particular, I once heard this romance as an adult performed by Olenina d’Alheim, already quite an adult. And the same feeling stirred up in me, but now consciously. I thought: Pushkin with Glinka’s music performed by Olenina is a triple creativity of the greatest representatives of each of the areas of Russian culture, ascending with the help and strength of the other. And they, these representatives, have not one of their creative acts, but the purest essence of all their creativity. What a compact focus of culture, which in a short romance encloses an entire century of the flourishing of Russian art. It is not without reason that the “wonderful moment” from the cradle seemed so enormous and spiritually significant to me. In my childhood, my musical inclinations were also channeled through poetry. I was comparatively less interested in the meaning of the poems, but mostly attracted by their sound and their rhythm. Possessing an almost absolute memory, I remembered everything that was attractive to me exactly one time; This especially applied to poetry. Pushkin, partly Lermontov - only them I recognized in early childhood, the rest did not reach my ears. However, I simply didn’t know Tyutchev, and for some reason we didn’t have him in our house. I could recite Pushkin's fairy tales, many poems, verses and other things by heart for hours, although they weren't read to me very much. On the contrary, I definitely felt the poems of other poets not as worse, but as something qualitatively different. The same thing happened with poetry as with music: there is the present, real music, real poetry, and it is inappropriate to praise this present, because it goes without saying that they are good. In addition, there is something else that claims to be music and poetry, but it claims powerlessly; it is unworthy to condemn it, because it would give rise to discussion, whereas it is not music or poetry, but simply some kind of rubbish that is not worth talking about. A child's judgment is ontological. Therefore, for me there was no good and bad art, but simply art and non-art, and I know that my judgment was honest and not deceitful. No - and no. Subsequently, when we all learn to be cunning, we try to sweeten the sad truth with various excuses and find something good in side circumstances. And as a result, we ourselves become entangled in this casuistry and stop intuitively guessing and appreciating the very essence of the works, being deceived by the mastery of technology, the plot, the sensual delicacy of the material, etc., and deceiving those around us. In addition, we are afraid to be cruel, perhaps for fear of being judged by the same court. But childhood knows no fears, is not afraid of judgment, judges disinterestedly and incorruptibly; it pronounces its verdict with the cruelty of truth. For him - to eat or not to eat. So, about Pushkin I told myself to eat, but about most others - the opposite. This doesn't mean you can't listen to them. But I listened to them in comparison with Pushkin, just as I listened to opera music, for example, in comparison with Mozart, that is, I clearly realized that this was just an empty waste of time, an external titillation, some kind of “idle word” that splits off from eternity. I appreciated this kind of art in the same way as sunflower seeds, which were certainly prohibited in our house and yet from somewhere else, to my mother’s indignation, leaked into the house. But I started talking about the sound of poetry. The sound side of the word always had a desire for independence in my mind and tried to break out of the shackles of logical meaning. This was especially easy to achieve in foreign names and words. I greedily picked up geographical and historical names that sounded musical or significant to my ears, mainly Italian and Spanish - they seemed especially elegant and refined to me - and combined them, flavored with well-known French or Italian words, into full-voiced verses that would horrify all supporters of meaning. These verses absolutely drove me into a state of frenzy, and I am surprised that my parents did not stop my zeal. True, more often I did it in private. But I also loved, sitting down on a chest in a darkened small room, when my mother and nanny were bathing one of my sisters, to start - first, something like a conversation in a strange language of sonorous words interspersed with meaningless but sonorous combinations of syllables, then, inspired, to begin this kind of melodic declamation and, finally, in complete self-forgetfulness, to move on to glossolalia, with a feeling of confidence that the sound itself, I published, in itself expresses my touch to the distant, exquisitely elegant exotic world and that everyone present cannot help but feel it. I finished my speeches with the end of the swim, but exhausted by the previous rise. The sounds intoxicated me. But I return to the thought I started: despite my mental and nervous strength, I was still always impressed to the point of self-forgetfulness, I was always intoxicated with colors, smells, sounds and, most importantly, their forms and relationships, so that I did not leave the state of ecstasy. The joy of being, the fullness of being and keen interest filled my entire being, I was always seething and never remained unexcited for a minute. This happened, I repeat, from the strength of impressions and from increased attention to them. For me there were no calm perceptions - such did not reach my consciousness at all, which was always busy with something extremely interesting. Each perception is connected with others, and by itself some kind of system is built in the mind, where heterogeneous things are correlated with each other in small but deep, in my opinion, characteristics. Plants, stones, birds, animals (- it was absolutely clear to me that it is impossible to unite cute birds in one group with other creatures, “animals”, in my terminology, and that birds are rather related to plants -), atmospheric phenomena, colors, smells, tastes, heavenly bodies and events in the underworld are intertwined with each other by diverse connections, forming a fabric of universal correspondence. It is no coincidence that humanoid rocks and roots have their own appearance: there is a mysterious relationship here. A plantain blossomed in our yard or along the railroad bed. I look at how proudly and resiliently these plantains carry their heads, and I think: isn’t this a flock of my favorite crowned cranes, the images of which I can’t get enough of in “Nature”? Catkins hang from the trees; Don’t I understand that when they flirt with me, they pretend to be relaxed? The ladybug, legs tucked, lies on its back as if dead; but it’s she who wants to attract my attention so that I can play with her. And a violet hid under a bush, she is playing hide and seek and would be very offended if I did not look for her. 1923.IV. 17. The whole world lived, and I understood its life. But this understanding was extremely erroneous to interpret as simple anthropomorphization - attaching the nature of human organs, human thoughts, feelings and desires to things and beings. It is extremely mistaken to think that I, along with all the children, simply lost the sense of the boundary between myself and nature, confused two areas that are obviously separate in the consciousness of an adult. My worldview did not contain anything similar to such confusion of concepts, and the boundaries of separation passed in the same place where they pass now for me and where they pass for every person. If we talk about the difference between then and now, then it had exactly the opposite meaning: these boundaries between individual things, beings and phenomena were incomparably deeper than now, and were recognized more sharply and impassable. After all, in fact, a child’s perception is of a more aesthetic nature than an adult’s, scientific or at least scientific-like perception. And therefore, each individual object in a child’s perception, as contemplated aesthetically, is holistically closed in itself, and from its unity there are no transitions to the self-closed unity of another object. The predominance of things over space in a child’s perception makes the world incomparably more firmly divided than in the perception of an adult. Scientific knowledge establishes community where it was not visible before, looks for intermediate phenomena between extremes, builds bridges to cross hitherto impassable abysses, generally blurs the clear separation of the world, dulls the pathos of difference. In a critical and consistent scientific understanding of the world, the immediate feeling of the impossibility of any rapprochement, transitions, transformations must be delayed, and this is the spirit of science. “Celui qui en dehors des mathematiques prononce le mot “impossible”, manque de prudence”8 - coined by the glorious Ampère, and moreover, in the heyday of rationalism, when it was believed that everything was fundamentally known and the circle of knowledge was almost closed. So, it was not out of inability to feel the natural boundaries between phenomena that I perceived life peace. The scientific worldview weakens the external difference between phenomena, leaving the phenomena themselves, even when they are identical in quality, alien to each other, and the world, devoid of bright diversity, not only does not unite, but, on the contrary, falls apart. Children's perception overcomes the fragmentation of the world from within. Here the essential unity of the world is affirmed, not motivated by one or another common feature, but directly felt when one merges the soul with perceived phenomena. This is a mystical worldview. Of course, I was well aware that the violet had nothing in common with me, and I was well aware of the non-existence of its eyes (alas, now I don’t know this, and therefore, for the sake of conversation, I can prove the violet’s gaze: and according to botany, plants have eyes). But I directly penetrated into the very essence of a modest flower, felt its life, so close to me internally and so distant in externally considered manifestations, and this inner life, comprehended by me, was told to myself in words, as they say, metaphorical. Some small and even difficult to formulate sign could then, but only then, that is, when the being was already known from the inside, become evidence that I correctly understood the essence of the matter. But for me it was not external proof, obligatory for others, and I would even be embarrassed to tell anyone about it: it was a sign, some kind of natural miracle - when the innermost essence lifted the veil of its secret and cast a sly glance from there. I remember well this sudden and far from everyday feeling that gaze met gaze, eye rested on eye - a sharp flash would flash and stop, and one would not be able to withstand this direct contemplation of the face of Nature for long. But this instantaneous feeling gave absolute confidence in the authenticity of this meeting: we saw each other and understand each other through and through, not only I him, but also, even more acutely, he me. And I know that he knows me even more deeply and sees me even more clearly than I do, and most importantly, he loves me completely. Once, many years later, I experienced the same meeting with crossed gazes and the feeling that the gaze was penetrating right through me, to the innermost recesses of my being. And this was the gaze of an approximately two-month-old child, my son Vasya. I took him early in the morning to lull him half asleep. He opened his eyes and looked for a while straight into my eyes, consciously, as neither he nor anyone else had ever looked in my memory; It would be more correct to say that it was a superconscious gaze, for it was not his small, unformed consciousness that looked at me through Vasya’s eyes, but some higher consciousness, greater than me, and himself, and all of us, from the unknown depths of existence. And then everything passed, and before me again were the eyes of a two-month-old baby. It was this experience that constantly directed the course of my relationship to nature. Nothing, nothing; and suddenly - and a glance darts, now tender and deep, full of some kind of expectation from me, now slyly cheerful, saying that we know by nature that others do not know and should not know. Nature, as I believed and felt, hides itself from people; but I am her favorite, and she wants to show herself to me in her true essence, however, so as not to become obvious to others. And she sends me her signs, speaks to me in significant forms, accessible to me alone, so that I know where to pay attention. Young animals, some birds, small lizards with beautiful brown eyes, sometimes small green frogs, and of course, many flowers communicated with me in this way. Minerals, various natural phenomena, especially many colors, smells and tastes, were permeated with the deep energy of nature incomparably more than animals and birds, even flowers, but in them this intense and bubbling power lay silent, devoid of an organ of expression. She swelled, striving towards me, just as she swelled in me towards her, but between us there always remained a transparent layer of thin but impenetrable isolation, and the desire for a mystical discharge was never fully satisfied. I always felt insatiable with my green color, my sparkles, my smell and the sound of the sea. Significant and therefore especially mysterious were various, semi-subtle signs. But there were, in addition, entire classes of natural forms, exciting, always desired, always evoking a desire to embrace them from the inside, to be imbued with them and to become like them, of course, not externally, but in some depths of the deep will. “Oh, why am I in the wrong shape?” Or: “After all, that form is me,” my feeling then fluctuated unsteadily between these two formulations. I liked many of the forms in nature, I admired many, but not all of them touched my heart and moved me to the depths, and I think, not only now, in retrospect, but even then I quite accurately identified my inner need in the word. Internally, certain forms, bounded by elastic surfaces and elastic lines, chain me to themselves. I look for elaboration of forms, but their callousness and dryness alienates them from me, just as too much tenderness, cunning, and complexity alienates them. In plants, the most attractive to me are straight lines or imperceptibly, slightly curved ones, but both of them should be elastic; the slightest interception either in the direction of callousness and mechanical correctness - like a stick, or, on the contrary, in softness, flaccidity or flirtatious inclination - and all the charm of the straight line disappeared irrevocably, making it in one case boring and dead, and in another somewhat sticky and disgusting. Naturally, this elasticity of straightness must be maintained and expressed by a corresponding structure, in which the direction along the line itself clearly predominates, so that the line appears as a tightly connected bundle of longitudinal fibers. In plants in general, I was worried about this fibrous quality, especially when it was expressed on the surface by the thinnest flutes of the stem, such as horsetail, in some aquatic plants, in lilies, or in the visible structure of longitudinally elongated cells with silvery longitudinal air bubbles between them, as in the stems of water lilies, many bulbous and others. This same elastic elongation most often determined my attraction to birds and animals. The thin and long, elastic beak of the woodcock, the even thinner and even more elongated beaks of hummingbirds, the same beaks and legs of storks, cranes, waders, generally long-legged ones, were perhaps the main reason for my spiritual closeness to them. That’s why I loved goitered gazelles, gazelles, deer, fallow deer - for their thin legs and elastic neck. When I felt in the surface bounding a certain body the natural surface of equilibrium of the elastic forces of the whole organism, when with my inner gaze I saw how, elastic, it was being pushed out by internal forces and it, in today’s words, solved the problem to the minimum, then something swelled in me in response, and I felt it as my surface and myself as its contents: such was, for example, the surface of some shells. I was excited by the restrained power of natural forms, when behind the obvious there is an anticipation of infinitely more - the hidden. In the elasticity of forms I caught turgor vitalis, life that could manifest itself, but restrains itself and only trembles with fullness. The elastic stem of a water plant, the elastic petals of white lilies, the elastic dark blue bells of field hyacinths, the elastic drops of dew collected on the hairy leaves of the cuffs, the elastic convexities of shells, the elastic neck of the goitered gazelle and the Karabakh horse and countless other forms, flexible and at the same time full of inner strength, excited me to the point of tickling my heart just like a revelation. the most creative power of nature. The thing as such, already fully expressed, touched me little, unless I felt that there was much more undisclosed in it than what had become obvious: I was worried only about the secret. I was extremely fond of buds and buds, but I accepted the luxurious beauty at its peak somewhat with the same shade with which adults regard rag flowers. Yes, the rose is beautiful, but it is all here, it does not excite the mystery, and the life that produced it has reached its peak and is now drying up. The rose is obvious and therefore not mysterious. So is every other thing - it excites you as long as you feel the bud of another being in it; and when it is on its own, sensually given, it is too understandable and therefore does not attract attention. I have always had a certain feeling that what is truly significant is modest and hidden, while there is something in the outright beauty of magnificent magnolias, roses, tulips, etc., that makes one feel embarrassed for them. And I preferred the violet, a modest, albeit sacred purple flower, hidden under the bushes among its own greenery, again the modest and inaccessible forget-me-not. The height of attractiveness was, almost mythically, in my mind, the lily of the valley, which I knew more from Aunt Yulia’s stories and drawings and later from garden specimens. Sometimes I found lily of the valley leaves in the forest and, delighted with the finest structure of their veins, all parallel to each other, I kissed them. My dream was to find a plant in bloom; but in the vicinity of Batum the flowering of the lily of the valley probably occurs so early that my search never reached its goal. Subsequently my feelings towards the rose and other luxurious plants changed; but not because the nature of my internal demands has changed, but because of the incompleteness of the rose that was revealed to me. Perhaps my very perceptions became less strong, so that this excessive luxury of colors and smells and tiresome beauty became poorer in my eyes and became more modest. But, in any case, it lost its magnificent self-sufficiency and became a bud of other possibilities and a different completeness. It’s the same in other areas: my perceptions in themselves were too bright for the bright and abundantly luxurious to give me satisfaction. Of course, a lot can be entertaining, you want to know and see a lot, but only modest things are really cute. A bird, perhaps non-existent, light brown, like coffee with milk, with a blue head, jumped in front of me in my imagination as an image of this cherished modesty. Invisibility, quietness, humility were dear to my heart. And at the same time and despite this, my soul was immediately drawn to the exotic, although here with something corresponding to this modesty. I have always wanted to live in a possibly simple environment, surrounded by modest nature, but with tropical nature somewhere at a distance. Partly this duality is reflected in the mountain landscape, where the harsh and deserted unsociability of the heights almost touches the subtropical flora. Isn’t this also the place of my birth, Yevlakh, where the steppe, abundant with natural resources and burdened with an excess of luxurious life, is constrained by two snowy mountain groups? But, rather, in this duality of nature, which raised me, I am inclined to see a clear expression of my own duality, in which north and south, through the historically youngest and most ancient blood, intensely oppose each other, not only not mixing, but, on the contrary, stimulating each other to stronger self-determination. So, while that brown and blue bird was jumping in front of me, I passionately and almost painfully dreamed of a hummingbird, and it seemed to me that there could be no better destiny than to kiss a living hummingbird - most of all I loved the elf, both for its smallness and somewhat funny, ruffled appearance, and for the very name - and die. I greedily asked everyone for the slightest details about these charming birds, looked at the available images of them countless times and remembered with bitterness that it was not possible to keep them in captivity, that the syrup they were fed became sugary in their small stomach and killed them, and that therefore there was no hope for me to see them alive. Then I begged the confidant of my desires, Aunt Yulia, to purchase a stuffed hummingbird. And in order to motivate this acquisition, I asked her to put a hummingbird on the hat - which, however, I really wanted due to my passion for outfits. I pestered him for a long time, trying in every possible way to prove the need for such decoration on the hat. Finally, dad told me to fulfill my wish. It was already quite late and somewhat cold. that is, according to the Batumi climate, when my aunt and I went for the coveted purchase. I think it was late autumn or winter. Batumi was still a free port at that time, and therefore very elegant and high-quality foreign goods were sold in squalid Batumi shops. Among the large selection of bonneted stuffed hummingbirds, my eyes ran wild, I chose one bird or another, then put it back and chose again, until, finally, it began to get dark and it was time to lock up the store. Aunt Yulia, somewhat dissatisfied with my indecisiveness, finally helped me make a choice and paid for a rather expensive purchase. The bird was wrapped, slightly bending the paper on both sides so as not to wrinkle it. My aunt didn’t want to give me the purchase, fearing that I would crush it, but I begged so much to let me carry it that my aunt gave in, only warning me again about the same thing and showing me how to carry the air bag by one edge so as not to harm the hummingbird. I clung to this region and conscientiously fulfilled all the instructions. But when, having walked some distance, my aunt wanted to check if I was crumpling the birds, it turned out that the bag unfolded from the bottom, the bird fell out, and I was diligently carrying the empty paper. I was so upset by this loss that I didn’t even cry, but my aunt was upset for me. We went back, but it was dark and damp, and of course there was no bird to be found. This incident inflicted a wound on my soul, one of those that never heals, even if we consciously forget about it. I no longer even wanted to buy a new hummingbird, and I rejected the offer in this sense; even talking about the hummingbird was painful for me. A few years later, dad read somewhere an advertisement about a luxurious color album of hummingbirds published in Paris and, remembering how I froze, asking about these birds, without saying anything, he wrote out this album and gave it to me. The album was truly wonderful. But my half-forgotten wound in my heart was so painful that the album left me cold and I hid it somewhere away. A few years later, in the third or fourth grade of the gymnasium, my classmate, Volodya Ern, once asked me for some book with pictures to copy. I gave him the hummingbird album back then, but I never got it back, despite his requests. I suspect that Ern, in his then passion for chickens, turned my hummingbirds into chickens. Then I didn’t even regret this album, and only now, when the impressions of childhood return every day, did it begin to come to mind again. But I was not so lucky in my life with these birds, in which for me there was the very edge of grace. I have this feeling from childhood that I, in fact, never, or almost never, came to a calm state; All day long, ecstatic elation did not leave me, when I either talked incessantly, for which Liza’s aunt in the village peasant girls called me in Armenian “tsitsernak,” that is, swallow, or everything in me sang and blossomed in ecstatic sounds. These states were hardly the ordinary liveliness of any child. Apparently, something was happening in my brain, if not wrong, then at least extraordinary, which caused me a lot of suffering. I remember well from early childhood headaches that began and stopped only when I was about ten years old, if I’m not mistaken, which can be partly compared to severe brain fatigue at the end of long and intense mental work. Probably, these were strong blood flows, moreover, precisely to the back, lower part of the head, and I tried to find relief from this pain and heaviness by throwing my head back quite often and pressing the back of my head for a moment to my neck; It seems to me that this movement of mine was somewhat reminiscent of a characteristic reflex during meningitis. It’s not easy to walk with such a head, and if it weren’t for my constant delight and interest in existence to the point of self-forgetfulness, I probably would have been constantly whimpering from my pain. Poor dad was always worried about my health, and many times a day he felt my forehead to see if I had a fever, and invariably asked: “Does my head hurt?” But both his palpating and his question were unnecessary: ​​I had a headache, and I just tried to forget about it, and I also almost always had a fever, from malaria, which the whole family, starting with dad, suffered from. I no longer know whether I had a rush of blood to my head from my usual inner agitation or, on the contrary, the excitement itself was intensified by the flow of blood. In addition, we all, not only our family, but also all our acquaintances, were sitting on quinine in Batum, absorbing it in jars, and this could hardly help but affect our general well-being. But no matter what, everything from the realm of nature interested me, without giving my mind a moment of rest. How many times a day would I climb onto the railing of the balcony, and, holding onto a wooden post, examine again and again the well-examined cherry laurel tree near the balcony and for the thousandth time I stroke and apply its dark green varnished leaves to my face, chew them, think about how drops are made from its black berries, smell the flower clusters and find in their smell a resemblance to bitter almonds Then the large orange and lemon trees growing on our balcony in boxes with still unripe fruits and white flowers, which are dear to me, are subjected to the same examination. It seems to me that a lot of time is spent in such activities. Then I begin an investigation that is both attractive and risky: a careful examination of the wormholes gaping with black elliptical holes in the balcony pillars. I had long realized that these dark holes had a secret meaning, and therefore I turned a deaf ear to the adults’ explanation that they were being eaten away by some kind of worms. One of the nannies (however, I remember it was Lyusina’s nanny, an elderly widow, named Sophia, and last name Romanova; she told us that her husband, like Romanov, was a king, and my semi-skeptical question why she lives in nannies did not erase the impression of her words on me) - so this same nanny, wanting to distract me from the wormhole, said that she lives there beech Of course, I immediately believed her, because I myself came to the same conclusion, but I didn’t know the name of the mysterious creature, but, of course, I only intensified my attentiveness to the abode of this beech. Sometimes Aunt Yulia would go out onto the balcony to replant plants or plant them in long boxes arranged by dad’s order all around the house, along the balcony railing. Aunt loved to dig in the ground with flowers, and I loved to help her: I was interested in the roots of plants, young shoots hiding in the ground, germinating seeds, and I was horrified, although without later developing disgust, by the mole cricket digging in the ground. But these are separate impressions. They multiplied and worsened when I found myself outside the city. Dad loved and considered it useful to give us all-day walks around the outskirts of Batum. A phaeton, sometimes two, was hired, a supply of provisions and, most importantly, tableware was made, and we excitedly drove along one of the highways. The most beloved and most frequently visited place for such walks was the first station of the Batumo-Akhaltsykh highway built by my father - Adjaris-Tskali. // The road first goes near the sea coast, flat, deserted - this is a good preparation for the subsequent wealth and steep cliffs of the Adjara Gorge. But this deserted piece of 2-3 miles is not without interest for us. Not far from the road you can see huts covered with dry corn stalks, and from the same stalks on the trees there are whole stacks of round shapes, like the nests of gigantic wasps. These huts and these stacks of corn belong to the Negro colony located near Batum. To our delight, a tall black man, almost a giant, or a black woman with a baby at her black breast and another black child clinging to her arm or skirt, will cross the road and stop curiously near us. In them I feel the meekness of the heroes and the openness to nature, which later began to be painfully sought by me. Their black color doesn’t bother me at all, I’m just thinking to myself whether I’ll have to paint myself with wax or mascara if I settle among them. How strange: as a child, the feeling of closeness to strangers was alien to me, except for a very few. But during such meetings, threads of sympathy are stretched. Let's move on. Here is the river from which the road under the direction of the pope begins and the first bridge he built on this road. We are proud that dad is building bridges, and on this basis we consider them our property, and therefore, together with dad, we must examine it with an economic eye to see if everything is fine there. Dad stops the phaeton driver, pressing him in the back with a stick - for some reason everyone is sure, despite humane ideas, that otherwise the phaeton driver will not hear. We rush under the bridge to splash in the clear water flowing over the sand, although we are strictly forbidden to drink it, we catch frog eggs or tadpoles, depending on the time of year, and, of course, this is at any time, we pick up pretty twisted black shells from the bottom. We would willingly stay longer, but we are in a hurry, we get into the carriage and start a quarrel with Lyusya, if we didn’t have time to arrange it when leaving, who should sit on the uncomfortable front bench, which seems to us a place of honor and independence, and in addition has the advantage of an observation point. Dad tells us about the development of frog spawn or the smelting of copper from copper pyrites, about the huge piles located along the road. In these pyrite mounds, spreading the smell of sulfur dioxide - I had long ago learned all this chemistry - the sulfur burns out, and the resulting copper oxide, as I learned, will subsequently be reduced by coal. From my dad, I also learned to regret the flying sulfur dioxide, from which I could make the sulfuric acid that occupies me and burn a rag with it without fire. I also know that pyrite mining is carried out nearby, and I am internally proud that our, I would like to say, my Batum is not devoid of real ore, that is, some connection with the underground world. Secretly, I deduce from this further consequences that since there is ore, there are or may be underground mines and corridors leading into the very underworld, and then into stalactite caves; In the background of all this one can see the still somewhat vague possibility of meeting the gnomes. And my dad’s story about gold-bearing sand excites me even more. I, of course, remember well the Argonauts’ campaign to the mouths of Phasis in Colchis for the Golden Fleece. And long ago I firmly understood that these “mythical places” are exactly where we live, and that, therefore, the myth is as real as I myself and our Colchis. Phasis is the present-day Rion, and I also knew that the rock on which Prometheus was crucified still stands in the Rion Gorge. By the way, my parents seemed to have made a mistake here, isolating me from church teaching and fairy tales, as if they were still living, they treated ancient mythology lightly, probably considering it hopelessly dead. The consequence of such an oversight was that I felt more clearly like an ancient Hellene than a Russian, and I loved and knew fauns and nymphs more than goblins and mermaids. So, the Greek myth was close to me, and the ground on which I walked was saturated with the vapors of antiquity. Regarding the golden fleece, I knew from my dad that in ancient times (and this word seemed to me filled with the same mysterious darkness as the caves, and therefore was just as exciting) the sands of the Colchis rivers, including Rion and Chorokha, were gold-bearing and remain so to this day, that is, before me; and gold mining was carried out by washing gold-bearing sand over sheep skin. When the curly litter becomes saturated with gold grains stuck in it, it is burned, but the gold remains. It was for this golden fleece that such a hero as King Jason once came to us. How could you not be proud of your country? – he almost came straight to me. True, there was also some stumbling block in the form of the evil sorceress Medea, who was also awarded by our Colchis in addition to the fleece. But Medea instilled in me a feeling of hostility for deceiving my father and killing my children, and in my thoughts I tried to avoid her image. So dad told us, near Artvin, that is, about thirty versts from Batum along the Chorokh stream, gold is mined using such a skin, but the gold content in the sand is very insignificant. Just around this time, the gold-bearing rivers of Chorokha gave some two dodgers the idea to do a business: they brought gold-bearing sand from Siberia, partly already washed, i.e. with a very high gold content, and added it in a certain place to the sand of Chorokha. A commission was appointed by their machinations, which was supposed to believe in the Chorokhi gold mines and, therefore, facilitate their sale at appropriate prices. But the deception was easily discovered, because the sand poured into some hole was clearly Siberian and was not located on the banks of Chorokhi. Dad was somehow involved in this commission. After investigation, he brought me from this place some added magnetic iron ore with small sparkles of gold. I really liked this coal-black sand, from which I extracted grains of gold with a pin and shone in my own eyes with the borrowed brilliance of gold mining. I kept it in a wooden thermometer case, from where I occasionally poured it onto a sheet of paper and watched how it was attracted by a magnet. I did not like the exposure of the deception described. Firstly, my mind did not accommodate fraudulent tricks, I did not understand the selfish side of this whole matter, and it seemed like some kind of misunderstanding. And secondly, it was upsetting that dad doubted the real gold content of our Chorokh, which, of course, was undeniable, since Jason came to us from afar. Having passed this place of failed mines, which still remained in question for me, the road turns into the narrow Chorokha gorge and goes over its steep, rocky shore, while on the other side of the road there are cliffs and wooded mountains. Similar mountains rise on the other side of Chorokhi. It was wonderful to see how the Adjara Mountains, foggy blue in the humid Batumi atmosphere, turned blue before our eyes as we approached them, then began to turn black and, finally, turned out to be green or black-green if it was not winter, while on their tops sparkling snow lingered for a long time and fog almost always swirled in the mornings and evenings. Sheer cliffs in many places are covered with the purest white veils of water splashes and foam from countless streams falling from above and breaking with such force that there is no trace of water left. I especially loved the magnificent basalts with their vertically standing hexagonal prisms, black and even blacker with moisture. High, so high that you can’t even throw your head, rises an almost vertical, broad-chested staircase of basalt pillars, with clearly cut vertical edges and precisely horizontal hexagonal platforms. And this entire huge surface, to its entire height and width, is covered with a transparent, soft-white water fabric and breathes coolness and cleanliness. 1923.IV.21. The columnar structure of the basalts showed me, as I felt, the internal structure of the rocks and echoed my favorite crystals. When it was not possible to get to the structure and some material stood before my eyes in a continuous mass, I felt a wall separating me from nature, a stone wall of mystery. On the contrary, all kinds of individuality, layers, order and rhythm showed the trust of nature and pleased - not with rationality, for what is rational here when they themselves need to be explained, but precisely with trust, the open pulse of the life of nature. On the Adzhar highway, from childhood I learned to see the earth not only from the surface, but also from a cross-section, even mainly from a cross-section, and therefore at the very time I looked from the side. This is not a matter of abstract concepts at all, and everything I point out is extremely easy to approach, guided by reasoning. And the point here is that the habits of the mind were absorbed from the beginning and formed the whole thought in their own way: certain concepts, which generally seemed abstractly possible, became necessary methods of thinking in me, and my later religious and philosophical convictions came not from philosophical books, which, with rare exceptions, I always read a little and, moreover, very reluctantly, but from childhood observations and, perhaps most of all, from the nature of the landscape familiar to me. These layers of rocks and rocks, these layers of soil, gradually changing, penetrated by roots, this layer of turf covering them, the bushes and trees above them - I learned about them not from geological atlases, but from sections and outcrops in nature, to which I was accustomed as if they were my own. In the structure of my perception, the plan appears internally distant, and the cross-section appears close; simultaneity speaks and tends to break up into separate groups of objects, sequentially observed, while succession is my way of thinking, and it is perceived as simultaneous. The fourth coordinate - time - became so alive that time lost its character of bad infinity, became cozy and closed, and approached eternity. I'm used to seeing the roots of things. This habit of vision then sprouted into all thinking and determined its basic character - the desire to move vertically and little interest in the horizontal. Sheer cliff on the left, sheer steepness on the right above the rapidly rushing Chorokh. The narrow road goes on as if on a shelf, and my heart either shrinks with horror that the horses will turn a little to the side and we will end up in Chorokhe or that I will somehow fall into this abyss - then it expands with a greedy examination of the warm rocks dotted with nimble lizards. I remember one time I gaped at them and fell out of the carriage, so unnoticeably that the elders did not pay attention to it and drove off some distance before they caught me. And I lay on the road and, despite a fairly bruised leg, watched my lizards. For the sake of these lizards, dad quite often stopped the carriage or carriages, and we got out to catch the cute animals. But more often than not, this catch ended badly for them, because the lizard, having freed itself from the tail we had grabbed, ran away. The tail suddenly became disgusting to us as a result of our remorse, although it was amusing, but not surprising, to watch how it beats, bending in a ring first in one direction and then in the other. I firmly remember the words of the elders that he would fight until sunset, and we drove away further, looking back at the beating tail. The Chorokh Abyss itself should have been interesting. The mere fact that in its further course Chorokh was the Russian-Turkish border should have attracted attention to it. The fast current of this river swiftly carried rafts and numerous feluccas loaded with fruits, olives, butter, and honey. It was even scary to watch: a long felucca almost falls straight onto a piece of rock in the river, and the death of the narrow shell, like a pod, seems inevitable; but at the fatal moment of the collision, the felucca man pushes off the rock with his pole and, having just been on the verge of death, rushes past. And little, I understood how tense and ready for death you had to be in for hours in order to float your cargo to the mouth. There is a tedious journey back, as slow as it was fast, and as demanding of patience as it was of vigilance; making his way among the coastal cliffs and over stones, the owner drags his felucca on a woolen rope. In reality, I myself was not aware of how my heart sank from this Chorokh and his menacing-sounding name. But in a dream, perhaps in connection with some kind of brain process in my head, every or almost every night I woke up from a painful vision. The visual material of his sleepy fantasy was his impressions of Chorokh, and the initial core of his education was the mental wound received in my earliest infancy from my fall from the high bank of the Kura River, where my mother and aunt were swimming below. My mother’s cry at the sight of me swinging along the slope, and Aunt Remso only caught me right at the water’s edge, the fall itself - all this is embedded in my body, and I don’t care whether or not they believe that I remember it - this incident was so vividly and painfully reminded of itself throughout my entire childhood. This is what I saw: my dad and Aunt Yulia were driving along the Adjara road, or, more often, I was alone, very little, trudged along the highway. Everything is flooded with sultry light and stuffy. On the left is a high chocolate-brown rock, hot from the sun, it is all woven with the finest cobwebs and almost completely covered with countless newly hatched spiders, a little larger than a pinhead; most are bright red, like arterial blood in strong sun, but there are also bright yellow and bright emerald green. These spiders run back and forth, and I have the feeling that somehow they are in my head. Now, feeling into this dream still standing before my eyes, I definitely know that the red spiders were some kind of projection of blood flow into the brain capillaries, and the yellow and green ones were related to some brain cells or centers; finally, a hot, chocolate-colored rock projects the inside of my cranial vault in a dream. I say this, not rationally interpreting the dream, but from direct sensation, for now I see with some other vision the internal picture of my anatomy and see how it is clothed in symbolic images, hovering before me in a space other than the space of sensory perceptions. However, everything described so far is only the situation. The essence of the dream is that on the right hand of the road along which I am walking is a steep bank of a river in which my mother is drowning and screaming in a voice that is not her own, and sometimes Aunt Yulia, also drowning, joins here. I’m mortally sorry for my mother, I’m trying to help her, but I’m unable to move - it’s as if I’m tied up, swaddled arms and legs, and no one else is here, or they don’t hear either my mother’s screams or my impulses - I say, impulses, because I can’t tell them anything. Actually, I don’t see my mother, I only hear her, and the main thing is that I directly know that she is down there. With this painful feeling of helplessness and complete inability to help, shedding tears, I woke up every time. For some reason, I never told anyone this dream as a child, despite the persistent efforts of adults to achieve what I was actually crying about and what I was afraid of. I felt what I saw in my dream was so real in some sense that it seemed that one word about what I saw - and that reality would break through here, into this life, threatening my mother. I knew within myself that from my slightest hint something irrevocable and destructive would happen, especially in relation to my mother, and therefore I kept the sleepy threat at bay with my silence. So the phaeton rolled over a menacing cliff, and on the other side of the road cold springs bubbled from the rocks and bright flowers hung. The right side of the road was protected by a stone wall. Along the wall, at regular distances from each other, there were piles of rubble standing in gentle cones. Sometimes workers, Greeks or Persians, were seen breaking cobblestones with hammers. Sometimes dad stopped the phaeton driver with a stick to inspect the prepared crushed stone. The pile was measured with a special square, then marked out to check whether it contained soil. While sweeping out the heap, I also rushed to examine the rubble, looking for interesting minerals, and often found geodes of agate or carnelian, sparkling druses of rock crystal, smoky topaz or pale amethysts in quartzites, pieces of phosphorite that fascinated me, which, when rubbed against each other, emitted a phosphorus smell and glowed in the dark, inclusions of pyrites. Then we rushed to drink from the cold crystal spring flowing from the rock and pick flowers, for which we had to climb the rocks. But we were persuaded to leave this until the return trip so that the flowers would not wilt. We followed further. We are already eagerly counting the miles on the pillars. Suddenly the gorge widens - it feels as if a cork is being pushed into a bottle, and suddenly it falls through. This is the Adjaris-Tskhali station, the junction of two gorges and the confluence of the Adjaris-Tskhali River into Chorokh. From here one road, crossing the Chorokhi bridge, goes along the Chorokha gorge to Artvin, and the other, along the Adzhar gorge, to Akhaltsykh. Dad, in fact, built the Batumo-Akhaltsykh road, and our friend engineer Passek built the Artvin road. But the bridge over Chorokh was my father’s. I remember that there used to be a ferry with kayaks, and when we arrived in Adjaris-Tskali, we always made a ferry crossing to the other side - it was an eerie pleasure to feel how the ferry, carried away by a swiftly powerful current, seemed to be about to fall off the rope. Then, as I remember, they began to transport large iron pipes, trusses, barrels of cement, winches and cranes to Adjaris-Tskali, and by one of their arrivals a bridge appeared; but he took away something from the wildness of our Adjaris-Tskali and deprived us of the ferry. We firmly consider Adjaris-Tskali our estate, much more ours than the Batumi apartment. Everything here has already been divided between me and Lyusya. The river at the entrance to Adjaris-Tskali is mine, and adults call it nothing less than the Pavlina River. She became mine when Lucy was still very small and did not strive for property. But on one of the trips, having heard about the Peacock River, Lyusya suddenly realized that there was an offense here for herself, she became capricious, as she generally knew how to be capricious. They barely calmed her down by making compensation from a stream that flowed a little further, beyond Adzharis-Tskali. True, this Lyusin stream was smaller than the Peacock river; but, I remember, he had some merits of his own, so I became envious. Both of these mountain streams flow into the Adjaris-Tskali River, flowing through relatively small gorges. And between them, on a hillock, there was a stone two-story engineering guardhouse to stop travelers. On the lower floor lived the watchman Akhmet, who was extremely devoted to dad, like all his subordinates, and on the upper floor there were two or three rooms separated by a corridor. We considered this gatehouse our own home, that is, not our father’s, but ours, our children’s, and one room was mine, the other was Lyusina’s. When we arrived, we settled down in these rooms much more freely than at home: after all, at home it was necessary to maintain order and not create dirt, but here, in the almost empty rooms, you could do whatever you wanted. Once or twice during the entire period some passing engineer stopped in one of these rooms. Although he left very soon, there was no end to our inner indignation and jealousy. We could not understand how “some stranger” could dare to settle in our lodge and why dad, so attentive to all our whims, would not take measures to remove the uninvited guest. My indignation was softened only by the fact that it was Lucy’s room that was occupied, not mine. We were met by the friendly Akhmet, whom we loved very much. He was an Adjarian. These are the people of the Kartvelian group, very close to the Georgians, inhabiting the Chorokh and Adjaris-Tskali valleys. Located either within Turkey or on its borders, this tribe, once Christian, has long converted to Mohammedanism, but did not, as happens with renegades, become fanatics of the new faith. Almost all of them are robbers, they are at the same time secretive, moderate and, like all robbers, they know a sense of devotion. At that time, rarely did anyone manage to travel along the Batumo-Akhaltsikhe road without being robbed, despite the escort of guards and weapons. Even a trip to Adjaris-Tskali in those days, i.e. in the eighties, was considered far from safe, and for many such a picnic did not take place without great trouble. But I, at least internally, was glad that my Adjarians were protecting my possessions from uninvited guests. Undoubtedly, although I did not know this name, I felt like a feudal lord, and on the part of the Adjarians I really did not see anything other than signs of loyalty. This was not childish self-delusion; but this was not as self-evident as it seemed to me, for it happened due to the completely exceptional relationship of these Ajarians to my father. Nothing ever happened to him on this road, not even an unpleasant meeting, and things were never cut off from the back of his phaeton. Meanwhile, my father always refused the guards offered to him by the authorities due to the danger of such trips, and not only did not carry them with him, but also did not have any weapons at home: the only thing he traveled with was a stick. Moreover, he did not give concessions and demanded from employees a “conscientious”, as he usually said, attitude towards the matter, and if he saw the opposite, then due to his temper he could shout loudly. // He demanded absolute cleanliness, and the slightest sign of sloppiness, dirt and disorder could cause an attack of anger in him, albeit very short-lived, but to the point of self-forgetfulness. In particular, they required absolute cleanliness along the entire length of the highway. He would lose his temper if he noticed any dust, some dirt, a piece of paper or wood chips on the highway. While he was still shouting, the workers suffered anger, taking him for granted; but the highest measure of anger - already unbearable for us - was something else - this was dad's silence: snatching a broom from the nearest of the workers, dad began to vigorously take revenge himself and did this for quite a long time. They knew the possibility of this and were extremely afraid of it, considering it as their shame. However, despite all these outbursts, all the employees were very devoted to the pope for his justice, benevolence and generosity. Due to the close clan cohesion of all Adjarians, the devotion of some, the employees, obliged all others to do the same. Without knowing it, the pope was always surrounded by guards, ready to protect him from the slightest trouble, and even those strangers whom the pope entrusted to one of his employees as his guests enjoyed the same security. Apparently, the pope was not even fully aware of the threat he would have been under if he had not been recognized by the mountaineers as the legitimate head of the Adjarian gorge. After his death, one of the employees came to Tiflis to look for a place for himself with his father and, upon learning that he was no longer alive, burst into tears and began to praise him. And then he talked about this protection of him in Adjara by the mountaineers themselves and, in particular, he remembered one incident that remained unknown to my father: he once spent the night in a guardhouse at the Khulo station. Having heard that someone was staying for the night, the surrounding robbers came in a gang to do their job. But they were met by the employees who were here and announced that they would not allow even conversations that could agitate their boss, and the robbers peacefully dispersed to their villages. The narrator told me that without such intervention, my father would not have survived then. It was this devotion to my father that extended to us, and I clearly felt like the sovereign prince of the Adjara Mountains. Akhmet, who came out to meet me, carried me up the stairs in his arms, and Lucy, if she also came, was carried by dad himself. Having washed ourselves with cold water from the spring, we, more than me, ran into the gorge of my river. At this time, the samovar was put on, hard-boiled eggs were boiled and chickens were roasted on a spit, an invariable property of Adjaris-Tskhali, and sometimes Adjaris-Tskhali trout with red spots on the sides was boiled in salt water. In addition, Akhmet invariably served cornbread - chad, matsoni, that is, a special type of sour milk, in a clay cup and a flatbread of local cheese, very strange and still incomprehensible to me in its composition: it consisted of long elastic fibers, like a tightly compressed coconut washcloth, and as soon as you grabbed the end of these fibers, the cheese spiral unwound. It was all very fresh, and after a trip of two hours or more, I ate it with great appetite. But the peacefulness of our breakfast was each time disrupted by the division of Adjaris-Tskhal chicken. Most of its parts were registered, and the violation of property rights seemed to us almost on the same scale as a violation of the international balance now seems. The slightest inattention on the part of Aunt Yulia or any of the elders - and a threat to the foundations of world justice arose. This is not an exaggerated way of expression: my legal concepts were absolute and, undoubtedly, were sacred norms. The point here is not in favorite pieces, but precisely in the consciousness of the eternal foundations of sacred law; to give in - I gave in willingly, but I could not allow inattention to the order, which seemed to me to be rooted in the essence of things. I am the owner of Adjaris-Tshali (the rest are participating in this only because of me), and it would be a ruin to my sovereign dignity to have a light attitude towards ancient rituals - and I felt myself for immemorial years owning this feud, it seemed to me that these places never had another owner, and although I knew that I was once born and even liked to consider myself and call myself small, but in matters similar to the ownership of Adjaris-Tshali, the attitude to parents, etc., definitely felt trans-temporal. The sign of my eternal power was the Adjaris-Tskhal chicken or chickens. I didn’t like some parts, and, most importantly, considered them unsublime. But it was Lucy who valued them. Therefore, when she was given chicken legs, I did not object at all, and I would not have encroached on the part that rightfully belonged to her; mine were the wings, dried and roasted in the flame until completely hard. I chewed them with pleasure, especially the tailbones, and I liked the smell of burnt meat and the sublimity of the name: in my division of things and phenomena, flight and wings belonged to the category of the noble and poetic, which I could never think about without trembling, while walking and legs belonged to the everyday and prosaic. The owner of Adjaris-Tskhali, of course, had a skinny, but noble part, and the vulgar fleshiness of the legs did not make them worthy food. Further, Lucy owned the liver, and I owned the stomach. In the flabby constitution of the liver and in its fatty content, I felt something base, and even when, in the absence of Lucy, the liver was offered to me, I refused it, as something beneath my dignity. On the contrary, the tense elasticity of the stomach and the definite structure of its tissue testified to me about the dignity of this part. Of course, taste also meant something here; but the main ones were still considerations about dignity, perhaps vague, but of a metaphysical order. I wanted white meat, and, on occasion, I ate it. But since I valued it only in terms of taste, but metaphysically its dignity was not clear to me, I never allowed myself to insist on brisket: to demand something metaphysically indifferent and, therefore, to reveal my desire for food as a sensual object of taste meant in my eyes to lose my sacred dignity and lose some kind of dignity. Finally, the most difficult question of dividing was eggs, not boiled eggs in the shell, but from chicken. My interests here collided with the Lyusins. True, in ordinary hard-boiled eggs the yolk, like yellow, fatty and too material - crumbles and smears - seemed to me not one of the sublime objects, unlike the white, mysteriously blue and elastic white. I only valued this last one, while Lucy had the opposite view, and so we exchanged our least favorite parts of the egg. But egg yolks directly from chicken, firstly, are mysterious by their very origin. These eggs had to be divided, starting with the largest, one for me, one for Lucy, one for me, one for Lucy. But the difficulty is who comes first. Of course, I thought that the first became me; but here Lucy often raised a scandal and thereby got what she wanted, and then I calmed down with the thought that the smallest testicles, in an indefinitely large number, which I received as compensation, carried the very secret. After breakfast, with all its pitfalls, we had to move on to the most important thing - the flowers. Everyone came out, scattering in different directions. Behind the guardhouse there was a clearing. Now there are dense plantings of subtropical bushes and trees, made by dad. I remember how on one of our visits we found our entire clearing riddled with holes, and among them one was especially large. Near the gatehouse lay and stood plants brought, I remember, from Sukhum. Dad ordered the planting of these plants in front of us, and we also planted them, each with a tree as a souvenir. All plantings have been done; The general bewilderment was aroused by the huge hole, and not a single tree remained unplanted. Then the brought gardener, to the friendly laughter of all the workers, carried out a barely visible seedling from the lodge, which he declared to be a cedar. This garden subsequently grew luxuriantly, but the cedar, despite the soil being carefully loosened and prepared for it, did not grow. It was in this clearing, both before and after planting, that we began our flower picking, and from there, carried away, we walked and crawled further, although this was considered not entirely safe - it seems, because of the snakes that crawled out from under all the bushes and, rustling the leaves, hid in the continuous thickets. Anyone who has not seen with their own eyes the forests of the Black Sea coast, and especially the Adjarian forests, will find it difficult to give an idea of ​​the abundance of plant life that makes the local thickets a continuous tangle of intertwined trunks, flexible stems, plant vines, and branches. The plants here are piled on top of each other; different types of ivy cover the trunks of chestnuts, ash trees, oaks, wild apple and pear trees, etc. from bottom to top. But these beautiful trunks, covered with a dark green mosaic of ivy leaves, are doomed to death, and you can see many trees, already withered and rotten, standing, or even falling, from this decoration. Between the large trees there are smaller ones: the hard greenery of the Caucasian palm, or boxwood, growing here, trunks up to half an arshin thick in diameter, jonjali, persimmon, different types of aluchi, medlar, negnap. Grapevines climb through the trees, everything is intertwined with thorny and steel-like stems of salsaparilla, blackberries and other climbing plants. They climb the trunks to the top of the trees and hang from there in powerful tangles, are thrown from tree to tree, entangled with each other, blocking all passages with impenetrable barriers. There is no way to get through these vines. You see nothing but a mysterious green twilight, neither up, nor down, nor to the sides. You don’t understand where you are going, what you are stepping on. Under your feet are huge, thick, smelling of either cucumbers or dampness, ferns of very different types, on the sides there are delays everywhere, and countless thorns pierce so that you cannot take a single step. If you somehow wandered into such a forest, you would have to die in it, despite the abundance of plant food. And we, of course, did not dare to make such attempts, although we gladly collected various fruits and berries at the entrance to it. Forest grapes, wild apples and pears - probably the remains of ancient orchards, salsaparilla berries, blackberries, wild strawberries and wild strawberries, persimmons and medlars, the fruits of which are called "cones" in the Caucasus, large rose hips, blueberries, chestnuts, walnuts and small nuts, beech nuts, Jewish cherry berries and much more brought us edges of forest thickets. There were also wild apricots, very tasty, but for some reason considered harmful and almost forbidden to us. At different times, different prey appeared, others, like grapes, persimmons and pine cones, were good only after the first frost, but stayed on the trees all winter. What seemed most worthy of attention to us, in connection with the far north, were the birch and rowan trees that grew in the mountains and which dad told us about. After frost, bunches of rowan berries were delivered to us from Adjara and used for jam. But we considered fruits and berries to be pampering, and flowers were the real deal. They appeared in Adjaris-Tskali and in general in the vicinity of Batum early, approximately from mid-January. First, crocuses and colchicas: white, pink, lilac, sometimes purple leafless harbingers of spring covered all the meadows with their cups. Then the “milky color,” as the ancients put it, snowdrops, galanthus nivalis10 and another, two species, of which with larger, but coarser flowers, grew in swamps and was therefore little accessible to us, and the other, more noble, in my opinion, could be found on dry soil. I was excited by the exquisite appearance of these flowers with three axes of symmetry, a double row of petals of various shapes and a thin greenish rim, which, in combination with the white paint of the entire flower and yellow stamens, seemed exceptionally elegant to me. The fact that snowdrops belong to the bulbous species, their triaxiality, the bright yellow-greenness of their leaves and stems almost to the point of fluorescent self-luminescence, the elastic succulence of all plants, elastic everywhere, the thin membrane on the flower shoot, the shy drooping of the flower corolla hanging like a bell, finally, its first appearance after winter, although too short in our Colchis - everything made this flower dear to me. The other type, more magnificent and less elastic, I recognized only for its resemblance to this one. 1923. IV. 24. From late autumn to early spring, we found a Christmas rose along the Adjara road. This large and rough flower, with hard petals and no scent, seemed more amusing than attractive, judging by its name and the strange, dirty pale green color of its petals, stamens and pistil. It was strange to see a flower that differed little in color from the leaves and stem; his appearance and color were completely November - gloomy, gloomy, hostile. Added to this was his toxicity. He was the flower of winter for us. On the contrary, we learned about the coming of spring by violets and cyclamens. Usually they tried not to miss the first appearance of these flowers, which always bloomed together. The pope ordered the employees going on road business to see if they had disbanded and to notify them when this happened. Having received this news, dad announced to us: “The violets and cyclamens have blossomed,” probably no less solemnly than the Athenian priest, who proclaimed the onset of the spring festival of flowers - anthesterium, and this meant: one of these days we are going to Adjaris-Tshali. Poor dad. In his worries about his family, he restored the cult of the Lares and Penates, only back - from the past to the future; and in the love of nature there is also an ancient cultic attitude towards it. I rejoiced at the cyclamens, because it seemed a violation of all truth not to admire these delicate pink flowers, sometimes red, sometimes lilac, with the delicately detailed coloring of their petals, with red fragile pedicels, with strange heart-shaped leaves and even stranger tubers, somewhat flattened in the shape of an orange. The grayish-green color of the leaves, their red undersides, the finest grain of the petals and leaves, sparkling in the sun - all this should have attracted people to this plant. But the feeling for nature is as straightforward as the feeling for man: I was hostile to cyclamen for some almost imperceptible immodesty, for the deliberate sophistication of the lapel of their petals. They seemed to me the direct opposite of their closest relatives - violets, with their warm fragrance, with their bottomless purple velvet corollas, set off by golden-orange stamens, and with the thinnest dark purple veins of the petals. From my dad, I knew that it was impossible to artificially compose violet essential oil (this was achieved much later), just as it was impossible to extract it from the violets themselves. Their color is the true color - ancient sacred purple. And at the same time, these sacred eyes of nature, royal and fragrant, hide, from afar only announcing themselves as a delicate scent. There is only one smell related to this, although somewhat coarser and also stronger. I was worried about it, for a long time not being able to understand why it suddenly smelled like violet meadows sometimes, obviously from afar. I asked around and no one gave an answer. Finally, I found the very source of this fragrance in flowers, even more modest in both appearance and color: the blossoming vine from the tall trees was fragrant. Then I smelled childhood in the Academy from the pages of the Bible, when the very sign of spring in the Song of Songs is indicated: “And the vine, when it buds, gives off a fragrance.” So the spring of my life was winnowed for me by this incense of violets and vines. From childhood, among the first flowers of the Batumi spring, I also remember primroses - primroses. First, a pink type with individual flowers bloomed, then another pink one, in which a flower brush rises on the arrow, then a yellow one, warm, sometimes peach-yellow, also with flower brushes, somewhat reminiscent of Central Russian rams. But the light peach smell of northern sheep there was thick, as if from a basket of real peaches, and unusually tasty, although too filling, too edible for a flower. In Adjaris-Tskhali, mostly in shady places, a pleasantly deep dark blue periwinkle was modestly hiding; blue snowdrops (scilla amaena) jumped out of the ground, going there salted for food; my favorite field hyacinths (muscari), dark blue, dark purple and dark blue, sometimes almost black, attracted me with their bulbousness, the tight density of their brushes of clearly chiseled balls, in which, upon careful examination, one could see many tiny, clearly worked details. There were many irises, purple and yellow, of which the first grew in the water of the springs and were distinguished by large flowers. I knew that “violet powder” was made from their roots, and this in itself was a virtue in my eyes. What was attractive was the incomprehensible triaxiality of their flowers, the flattenedness of their leaves, their airiness. But I also approved of them somehow formally, with secret disapproval of their deliberate poetry, too obvious elegance, which after a few minutes turned into a slimy black and purple lump in the bouquet. I myself am surprised by the children's duality: the outfits interested me very much, an elegant suit and taking care of it did not seem like a trifle, despite my mother’s suggestions. But when I saw the slightest shade of pretentiousness in nature, I immediately lost my personal tender feeling and looked with an external gaze. Purple porridges, wonderful dark blue swamp forget-me-nots, deep blue gentians and other simple flowers were much closer to me, and I felt them as family and therefore tried to give them full attention. There lived within me a conviction, a conviction in my heart, that flowers—my flowers, loved by me—love me, bloom just for me, and that my inattention to their beauty would be an insult, or rather a wound, to their ardent feelings for me. People, both then and after, seemed to me independent and free, so that everyone loves or does not love - according to his own desire and, not receiving an answer, not only should not complain, but also be upset. When I later began to devour Walter Scott’s novels, the sighs of love seemed so meaningless to me that I considered this type of phenomenon invented specifically for the plot of the novel and did not believe the sincerity of these longings. Flowers are something completely different. They love me because they cannot help but love me, for the sake of love and growing up. True, not everyone loves: there are rough flowers, like the Christmas rose or the royal scepter, which perceive life stupidly. There are also self-satisfied flowers, busy with themselves, like cyclamens and irises. But most flowers see me as their master and friend. Not to pick such a flower and not to take it home when it was just waiting for my arrival and had bloomed on purpose by this time - doesn’t this mean to upset him in his best feelings? And I tried as best I could not to offend anyone. Without bending my knees and crawling on my stomach, I collected, collected until exhausted, took heaps of flowers to Aunt Yulia, then ran to new collections, brought them to her again and ran away again, showering her with flowers. They tried to persuade me: “Sit down, relax,” but I responded with lack of time: “We need to pick some more flowers,” and ran away again. I felt sympathy in Aunt Yulia, and I don’t know if it was so or if it seemed to me that she silently shared my attitude towards flowers. I considered it my duty, the duty of reciprocal love, to pluck every single flower, everything, and even more so, all the violets. But in front of me there were clearings densely covered with flowers, the same violets, and beyond the clearings there were others, and all, as in the best flower garden, completely covered with flowers. No matter how hard I tried, my work was not at all visible even in the nearest places: after all, heaps of flowers could be picked there without leaving the spot. In addition, when discussing individual flowers, I could feel something disapproving about them, but I loved the flower kingdom as a whole to the point of oblivion and believed that I could not help but love it, even if my surname, as I then thought, comes from Flora, the goddess of flowers. And therefore, the internal need for collecting flowers extended to the entire kingdom of Flora. I tore and tore, and before me stretched the mountains, all the slopes of which were covered with flowers, and then I began to feel that the whole Adjaris-Tshali would remain offended. The day is approaching evening, dad calls us to get ready to go home. I say “now” and continue to tear; then they call again: “Daddy, wait a little,” and again I tear, this time convulsively, and I cry with pity, kiss the flowers, pouring tears over them, asking for forgiveness, I promise to come again very soon and then I’ll probably pick them. Meanwhile, the elders are breaking huge bouquets of rhododendrons, magnificent, pink, white, red, lilac, with large, but, unfortunately, easily falling corollas and beautiful glossy leaves. This species, growing in large bushes, should not be confused with the same species of rhododendron, which is small-growing and relatively small-flowered, with continuous impassable thickets covering many square miles of the Caucasus Mountains and growing so densely that sometimes fires occur from spontaneous combustion. A more noble large species grew in Adjaris-Tskali. In addition, an indispensable feature of the Adjaris-Tskhala trip are no less huge bouquets of dark yellow azaleas, blooming so densely that their branches, sticky with resinous juice, even have few leaves. All these bouquets, brooms, branches, wreaths, pieces of turf, whole plants, and finally, just armfuls of flowers, with great difficulty and the combined efforts of everyone, from dad to Akhmet, are placed in the phaetons literally from all sides, so that we ourselves can barely squeeze in. Flowers are tied to the back, to the top of the phaeton, which usually rises due to the onset of evening dampness, they are stuck into the lantern brackets, onto the trestle of the phaeton driver, placed under his feet, put on our heads and all our hands are occupied with them. When we have already sat down, wrapped in the obligatory blanket, Akhmet arranges the steps of the chaise with new bunches of flowers tied there. Finally, the packing of us and the flowers is finished, and dad says to the cab driver: “Let’s go.” We shout goodbye to Ahmet and the other employees and graciously console them on our departure, promising to come again soon. There are no longer any special arguments over the front bench: it’s cool, and we would rather try to squeeze into a warm nest between the adults or peacefully settle down at the bottom of the car among flowers and under a blanket. A flower basket is rolling along the highway, now quickly, while the carriage was driving there, constantly slowed down by the father. We do not stop, saturated with both impressions and flowers, the fragrance of which surrounds the phaeton by night. We quickly eat something without stopping. The manganese mountain turns black at the entrance to the Chorokhi Gorge. This means that Batum is not far away. A black colony flashes in the semi-darkness, we drive across the last bridge, and now our mother is kissing us, missing us as if we were leaving for a year. The house is warm and light, a hot dinner is steaming on the table. After dinner, the flowers they brought are quickly laid out in vessels with water; In addition to numerous vases, some of them quite large, we have to use salad bowls, soup bowls, dishes, deep plates, and glasses for flowers... The final sorting of flowers will be done tomorrow, in the morning, as soon as we get up. And now, half asleep, I hear the restless conversations of the elders that it is impossible to leave so many strongly fragrant flowers, especially azaleas, in the rooms at night. Dad recalls cases, almost like Batumi, when inexperienced visiting flower lovers fell asleep and never woke up, having placed only a bouquet of these yellow pontic azaleas on the night table near the bed. He also tells, not for the first time, that the most fragrant honey from these flowers is deadly, it kills when eaten with its aroma alone; Occasionally it comes across in our market, but knowledgeable people carefully avoid it. Indeed, the azaleas emit a smell that is strong and pungent throughout all our rooms. This is not the stuffy smell of bird cherry, nor the sticky smell of many garden plants; there is no cloying, no moisture, no sensuality in it - it is strict, partly reminiscent of some types of incense. Immensely superior in strength to the other fragrances that now fill the air of the entire apartment, and the smell of azaleas drowning them all out, however, does not seem intrusive or unpleasant: the air has simply become dense, like a transparent solid. But whether it seems to me from a dream or is it in reality, I see the thinnest arrows, as long as my finger at that time, rushing through the air from the azaleas, like those rays that surround a night light with my eyes closed. They are the same amber-yellow color as the flowers that send them out. They are carried by currents of air and are so thin that they stick with their poisonous tips without pain. But if a lot of them stick in, you will die, poisoned by these arrows, similar to the golden arrows of Apollo. Half asleep, I hear how the adults, having finished their dinner, move chairs and take some of the destructive flowers outside, and I fall asleep, as this very rarely happens, without painful tossing from side to side and sleep without nightmares all night. I was probably about six years old. My dad and I walked around the city. As we passed the church fence, we met a local priest. Probably the liturgy had just ended; he was wearing a purple kamilavka. Suddenly, to my embarrassment, he greeted dad, and dad began to talk to him about something, as I felt, in a warning manner. I shifted from foot to foot and looked out from under my brows. Saying goodbye, the priest took a prosphora out of his pocket and gave it to me, but I was scared, and then dad took the prosphora for me. After that, we walked around the city, and I tried to make sure that dad didn’t say a word about what had happened - that’s how this meeting with me was assessed. But, apparently, dad did not attach much importance to her and did not talk about her at all. Only upon returning home did he tell his aunt in a slightly joking tone: “Here Pavel received the prosphora,” and wanted to give it to me as it belonged. I was overcome by inexpressible embarrassment, I ran to the farthest room and, hiding under the bed, heard from there that the prosphora was being put in the buffet. However, I use all the church terms in this story retroactively; back then, prosphora and everything like that were “this” and “it” for me. The church, which I had never been to, the priest, whom I had never approached, the strange appearance and the unprecedented white color of the prosphora bread, all together extremely alerted my sense of specialness, and I was embarrassed, ashamed and afraid of all this precisely because I was acutely aware of how unusual it was. I passionately wanted to look at my prosphora, but I was not only painfully embarrassed to ask the elders about it, but I myself did not dare open the cupboard to look at it. I had an internal struggle for about a month; Finally, he made up his mind: he secretly went into the buffet, but there was no prosphora. After another long period of time, making a great effort on myself, but adopting a casual tone, I asked Aunt Yulia about her, as if by the way. “You didn’t need it, and they gave it to the nanny,” was the aunt’s somewhat emphatic answer. This incident represents, in a condensed form, the religious soil on which my later convictions were to grow. In the modern language of psychoanalysis, I had a delayed affect of religious feeling: I was cut off from religion so reliably that, with the power of internal attraction, I myself built up the wall erected between me and religion. The greater the religious need, the further I, placed on a certain path, voluntarily and rapidly fled from the possibility of satisfaction. And although my parents did not do any obvious violence here, they turned my spiritual development in such a way that I spent a lot of energy on building a prison for myself, and then on destroying these walls. Of course, probably all this should have happened in the general course of life, and I least of all complain about what happened. Besides, what I built, I built, and I alone am responsible for it. In moments of complete spiritual liberation, when you suddenly recognize yourself as a substance, and not just a subject of your states, and you stand before the Eternal, you are acutely and extremely clearly aware of full responsibility for everything that was and is, for the most passive states, and the equally decisive impossibility of being excused by external influences and suggestions, heredity, upbringing, weaknesses. Then it is clear: there is nothing that “did”, “happened”, “happened”, there are no simple facts, but there are only actions, and you know: I did them. I am the point; further there can be no talk of anyone or anything. It’s no different – ​​and in relation to everything that happened even in early childhood. But one can understand the content of life only by its connection with the environment. In this sense, I need to talk about the atmosphere of our home. 1923.IV.24. My parents wanted to restore paradise in the family and, especially, to keep their children in this pristine garden. I don’t know if it was an accident that I, for my part, followed their wishes; rather, I am inclined to think that by some kind of premonition they began to realize what turned out to be in some sense possible. Not only did they want to, but I was also able to perceive the world in a heavenly way. But in this paradise there was no religion, at least there was no historical religion. She was absent here not by mistake, but by the force of a deliberately erected wall that protected the said paradise from human society. This was not a denial of religion in a metaphysical manner, it was not such in the internal consciousness of the parents, and even more so it was not such in their statements. In this respect, our family was very little like most families in our circle, both non-believers and believers. For both, the fundamental questions of religion seemed at that time clear and resolved, either negatively or positively; the corresponding decision was further instilled in the younger members of the family. The families we knew were like this: in some, the children were taught that there is no God, that religion is superstition and the clergy are deceivers; in others it’s the opposite. But here and there the younger generation grew up in one or another certainty. In our family, the essence of religious education was the conscious removal of any, positive or negative, religious influences from the outside, including from the parents themselves. We were never told that there is no God, or that religion is superstition, or that the clergy is deceiving, just as the opposite was not said. However, there were shades here. Mom was absolutely silent on this score, but in her impenetrable silence I vaguely felt some subtle smell of the word “no.” Auntie was also silent, but from various signs I discerned in this silence a compulsion, covering up some sort of “yes,” as if with her eyes. Finally, Dad, through whom the religious meridian of our home ran, seemed to feel most at ease with regard to religious expression. He said “no,” which sounded like “yes,” and “yes,” which sounded like “no.” If I remind you that his gospel was Goethe’s Faust, and his bible was Shakespeare, then the religious tonality will become completely clear. I often heard religious sentiments in my father, mainly as a feeling of infinity and, parallel to it, a feeling of the insignificance of man, his weakness - mental and moral. Resignation naturally followed from this, turning into fatalism and all-forgiveness, or, rather, all-apology. The denial of religion, whether in the sense of atheism in general or condemnation of some historical form of religion, no matter what, evoked a decisive rebuff in him. He would have treated the statement more gently, but he would not have failed to cool the heat with the skeptical thought about the impossibility of absolute truths, and therefore the injustice of asserting one’s relative truth to the detriment of others. When we walked, Dad would sometimes, although not too often, casually drop a phrase about the Supreme Being, and I never heard him deny His identity. Perhaps in some sense he recognized it, but he was afraid of any certainty in this regard. Sometimes dad used the word Divinity and much less willingly the word God, and when he uttered this word, it was with a reservation, like: “That which is called God,” or “The Supreme Being, Who is given the name God,” etc. With these reservations, he wanted to emphasize to me and to himself, or, rather, to himself and me, the incommensurability of the Supreme Being with human knowledge and with the human word, and so that the habit of known names and words would not weaken this feeling the immensity of the distance between him and us, my father, as I understand it, considered it necessary to use a new phrase and name each time. This meant to my father: “I can’t tell you anything definite on this issue, there is no solid knowledge here; but now I’m thinking this and that.” This abstinence from the name was not from motives of reverence, but from cognitive conscientiousness, on the one hand, and from social caution, on the other. “I don’t talk about what I don’t know exactly,” and “I avoid certainty in these things, because that’s where intolerance, hostility and fanaticism usually arise.” Sometimes from dad one could hear something like a cosmological proof of the existence of God, but also in the form of some kind of subordinate clause, that is, a psychological subordinate clause - father did not want to talk about it point-blank, as the main sentence, or he considered direct statements wrong. In addition, and here much more directly, he pointed to the national historical experience: “If all humanity has always had a religion, then it cannot be that there is no real basis behind this faith.” Therefore, the pope considered it frivolous to deny religion, but at the same time he considered it impossible to isolate this real basis from the historically established beliefs of mankind. No matter how hopeless his assessment of religion sounded, however, I realize that it was from the overtones of his brief judgments that the germs of my later convictions crystallized that, in fact, there are no religions, but there is one Religion. Religion greatly changes its appearance in humanity, and the value of its various forms varies greatly. But the main forces that compose it are similar. Perhaps, under the positive influence of Comte’s religion or the further developers of the right-wing contists, of whom the pope was once related to Heinz, who emigrated to America with the name Frey, or perhaps directly from the historical material with which the pope was constantly studying, he saw three main forces that shape religion. The first of them is the feeling of world boundlessness and infinity, the loss of a person in a world that is disproportionately large compared to his own insignificance; hence the desire to formalize this infinity, understanding it as a being and, due to the powerlessness of our mind, not being able to think about the world's infinity except by analogy with man. The second force is the feeling of connection between individual people, which ultimately forms nations and humanity. The Pope, however, contrary to Comte, considered the idea of ​​humanity too distant, vague and pale, perhaps, to give it practical significance; What drives human life are connections that are much closer and smaller in scale, but which are more directly inherent in our consciousness, namely blood ties. Insistently, and the further, the more insistently, dad insisted that this feeling of kinship is inseparable from him, that he feels his life is widespread in his family, and that he affirms these feelings as a physiological phenomenon, he cannot help but affirm, because otherwise it hurts him. When he became acquainted with Fustel de Coulange’s book “La cite antique,” ​​he found in it, as he said, complete confirmation of his views and forced me, probably in class III or IV, to read it. This will be said in its proper place, but for now it should only be noted that the pope saw in this wonderful book something that he did not say or think, perhaps even that was hostile to him, for he turned this book on its head. After all, Fustel de Coulanges proves that ancient religion was the veneration of deified ancestors, that the cult of ancestors determined all civil life, and that people mattered in the eyes of antiquity only as priests of the ascending line of their clan. According to Fustel de Coulange, the eyes of ancient man were entirely turned back to the past. The Pope spoke of just the opposite, and in regard to the family connection he was more like an ancient Jew waiting for the Messiah, rather than like the Roman described by Fustel de Coulanges. For many reasons, my father’s ancestors were non-existent; he did not think, could not and did not want to think about them. The fundamental virtue of the Romans was pietas erga parentes11, and the one who possessed it was pius12. My father could by no means be defined in this sense as a pius, for his pietas was erga pueros13. His gaze was turned forward, and although he was not a priest, he could well have been one, but a priest of the descending line and, more specifically, a priest of the family. In addition to the actual isolation from his clan, he willed this isolation because he wanted to completely devote himself to another service, he wanted freedom from his ancestors and all those relationships, beliefs and feelings to which life in the clan obliged. Society, my father always insisted, is not made up of individual people, these atoms of humanity, but of molecules that are no longer divisible in the social sense; each such molecule is a family. I remember well that in these cases he always used the terms “atom” and “molecule.” But the pope never spoke about the gens, which is a genuine element of society that makes it historical, and this is all the more surprising since he always read historical works, and in particular, if not otherwise, he would have been forced to encounter the concept of the gens, from the same Fustel de Coulanges. Given his intelligence and powers of observation, it is impossible that he actually overlooked this basic historical category. It is absolutely clear to me: he did not see her, but did not want to see her. The whole structure of thought of his contemporaries, which completely excluded the tribal connection, in this regard responded to some deeply personal and, apparently, very painful wounds of the soul, so that the pope surrounded this dangerous place in his soul with a special wall, beyond which entry was once and for all prohibited; and he directed all the heat of his soul, which tends to gather here, towards his family. Thus, the second force of religion - the cult of ancestors - produced in him a veneration of the family, if not cultic, then in its nature very close to religious. Finally, there is a third force of religion; this is a set of mysterious phenomena, what is now called higher psychology. The father had little interest in them and, it seems, considered them spiritually of little value, at least in his life; If I correctly interpret his words, which I do not remember clearly enough, then my father believed that on earth you need to deal with earthly things, and the mysterious will have its time, after death, although now it is impossible to imagine even approximately what this future will be. He did not deny the boundlessness of the unknown and the possibility of many surprises emerging from there, but he did not see ways to accurately understand this area, and he had no taste for it, although “fantasy” in literature attracted him. I have never heard him say that everything ends with this life, and, on the contrary, many of his words made sense only on the contrary premise. But even here he avoided direct statements, although behind his words I felt goodwill towards the idea of ​​posthumous existence. However, when Aunt Julia died and dad followed me to our friends Khud Adov, where they sent me on the day of her funeral so that I would not see this spectacle, he told me on the way: “Your aunt belongs to God, He took her to himself” - and after that he never spoke to me about her. These are the three powers of religion. In historical religions, their areas are confused among themselves and obscured by various ideas, which not only do not make sense, but which are so obscure and difficult to decipher that it is impossible to understand them, and, in any case, this is a matter for specialists. In practice, the use of such “ideas” inspires a false idea of ​​absolute truth, and is therefore harmful. My father was not hostile to any religion, but he was inclined to consider, it seems to me, the Chinese cult of ancestors and Mohammedanism to be the healthiest. But both there and here he emphasized, as the wisest thing, satisfaction with the small and present, the reluctance to seek absolute truth in Chineseism and the non-predatory culture of Mohammedanism. In general, he always contrasted the calm and peacefulness of the East with the constant rebellion and violence of the West and believed that wisdom and truth are the lot of the former. I said: he was not hostile to any religion; but - and did not recognize any. As for Christianity, my father saw its height, but it was precisely this that inspired him with fear: a religion that inspires the idea of ​​its absoluteness cannot but be a source of intolerance. In this regard, Catholicism seemed especially threatening to him. But perhaps I speak too much and too definitely about his views: my understanding of them was formed from many of his half-statements and accidentally dropped words; With such a transfer, inaccuracies are possible. 1923.IV.30. In any case, I conveyed the main meaning of his beliefs correctly. It is also confirmed by the father’s attitude towards the clergy. Father was always invariably respectful and attentive to ministers of worship of all confessions and even faiths. These were signs of attention not to them personally, but to representatives of those believers for whom these persons were special people. The pope recognized the clergy, but the motive for recognition was not agreement in the content of faith, but the fear of offending a person in his cherished beliefs. “How can I not be respectful to someone who is recognized by many people as their representative before God and is a sacred person,” I heard from him many times. And indeed, he was respectful, however, to all clergy. The priests and pastors approved of him no less than the mullahs and rabbis, and even with the Yezidis, who were generally so distrustful, he got along, just as he was on good terms with the Orthodox and Armenian-Gregorian clergy. I don’t know whether they didn’t notice that dad, essentially, was not with them at all, or whether it seemed to them in the order of things not to delve into metaphysical questions, but they seemed to be content with signs of honor and attention and did not talk about more. I think with bitterness that perhaps my father was practically right that people do not need absolute truth and will live more comfortably without it: the majority feel comfortable when there are no clear angles and edges in their thoughts, and are happy if external circumstances allow them not to remember them. Humanity was my father’s favorite word, with which he wanted to replace religious dogma and metaphysical truth. He saw humanity as a universal regulator of all social and personal relations instead of religion, law and morality - the only thing that should be preached and instilled. My father was by no means sentimental and did not at all dream, in the Tolstoyan spirit, of the abolition of wars, state laws and courts, national and class barriers. He not only saw the immediate need for all these principles of social organization, but, apparently, did not hope for the possibility of arranging them in any historically taken into account period. And therefore he treated revolutionary ideas with distrust and contempt, as boyish claims to remake society, which is as it is, according to the laws of necessity, and with anxiety for the consequences of revolutionary attempts that would lead Russia “into complete chaos.” The father was convinced of the inevitability of this shock to the state, and his thoughts of a rational order were subsequently intertwined with premonitions of an impending catastrophe and painful feelings of black melancholy. He was not an ardent admirer of statehood and considered many things in the government course to be a mistake, which was especially clear to him in the Caucasus; but in the shock of the state system, he foresaw that justice, common sense, the order of life and all social construction would be trampled underfoot and, despite his exceptional tolerance, in hours of particular gloom, with pain and as if he himself was afraid of his words, which nullified his previous reasoning that everyone should be allowed to breathe, he gloomily added to himself: “Equality, equality... and yet we (i.e. Russia) will be eaten by the gentlemen Jews. These are the people who will have to tinker with some more. But I don’t foresee any way out...” And he fell silent even more gloomily. So, he did not look at life utopianly, but believed that it was accessible and quite feasible to soften the rigidity of social forms, “humanizing” them from the inside. My father believed that it was possible to change the inner character of all life if it was imbued with a sense of “humanity,” and he considered the East to have achieved much more in this regard than the West. Humanity, the warmth and gentleness of human relationships comes from the family - that’s what he believed. I have never heard him mention V.V. Rozanov, but I think, despite the complete opposite of their character, the father, built on a sense of duty and decency, and Rozanov, on the deepest internal rebellion against these principles, they would have found a lot in common in their thoughts about the historical and social significance of the family principle. Humanity is the only slogan that can be common, common to all people, which gives the correct understanding of the moral commandments and requirements of religion, which does not lead to bitterness and intolerance. This, in fact, is what should be brought up in people. Shakespeare, in Dad's estimation, was an exceptional teacher of this sense of humanity. Two verses from Othello in particular sounded like a revelation of this feeling to Dad - he told them to us in Russian translation: She loved me for my torment, And I thank her for her compassion for them. “Above and deeper than this,” my father sometimes burst out, “nothing has been said or can be said.” My story went sideways here, and either too much was said about my father so as not to disrupt the rhythm of the story, or too little to actually present the appearance of my father. But without this anticipation, I would be afraid of remaining completely misunderstood. It is not difficult now to guess what my father’s views on my religious upbringing were. To summarize, in religion, in fact, he did not deny anything except the fervor of affirmation, and since people of religion do not metaphysically sharpen their beliefs and do not consider them more than “symbol and likeness,” as the pope liked to rely on Goethe, he probably approved of religion, at least among the broad masses. But along with this skeptical half-recognition, the father, without realizing it, also had a dogma, his own dogma and his own absoluteness. I mean my own family. I don’t know where it came from, but my father had, in essence, a very great aristocracy, and his courtesy, delicacy and generosity, especially the absence of pettiness, were undoubtedly and almost undisguised condescension of the higher to the lower. He always felt obligated as if by some kind of high position, although there was none at all. But, remarkably, those around him, equal in position and even superior, accepted this shade of relations of internal inequality as correct. Father never “allowed himself” to do something that is quite natural to allow in relationships with equals and that would be undignified when dealing with people from a completely different circle and, moreover, aware of this distance. Therefore, the father was always not according to the measure of equality, delicate, generous, magnanimous and broad, unless, outraged by obvious untruth or injustice, he showed a short-term, but also not according to the measure of equality, violent anger. However, neither the first nor the second raised any objections. It is characteristic that this aristocratic self-consciousness was in no way artificial. Pompous, elevated, theatrical - this category of phenomena was the most hostile of all to my father, even the worst of fanaticism, and the slightest shadow of affectation aroused in him almost physical disgust. I am sure that the above-described character of relations with people was rooted in some of the deepest layers of his personality and precisely because of this, he himself, as the most constant in his life, was not noticed. But then this aristocratic identity extended to the family. Our family, according to my father’s silent but very definite conviction, must be special, and what is acceptable in other families cannot be acceptable in our country. Dad did not judge others and discussed them relatively rarely. However, this was not a consequence of a Christian or even a general religious commandment, but rather flowed from the thought, often repeated by the father, that “people are always people, with their weaknesses.” There was a hint of low appreciation of people here. The father was not a misanthrope; but in his excessive condescension there was a taste, albeit benevolent, of misanthropy, as if the father had once and for all decided to expect the worst from those around him, although in life he tried to appeal to the best. These people around were the old human race. Our family was supposed to become a new race. That old race was in the laws of historical necessity and historical weakness; in relation to our, new, father seemed to forget both the laws of history and human insignificance: for some reason a historical miracle was expected from her. Not quantitatively, no; Father was too sober, too far from vanity, to think of his family in outwardly exaggerated terms, or to overestimate it, or even to wish anything extraordinary for us in the future. Such a thought would make him wince in disgust, and he also considered his outwardly high position to be burdensome. But qualitatively the family was supposed to be exceptional: it seemed to him woven from nothing but nobility, generosity, mutual devotion, like a clot of pure humanity. That is why what is tolerable in others would also be intolerable in us; This is where I was inspired semiconsciously by the attitude of what is decent and what is indecent. It was indecent not in itself, but in relation to our family, to us in general, as excluded from the whole society. It didn’t seem “bad” to me, like “indecent” things were done and said by others in other families. But my consciousness could not accommodate that something similar could happen here, and the attempt of thought to imagine such a case led to the feeling of a world catastrophe: if this happens, then everything collapses and such confusion sets in that thought can no longer distinguish anything. Religion and everything connected with it were considered indecent; It seems to me that in my mind she was the very center of the indecent. Religious life is generally shy and seeks to hide from the prying eyes of others. During my upbringing, everything was unconsciously done to evoke this very feeling. We never said a word about religion, either for or against, or even narratively, as one of the social phenomena, unless more or less accidentally a word slipped through about the cult of savages or some Egyptians, but even then very fragmentarily. The closer any concept was to the Church, the less reason there could be for it to be mentioned in our house: only religious archeology, so dead that one could firmly count on its religious inactivity, was tolerated, and then barely. People “believe” in their own way. (I remember well this form of “believe” instead of believe, which is not at all accidental, for to believe means to spiritually know some objective reality, and to believe means to have some subjective state of confidence, perhaps completely illusory); So, people believe in their own way, and it would be inhuman and cruel to take away from them this sense of confidence, these illusory beliefs that support their humanity. They believe - and let them believe. But these are other people. And we must carry humanity in life in its immediate form, without symbols and similarities; we should not need artificial supports. A child’s consciousness must grow up outside the oppression of any ideas of religion in order to be able, when it becomes stronger, to freely define itself in one way or another and freely, without preconceived suggestions in childhood, without known habits of thought and feeling, not constrained by images of fantasy, not carried away by imposed likes and dislikes, to freely choose for itself the religion that it considers true. However, this upcoming choice was spoken to others and to myself, as far as I understand, more in an abstract formulation, according to the fair course of theoretical thought. In fact, behind this formulation lay a feeling of confidence that the matter would forever be limited to the abstract possibility of choosing a religion, and that we, children, would forever remain in a religious feeling that was deliberately not allowed to be clearly defined and therefore consciously maintained in an unstable balance, a religious feeling from which anything can come out, but it does not work out, is not allowed to obtain anything definite. I cannot say, but it seems to me that my father’s desire was to see you, my children, brought up in the same freedom from religion, so that you and your children, and so throughout the generations, would grow that new religion, which Guyot later depicted as “L’irreligion de Tavernr”14, or something like that, that is, a strong but formless religious feeling. Apparently, the pope was extremely confident within himself that this unstable religious state was so clearly superior to any historical religion that he did not even allow the thought of the possibility of us ever actually choosing a certain religion for ourselves and believed that since the direct indoctrination of religion was removed from childhood, it was psychologically impossible to turn to it later. And that is why he spoke so carefree about future religious self-determination, he even spoke about it as if benevolently, without taking into account the impending “intolerance” in such a case, which, at least formally, should have been taken into account as accompanying the future choice of religion. When my father spoke about the “relativity” of everything, he had the courage to agree that this, that is, the statement of relativity, is the only absoluteness available to us; and when he spoke about tolerance, he sometimes added that it was the only dogma. But dad did not take into account that “intolerance”, i.e. the consciousness of its complete rightness has its source not in the content, but in the form of the statement, and that as soon as something is recognized as absolute and dogmatic, it thereby already distinguishes a person from the ranks of all others and makes him, in his consciousness, exceptional and opposed to those who do not agree with his statement. Preaching tolerance as a dogma inevitably leads to intolerance towards everyone who denies such a dogma. And then we would have to enter into an active struggle with all representatives of other beliefs. But there was no point in fighting with us, and my father considered those around us not to have matured to a true understanding of humanity and therefore did not internally take them into account. Most of our acquaintances, my father's schoolmates and others, were either religiously indifferent, and for them religious issues seemed long ago resolved in the direction of sluggish atheism, or they were militant atheists. Both were deeply alien to the father, like an ignorant and boyishly frivolous way of dealing with issues that the father also did not want to touch, but not as resolved, but as infinitely difficult and insoluble. In addition, he did not sympathize with anti-religious beliefs as offensive to the majority and, perhaps, as socially dangerous. Both politically and religiously, when compared with most of those around him, he was more of a guardian, a very gentle and skeptical conservative of the English mold, rather than a person striving for something new. When I said that in the choice of religion that lay ahead for us, in his opinion, it was a foregone conclusion that we would not choose any religion for ourselves, least of all should it be seen that we were raised in the sense of unbelief. If in this choice we were inclined to actively deny religion, then my father, I am sure, would be very upset, even more than this or that choice of a particular religion, although this would also be upsetting to him. Equally, despite all the talk about tolerance, he would undoubtedly be warped by the choice not only of a different religion than Christianity, but also of a different confession than the Orthodox. I think (I will talk about this later) in my father, unrecognized by him and somewhere very deeply, there was an inclination towards the Church. Speaking about him, it is necessary to take into account the terrible time of Russian history - the reign of Emperor Alexander II, in which he spent his entire youth, and the terrible environment that surrounded him in the days of his youth and throughout his subsequent life. At this time and in this environment, my father gave a huge rebuff to the currents of thought that surrounded him, and his own worldview, which answered the questions of time and environment, overcame everything that surrounded him. His understanding of the family and his attitude to religion in the context of his life were, after all, a manifestation of precisely the church principle, as it could then be expressed without completely breaking with the surrounding society: his views were on the border of tolerance. That is why, when my choice of religion was subsequently determined, my father, despite his chagrin, began to explain to himself my path as “atavism,” recalling some of his father’s inclinations and, it seems to me, feeling that he was not entirely innocent in the transmission of religious heredity. But, in addition to theoretical views, the father was also strengthened in his fear of religious certainty by more private motives: family circumstances were their source. If // it weren’t for them, then, very likely, the pope would have allowed religious judgments to develop within himself that were more definite and more meaningful. These circumstances consisted in the difference in confessions to which my parents belonged by birth. Above all else in the world, valuing the principle of family in general, and his family in particular, and having deified my mother, not only out of deep and conscious love, but even more from theoretical motives, as a feminine and sacred principle, my father wanted to bring the difference of confessions to zero through the practical destruction of all occasions where the difference of religions could remind itself. Dad did not show his belonging to the Orthodox Church for fear of reminding his mother of his Orthodoxy with even the subtlest breath of a cold breeze; and my mother tried to repay him with the same delicacy and did the same in relation to the Armenian-Gregorian Church. Here I have before me a convincing example of how the noblest human feelings lead to harm when they are considered without regard to the general economy of life and, having received an absolute character, are elevated to their place God's. A kind and noble fear of causing the slightest grief to a loved one led, however, in combination with other contributing reasons, to depriving oneself and the most dear person in the world of the strongest of life’s supports, the most reliable of consolations. Meanwhile, if it weren’t for the hyperesthesia of delicacy (and a greater consciousness of the objective good of religion), then why not try to strengthen the religious consciousness in the same mother, why not support her connections with the Armenian Church, explaining that belonging to at least two confessions still unites in the most important and deep, and convergence on the religious zero, even if very unanimous, is a departure, albeit common, from the power that unites in Eternity? Probably, the father was not so clearly aware of the matter, because all the surrounding air suggested the opposite; and besides, biographically there were complicating circumstances. I mean the Armenian perseverance in preserving their people's people - a perseverance that is quite, in general, expedient, because without it this most ancient of cultural peoples, who had the misfortune of settling between the millstones of world history and therefore, throughout the many millennia of its existence, constantly beaten and constantly melting, would have long ago fallen into the number of extinct peoples. His history is fatal because of his country, for who can be safe, positioned on the line of fire between skirmishing trenches, on the great military road of world history? All the cultural values ​​of Armenia, created with talent, were a vain attempt to be built in a rapid stream, and all of them were constantly carried away by the current. Not a single people in its life has spent so much effort on culture as the Armenian, and, it seems, no one’s efficiency has ultimately turned out to be as small as theirs. Finally, the exceptional vitality of this people became tired, and, the oldest of all, he abandoned the tasks of state and cultural construction and instinctively applied concern to the most modest task - how to preserve in the world at least the existence of his small remnant: in fact, everything shows the impending disappearance of the people themselves in the future. The so-called Armenian conservatism is an instinct of national preservation, however, in essence it is hopeless, because it is impossible to preserve in history what no longer has the strength and will to open up and be spiritually built. But, in any case, in the Armenians there lives a patriarchal principle and a convulsive grasping at the foundations of their nationality, which are clearly leaking away. My personal conviction: this people is not only historically hopeless, but also has to dissolve into other peoples as a cultural task, introducing here the enzyme of the ancient and from the fortress already unproductive in the pure form of their blood. But the instinct of the Armenians themselves naturally fights against fate, and in significant births this fight is especially painful. This is exactly what happened in the Saparov family. The Saparovs were among several Armenian clans that belonged to the heterogeneous and ethnically poorly mixed mass of the inhabitants of Armenia, to the branch that the Armenians themselves call “Albanians.” This is an offshoot of the most ancient inhabitants of the Mediterranean basin, the so-called Mediterranean race. This race formed the basis of ethnicity in pre-Homeric Greece. In a purer form, its remains were given by the ancient tribes of the Lydians and Phrygians. Going deeper to the northeast, they partly mixed with the surrounding Ararat population, and partly remained here as ethnic nodules. One of these nodules survived until the early Middle Ages on the shores of Lake Gokchi and around this time, pressed by some kind of invasion, it moved even further north, into the current Elisavetpol province. Five independent regions, or melikties, were formed there, which subsequently fell under the vassalage of Persia, then Turkey. Several clans that came from here and partly settled in Georgia and descended from the ruling houses of these regions, remembered and still remember something special in their past, although in most cases they are poorly able to express their clan memory in articulate words. The motives of ancestral pride have long been forgotten, but the very feeling of superiority has not disappeared. These clans are, however, distinguished by their special beauty, and among them the Saparov clan stands out as well-known in this sense. These families are influential and recognized; Again, the Saparovs stand out from them in this regard. These clans, compared with those around them, were cultured and wealthy, and the Saparovs were exceptionally cultured and very rich. But all of the above is still not enough to explain the feeling of superiority inherent in the clan, and the deep family pride, Saparovsky pride, behind which something incomparably greater is definitely felt and felt than the taken into account motives of consciousness of one’s uniqueness. These families have long married only within their own circle, and the tuberculosis that devastates them is probably retribution for this exclusivity. The circle of these few surnames, related to each other by origin and connected by the most diverse properties, also included the Melik-Beglyarov family, most closely related to the Saparovs through my eldest aunt Elizaveta Pavlovna and some other marriages. The Melik-Beglyarovs owned one of the five melikdoms that were subsequently fragmented after the destruction of the majorate and were real meliks, that is, kings. One of the first rich people in the Caucasus, a dandy and a trendsetter, a lover of beautiful things, my grandfather Pavel Gerasimovich Saparov was not at all an opponent of cultures other than the patriarchal Armenian one. 1923.V.5. In his house, oriental customs were combined with sympathy for Russian statehood and European luxury. Various products and things were brought to his house from Persia and other eastern countries, and in this circle of related families relations were maintained even with India, where one of the branches of the Melik-Beglyarovs moved. Camel caravans loaded with oriental sweets often stopped in my grandfather’s vast yard. Silk fabrics, carpets, and precious utensils filled the house, and the way of life was half oriental. But at the same time, the grandfather and his brothers maintained relations with France and received products of luxury and comfort from there. In particular, there were many foreign things in the house, rare and not only in Tiflis. There were huge Sevres vases and silver utensils, personal items from the French court, I don’t know by what fate they reached Tiflis. So, Aunt Remso had a gold watch with blue enamel with the name, if I’m not mistaken, of Marie Antoinette; I remember my mother’s carved walnut snuffbox with the profile of Louis XIII, about which one of the curators of the Hermitage told my brother that there are only a few similar copies in the whole world and that all of them are known by chance; I remember a medal made in memory of Shakespeare and very close to his time, etc. This is not the place to describe the Saparovs’ house, I only want to note its connection with Europe. Particularly perfumes and fabrics were obtained from abroad. Here, however, it is impossible to omit one circumstance: the luxury of Saparov’s house was fatal, for him it was the cause of the death of the entire family. Not knowing what to do, the grandfather decided to upholster the rooms with precious Lyon velvet. Indeed, some extraordinary velvet was made to special order in Lyon, which then ended up on the walls of Saparov’s house. But manual production of velvet is known to be harmful to the lungs, and among the workers of the Lyon factory there were many tuberculosis cases. Along with the velvet, which greedily retains all kinds of infection, tuberculosis also came to the Saparovs’ house. Apparently, there was already a predisposition to it in this and related clans, but velvet served as the impetus for the disease, and since then the Saparovs and their descendants have been dying out from it one after another. This illness was Saparov’s fate, which gave all members an ambivalent and tragic mood: under the layer of taste for earthly things and placing oneself on the earthly there is another consciousness - the futility of all attempts and doom. But one should not think that only external comforts and luxury were taken from the West by the Saparovs. This house gave shelter to numerous foreigners who appeared in the Caucasus; relations with them were maintained even after, so, obviously, the house was not devoid of cultural interests. Thus, Academician Abikh, the first researcher of the geology of the Caucasus, was constantly in the house; By the way, it was he who gave the impetus to my mother to leave for St. Petersburg for further education. The dominant language in the house was French along with Russian: both were then a sign of culture in the Caucasus. Saparov was close to many Russians, representatives of civil and military authorities, and hosted them. In particular, one of the regular visitors to the house was the famous General Komarov, who later married my mother’s sister-in-law Nina Shadinova, from which marriage the writer Olga Forsh was born. As for the Armenian-Gregorian confession, the Saparov house seems to me, as far as I learned about it, infinitely far from not only the Armenian Church, but also from religion in general, despite the mystically sensitive constitution of all family members. Religion, apparently, was not denied by anyone, the perception of it was so dulled. Among the Armenians, the first of the peoples to adopt Christianity, it has lost its fermentative power, and, always ready to shed their blood for loyalty to Christianity and not alien to the practical side of churchliness, the Armenians have long been no longer excited by their confession, as is generally the case with everything too familiar. Only an external push reveals the religious mass of those who just seemed empty in this sense. Here firmness appears, based on a two-thousand-year habit of fidelity. So, in the Saparovs’ house there was enough latitude towards one and indifference towards the other; Moreover, the aggravation of Armenian nationalism dates back to much later times, and then in the Caucasus the general slogan and at the same time good form was an orientation towards Russia and Russian culture. And yet, even in such a family as the Saparovs, far from protective either in the church, or in the national, or in the cultural sense, the marriage of a daughter, moreover, a beloved one, with a Russian, moreover, without position and fortune, was a scandalous matter. Already the mother’s departure to St. Petersburg aroused the wrath of her grandfather, and she left against his will, with the help of her brother Arshak, who was then, as fashion demanded, a Russian nihilist. My grandfather was tormented by this kind of enlightenment invading his house, although in my mother, in fact, there was never any nihilism. But it is quite natural for him to expect the worst. My mother’s acquaintance with my father took place in St. Petersburg, and when my mother had to leave for Tiflis, my father remained in St. Petersburg to finish his course at the Institute of Communications, their correspondence was addressed to Arshak - then called Arkady Pavlovich - Saparov, that is, in other words, hidden from his grandfather. I do not know for sure whether my mother spoke to him about the possibility of her marriage, to which she had already given her consent. But, directly or indirectly, she made clear to herself his disagreement, and, apparently, quite definite. After his death, which followed the destruction of his wealth by some dark deeds on the part of the manager and relatives and the fire of the house, she acted in accordance with her decision, but as a result of this she considered herself to have broken with her father and not been forgiven by him, and therefore, out of too much scrupulousness, torn away from her people. It seems to me that in these feelings of the mother, however, which determined the tone of her inner life, there is much more painful, exaggerated honesty and, again, painful and exaggerated decency than a healthy understanding of life. But, probably, some careless words of the grandfather inflicted a wound on the mother that was extremely painful due to her increased moral sensitivity, and everything that followed began to bypass this wound, gradually expanding what she voluntarily excluded from her life. With a lighter assessment of life, easy in every sense, it would, of course, be possible to treat the violation of the father’s will less formally, especially since the grandfather was not completely wrong in his fears of a mixed marriage and, moreover, in a nihilistic time. If the grandfather had remained alive, then it is very likely that he would have treated this marriage not as a matter of principle, but as a special case, would have reconciled with it, leaving aside his general beliefs, and would have appreciated the courage of his daughter; after all, my mother’s sisters and their husbands, much more nationalistic than the Saparov family, highly valued my father and were close to him. Consequently, the mother could well reassure herself with the thought that subsequently the father’s dissatisfaction would have dissipated and that any internally unweighted words spoken in the heat of the moment by a bankrupt, sick old man, wounded before death from various sides at once, would be unfair and cruel to really take into account. All her life she considered herself as if not belonging to her clan and ridiculously hid even the most trivial details concerning the past, and not only did she herself never want to say a word about this subject, but she also strictly forbade her sisters, who were more simple in such things, from telling us, children, anything, and for us to make any attempts at questioning. But the most remarkable thing is that my mother forbade us to understand our prohibitions as such, so we were simply required to forget all these kinds of sensitive issues. Meanwhile, a natural interest in one’s family was aroused by things from Saparov’s house that were accidentally spied in mother’s closets and drawers, although few had survived, but they were really worthy of attention. These things were carefully hidden from us, but due to my mother’s gentleness, one of the children, despite her resistance, nevertheless, seized a moment when the closet or drawer was unlocked, climbed in and pulled out something interesting. And then – questions are inevitable. An ordinary conversation on this topic, from childhood to adulthood inclusive, took place with my mother invariably according to the following pattern: one of us, having forgotten about the prohibitions or making an attempt to find out whether the mother herself would forget about them this time: “What year, mother, did your father die?” Mom, very dryly: “I don’t remember.” Any of us, making a new attempt in the same way: “When did your mother die?” Mom, as if casually, but actually with concern: “Oh, please leave this nonsense.” Or: “You don’t want to bother with such trifles.” But the questioner does not calm down, and the most unpleasant questions are about the surname. “What was your grandmother’s last name?” Mom, very impressively and putting an end to the conversation: “Once and for all, I ask you not to engage in such trifles. You have your own business!” In addition to the mental wound mentioned above, the mother was guided by these prohibitions, or perhaps she tried to convince herself that she was guided by fear that such questions were not being made out of vanity, and then she remarked with emphasis as an antidote: “We are the most ordinary, the simplest people.” But this was said so forcefully that even in early childhood we did not have faith in the non-pedagogical nature of this assurance. The mother recognized herself as being cut off from her clan and even, however, for various reasons, alienated herself from all her relatives except her sisters; I do not undertake to judge the sufficiency of the motives for this distance, but, in any case, the mother rejected them, and not they rejected her. Of course, under such conditions it was a painful exaggeration to consider oneself without a family, especially since all the sisters respected her extremely, if not adored her, and were on the most friendly terms with my father. But my mother's wound widened even further. If, in fact, the entire family had rejected it, this would not have meant a break with its people, much less with its Church. Perhaps the mother did not feel either connection was strong; but, in any case, in her reluctance to say even a word in Armenian or to talk and read about Armenia or the Armenians, as well as to go even out of curiosity or take us to the Armenian church, I always felt something much more than simple distance and lack of interest. Mother was afraid of everything connected with Armenia, and then, by irradiation, this spread, firstly, to the Caucasus in general, secondly, to the national and state issue, then to the religious issue and especially to the issue of ancestry. All these questions, no matter how far they were touched upon, obviously already familiar to her and, perhaps, little consciously through numerous connections, inevitably led her to a painful sensation of her wound. In particular, she was afraid of similar possibilities on our part. It is surprising how little mental impulses matter in such circumstances. After all, my mother read a lot and not to no avail. Natural science was no stranger to her, but she mostly read historical books, and so carefully that she never left a single unknown foreign word ununderstood. Theoretically, she understood better than we the meaning of heredity, the meaning of clan, the importance of acquaintance with the past, the indifference of the psychology of peoples, and even the significance of religion. But this is only theoretically and in general. I am sure that she could tell us a lot of useful things and would say it if the separation of all general thoughts from their application to ourselves and to her was guaranteed. But every manifestation of it was delayed by fear, lest thought move from “in general” to “particular,” and therefore “in particular” it was not that she did not understand, but did not allow herself to understand, just as she resisted our understanding. I had to make a long digression here; but without it, the special family circumstance that forced the parents to impose a taboo on religion would hardly have been understandable. This circumstance was a wound to the mother and caution with this wound to the father. If his mother left her clan and her people for him, then in order to restore equality, he had no choice but to do the same in relation to his clan and his people. At the same time, the Church was also captured. The Armenian Church is clearly nationalistic and is recognized as such by Armenians; I have not heard of a single case of conversion to the Armenian confession; proselytism is certainly alien to the Armenian clergy, and I think the desire to join the Armenian Church on the part of a member of another Church would be greeted by the Armenian clergy as extravagance. The Russian Church is less nationalistic, but it also has a lot, even too much ethnic and national, normalized by the Slavophiles. In the minds of people who were not theologically polished, such as my father and mother were, this ethnicity and nationalism of the Churches was still sharpened. If the mother was alien to the Armenian Church and did not want to affirm in herself her nationality by being close to it, and through the nationality - her kind, then the father was far from the Russian Church not only in fact, but also more consciously, so as not to emphasize by this that he was Russian. Mother did not bring us into contact with the Armenian religious life for an understandable reason; the father did not want such contact with the Orthodox religious life out of courtesy to the mother, and therefore a ban was imposed in this sense on Aunt Yulia. But where there was a clear common factor between two ways of life, like, for example, our clearly ritual Easter table, which had not been cleared for a whole week, there this way of life was firmly supported. The same was the tree and, as far as I remember, the decoration with greenery on Trinity Day. 1923.V.7. These were voluntary, although not close contacts with churchliness. Easter, as a spring holiday, is especially understandable in the south, where by this time all nature is already fully unfolding. We did not spend Great Lent entirely without responding to church rules, and although we did not fast, at that time lunch often consisted of only vegetables. Here all family members enjoyed the lenten and semi-lenten food customary in the Caucasus. Lobia in various forms - stew with walnuts, boiled grains with vinegar and Provençal oil, fried with eggs; pod lobia, with eggs and often with chickens, which for some reason should also pass for lean food. At the post, jars with salted jonjali buds, corresponding in part to northern cabbage, are opened, jars with salted flower arrows of some bulbous plant like what are called snowdrops in the north are uncorked, and we really liked to cut the thread with which these arrows were carefully tied into a pickle. All kinds of marinades invariably appeared, consumed in the Caucasus more as food than as a seasoning, which is possible without harm to health due to the use of exclusively wine vinegar and, moreover, homemade one. Plates with clusters of large-berry grapes, peaches, pears, cherries, especially our favorite pickled “cones,” i.e. loquat, and other pickled fruits seemed attractive to us, as something not quite ordinary. But among the pickles and marinades, what I valued most were porcini mushrooms, which were rare in the Caucasus at that time and were brought from the north. Given my illness, these mushrooms were almost never given to me, mainly guided by the widespread fear of mushrooms in the Caucasus. Dad had little regard for the views of rational hygiene and throughout his life, except for his near-death illness, when he could no longer carry out his will, he did not show himself to doctors and was not treated, although he had personal friends among them; As for medicines, he made the only exception for quinine, which he swallowed directly in the water almost every day. But dad really listened to the voice of the people and thought that in each locality the folk hygienic views that had developed over centuries were the most acceptable, since they pointed to the adaptations of the “natives” to the climate. The very word “natives” sounded so significant to my dad, or it seemed to me, that for a long time I attributed it only to the most attractive Polynesians and all sorts of islanders discovered by Cook and who eventually ate him. The power of children's mental overtones is so great that even now I would feel like a violator of the correctness of language if I applied this inviting word with “u” to people dressed and with white skin. For me, the Caucasians were too familiar, but my father was still separated from them by a sense of exoticism and therefore, too, probably said this word with the timbre of exoticism and would not have applied it to Russian peasants. So, faith in the exotic wisdom of the Caucasian encouraged him to observe the hygienic tradition, one of the points of which is the prohibition of all mushrooms, except champignons and truffles, and another, even more recognized, is the fear of water after dinner and especially after fatty foods, fish and raw vegetables and fruits. A pleasant Lenten dish was the white rhizomes of swintri and other herbs and roots boiled in water. By Lenten time, the greens that are constant in the Caucasus were already appearing - radishes, watercress, dill, tarragon (tarragon) and cilantro, which, however, I could not see for its smell of grass bugs. All this was, of course, very far from Lent, but slightly set off Easter, which is celebrated very much in the Caucasus. We loved these preparations a few days before Easter and were excited about them, feeling the onset of something special, especially since the symbolism of Easter food, although not understood by us, was somehow vaguely grasped. Some of the preparations, apparently through the efforts of the aunt, were done by her herself with our help and, as having the rank of sacredness, were not passed on to the cook. We painted eggs, making them marble with the help of pinched multi-colored lint, which for some reason had to be silk; they rubbed cottage cheese and large egg yolks through a sieve, amazed at the worms that came out on the other side; they peeled almonds steamed in boiling water, pulled pistachios out of their shells, crushed spices, beat egg whites with sugar, and sometimes were allowed to do more important tasks - stirring the curd mass for Easter, batter for mazurkas and various small cookies, even before the ceremonial release of eggs into the dough. Auntie made these preparations with great love, trying with them to compensate for the lack of direct churchliness, and partly involved my mother and others in them. Some sections of Easter preparation - Easter cakes, the obligatory baked lamb, the equally obligatory pig and ham - were transferred to the kitchen, but then were subject to careful inspection. From the ham, a few days before, immersed in water with bran and then baked in dough, the burnt crust was removed without fail. A pig, surrounded by greenery and with a bunch of parsley or watercress in its mouth, and an Easter lamb, decorated with naive cuffs of pink and white paper, were examined. When something like eggnog, etc., was whipped, each time the need was indicated to make rotational movements with the hand in the same direction and, in a certain sense, for different substances in their own way - now I have forgotten when such rotation is required. Finally, all preparations are completed, and the tables are filled with dishes and plates that should remain there for several days and even a whole week. To give the servants rest, the first three days of Easter, cooking is canceled, and at most, the broth is heated for the little ones. The house is filled with the holiday chaos that we love, when you don’t have to sit at a boring dinner and casually nibble all day long on whatever comes to hand and in any combination. Dad, who generally defended our right to be disorderly, at least in food, here became our unconditional defender, and we were happy to hear him many times a day: “laisse-le”15 or “laisse-la”16 to mom or aunt, when they began to pick at Easter to extract raisins or almonds, pulled out a piece of lamb from a whole dough, tried in vain to chew the tempting skin from hams or gorged on mustard. For Easter, as for other holidays, both general and family, we also prepared in other ways. Firstly, costumes made for the holidays; but they occupied us relatively little. I firmly understood that my parents would not keep me in worn clothes and shoes, and therefore I considered them, and not myself, to be interested in the cleanliness and neatness of my clothes; as “necessary”, and, moreover, not for me, I only endured the clothing preparations for the holiday, especially since I was bored with fittings and, besides, I really didn’t like putting on anything new, including orders and tears. But that doesn't mean I didn't appreciate clothes. Perhaps I generally began to disdain my clothes precisely because I loved clothes too much, having received a painful wound in this area since childhood from fate, which made me a boy. Most of all I strove for the beautiful, and the beautiful seemed to me to be a property, a property and a woman’s right. Therefore, when it finally became clear to me that I could not be a girl, and then, as if to spite me, Lucy began to grow up, I, so to speak, gritting my teeth, turned away from my clothes, which, it seemed to me, of course, could not be beautiful: I would like translucent silk, beautiful folds, lace, bows, a hat with a hummingbird, perfume and jewelry, moreover, it would all be in delicate and light colors. My quarrels with Lyusya were rooted precisely in the feeling of deprivation by nature. Lucy’s outfits aroused my anger not out of envy, but mainly because the elders tried to assure me that boys did not like “rags” and that this was a feature of girls, and I knew from my own experience that I loved dresses and understood them better than the girl - Lucy. So, I was not happy with my costume; on the contrary, every time he added a bitter feeling to the festive joy. We all had a completely different attitude towards gifts. A holiday without gifts would seem to us a violation of all truth, and we prepared for these gifts for a long time and long ago began to worry about them. But what I mean here is not only and not even so much the gifts we receive as surprises that we give to our parents and all our elders. // Long before the holidays, we began to whisper in secluded corners about what to give to whom. The elders, especially Dad, often encouraged us to give gifts and expressed genuine pleasure when receiving something, but they always noted the need to give our own work. Consequently, it was necessary to come up with some kind of trinket for everyone, which could not be spoken of with complete implausibility as necessary. And dad always presented our gifts as exactly what he needed at that moment. Having thoroughly consulted with Lyusya - at such times we were in complete agreement - we then negotiated with each of the elders regarding all the others. Then, sometimes with the help of Aunt Yulia, sometimes on our own, we carried out our plans - we drew, sewed, embroidered and knitted, glued, then gradually began to write. I painted exclusively flowers, often from life. They seemed to me the only object worthy of my pencil and my brush; occasionally hummingbirds and other birds joined here, but even then not for gifts. True, when I was still completely inexperienced in everyday life, I was also interested in brides as a theme, mainly for their muslin veil and crown. Some inner feeling told me that this topic was forbidden. But one evening I became bolder and, gathering all the sublime into one focus, on a piece of magnificent Bristol cardboard I depicted a princess-bride about to get married (I did not know what this word actually meant, but I correctly guessed that it could motivate the combination of the most graceful aspects of life). This princess was under a veil, with curls, and her loose hair was decorated with a high crown. This splendor was contrasted with the huge envelope in her hand - a letter sealed with a black seal and in a mourning frame: the princess had just received news of the death of her fiancé, the prince. Round and large tears rolled down the princess's face and dress, larger than a walnut and like the pearls of her necklace. I remember well that what moved me to such a plot was not pity at all, but exclusively the artistic possibilities of juxtaposing the joyful and the sad and enclosing in their interval a certain rounded completeness of individual themes, and I considered my princess only as something beautiful. In the midst of my work, my mother entered my father’s office and, looking at my drawing, with some intonations of her voice, confirmed to me for the rest of my life the decisive impropriety of my plan, which I had already sensed for the rest of my life. Not only myself, but all the brides in me, princesses, crowns, deaths and other related circumstances burned in a few seconds, burned with shame so completely that subsequently I could never find a response to them or the slightest inner recognition. In a few seconds, my internal relationship with the feminine principle was severed, never to be renewed. Mom left without later knowing what she had done. True, such an event would probably still have to happen someday without my mother, because it is difficult to imagine the described incident without internal preparation; Maybe some of my feelings would ripen and fall off on their own. But I cannot help but believe that I had to become the way I became, and in this sense, the painful breakup of the living was, perhaps, expedient, as it made me more conscious and more severe in walking the destined path. My not just non-recognition of psychologisms and spiritual thoughts, but internal hostility towards them, almost physical aversion to the fuzzy and smeared, lie on the line of precisely this departure from the feminine element and, probably, were very reliably consolidated on this memorable evening. But so far he has not immediately destroyed the feminine character of my gifts: these were sachets with orris root, embroidered and sewn by me, napkins, feather wipers, boxes, frames, notebooks and saucers for pins, lampshades - everything painted, sewn and embroidered, or decorated with dried plants, or covered with sea pebbles, cypress branches, which we gilded, etc. It was both entertaining and awkward to keep a secret, which, however, everyone knew about. We were accustomed to complete truthfulness, the exaggeration of which later brought many troubles and many difficulties in life. The whole structure of family life has instilled in us a lifelong panicky feeling that the exact and complete truth is always required and that the slightest omission or evasion is no different from a real lie, and you can’t think of anything worse than a lie. However, the elders did not allow us the word “lie” as it was extremely condemning, and we only knew the name “falsehood.” “I told a lie” was an insulting and grave accusation, to which I was subjected three times throughout my childhood, but unfairly. Since children, once they have mastered something, they certainly go to the limit and apply what they have already perceived absolutely, then we have surpassed the demands and intentions of our elders in our sense of formal truthfulness. When the servants were given orders not to receive visitors on holidays, announcing that “no one is home,” we suffered painfully for what seemed to us to be a lie. // And these suggestions did not remain without consequences. A painfully acute sense of truthfulness developed, in which the slightest deviation from the complete and precisely formulated truth seemed criminal. Such a zealous defender as Kant argues that although no one should tell a lie, no one is obliged to tell all the truth known to him. It is this silence, this evasiveness, that we have been accustomed since childhood to identify with outright untruth, and it has always seemed necessary to say everything you think, not out of a desire to talk, but out of a painful fear of giving rise to a mistake. The idea of ​​being indifferent to such a mistake and removing this sin of thought from oneself, shifting it onto the interlocutor, never occurred to me. Therefore, maintaining secrecy was intolerable. Not talking about the gift, it seemed to me, was almost tantamount to a lie, and, moreover, in this case, a lie to those closest and dearest. We strengthened ourselves before the holidays as best we could, but it came at a high price. There were contacts with the Church, which, as it seemed to me, and perhaps was in fact, my parents obeyed out of necessity and with reluctance. I mean the christening of my sisters and brothers. Usually this event was possibly delayed until, finally, the child grew so much that it was no longer possible to leave him unbaptized, and baptism itself became difficult, due to the child’s considerable size and independence. But a year usually passed before the baptism took place. However, here, apparently, there was also the influence of Caucasian life, for in the Caucasus children are generally baptized late. Conversations and negotiations about christenings were carried on, remaining unknown to me; but somehow I guessed what was coming and cringed internally, because I either sensed or thought about the need for me to take part in the ritual. We were so afraid of the false situation with these christenings that we tried to arrange them as inconspicuously as possible and make do with home remedies, without attracting the attention of strangers to the christenings. Because of this, they made me a godfather. Perhaps I take too much account of the more external motives for such a choice; It now seems possible to me that another motive, not expressed out loud by my father, is to bring me closer to my brothers and sisters in this way. But this was done forcibly and, moreover, without explaining what, in fact, I was called to do, and without recognizing any rights of a godfather for me. Therefore, my participation in the christening was a burden for me and did not contribute to my churchliness in the least. I was already painfully shy, and any manifestation of myself in front of several people together was insurmountably difficult for me. And here I was forced to participate in an event, of which I directly felt some significance and which, as I felt, the parents themselves were either afraid or ashamed. I was both afraid and ashamed of him, and therefore tried in advance to take measures in order to somehow escape from the duties assigned to me. But no excuses helped, and in anticipation of the inevitable, I began to rush about. I remember when Lilya, and perhaps Shura, were about to be baptized, I saw a church clergyman from afar, without a hat and as he was, and ran to our neighbors, the Passeks. In those days, in our family, such an escape, without a hat, was as extraordinary an event as in most families the flight of children to America, and therefore no one could think of looking for me at the Passeks. They searched our whole house, but, of course, they didn’t find me, and the church clergyman sat in absurd anticipation. The Passeks greeted me kindly, but obviously took into account the strangeness of my visit and probably sent servants to report to us about me. They came for me and, happy that I had been found, were not even angry. But as soon as they brought me home, I was suddenly overcome by such embarrassment and such fear that I again broke free from the hands of my elders and hid under the bed in a dusty corner in one of the back rooms. They are looking for me again, and I huddled under the bed and with a sinking feeling I hear the search approaching me. Finally, they find me, pull me out from under the bed, are horrified at what to do with my dirty suit, get angry, quickly change my clothes and wash me, and lead me out. In final despair, I become indifferent to everything, I allow everyone to do to me whatever they want, and I am poorly aware of the baptism itself, until finally the tea begins after it. I well remember the next awkwardness at this tea and each time the repeated mutual embarrassment of both ours and, as we usually said, the “priests,” although, in fact, there was only one priest: for these christenings, a rich meal was prepared and, probably, to make it better, almost exclusively meat and generally fast food. And as luck would have it, baptisms usually took place on a fast day, and the priests had nothing to eat. This was all the more awkward because usually we often served vegetables and fish. In church terms, I grew up completely wild. I was never taken to church, I didn’t talk to anyone about religious topics, I didn’t even know how to be baptized. Meanwhile, I felt that there was a whole area of ​​life, significant, mysterious, that there were special actions that protected against fears. I was secretly attracted to her, but I didn’t know her and didn’t dare ask about her. I sneaked a peek at what I could and secretly tried to apply my observations, again as best I could. Under the cover of indifference, my attitude towards religion was not smooth and could least of all be called indifferent. I tossed between a passionate attraction to religion and bouts of struggle with what I did not know, but the reality of which was given to me powerfully by itself. I had a feeling that this question, unknown to me, needed to be clarified and either affirm God in myself, with all the ensuing consequences, or... I myself didn’t know what this second “or” meant, because the possibility of simple denial did not occur to me. And how could I deny the One who shone the light of His reality into my consciousness? The only way out was to fight God. I knew the reality of God, but I also knew the love and dignity of my parents, and even more so, my dignity as a person. And then at moments I rebelled against God, not that I denied Him, but did not want to obey. I remember well the pantheistic meaning of these uprisings. I am part of the darkness that was in the beginning for everyone, Of the darkness that produced the light... God is reality and Light, He is great; but I, too, am reality, and also not darkness - for I have not yet felt the sting of sin and did not know death, and therefore, I did not recognize myself as a creature. “I don’t deny God; but I, a man, am also God, and I want to be on my own” - this was the meaning of my experiences. I repeat, the lack of a sense of sinfulness in myself and, as it seemed, the internal impeccability of everything around me and in me, a certain absoluteness and completeness of the entire way of life, made the thought of death inconceivable in my consciousness. Surrounded by nobility and trembling with ecstatic inner sounds, I was almost in Eden, and this “almost” blinded me to the fleetingness and insignificance of all existence. I cannot think of myself as an insignificant creature, and even though small, I was a god. However, some underground blows of Fate and the distant roar of the underground depths vaguely reached my inner hearing, no matter how intoxicated I was with the world. While and when it was only an impersonal and unformed hum, my heart squeezed with horror, and I hid in anticipation. I told myself and others with deep confidence that dad, mom, and aunt, and all of ours would never die, and, indeed, the thought of their death could not be part of my other thoughts. I said this; and in the very depths, despite all the strength of confidence, I felt something was wrong, some kind of inexpressible and senseless horror, so terrible that the mind becomes numb to it and cannot think of it at all. This horror rose from the abyss and, elusive, seemed stronger than anything, stronger than God, stronger even than aunt, dad and mom. Everything was equalized in the face of this death, but it was so deeply under consciousness that then I would not have dared to say such words to myself. But the external reason puts forward God as omnipotent and immeasurably superior to man. Either this is not true, or He is responsible for all the horrors that I don’t even dare talk about. Of course, He is: not me, weak and not doing anything wrong. And then I flare up in anger. This is a childish and quite direct formulation of the whole problem of theodicy, which I reached with my own - not even with my mind, but almost with my body. I rise up and am ready to go on a rampage. Innocent in appearance and full of enchantment, pantheism is inevitably carried away towards rebellion, towards anti-Godism, towards Titanism and Presbyterianism, and if it diverges, even into real demonic possession. I acquired knowledge through too difficult inner work to give it up. Yes, I know what Beethoven is. Without this divine self-awareness there is no impulse to life, and creativity breathes this oxygen. When, despite all efforts, it nevertheless breaks through into us, we feel guilty and therefore resign ourselves. But the spiritual current that carried me was completely different, and human nobility here did not invade the divine law, but was put in the place of this divine law. My parents had a bias here. I, who never knew how to do anything halfway and, by my very name, was a desire that washed away every obstacle on my way, early understood the cult of humanity as human self-deification and early heard in Beethoven this infinitely dear element of titanism. Of course, I would not have said these words then, I would not have said them exactly as I say them now, but, however, I am not very far from here, for since childhood I have felt the images of Prometheus and the Titans as mine. That is why the name God, when it was placed on me as an external boundary, as a derogation of my humanity, was capable of exploding me, then all my pride soared - in humanity, in family, in myself, and I, so far from theology and so seemingly indifferent to it, suddenly found myself perfectly aware of it, for I was not at all at a loss to strike childish blows in the places most difficult for theology. One of these disputes with the children of the Lileev artists, who lived in the same yard as us, the boy Sasha and the girl Zhenya, who defended the omnipotence and goodness of God before me, ended on my part in an explosion of angry blasphemies. Of course, I could not say any particularly bad words, but purely out of ignorance; It was my will to reach the end, and, having exhausted with repeated repetition my entire limited vocabulary of curses against God, I felt myself suffocating from the inability to say any decisive word. I started arguing with the children and was indignant that they were referring to their parents, when my parents did not tell me the same thing. It suddenly became clear to me that we were talking about something essentially important and that, therefore, either all of this, I must think, is not as the Lileevs say, or my parents themselves are in a deep mistake, since they do not tell me the most important thing. And suddenly I was faced with the need to choose: either God, and with him the insignificant and vulgar Lileevs, with a bohemian family of small operetta artists, or the nobility of a person in the person of my parents and, consequently, the correctness of their convictions (for what kind of nobility would that be in the gross ignorance of the most important thing), i.e., independence in relation to God and unwillingness to reckon with Him. It immediately became clear to me - I remember this moment well - the internal incompatibility of both, God and man, and it seemed necessary to pour out my anger in either one direction or the other. Finally, my blasphemies seemed terrible to the children, they shouted that they did not want to listen, and, covering their ears, ran to complain to their mother. A little time passed, and the actress Lileeva came to us with a complaint against me. I don’t know who she was talking to, but our people didn’t consider it possible to touch me with these, no less sensitive questions for them, right there. Somehow, out of the corner of either my ear or my eye, I sensed that the elders were consulting among themselves about this case, and I was already expecting trouble for myself, but no one said a word to me. Several days passed. I considered this case settled, when one evening, in the midst of a very interesting conversation about plants, in connection with Viskovatov’s book “From the Life of Plants,” which fascinated me at the time, which Aunt Yulia was reading to me, she suddenly changed her tone and said that, on dad’s instructions, she would speak regarding the Lileevs’ complaint against me. “You spoke bad words about God and embarrassed Sasha and Zhenya with them. Dad and I think that everyone can believe as they want. And you can think whatever you want about God, that’s your business. But you need to respect other people's beliefs, and it is not good to embarrass others. We hope that you did this out of ignorance and that it will never happen again.” // This really never happened after that, but not only because my aunt forbade it, but because of a more internal impulse: I was never able to repeat strong internal movements and did not want to repeat them. Repetition and multiplicity, I don’t know due to which of the shocks of early childhood, were unbearable to me, like bad infinity, an object of languid boredom, disgust and horror. Since childhood, I have become accustomed to the idea formulated later: there is no such good thing that, when combined with the word “many,” it does not become unbearable. The internal certainty of the phenomenon did not allow its repetition and multiplication in my thought. Abundance has always been painful for me: let it be luxury, but closed in on itself, not allowing “more and more,” unique in its kind. The acute hatred that gradually arose in me for evolutionism, for the limitless expansion of astronomical spaces and geological times, for this invasion into the world of evil infinity, was rooted precisely in my childhood fear of the word “many.” Having risen to an internal movement that was sufficiently expressed, I no longer wanted to return to it, and partly I couldn’t: if something is really said, then it cannot be repeated, it was born from me and is no longer in me. I can say something else, perhaps even more expressively, but I won’t say that anymore. So in the case described above, I had already vented my affect of anger, and I had nothing more to say about it. But this did not yet mean my reconciliation with all norms. Extremely obedient to any prohibitions and demands, when they came from those who were already recognized by me, I was ready to rush to any new norm that unexpectedly appeared before me and test its strength through experience. And here my parents’ excessive hushing up of many issues, instead of completely destroying in me the very possibilities of certain thoughts, on the contrary, prepared the ground for actions that were completely unforeseen. In our yard, in the outbuilding, in addition to the Lileevs - two brothers married to two sisters, there lived a family of Jews, whose last names I don’t remember. But the name of one of them stuck firmly in my ear. These are the poisonous sounds of Yankel. These were smugglers and counterfeiters. When they suddenly fled, apparently covered by the police, abandoning most of their property, we were interested to find in their apartment blowpipes and lamps, galvanic cells, a printing box, a box with rubber Jewish letters and some mysterious signs for typesetting and printing, all kinds of chemical and plumbing tools, many chemicals and other strange objects, the purpose of which even the elders could not explain to us. It was a real witch’s kitchen, and then it was perceived by me in a completely Hoffmannian way. But that’s not what I actually wanted to talk about. Before their flight, this family kept itself very closed; during the day they sat locked up, with the curtains drawn, and probably slept, and worked at night. We almost never saw the men who lived there, and only occasionally a woman of about thirty from a mysterious apartment, dressed loudly, brightly, but wearing a basket hat that obviously deliberately hid her entire face, walked through the courtyard and towards the gate, past our balcony. She went out to get provisions and, soon returning, locked herself in her outbuilding again. I don’t remember exactly whether the corner of the yard where this outbuilding was located was especially shaded by trees, but my memory imagines the entire back part of the yard, and especially this corner, shrouded in twilight, as in late evening. It is difficult to imagine such gloom in the Batumi sun, and my memory, obviously, brought into the visual impressions the spiritual coloring of our yard, something deep, mysterious, full of unknowns and fears, disappearing into complete darkness. It was in this darkness that our smugglers nested. Their mystery, of course, attracted me to them, although I was afraid to approach their outbuilding. This interest was once greatly sharpened by Sasha Lileev’s message that these people were “Yids.” I, of course, had never heard such a word in our house, and in its sounds I immediately sensed something eerie and rich, and therefore significant. I wanted to say such a word, but Sasha warned me, referring to his father, that I should not say that, because the Jews really do not like this word and will be very angry at it. I felt, from the dull density of the sound that attracted me, some truth in Sasha’s words, but I considered it necessary to doubt the accuracy of this information, as it did not come from my parents; Sasha insisted, even scared. Then I said that now I would test whether he was telling the truth, although I myself was afraid and inside myself already believed him. Just in case, we saw in the courtyard a woman from the mysterious outbuilding, going to the market. Having set up an ambush behind the railing, I waited with bated breath for her to pass, and when she caught up with us, I jumped out from behind the ambush and clearly said: “Sasha, look, there’s a Jew coming,” and then hid in the ambush again. The effect of my words exceeded all expectations. At first this woman was confused and, stopping, remained silent in rage, and then shouted: “And you are a bad boy,” and quickly walked forward. Her remark was for me, given the excessive restraint in the words of our entire house, a stunning and unheard-of insult. But I felt confirmation in her rage that the word “Jew” is indeed a special word, full of magical power and horror. This feeling was so ingrained in me from this incident that even before graduating from university I could not stand it at all, not for its meaning, but in a purely sound sense, and even to this day it does not pass by my ears smoothly, like other words, even abusive ones. How my childhood experience responded to Gogol’s denunciation of all witchcraft, necromancy and some thick, black liquid that the sorcerer drinks - the densification around the word Jew. Well, of course not a Jew! This sound cannot embody the blackness of darkness, witchcraft and horror. The interweaving of criminal cases, secrets, either witchcraft or chemistry, strangely loud clothes, the thick guttural pronunciation of our smugglers in my imagination very easily merged with Gogol’s sorcerers, and all this naturally rested on the sounds of the word “Yids.” So I oscillated between an attraction to some norms unknown to me, and a rebellion against them. I tried to reach the point of churchliness with my mind and at the same time I was mortally afraid that something churchly would be said out loud. I either saw or heard that people were somehow baptized; but I didn’t have time to notice exactly how this was done, I didn’t dare to look “shamelessly,” much less ask whether they were crossing themselves with one finger, two, three, or five, gathered at one point. I hesitated between two and five, in the first case - the thumb and the index finger, and secretly crossed myself at night this way and that, trying to maintain complete secrecy - I was baptized with a blanket pulled over my head in an almost dark bedroom. At the dacha in Borjomi, I enjoyed relative freedom and walked along a small street - the path to the Androsovs - alone. On the way, I crossed myself in a way I had invented and took off my hat: I was afraid of both dogs and unknown horrors. I cried out to God, Whom I did not know, and my heart was full of fear, longing and hope for miraculous help. Nothing else, but I never doubted the wonderful help. And in my soul I already firmly believed that God hears me and will not leave me. But I was so excluded from religion that even when the opportunity to learn something presented itself, I was afraid and confused and refused. One day I was rummaging through Aunt Yulia’s chest of drawers and, pulling out small boxes with buttons and small things, I came across a small black book with a picture of the Cross. Her appearance confused and frightened me. My aunt explained that this was a holy book, the Gospel, and offered to let me read it (I learned to read self-taught at such an early age and so imperceptibly that I don’t remember how it happened). I wanted to look into it too much for me to agree to my aunt’s proposal: I flatly refused. Auntie came out of the room to get something, and I took a moment and began to read. It was a few minutes. The genealogy of Christ in the Gospel of Matthew seemed mysterious to me and fully corresponded to the black cover of the small book, and I wanted to get acquainted with it further. But then Aunt Julia returned. Wanting to take back my refusal, but not admitting my interest, I half-laughed and told her about the genealogy in a deliberately frivolous tone, although I was actually scared and had no time to laugh at all. This should have meant that I had already started reading and could continue. But my tone seemed inappropriate to my aunt, or maybe she remembered that she had acted arbitrarily, without telling her parents anything. The book was taken from me and locked, and my aunt added that it was probably too early for me to read the Gospel. And after that, she and I never talked about the Gospel. Meanwhile, horrors began to invade the cloudlessness of my childhood delights, no matter how much I protected my inner world from them. As I grew, the spiritual beings that inhabit nature grew with me, or were pushed aside by other beings that I had not thought about or knew about before. Elves were now less often in my thoughts, and goblins more often. Previously, mermaids were only charming with their long green hair, but now I began to realize their dangerous side. The destructive spirits of nature began to crawl out of the shadows on the other side of the fence of my Eden, and I felt how they grew bolder and lost their complacency. Every bush, every backwater, every dark space now became dangerous and caused alarm. I was sometimes struck by a sudden fear in the room during the day, and even more so in the bright sun, around noon; when I was alone. 1920.VI.25. Serg[iev] Pos[ad] (1916.X. 15). Everything special, everything unusual seemed to me like a messenger from another world and riveted my thoughts, or rather, my imagination. But my thought was always inspired by imagination, which allowed it to run ahead and then move along the intended trail. The unknown was for me not an unknown ordinary thing, but rather, on the contrary, a known but unusual phenomenon, an intrusion into the ordinary from the transcendental realm, an attack on the ordinary unknown - unusual, however, sweetly known, dear, a revelation from native depths. It only seemed worthy of knowledge, a worthy object of knowledge, while what was not special glided by like a pale shadow. The unknown fed the mind, and everything that was not surprising, that did not cause surprise seemed like some kind of dry chaff, containing no nutrients. However, there was very little that was not surprising or special; and much of what elders pass by indifferently touched the mind and was imprinted in its prototype. This Urphaenomenon further became an instrument of knowledge, a category, a basic philosophical concept around which everything was grouped and coordinated, around which all experience crystallized. In this way, from a very early age, the categories of knowledge and basic philosophical concepts were formed in my mind. Subsequent reflection not only did not strengthen or deepen them, but, on the contrary, at first, during the study of philosophy, it weakened and obscured them, without giving anything in return, except for a feeling of bitterness. But little by little, pondering the basic concepts of the general worldview and working through them logically and historically, I stood on solid ground, and when I looked around, it turned out that this solid ground was the same one on which I had stood since early childhood: after mental wanderings, having described a circle, I found myself in the old place. Truly, I did not learn anything new, but only “remembered” - yes, I remembered the foundation of my personality that had developed since childhood or, more correctly speaking, was the initial grain of all spiritual growths, starting with the first glimpses of consciousness. All my life I have been thinking, in essence, about one thing: about the relationship of the phenomenon to the noumenon, about the discovery of the noumenon in phenomena, about its identification, about its embodiment. This is a question about symbol. And all my life I only thought about one problem, the problem The mind's gaze was directed in different directions; many different objects passed before me. However, it was not I who passed before them, for I was looking for one thing, always one, and I was internally occupied with one thing, always one. I was looking for that phenomenon where the fabric of the organization is most worked out by the forces that shape it, where the permeability of the flesh of the world is greatest, where the skin of things is thinner and where spiritual unity shines through it more clearly. However, maybe I’m not speaking very well. The point is that for me the relationship between the illuminated and the translucent, the thing and the skin, has never been external. I never intended to contemplate this spiritual unity outside and independently of its appearance. The Kantian disunity of noumena and phenomena, even when I did not yet suspect that there was at least one of the four terms listed here: “Kantian”, “dissociation”, “noumena” and “phenomena” - it was always rejected by my whole being. On the contrary, I have always been in this sense a Platonist, an imeslavist: the phenomenon was for me a phenomenon of the spiritual world, and the spiritual world outside its manifestation was recognized by me as unmanifest, existing in itself and about itself, - not for me. The phenomenon is the very essence (in its appearance, it is implied), the name is the named itself (i.e., insofar as it can pass into consciousness and become an object of consciousness). But the phenomenon, two-unit, spiritual-material, symbol, has always been dear to me in its immediacy, in its concreteness, with its flesh and with its soul. In every vein of his flesh I saw and wanted to see, sought to see, believed that I could see - a soul, a single spiritual essence; and how firm was my confidence that the flesh is not only flesh, only an inert substance, only external, just as firm was the opposite confidence - in the impossibility, unnecessaryness, arrogance of seeing this soul disembodied, naked of its symbolic cover. I was simply ashamed to see her naked and would not agree to look at her nakedness. Gnosticism, so understood, has always disgusted me, and my mind has always been occupied with concrete knowledge. However, the very thought of the nakedness of the soul of things did not occur to me and would have been empty, silent, fictitious for me then, earlier, if they had offered it to me. I hated positivism, but I also hated abstract metaphysics. I wanted to see the soul, but I wanted to see it embodied. If this seems materialistic to anyone, then I agree with such a nickname. But this is not materialism, but a need for the concrete or symbolism. And I have always been a symbolist. The veils of matter did not hide in my consciousness, but spiritual essences were revealed; and without these covers, spiritual entities would be invisible, not due to the weakness of human vision, but because there is nothing to see there; but the whole point is how to understand the substance. Things in themselves have always been unknowable to me, but not from a skeptical and pessimistic assessment of human cognitive ability, but because there is nothing to know there. And I repeat what was said at the beginning, that the unknown was such not because it was unknown, but because it was cognized, and cognized in its intrusions into the cognizable, while remaining other-worldly, other-natural, peculiar and strange, according to the usual understanding. But the sign, the sign of its unknownness, was in my mind the firmly rooted difference between “seems” and “is.” It seems so and so, but in reality the situation is completely different, quite the opposite, in complete contrast to what it says. However, this opposition had nothing to do with Kantianism. In Kantianism, a thing is opposed to its appearance. But how is opposition possible where comparison is impossible, where there is no knowability of a thing, where one term of opposition is entirely immanent, and the other is entirely transcendent? It seemed to me from early childhood that a phenomenon is precisely a phenomenon, an announcement, a manifestation of a thing, is not separated from the thing and therefore is just as “here” as “there”. And the thing seemed to me to reveal itself by its appearances and therefore to be as much “there” as “here.” The opposition between “seems” and “is” consisted for me in the very phenomena, in the very manifestations. There are superficial detections, and there are also deeper ones. And they testify to themselves as such. Look closely at a phenomenon and you will see that it is the husk of something else that lies deeper than it. And that which lies deeper is a “noumenon” in relation to the first as a “phenomenon”. When you look closely at phenomena, you see there something that you have not seen before and, moreover, what you have seen is the opposite. This is what constitutes “is” in relation to that “seems.” But there is - no worse than it seems - can also be perceived by some subtle perception, and then at a depth, when you come to that “is”, you see not only it, but also that which “seems” expressing its own opposite, i.e. the true “is”. This, at least, has been my conviction since my early childhood. But, I repeat, from that time this conviction became the seed of all other convictions. I cannot think otherwise; any other way of thinking is denied by my entire being. Philosophically, in terms of criticism, the main question of my life can be called the question of the “schematism of pure rational concepts,” of course, meaning this combination of terms broadly. How is the general combined with the particular, the abstract with the concrete, the spiritual with the sensual? By virtue of what can a phenomenon be infinitely more significant than itself, opening up perspectives on a series of phenomena, itself becoming their type and together raising the mind from phenomena to the first appearance? By virtue of what can the sensory become a schema of the supersensible? The problem of this schematism was my problem even when I had not heard the name of Kant. I remember many years ago, my father, when I was still in one of the middle classes of the gymnasium, noticed to me that my strength was not in studying the particular and not in thinking about the general, but where they are combined, on the border of the general and the particular, the abstract and the concrete. Perhaps at the same time my father also said “on the border of poetry and science,” but I definitely don’t remember the latter. Then I did not understand his words well and was somewhat offended by such a judgment about me, believing that a real person, that is, one who is in abstract thinking, is a pure scientist, by which I meant scientific thinking. The very comparison of my thoughts with the realm of poetry seemed humiliating to me. But I remember my dad persistently insisted on his opinion and even added that he would like me to work in this border region in the future. Then I was both theoretically and psychologically at the greatest distance from my childhood worldview, and therefore such a judgment about me was the least timely. But, obviously, even in this drying up of childhood, my father’s judgment about me was correct, although I did not want it to be so. My father, who loved me and watched me with excitement, must have known me and had a basis for his forecast. However, I cannot say that my protest in this regard was internal, and within myself I knew my father was right. After that conversation, my father at different times, and in particular when I was at the University, used to tell me the same thing: he approved of my aspirations to build a bridge from the mathematical schemes of the theory of functions to the visual images of geometry and to natural phenomena; he believed that here I was working in my place. He repeatedly asked me to publish my work on discontinuity as an element of worldview. My father believed that it was the idea of ​​discontinuity that lay the gap between the worldview of his generation and the fairy-tale worldview of a miracle to which I strive. According to my father, to prove discontinuity in natural phenomena means to smash positivism and implement the opposite. He said that this idea of ​​discontinuity is directed against what he defends, but that he considers it a matter of the greatest importance to make an attempt to substantiate it and believes that my methods, abstract and concrete, are most relevant to the needs of our time. Although I recognized that he was right, i.e. regarding the nature of my thought, however, I tried to disagree with him, because I felt in his words some kind of disparagement of pure thought, by which I meant the study of concepts and categories, which has to predetermine the correct formulation of the constructions of thought. But, of course, now I see that not only my father was right in relation to me, but I was also right in my suspicion that my father not only establishes the nature of my thought, but also approves of it and, therefore, casts some shadow on pure thinking. After all, his own thinking was intermediate between the concrete and the abstract: it was not without reason that his favorite writer and thinker was Goethe. In the end, my father affirmed our ancestral property, for my grandfather Ivan Andreevich Florensky was the same, and my other grandfather, Pavel Gerasimovich Saparov, judging by his passion for fabrics, perfumes, beautiful things, etc., was distinguished by even greater concreteness of thinking. I have inherited this carnality of thought. Whether this is good or bad is not for me to judge, but my father was right in establishing the property itself. Nine-tenths, if not more, of the content of my inner life was always my thoughts, but never quiet, but always seething and burning, my intellectual unrest. My thoughts did not flow systematically, but always excited and amazed me. It was always intermittent, now hiding deep in the subconscious area, now flashing with dazzling clarity, only to immediately disappear again into the subconscious darkness. It was not a flow line, but rather a dotted line, and the image of underground rivers quilting the earth’s surface seemed especially close to me. The subject of thoughts and worries has always been the problem of the Symbol, either in particular applications and for particular reasons that completely captivated me, or in its direct formulation, so to speak, in logical focus, and moreover, the further, the more direct and the more definite. Yes, if we talk about primary intuition, then mine was and is that mysterious illumination of reality by other worlds - illumination through the reality of other worlds, which can be touched, seen, smelled, tasted, it is so certain, and which, however, always runs before the final analysis, the final consolidation, the final “stop, just a moment.” It runs because it lives; it nourishes the mind and excites it, but is never exhausted by the constructs of the mind. And I loved it precisely as if it were alive, I loved it when it played under my gaze, and ecstatic joy bubbled up in my heart when I managed to somehow embrace it, unveiling it in new symbols; but exposure never came to mind, there was never a thought about killing, about stopping, about analysis. Moreover, despite the constant delight of his mind, he was very sober and did not delude himself, realizing the impossibility of such exposure. It was clear to me that this analysis would be self-deception. But my rejection of it was not despondency, not bitterness or sorrow, not even self-restraint, but simply a calm, clear feeling, yes, first a feeling, and then the thought that this is not necessary, that this is a rejection of knowledge, that this is not a regrettable retreat from the unknown, but on the contrary, this is its true knowledge, for the unknown is, first of all, the unknown, in its special quality, and that knowledge that would make it not unknown, which would deprive it of the quality of unknown, would not be knowledge, but the greatest delusion. I want this basic feeling of mine to be clear to you, my children. The whole point for me was to understand the world in its life, in its truly existing relationships and movements. But the fact that there is an unknown in the world was, as I perceived, not an accidental state of my still unknowing mind, but an essential property of the world. The unknown is the life of the world. And therefore my desire was to experience the world precisely as an unknown one, without violating its secrets, but by spying on it. The symbol was a glimpse of the secret. For the mystery of the world is not hidden by symbols, but rather is revealed in its true essence, that is, as a mystery. A beautiful body is not hidden by clothes, but is revealed, and more beautifully, because it is revealed in its chaste modesty. On the contrary, the body is shamelessly naked - closed to knowledge, because it has lost the play of its modesty, and this is the mysterious depth of life and the light from the depths. And now, looking back, I understand why from childhood, almost from the time I learned to read, I had in my hands “Goethe and Goethe Without End” - that is, of course, not Dubois Reymond’s pamphlet, but Goethe himself. He was my mental food. Intellectually, I understood it little, but I definitely felt that this is the very thing that is close to me. And what I was striving for was Goethe’s first appearance, but probably in even more ontological density, according to Plato. It was It's time to talk about it and ease your soul. 1920.VII.8. Kaz[ansk] Boz[ii] Mat[ery]. That’s how it was in the worldview. As for the very vital attitude to the world, the determining factor here was the search for those places where the world’s pulse can be felt more clearly, where the otherworldly voices of nature speak more clearly. I've never been curious; but my behavior made those around me consider me as such, very much so. Finding out about things that don't concern me has never been attractive to me. But with an irresistible force, my attention was pinned by everything that was clearly evident in its originality. The unusual, the unprecedented, the strange in shape, color, smell or sound, everything very large or very small, everything distant, everything destroying the closed boundaries of the familiar, everything intruding into the foreseen was the magnet of my—I won’t say mind, for the matter is much deeper—of my entire being. For my whole being, as soon as I felt this special thing, would rush towards it, and then neither persuasion, nor difficulties, nor fear were able to hold me back - if only something appeared to me as a first appearance. Desire, which melts all obstacles before itself like the black fire of an explosive gas, once it arose, had to be satisfied with the spectacle of its first appearance. Sometimes you hear about something in which you feel the secret of existence revealed, or you see an image - and your heart beats so hard that it seems like it’s about to jump out of your chest - it beats painfully hard; and then you turn entirely into a painfully powerful desire to see or hear to the end, to delve into the mystery and remain so in a sweet, selfless fusion. I repeat, this was not kindled curiosity, which is still superficial, but a much deeper and stronger desire, a shock to the whole being, captivity and a rush into the unknown. And scary, and sweet, and languidly - I want it. The thought of a secret like a sunbeam, some spot of light gets stuck in the brain; Yes, I deliberately say in the brain, because this desire, in its strength and irresistibility, captured the entire body as a reflex, physiologically. It was a thirst to know, to revel in the knowledge of mystery, to completely merge oneself with the mysteriously illuminating noumena. All other aspirations, all other attractions—an all-consuming passion—for Nature receded before her. What are usually called “secrets” and “mysteries”, social and human relations in general, human confusion, the mysteries of history - all this worried me very little. Nature, in all its aspects, in all the events of its innermost life - it alone held me captive. But what is called the laws of nature has always seemed to me to be a mask taken temporarily. Other forces shape the world, and other reasons direct the course of her life than is accepted by science. These forces and these reasons sometimes lift the mask they have taken on and peek out from the cracks of the scientific world order. Sometimes nature speaks out and, instead of the memorized words that are boring to her, she will say something else, a sharp and piercing word, teasing and challenging her to explore. This is where you peek, this is where you eavesdrop on the world’s secret, seize this moment. Where there is a deviation from the usual, look for nature’s recognition of itself. And from early childhood, my mind was riveted to unusual phenomena. When the gaze is directed in this direction, then in the very combination of the ordinary (if one were to believe in the final reality of the ordinary), one can already feel the undeniable intervention of the unusual, something greater than the usual evidence of nature itself. The Colossus of Memnon, making a sound at sunrise, singing sands, caves with overhanging stalactites and stalagmites protruding from below, geysers, from time to time raising fountains of their waters, fire-breathing mountains and mud-spewing hills, human-shaped rocks, poisonous and aromatic plants, etc., etc. crowded in the mind and incessantly worried. Many reasons for trepidation were found in this sense in the Russian magazine “Nature” and in the French “La Nature”, which we received from the time of its founding by Gaston Tissandier until the death of my father. But what especially attracted my attention were the articles in “Nature” about giants and dwarfs, about meteorites and, most of all, about deformities. Physical deformity, madness, poisons, destructive diseases, all kinds of destructive forces of nature - all this seemed inexplicably interesting and attractive; if somewhere, then perhaps nature is already letting it slip, I thought. She hides, is silent or jokes, plays with me in order to awaken me to activity, and she wants to be known by me. But sometimes she encourages, as if accidentally lifting her curtains. Such are the ugliness. In this area, I found and still find little response in those around me, who winced in disgust at the drawings, which I looked at countless times and never tired of. To me, they were incredibly attractive and sweetly excited me with the mysterious, slightly forbidden feeling of peeping through a slightly open door. But then I found the full expression of this feeling in my favorite T. A. Hoffmann, in the words of Cyprian from “The Serapion Brothers.” “It always seemed to me,” says Cyprian, “that in those cases where nature deviates from the correct course, we can more easily penetrate its terrible secrets, and I often noticed that, despite the horror that sometimes took possession of me during such an activity, I took from it views and conclusions that encouraged and encouraged my spirit to higher activity.” Looking through for the hundredth time drawings of six-fingered hands and feet, conjoined twins, people with two heads, Cyclopean deformities with one eye on the forehead, people overgrown with hair, and other monsters, I remembered them so clearly that even now I could reproduce any drawing. Each of these deformities gaped before me like a metaphysical hole from the world into another, fundamental being, and with my heart pounding with excitement, I leaned into these breakthroughs of the universe and greedily peered into the blackening night behind them. Then, when I learned to read and never parted with perhaps the first book I read, Pushkin’s works in Pavlenkov’s edition, how familiar Pushkin’s words sounded in me: Everything, everything that threatens death, Hides for the mortal heart Inexplicable pleasures - Immortality may be a guarantee, And happy is the one who is in the midst of excitement I could acquire and know them. 1920.VII.9. Precisely, where the calm course of life is disrupted, where the fabric of ordinary causality is torn, there I saw the guarantees of the spirituality of existence - perhaps, immortality, in which, however, I was always so firmly confident that it even interested me little, just as it did not interest me later and was implied by itself. The whole world was a fairy tale, hidden in some places, open in others. But even where the fairy tale of the world seemed to be sleeping, I saw pretense: her eyes were slightly open and looked out expectantly through her eyelashes. Fairy tales. Contrary to the innate fairy-tale mentality of my entire worldview, my parents did their best to separate me from the world of fairy tales. One of the reasons for this was my excessive impressionability; It seemed to my parents that introducing me into the world of “fantasy” would be detrimental to my already weak health, so they protected my overly excitable nervous system from impressions in which, not unreasonably, they foresaw rich food for fears and a sense of the mystery of nature. But, in addition, it seemed necessary to my parents to protect me in the sense of worldview, in order to instill in me the views of natural science from childhood and to block access to thoughts about the other world. My father, more skeptical than my mother and therefore more tolerant than my mother, was more open in this regard and would have allowed fairy tales more easily. It was he, however, when I was already reaching a different age, who began to buy me fairy tales, despite my mother’s obvious displeasure. But my mother mercilessly drove fairy tales away from us children. We were not told or read fairy tales, books with fairy tales were not given to us then, and the very concepts of folk mythology had to remain alien to us. This was the program - to educate the mind clean of the remnants of human history, directly on the scientific worldview. And we, the children, especially me as the eldest, were shown images of zoological, botanical, geological, anatomical, etc. From the cradle, all kinds of phenomena of organized and unorganized nature stood before me, imprinted in my memory with extreme sharpness. Father, Aunt Yulia, and occasionally mother told stories and explained things, mercilessly banishing everything supernatural: everything had its own explanation in the spirit of naturalism, schematically simple and completely understandable. At the same time, the strict regularity of nature and the continuity of all its phenomena were emphasized. When I, always excited at the end of the day, finally went to bed, after all the delays and protests, and tossed and turned in languor from side to side for a long, long time or looked through the drawings of the carpet and wallpaper, which I had studied to every spot, with my eye, dad took pity on me, came into the bedroom and, sitting down on the edge of the bed, began his stories. These were some kind of travel - Livingston, Stanley or Cook, wild peoples, of which I was especially attracted by cannibals, the Stone and Bronze Ages, mining and manufacturing industries, geological periods, the structure of the solar and stellar systems, the Kant-Laplace hypothesis of fat formation, the wave theory of sound and light, the foundations of thermodynamics, Darwinism, the essence of which my father saw in continuity. “Infinitesimal causes, acting over centuries and accumulating over very long epochs, can produce a final change - that’s what Darwin discovered,” my father told me. I dwell on this because, in my father’s understanding, it was the idea of ​​continuity that was the stronghold and central anchor of the scientific worldview, scientific character, while the soul of the fairy tale, in his opinion, was the opposite idea - discontinuity. Comets attracted perhaps the most attention. With a yearning that can only be likened to a strong thirst, which I constantly suffered in childhood, I wanted to see a comet with my own eyes, and, in the absence of an original, I kindled my imagination with drawings of comets in Meyer’s Conversations Lexicon and in astronomy courses. But on the other hand, I received some satisfaction from dad’s stories about how he himself saw comets: from the feeling of unity with my father, his eyes were almost mine for me, and the comet seen by dad seemed to be seen by me. Dad spoke of a comet he had seen in his youth, probably the August comet of 1876, and of another in the year of my birth, the September comet of 1882, which was considered, according to Newcombe, “the most wonderful sight of our century.” All this and much more has been told more than once or twice. Admittedly, my father was distinguished by great teaching abilities; clearly presenting and understanding everything that he wanted to explain, he was able to tell everything so clearly that even difficult and boring subjects fit into the head by themselves and with interest. He did nothing haphazardly, reluctantly and without taste, but no matter what he took on, everything came to life in his hands and his words. Everything was ennobled, made entertaining and significant, he himself was carried away by every matter, illuminating it with his clear knowledge and relating it to distant prospects. At the same time, he loved us dearly, and we loved him; and in addition, the very atmosphere of the night twilight, with a night light, with the impending tedious insomnia, forced me to immerse myself in my father’s nightly stories. And it is clear that his words, contrary to my basic disposition, did not pass without leaving a trace, penetrating into consciousness and doing their work. A film formed over my own worldview in the spirit of magical idealism, blocking my freedom of breathing; it was the idea of ​​continuity, as essentially excluding the miraculous, and it tried to pervade my mind. Concepts were introduced into the soul that were alien to it, hostile to its essence, and, oppressing it, at the same time they themselves were transformed into something alien, as I think, to the intentions of the father. My parents wanted to protect me from excessive nervousness; but all these Milky Ways and nebulous spots, sidereal years, spectroscopes and telescopes, the rings of Saturn, the moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus, geological periods, the infinitely small and the infinitely large, bacteria and plesiosaurs, conical refraction and the northern lights, etc., etc. - excited and excited the mind much more than the natural, common to humanity and all children, ideas about mermaids and goblins, and, moreover, unnaturally, with unhealthy excitement, because they tore me away from myself and directed my spiritual life in a direction that was not characteristic of it. The facts and fictions of science were much less natural to me than the mystical fauna of fairy tales. My parents, especially my father, wanted to instill critical thought in me and decisively cut off any possibility of religious dogmatism, and in connection with it, fanaticism with intolerance, more dangerous than which, according to my father’s deepest conviction, no passion can be. In order to suppress the possibility of fanaticism in himself and in others, he undermined the fervor of convictions with the axiom of the relativity of all knowledge and all judgments. “Nothing in the world is absolute,” was his constant saying. But I am surprised that he overlooked the scientific protest against the relativity of our knowledge, which is so natural in a child. Instead of universal human religious dogmatism and universal human religious intolerance, scientific dogmatism was implanted in me, a catechism of a scientific worldview, which is unnatural at the core of the matter, because the essence of science is exactly the opposite - in criticality; On the basis of scientific dogmatism, scientific fanaticism and scientific intolerance were preparing to grow. Arrogance developed from science, it must be said, murderous arrogance, because from the point of view of scientific dogmatism, everyone not involved in it was regarded as almost not even human. Laplace and Lyell, Darwin and Haeckel and others occupied places in the soul that did not essentially belong to them, and, having occupied them, they clothed themselves with the attributes of the holy fathers and teachers of the Church. But the worst thing was that, with a hot head and a stirring thought, all these views, adopted very firmly and violently for use ad extra18, in the soul, as an object of one’s own use, did not meet with an internal response and remained, despite the force of their external expression by me, on the periphery of the soul. There was a seminary topsy-turvy. There, the dogmatic concepts of the Church remain on the periphery, and the deeper spiritual life is guided by materialism, evolutionism and mechanism. Here it was the opposite, but with the dangerous difference that the instillation of church concepts from childhood, although in a different way than this is achieved in theological seminaries, corresponds to the needs of the soul, and the instillation of a scientific worldview goes against them. Hidden deep in the soul is the perception of the world as living and spiritual, all the natural symbolism of nature, all the emotions, moral and tender. There was no place for this in the realm of thought; scientific decency demanded that it not be talked about, not taken into account and treated as non-existent. But it did not cease to exist and went underground. A crack formed in my mental life, a split began to arise, the crack began to widen and subsequently led to a great crisis, which will be discussed in its proper place. But I return to my rational upbringing. Wanting to protect me from “mysticism,” my parents actually worked in the opposite direction, not allowing me in childhood to perceive everything that roughens the skin of the soul and deprives it of excessive mystical sensitivity. My body has not acquired immunity to mysticism. Lacking natural, popular nourishment in this sense, I was all the more greedy and all the more passionately eager to come here on my own paths, myself revealing ideas that were forbidden to me, myself creating my own mythology and zealously restoring, as much as I could, folk mythology from those fragments and hints that I carried with me, without suspecting it, in any book, in speech itself, and, finally, in the semi-conscious slips of the same parents. No matter how much my parents protected me from the mystical fauna, with my mind I quickly got to the goblin, and to the mermaids with brownies, especially to fairies, geniuses, elves, and other creatures - graceful, light and bright. “Never would these fairy tales, which, I note in passing, in childhood we constantly listened to with delight, and not at all with fear,” I later read in Hoffmann’s “The Sinister Guest” and found complete confirmation in my inner experience, “never, I repeat, these fairy tales would have left such a deep mark on us if there had not been independent strings in our souls that sounded in response to them in the same tone. There is no way to deny the existence of a strange, hitherto incomprehensible special world of phenomena that sometimes amazes our ears, sometimes our eyes, and believe me that the fear and horror of our earthly body is only an external expression of the suffering to which the spirit living in it is subjected to under the yoke of these phenomena.” In my experience, I find complete agreement with Hoffmann’s words, with the difference, however, that my mystical worldview was not gloomy at that time, the dark force cared me little, and my gaze was primarily turned to charming and beneficent creatures, to the souls of flowers, and birds, and streams, to fairies and elves fluttering like hummingbirds, to their and my joy. The world, more ponderous and menacing, was also felt by me, but it stood in the background, occasionally rumbling with distant thunder, and only later came forward: then a period of fears and horrors began. Fairy tales did not leave an external trace on my soul at all, but independent and fabulous vapors rose from the depths of my soul and solidified into images similar to the primordial images of the people's faith. The strings of the soul responded to the mystery of nature, and their sound, not having ready-made channels to facilitate the exit in universal human images, broke out with tightness and pain, accumulating, perhaps excessively, looking for a way out, looking for a form that would envelop it. This need for mysticism, this thirst for the miraculous turned to where one could hope for at least an apparent miracle. The tricks attracted my imagination, prompting me to see in the most understandable, apparently, combination of actions and techniques, explained to me and perfectly mastered by me, some kind of irrational remainder: understandable - and yet something more than a simple combination of clever techniques. I knew how a trick was done, just as I knew why a certain natural phenomenon happened; but behind all this, both in focus and in the phenomenon of nature, I saw something mysterious, which no assurances from the elders could destroy. The very appearance of a miracle was already wonderful. It is not without reason that magic has always been not averse to prestidigitation, which, however, did not prevent the magicians themselves from believing in its power. // Not without reason, the faumaturgy19 of the ancients and the “white magic” of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance mainly consisted of tricks. Where the miraculous is excluded at its very core, the trick, of course, is only a trick, an empty appearance of the non-existent, the impossible. But when the miraculous is generally recognized, its invasion cannot be conceivable only in certain, strictly defined exits from the world; like an incense, it covers everything with itself, although there are places of greater and there are places of lesser fragrance. The miraculous is then thought of as musical accompaniment. It forms the background of everything that happens, but with more or less intelligibility, and the one in which this sound is heard with powerful peals of copper pipes is essentially nothing other than containing the most delicate sounds of a flute. Everything is wonderful, everything is permeated with mysterious forces and their activities, only in one case it is more obvious, in another it is not so. Just as waves in the ocean, reflected from a particular coastline, sometimes greatly enhance each other, so some relatively miraculous phenomena behave like a concave mirror. Everything is wonderful. In this sense, the trick, no matter how understandable it may seem, is fundamentally wonderful. But where there is a will to deliberate miraculousness, or at least to the ghost of the miraculous, it is difficult not to expect such an intensification of the element of the miraculous, which permeates everything. After all, this will is the producing cause of focus. When she satisfies herself at least by playing at the miraculous, imitating him, imitating him and causing the audience - only for a moment - to burst into "ah"! - to believe in an intelligible miracle that has happened, there cannot but be some wave, some instant impulse, some phenomenon, indeed, that is more than the physical means and dexterities put into use. Visibility is wonderful, although it is only appearance; it actually contains a kind of instant miracle and thereby evokes nature to imitate. A trick is not at all as “simple” as the elders think, but is a technique of imitative magic, for all magic, in the end, comes down to a wave of will sent, to its concentration by well-known rituals and to the creation in an imaginary way - poetic, pictorial, sculptural, dramatic, choreographic, etc. - of the miracle that is expected and sought. Not in these words, but in this direction I thought about magic in early childhood. I can confirm my thoughts at that time with one interesting piece of information. Known for the passion of his struggle against spiritualism and all superstitions in general, Lehmann, for the sake of completely exposing conjuring mediums, as he claims, undertook a series of sessions in which he himself acted as a medium, that is, as a provocateur-magician, and performed various deliberately conjuring tricks at public gatherings. He was successful and deceived many with his tricks. But... he himself turned out to be deceived: his deliberate, hand-crafted tricks, the appearance of a spiritualist miracle he produced, even in the absence of magical will, at least on the part of Lehmann himself, evoked genuine spiritualistic phenomena by imitation, contrary to the belief and contrary to the intentions of the scientist-magician. “...It is certain that both Devay and I achieved results through magic,” he writes. And at the same time: “Even with my mediumships (i.e. Magical experiments revealed some indications of highly remarkable psychic phenomena that determined my successes, and I am sure that the presence of such phenomena is precisely what distinguishes a medium from a simple magician.” Lehmann further expresses the belief that for the famous magician Devay, who staged spiritualistic phenomena, not everything was just a trick. Consequently, the tricky distraction of Lehmann, Devay, and others like them was not, as they themselves thought, that instead of spiritualism they were showing clever tricks, but that the notorious dexterity of their tricks was replaced by real spiritualism, but, of course, not entirely, just as real mediums are not entirely magic. As spectators who have paid admission to magic tricks, we often have the right to be indignant, like the queen of Andersen's fairy tale, at the fact that we are shown a real nightingale, a real rose and a real blush, while we came to watch an imitation. But that’s the point, there is no stable boundary between charlatanism and the occult, between tricks and magic, and one turns into the other and causes the other. A trick is not done without a miracle, just as a miracle of magic is not done without a trick. Despite all the understandability, the trick, even the simplest one, was in my mind a magical technique, and I looked at it or even thought about it with close, intense attention, but also with superstitious fear: I was drawn in by my gaze, but also froze mystically. The elders, on the contrary, did not understand this duality of my attitude and, it seems, thought that acquaintance with tricks, of course, exposed, should radically destroy the taste for the miraculous in general. And then one day, coming home from the city - and you should remember that Batum was a small town in which any special events rarely happened - coming home from the city, dad solemnly announces that tonight Lyusya and I will go to see the tricks of the famous magician Robert Lenz, who came to Batum. At the same time, he handed his aunt the already purchased ticket for the box of that corrugated iron barn, which in Batum was called a theater, and a program of magic tricks in two copies. The very appearance of these programs seemed surprising: printed on tissue paper with frames of flowers, which seemed to us the height of grace, these programs were perfumed. Auntie read us the most extraordinary miracles from them. There was even a number - the distribution of surprises, which I liked because of the very word “surprise”. In the last section, “cutting off the head of a living person.” Streams of blood gushed in my imagination from the stump of the neck and began to flood the floor and everything around. Blood, but scarlet, self-luminous in the sun, permeated throughout the mass with diffused light, always seemed to me a mysterious “liquid of a special kind.” I was too excited about this program, and my whole appearance, tense to the point of pain, revealed this excitement; No matter how hard I tried to restrain myself, I felt like I was in a fever from anticipation and horror. Then the elders announced that we would sit in the theater until the last part and then leave, because the spectacle of the execution might shock us too much. But I myself was very happy with this decision, because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to withstand the bloody spectacle; Without that, the soul was tense to the last degree. No matter how curious I was to see this main trick, I was so afraid of it that I did not object to the decision that had been made. The interesting programs were packed in special envelopes, and mine was then kept with me for a long time, unless it is kept somewhere among my things to this day. The rest of the day was spent in tension and excitement. They tried to put us to bed during the day, but, of course, I didn’t sleep a wink and jumped up every minute. In the evening, having dressed for a holiday, we were taken to an iron barn, and there was no end to the admiration. Guinea pigs that were divided so that they doubled, and then they were divided again, and they doubled again, and so on - several times. Lenz stretched a paper ruble credit note—I remember its yellow-brown color—to the size of a large flag. The spirit table, wound up from below with a deliberately rattling key, flew across the entire stage. The watch, crushed into powder with a copper pestle, was used to load a revolver; Lenz's assistant fired it, and the watch ended up under the nose of someone in the audience, to the indignation of the exposed person and to the laughter of those around him. After some kind of trick, a shot was fired at Lenz, blood gushed from his hand; Having washed the wound in a basin of water, Lenz splashed the audience from the basin, and instead of water, photographic cards of Lenz himself rained down, which was the promised surprise. And much more in the same spirit seemed to me to be genuine magic, although I knew very well that it was done by dexterity and adaptations, and although one of the tricks was explained right there on stage by Lenz himself. The explanation he gave seemed to me, however, boring and somewhat tactless, inappropriately disturbing the general spirit of the wonderful. Lenz suited everything to my ideas, except for this, except for the rationalization of his own focus. But internally, I still didn’t believe him that it was so simple (although I myself repeated the explained trick), and I considered his explanation as one of the ways to avert my eyes so that something truly magical would happen at that time. Filled with the miraculous, I resignedly allowed myself to be taken home until the last section: there was my usual obedience, and the consciousness that I had seen enough of the secrets of nature, even more than I was supposed to see, and most importantly, a cold horror seized me at the thought that I could see something too terrible. Before leaving, I was already close to a nervous attack. One of the adults stayed until the end and then said that we left on time and it was to our advantage that we did not see the really difficult spectacle and the shed blood. 1920.VII.11. This performance by Lenz left an indelible mark on my memory. Separate moments of focus, not connected with each other, in my contemplation, and then in my thought, were connected by intermediate links connecting them. I really saw how a ruble credit card stretches in the hands of a magician and grows to the size of a sheet, how a guinea pig is divided into two, and each of them doubles again. The focal imaginary nature of a miracle strengthened me in the conviction that a miracle is possible in general and, not only that everything that happens “naturally,” as adults think, actually happens in exactly the same, miraculous, and sometimes, perhaps, focal order. One is, the other seems to be. There is dexterity, it seems - wonderful, - the adults reasoned. But isn't it the other way around? It seems like dexterity, but it is a miracle. There seems to be a continuity of the process of change, but there is a series of wonderful leaps, discontinuous leaps of reality, jolts and sudden appearances. The thing placed there disappears from a locked box—it “seems” to disappear, adults think. But maybe it’s the other way around: it seems that there is always a thing in my box, but in fact it may be disappearing, for example, disappearing and reappearing many times a second, lying here and somewhere else, in a completely different place. The watch is actually intact, adults think, but “it seems” that it was broken and then grew back together. Isn't it the other way around? It seems to adults that the clock remained intact, but in fact it either fell apart or grew together. And these conclusions, arising in my mind, powerfully, although perhaps not quite clearly expressed, involuntarily and irresistibly went further, becoming increasingly complicated and accumulating. The magician appears to be a magician, a kind of trickster: he is considered a magician. But in fact, perhaps he is not a magician at all, but a genuine magician; and his apparent tricks, in the end, perhaps, are not tricks at all, but real magic. If we consider tricks to be deception, then it is still unknown who exactly is being deceived. Perhaps the magician himself is deceived about himself. And the conviction began to sink into my thoughts that the “simple” is not at all as simple as they want to imagine it, that the “explained” is not at all as explained as the explainers flatter themselves. The continuous is not continuous at all, the identical is not identical, but different, and the different is not different, but identical. A strong conviction arose in me, to use later language, that in the very essence, in that mysterious depth, where adults are afraid and do not want to look, and where they do not allow me to look, that there the laws of identity and contradiction are powerless and other laws operate: the identity of the contradictory and the inconsistency of the identical; the thing is not she, but something else - this is she. I readily accepted all kinds of explanations of life, the most rational ones, and absorbed them into myself; but in his soul he reserved the right to think, ultimately, on the contrary, quickly realizing some of the pragmatic, in the working sense, usefulness of rational explanations, as well as their arbitrariness, conventionality and emptiness. I quickly learned to live with two minds: on the surface - with the mind of adults, easily accepting the laws of logic, and in the depths - with my own, childish mind, and perceiving the world as - many years later I learned this term - as a supporter of magical idealism. On the periphery, I could ardently and even fanatically defend this or that scientific explanation, but in my heart, however, I did not believe in scientific explanations and considered them (as they are in fact) conditional. I felt I shouldn’t talk about something else, about my understanding of the world, out loud, and I hushed it up as the secret of my soul. It seemed obscene and naive to me to explain the world magically to others: but you never know what you shouldn’t talk about to others. And I seemed like a “scientist,” but inside I was a “magician.” However, this was not pretense, but a kind of modesty and mental decency. 1920. VII. 12. Here I am sitting now with these memories. And in the next room, the breeze clinks the long glass pendant tubes hanging around the large lampshade of a hanging lamp. And the glass pieces clink weakly, as if they are giving voice to each other, as if they are discussing something among themselves. A pleasant and mysterious sound, somewhat creepy. And my childhood feelings and my childhood thoughts are resurrected in me. The mechanical explanation is a cheap explanation. Even my children understand “scientifically” that the ringing is from the breeze. The mechanical explanation here is more than simple, and it would seem that if anywhere, then it would prevail here. But I hear, I perceive with my ear the mystery of these jinglings and I cannot rid myself, right now, of the immediate impression that these fragile, breaking sounds convey some meaning that is not entirely accessible to me, but, however, generally understandable. After all, these jingles have a color of mystery, carelessness, and innocence; and if it exists, then its corresponding object—some spiritual essence—cannot fail to be recognized. In this case, this object, although mysterious, is harmless and fragilely graceful. These are some innocent and carefree little creatures, talking to each other in thin voices or forming small conspiracies among themselves. But in other cases the spiritual coloring can be menacing and creepy. Doesn't the roar of a car sound like a minotaur? Doesn't the deep, chest-like whistle of old steam locomotives seem like the voice of huge but good-natured animals from some prehistoric past? I remember my father loved to take me to places with a distinct multiple echo - in Kodzhori on Ker-Ogly, in Borjom - on the Elizabethan Plateau, above the mineral park, and others. And when he shouted, trying to teach me to be fearless, I was frightened by the echoes, grabbed my father’s hand and begged him not to shout anymore. I was especially frightened once in Borjomi, so that later even my legs gave way and I could not walk. But my father explained to me the physical origin of the echo, I perfectly understood his explanation and even the method for calculating the distance of the sound-reflecting surface. I learned it, explained it to others, probably laughed myself at the fear of others and, in any case, at the lack of understanding of why the echo occurs, and with all this it was even more clear to me that the matter is not exhausted by a physical explanation, that there are mysterious forces, or, more precisely, mysterious creatures that produce echoes, that these spirits are creepy spirits with which it is risky to get involved, which are dangerous to tease and which, hiding behind the guise of physical intelligibility, behave as if Indeed, it was only a mechanical reflection of the sound, but at one moment or another, when they begin to speak in their own voice, when they shout something of their own, not at all what we shout to them, they will appear in such a terrible authenticity that you will die right there on the spot from their mere appearance. My immediate perception told me that, of course, a physical explanation is a physical explanation, but, behind all that, we must remember about the life hidden under the guise of physical appearance. Perfume depicts mechanics, but for the time being - that was my formula. But I’m not so stupid as to be clueless about this appearance and trust it. And the same in many other cases. The shadow, now lengthening, now becoming short, distorting and grimacing, stretching out now its nose, now its ear, is it not perceived as an independent mysterious creature? // When you sit alone at night and by candlelight the shadows stretch around the corners, suddenly rising in unexpected places, as if floating out from under the table - isn’t it creepy and isn’t there a presence felt - the presence of alien and mysterious creatures that make you shrink inwardly and be wary just because they are here, near me, even though they haven’t done anything hostile? The very presence of the mysterious, once perceived, does not remain without a trace and painfully excites the soul, although this painfulness has its own depth and its own vital significance. In the shadows I felt some kind of double of a person, some kind of integral part of him, contained in him or with him, but not controlled by him, having in him a force and source of movement not subordinate to his will, and therefore rising up like the ghost of madness. And things have their own doubles, insinuating, silent, elegant shadows. The mirror image also seemed to be a double. If you accidentally see your image in the mirror, especially alone, and especially at night, don’t you feel a sense of mystery, embarrassment, and timidity? And if at night you have to look at yourself in the mirror for a long time, doesn’t shyness turn into horror, into an insurmountable inability to study in front of the mirror? The mirror double repeats me: but he only pretends to be a passive reflection of me, identical to me, and at a certain moment he suddenly grins, makes a grimace and becomes independent, throwing off the mask of imitation. It seems natural, but whether this is the case in reality is a big question: that’s what’s scary. Don’t we all know the physical explanation for why mirror reflection occurs? Haven't we heard about the reflection of light? Suvorov's fear of mirrors reached the point of complete intolerance to the sight of a mirror surface, to the point of convulsions, and in the rooms he occupied, all mirrors had to be hung. And it is not without reason that this expectation is that the mask of physicality can be thrown off at any moment: after all, in fortune telling with a mirror, this is what happens - instead of a reflection, other images appear, and mystical awe turns into genuine horror. Isn’t there always a fear of mirrors, a feeling of the mystery of mirrors, a semi-conscious thought about the obvious mysticism of a mirror in fortune telling? And was it not this premonition, as well as direct knowledge, that made the mirror a sacred object among the Chinese? 1920.VII.15. So, my attitude to the world was this: the physical in the world, the physical-mechanical, is only one of the aspects of the world, but by no means everything - something accompanying and secondary, arising more like a thought about a phenomenon taken in the abstract, rather than a directly perceived reality. In the depths of the physical lies a secret, half-hidden by the physical, but not physical at all, and the physical not only does not abolish the secret, but itself, at a certain hour, can be completely abolished by the mystery. Yes, at any moment, I thought, the mystery could rise to its full height and throw far away the guise of the physical. Where physical appearance is removed only in an apparent way, where the face of the secret seems to be shown in focus, favorable conditions are created for the secret to actually throw off its mask and stretch out, stretch its limbs and play around to its heart’s content, taking advantage of our flirting with it. Where we tease the mystery, it willingly comes forward to meet us and, under the cover of a magic miracle, performs a real miracle, does it, but through our own fault remains undetected. I repeat to summarize - I was convinced that focus lives and - more focus. Subsequently, confirmation of this childhood thought of mine was found in the same Hoffman, in his “The Everyday Philosophy of Cat Moore.” Let me remind you of this very openly encountered place. Hoffmann describes a trick of predictions emanating from a glass ball that hung in an empty room. The predictions were given by a somnambulist girl, with the sound of her voice transmitted to this ball through pipes. It looked like a trick, but it was much more than a trick. And so, as if in a preface to the description of such a trick, Hoffman writes a conversation: “...People are more satisfied with mortal horror than with a natural explanation of what seems illusory to them; This world is not enough for them, they want to see something else from another world that does not require a body in order to be open. “I cannot understand, Maester, your strange taste for such things,” said Kreisler. “You prepare wonderful things from various spicy drugs, like some kind of cook, and imagine that people, whose imagination has become as flat as the stomach of a slug, will be irritated by such things.” There is nothing more unpleasant than when, after such damned tricks that tear apart a person’s heart, it suddenly turns out that all this happened naturally. - Natural! - Maester Abraham exclaimed. – As a person of considerable intelligence, you must admit that nothing in the world happens naturally, yes, nothing! Or do you think, dear bandmaster, that if we manage to produce a known, definite action by these means, then the reasons for the action, arising from the secrets of nature, will be clear to us? You once had great respect for my tricks, although you never saw the best of them, the pearl of all my tricks... (the above-mentioned invisible girl-fortuneteller). It is this trick, more than any other, that could prove to you that the simplest things, easily amenable to mechanics, often come into contact with the most mysterious miracles of nature and can produce something that remains unexplained in the simplest sense of the word.” So, for me, too, the trick was almost a miracle, a borderline phenomenon between “here” and “there,” between “this-worldly” and “otherworldly”: it is an unsteady phenomenon, unstable, deceptively sliding, never accurately fixed, teasing the mind, running away from precise statements about it, truly neither “yes” nor “no.” The focus was almost a miracle. But these were also the first scientific experiments that my father showed me, however, with the difference that I saw their recognition by elders, as opposed to the contemptuous and disdainful non-recognition of tricks. That’s why I was even more excited about scientific experiments than about magic tricks: they excited me to the extreme, to cold trembling, to heart palpitations, to the point that my breathing seemed to stop and my heart would jump out of my chest. They were for me a half-miracle, half-trick, contrary to the intention of my parents, to introduce into a pure consciousness, not confused by relics, nurtured on a secluded island, clearly and most convincingly typical examples of natural phenomena that would form in my mind the first stones of a rational worldview. Dad blew rings of cigar smoke through his mouth, sometimes stringing several rings together. And he drew our attention to similar rings flying out of the locomotive chimney. I saw how these rings slowly pulsated like an elastic ribbon, now contracting, now expanding. Long before I learned about Kelvin's vortex theory, I saw with my own eyes the extraordinary elasticity of smoke rings and became accustomed to the idea of ​​​​the elasticity of air formations. But he also realized that smoke is smoke, almost nothing. And, consequently, elasticity here does not depend at all on materiality, but on something else, on inner life. And if so, then in general, when we encounter elastic resistance of the external world, this is not at all proof of its materiality, in the sense of materialism. This is a special force, it produces the appearance of a rough material mechanism. And again there was an abyss between the physical “seems” and some secret “is.” Physical experience was perceived by me as metaphysical experience. Dad added sulfuric acid to the water in a test tube. The water was warming up. It warms up without fire: therefore, heat does not necessarily come from fire. It is concomitant, but different. It is born spontaneously, regardless of fire. But then fire - maybe without heat? Dad confirmed that the light of my favorite phosphorescent substances and the light of Ivanovo's worms has almost no thermal effect and that if it were possible to make a lamp of this kind, then this would be the most profitable method of lighting. Once from Tiflis, my dad brought me phosphorescent rosettes for candles. I liked them, but they seemed too pale, especially in comparison with the Ivanovo worms, which I caught in a glass with grass in the summer and tied with pinned paper. The mystery of these worms, with their amazing emerald glow in females and apple green in males, has always attracted me, especially since I learned from my dad about the perfection of this light, which produces almost no heat rays. But, therefore, the causal connection has broken down. Light is on its own, heat is on its own. But it seems that they are inseparable - it seems the other way around. And then I remembered that the rag, doused with sulfuric acid, was charred in the fireplace and smoldered. I also remembered how a mixture of crushed sugar and Berthollet salt caught fire when dad touched it with a glass rod dipped in sulfuric acid. This means that the actions of fire are separated from fire, from heat, just as light has already been separated. The complex “seems” broke down into light, heat and a series of separate actions, all of which turned out to be independent of each other. But it seemed complicated. Where is the limit of disintegration? Who can indicate that a given action is precisely from this, and not from that reason, and that in a given phenomenon a certain property cannot be isolated and isolated? Nobody? In our yard there was a wooden box in which a Blüthner piano had been sent from a factory abroad. This box was lined inside with zinc sheets and thick felt. Sometimes dad and I went into the yard to break off with difficulty a small piece of sheet zinc and then lit it in the stove. More often and much more easily, they lit a magnesium strip, and dad noted that potassium metal even ignites on its own, and even on water, but it is still a metal. “How can we make candlesticks out of it?” - I asked many times and was embarrassed by my doubt; At the same time, in my mental image there was a large silver candlestick from my mother’s night table, one of the few things that had survived from her father’s property. “Will a candlestick made of potassium light up?” – I was perplexed. Dad explained that no one makes such candlesticks, especially since potassium metal is soft, like wax. Metal burns, metal is soft. What is considered synonymous with inflammability and hardness burns softly. Therefore, the metallic luster is in itself, and the property of hardness and non-flammability is in itself. And if so, then what guarantees the inseparability of these properties in the case of ordinary metals? Moreover, in addition, it burns on water, while fire is extinguished with water. Dad confirmed my thought, pointing to the Greek fire that ignited upon contact with water; The most interesting thing about this fire was the mystery of the lost secret of its composition. In general, everything that was lost, secret, forgotten, impenetrable to reason, at least in the simplest sense of the word, inaccessible to it, was assessed by me as significant and worthy of attention. So, the idea of ​​the immutability of the order of nature collapses. Maybe instead of these crumbling ideas there are others that will prove durable? But why should we know this? If the “seems”, which has seemed to all people from time immemorial, turned out to be torn off from the “is”, then the “is” of a small group of scientists, the “is” of yesterday, will not itself be exposed as a “seems” and already monstrously divorced from the “is”? What is, what seems? The living, mysterious “is” of nature can be sensed only through inner meaning. And everything else seems to be masks and guises assumed by life. Dad mixed soda and tartaric acid and poured vinegar over the soda. The mixture boiled violently, but remained almost cold. Here is another proof that properties can be separated from each other. Boiling is not related to heat. It's on its own. I was convinced of this in another way. // We set up a boiler with the Franklins’ dad: we boiled water in a flask and plugged the neck with a stopper while boiling. The water continued to boil without fire, and then, having cooled down, the bottom of the inverted flask boiled from cooling with a wet handkerchief. Here again: boiling is not a continuous consequence of heat, but can also be produced by cooling. On the other hand, dad poured sulfuric ether on my hand. The bottle contained liquid at room temperature, and when poured onto the hand, it cooled extremely, although, it would seem, it should have warmed up on the hand. I compared this with the Caucasian custom of placing a clay jug of water in the wind, also for cooling. So boiling on its own, warming on its own. The blade of a knife, dipped into a solution of copper sulfate, became covered with a copper coating, although no copper was seen in the liquid. Violets and purple fennel flowers turned green in ammonia, an infusion of red cabbage when making a salad turned blue from hot water, and turned red from vinegar; blue copper sulfate turned white when heated in a test tube; gypsum, when mixed with water, hardened, etc., etc. All these and other similar phenomena were perceived with a keen sense of surprise, shocked and excited the mind, and aroused a sense of the mysterious. The elders assured me that this was a natural phenomenon, but in my heart I still did not see their naturalness and continued to be amazed at the mysterious transformations of matter. Amazement has always been associated with awe at the mystery taking place. Sometimes this trembling turned into an irresistible horror, which, despite the passionate attraction to the visible, forced me to flee from it. I remember that when I was very young, my dad brought me a small Ruhmkorff coil and Heusler tubes with it as a gift. The battery and coil were placed on the fireplace in the office. Dad called me over. But the very sight of the spirally twisted drives, entwined with green untwisted silk, brought me into the greatest awe. At first glance, in this emerald green color, in these serpentine coils, I felt something sinister, and I fearfully retreated from the spiral. When dad turned on the breaker and the spring began to buzz with a thin squeak, like a fly caught in a spider’s net, and in addition a small spark began to jump between the points of the spark gap, I was horrified, unable to remember myself and almost fainting, rushed from the office to the most remote corner of the house, but even from there I heard this buzzing or thought that I heard it. I begged my father to stop the operation of the terrible device and, despite all the persuasion, I still did not agree to go to the office. Then dad, it seems, somewhat angry, gave the spiral and all the accessories for it to the son of Colonel Prokhorov, Lucy’s godfather, and I never saw the spiral again. But I am inclined to think now whether my overly excited state was not the main reason that this device left our house? Another incident that I remember is of the same kind. Dad told me that the colorless alcohol flame, which I was so curious to observe in the sunlight: the fire is not visible, but burns, that it turns blue from the admixture of copper sulfate in the alcohol, and that from this light all faces seem bluish; Perhaps dad carelessly uttered the word: “Like a corpse.” Of course, I was inflamed with a desire to see this terrible blue flame, but in my thoughts “like a corpse” had already turned into simply a corpse, a real corpse. Dad promised to show me. I remember this day when I was worried and frozen in the morning. As always in such cases, my heart was beating so hard that I could not eat anything, and all food was disgusting to me. In the evening, dad went to the Triandopulo pharmacy store to buy copper sulfate, and I waited for dad's return with impatience and fear. I remember it was late autumn; There was bad weather outside, why didn’t dad take me with him? I remember the elders’ arguments about whether it was possible for dad to leave the house in such a downpour, and my mother and aunt tried to persuade him to stay. But my pleading look won, dad left, and I, no longer able to endure the everyday environment, hid in the office under the table and sat there, despite my fears, in the dark. Dad probably went somewhere else on business and didn’t return for a long time, or it seemed to me that he didn’t return for an unbearably long time. Finally, the bell rings, wet dad comes. I freeze, I don’t even dare ask if he brought what was required; and dad purposely doesn’t say a word either, wanting to see how I will behave. It turns out that he brought a whole heap of packages and shows them; these are fruits and something else that I don’t even want to look at, but not a word about copper sulfate. Finally, Aunt Yulia, seeing how nervous I was, calms me down: dad also brought copper sulfate. I remember well how I gasped when they began to unwrap the bag of copper sulfate and put the mysterious blue pieces into the alcohol lamp. All this was all the more mysterious because their poisonous nature was explained to me. Poison - Yankel - blue color - copper salt - blue faces - corpses - all together these ideas were knitted in thoughts into one continuous network of horrors. In addition, Triandopoulo’s store (and the last name is also worth something) was located at the pier, this gave a connection with the sea and again led to blue vitriol. Everything rallied into one ball, mutually penetrating each other and mutually reinforcing each other with a touch of mystery, hinting at itself, but nowhere definitely caught. Most of all I was fascinated by those experiments where I had to deal with sparks. My father and I prepared stars from a crushed mixture of gunpowder, coal and iron filings rolled up in tissue paper; and when these stars were lit, the beautiful sparks, scattered along radii and then at a certain distance bursting in turn into radially scattered streams of fire, looked like the seeds of a fiery dandelion. And when I looked at them, I was irresistibly reminded of those fiery streams from the grinder’s wheel that first appeared to me, which once gave me my first feeling of mystical horror. Now I was no longer frightened by these sparks, but felt admiration mixed with the sweetness of a secret that had long been close to me. And in these sparks, playfully gliding before my eyes and starting an elegant game, I felt streams of those long-ago sparks, but dear and close to my heart, like childhood friends. Sometimes my dad and I made gunpowder, and I was once again convinced that even a simple mixing of substances can give them a property that is completely alien to each of the component parts, unforeseen and indeducible from the obvious properties of everything included in the mixture. Sometimes we made sparklers. I have always loved fire and saw something living in it. And here the fire was colored like a precious stone. It was beautiful; but for some reason the sparkler seemed dead to me, comparatively rational and lifeless, too rough, in contrast to my beloved flame in the fireplace. It seems that a repulsion from everything mechanical, devoid of halftones and play of shades, has already begun to awaken in me. But I was more fond of the fireworks that we sometimes set off in our yard, or the military missiles that were launched from the Batumi battery. The sparkling tail resembled the tail of a comet, and comets, like ominous disruptors of the order of the solar system, unexpected guests in it, have been my favorites since childhood and attracted me with their mysterious tail, weightless and so huge. 1920.VII.16. I loved tinkering with a horseshoe magnet: magnetizing needles, forming a magnetic spectrum on paper, extracting black grains of magnetic iron ore from sea and river sand, blacker than coal. Dad showed what exactly was happening, and I received special satisfaction from the obvious mystery of it all, which Dad did not undertake to explain and even admitted his inexplicability regarding what. Why is iron attracted, but not copper and wood? – Unknown. How does the north pole of a magnet differ from the south pole? – Because the northern is attracted by the northern and repelled by the southern. Yes, but by itself – what? If we only had one magnet, how would we know which pole is north and which is south? There is no answer. And with inner triumph I looked at my father’s large compass with an arrow on carnelian, which I still keep as a memory of my father. Ah, it’s unknown... that means not everything is known, and even the elders admit it... The unknown was for me not yet unexplained, but essentially inexplicable. I tried to wash away magnetism from the poles, dad left me to do what I wanted; and when it didn’t work, he explained that it couldn’t be done. And then I imagined something living in magnetism. He also tinkered with amber - with his father’s amber mouthpiece - and with sealing wax sticks, of which his father always had a lot: he rubbed them, attracted pieces of paper and straws with them. He talked a lot with his father, but apart from science, he didn’t seem to talk about anything else; Did he still remember something from his childhood? But my interest and my father’s interest hardly coincided. The law of constancy, the certainty of the phenomenon did not please me, but suppressed me. When I was told about new phenomena, previously unknown to me, I was beside myself, worried and excited, especially if it turned out that my father, or at least someone he knew, had seen this phenomenon himself. On the contrary, when I heard about the found law, about “it’s always like this,” I was overcome by a vague but deep disappointment, a kind of annoyance, coldness, discontent: I felt cheated, deprived of something joyful, almost offended. The law was imposed on my mind like a steel yoke, like oppression and fetters. And I asked greedily about exceptions. Exceptions to laws, breaks in the pattern were my mental stimulus. If science fights phenomena by subordinating them to the law, then I secretly fought the laws by rebelling actual phenomena against them. Regularity was my enemy; Having learned about some law of nature, I only calmed down from the painful anxiety of the mind, the feeling of constraint and melancholy depression, when an exception to this law was found. The conversation usually followed one plan. Regarding any phenomenon, my father tells me its law. Instead of answering what was reported to me, I now ask about exceptions. My father, being extremely mentally conscientious and, moreover, prone to mild skepticism, is forced, although not with great desire, to tell me exceptions. Then I say with satisfaction: “Ah...” The positive content of my mind, a solid point of support, have always been exceptions, the unexplained, the rebellious, nature obstinate against science; and laws are, on the contrary, those fleeting things that are subject to decay sooner or later. Usually they believe in laws and consider what is not subject to them to be temporary; For me, what was authentic was not what was subsumed under the laws, and I assessed the laws as still, due to a lack of accurate knowledge, holding on. And the phenomenon attracted and interested me as long as I recognized it as unexplained, an exception, and not normal and explainable from the law. That is why, from childhood, I hated mechanics, never wanted and could not master its fundamental principles, and even later, in the gymnasium and the University, I did not internally take it into account. True, I knew by heart the Latin text axiomata sive leges motus20 of Newton, however, I did not understand and did not want to understand them, for they were pushed out of my consciousness. My mind was jumping off them. For myself, I always thought of mechanical processes as derivatives of something secret, like, for example, electrical ones, and I partially calmed down only when the new electromagnetic mechanics reigned. On the contrary, the whole phenomenon, concretely contemplated, was dear to me. The form of its unity is what worried me; form was reality for me. Without knowing these terms, I believed most of all in the substantiality of form, and I wanted, so to speak, the morphology of nature, the holistic morphology of all phenomena, that is, the comprehension of forms in their integrity and individuality. The scientific worldview crushed these forms and led to non-individual, formless and therefore extremely boring elements. To explain, for the scientific worldview, means in my eyes to destroy the concrete integrity of a phenomenon, to prove its illusory nature. What I was looking for was a statement of concrete integrity and confirmation that the phenomenon is truly individual and cannot be reduced to anything else. In my worldview, I repeat, form was reality; and the scientific worldview proceeded, as I perfectly felt, although I could not express it clearly, from the denial of this reality. That is why, where it seemed that the mechanism, that is, the negation of form, was probable and very plausible, there my childish mind still saw a trick, a focus of vital integrity pretending to be a mechanism, a kind of mimicry of the mechanism. On the contrary, in the one that directly shows the external threads and levers that give the appearance of the non-mechanical, I still saw reality, for the imitation of form, even if illusory, was, however, some kind of minimal reality, the cause of the reality of the form itself. Hence my childhood interest in dressing up, putting on makeup, and masquerade. Costuming had something magical in my eyes, it was some kind of partial transformation of a person, just as a magic trick was some kind of partial transformation of nature. My sister Lyusya and I loved to change clothes, even if just by exchanging clothes. Sometimes we painted our faces with watercolors or made beards and mustaches out of Spanish fur or dried corncob hair, and sometimes we dressed up as adults. All this was exciting because of the proximity of some magical transformation, which seemed to be about to be complete. Sonya Androsova, and sometimes her brother Vanya, about whom I will write below, also participated in these disguises, with pillows tied to their stomachs and other hastily arranged costume techniques. But the elders looked disapprovingly at these disguises. My father, a supporter of everything natural, organically could not stand the theater, seeing in it cheap props and brokenness, and ignored it as art; to define anything as acting was his worst condemnation. I remember when I was already at the University, I sent home a good reproduction of the Böcklin sea surf. In general, my father greatly appreciated any attentiveness on our part and carefully kept our gifts in a special closet. But this time, instead of gratitude, I received only cruel condemnation, both in a letter and verbally upon arrival home. “This is not the surf, but some kind of breaking actor,” he wrote and said almost with anger and, in contrast, sent me “real surf” - a postcard with a reproduction of some English painting, which depicted the shore of the Isle of Wight and seagulls flying over the damp smoke and waves. In this case, my father was partly right, and I didn’t like Böcklin’s painting much when I looked at it, but I took it from Advance out of embarrassment, because for a long time I couldn’t find anything suitable. But the contrasting picture also satisfied me even less, as a typical case of naturalism, very close to instant photography, but truly spectacular in appearance. However, this came to mind by the way, I wanted to talk about my father’s hostility to the theater, in its very essence, and hence to our tendency to change clothes and put on makeup. To the mother, I think, these disguises seemed too empty and vulgar, so she hid her disapproval even less. Only Aunt Yulia looked at our masquerades more easily, even gave advice and helped us when we attempted to act out a pantomime. Once we even staged Krylov’s fable “The Cuckoo and the Rooster” in costume, making bird costumes from cardboard, colored paper and various household items. The soul of this performance was the aunt, who somehow overcame this time the passive resistance of the father and especially the mother. She made our costumes, learned our roles with us, rehearsed fables, and arranged a setting of orange and lemon trees and palm trees pushed together in tubs. Between these trees I sat on a folding ladder, in the form of a cuckoo, with a huge cardboard tail covered with dark glossy paper in which round holes had been previously cut out. There was a cardboard beak with clear edges on the nose, some kind of gray clothing on the head and back, and something on the legs too. Below stood Sonya Androsova as a larger size, accordingly transformed into a rooster; I remember that I was somewhat envious of her elegance, and I also well remember her crooked beak, made of oilcloth and stuffed with cotton wool, and her bushy tail. Lyusya, then still just a baby, poked her head out from behind the trees in the form of a sparrow. Now, remembering this performance, I can perhaps understand why my parents agreed to it: here the pretext of zoology and the fact that we did not portray people served us well, so the acting seemed less perceptible. I even vaguely remember some negotiations in this spirit. But, of course, the true meaning of our dressing up and taste for them remained incomprehensible to our parents, and Aunt Yulia probably did not understand it either. 1920. VII. 17. The theater attracted us, although we had never been there; It may very well be that I was attracted because I had never been there. But Aunt Yulia talked about the St. Petersburg and Moscow theaters, about the theater in Tiflis. Occasionally we went to the theater in Batum, my mother and aunt to see a troupe that came by chance, my mother with condescending dismissiveness, my aunt with enthusiasm, but also disappointment. Upon their return, I heard about what they had seen. What attracted me to the theater, in fact, was not the action or the performance, but precisely what was deeply despised by my elders: props, scenery, and especially stage effects. Dips under the stage, lowering from above, sunrises and sunsets, moonlight, images of the sea, theatrical lightning and thunder, sudden transformations (especially Faust from an old man to a young man), a two-tiered stage in “Hades”, reproduction of the sounds of nature - birdsong, murmur of streams, sea surf; theatrical ghosts and all kinds of spirits in my imagination, according to my aunt’s stories, seemed, of course, more significant than they would have been in direct perception. Since childhood, anticipation and anticipation of experience based on some small manifestations was extremely alive in me, and a sliding and barely perceptible sign was enough for an image of the whole to form in my thoughts, but much more vivid and artistically complete than reality itself. I guessed the image of reality, in this, and not in anything else, were my abilities for exact knowledge: I guessed before I knew, and I foresaw before I had direct experience, and therefore I could consciously direct my searches and my experience in a direction that was already known to me. I searched in physics, and in mathematics, and in all areas, just as an actor searches for a hidden and active person on stage, knowing where to look for him, and only acting out the search, so that the finding would be rounded and justified for others and for himself. I had the same anticipation of theater as a child. Perhaps a vague premonition of possible disappointment forced me to be content with stories and images of fantasy and not be drawn to a theater where I was not taken. But I accepted this limitation with complete inner submission; It never occurred to me that I could tag along with adults to some kind of performance. Be that as it may, my interest in theater was in the plane of tricks. Stories about machine guns and drawings of machine guns interested me, perhaps even more than the theater. It was extremely interesting for me to peer at illustrations of this kind, of which there were many in the magazine “La Nature,” I absentmindedly tried to understand the mechanism of the machines and felt that behind everything in the machine there was an eerie secret force that could not be explained by any wheels, levers and threads. And when Aunt Yulia talked about the Hermitage automaton of Peter the Great, which stood up to meet the visitor as soon as he stepped on a certain floorboard, this attractive horror intensified to the utmost degree. I was completely cold with horror in anticipation that a mannequin of the formidable emperor might come out to meet me, and I fully understood why they stopped turning it on after the deep fright of one of the most august visitors to the Hermitage - I understood, but at the same time I was disappointed. I, too, experienced a mystical fear of human images to the greatest extent on my first visit to the Caucasian Museum. It dates back to a time later than that described here, but it is appropriate to talk about it here. It was engraved in my memory, like something carved into stone by a chisel, and naturally: it was a spectacle that combined the impressions of everything that interested and attracted me, mystery and fear, beauty and wonder. It shocked and saturated my mind for a long time. To this day it stands before my eyes with complete visual clarity, although since then I have been to this museum dozens of times and had every opportunity to be convinced of the insignificance of everything that struck me then. On one of my trips to Tiflis with Aunt Yulia, perhaps on the way to or from the dacha, the idea struck her that I needed to show me the Caucasian Museum. Aunt Lisa, with whom we stayed as usual, approved of this intention and offered to come with us. But when the three of us walked along the hot pavement to the gates of the museum on Palace Street, then, to an unpleasant surprise, we read in the schedule of days and hours when the museum is open, a ban on bringing children under a certain age, I remember, five years old, but it’s possible that I’m wrong. There was also a ban on bringing dogs with you. I was missing something like six months before the specified age. Then Aunt Liza, who was generally not accustomed to seeing herself forbidden, announced at the ticket office that at the entrance that I had already reached the legal age, and, with the help of another tip given to the watchman, we nevertheless passed through the iron gate - with a sinking heart from possible failure, amazed and embarrassed for the first time by the untruth I heard: it should be noted that truthfulness was brought up in us, even excessive, so that untruth, even the slightest and purely formal - has become organically impossible, to the great everyday inconvenience of not only ourselves, but also our parents. This first deliberate untruth I heard completely amazed me as a phenomenon of a world alien to me. But, albeit with the help of lies, I ended up in the treasured garden at the museum. Going down the stone stairs, I saw in large shuttlecocks and cages a variety of, mainly predatory, birds of the Caucasus and some animals that I had long dreamed of seeing. // Various eagles, eagle owls, owls, some long-legged ones, the names of which I now don’t remember, were examined by me with a feeling of great satisfaction. Then we had to enter the museum itself, and again I was afraid that our deception would be exposed and the doorman would send me back. The vestibule, reproducing a room in a Moorish palace in Granada, with a ceiling like a sieve or basalt sections, all painted in a rich dark red color, was even beyond my expectations. The mineralogical and geological department contained many subjects that had long been familiar from stories. The oil industry, the extraction of rock salt, the development of ores - here I already knew a lot of details and therefore walked among the corresponding objects consciously, but each time receiving impressions more vivid than I expected, because the minerals were in pieces larger than ... 1923.25.XI. I. Approximately in the sixth grade of the gymnasium, or somewhat earlier, my scientific attitude towards the world was fully formed and even acquired the character of canonicity. I repeat, underneath it, for myself and almost inexpressibly in words, I contained my fairy tale, flowing from a child’s paradise buried deep in my soul. This tale gilded the heights of scientific experience and made the heart beat at the sight of other natural phenomena or even at the thought of them. This fairy tale guided my thoughts and interests and, in essence, was the true subject of my worries. But verbally I didn’t know about it, or rather, I didn’t want to know. When asked what I am striving for, I would answer: “To know the laws of nature,” and indeed, I devoted all my strength, all my attention, all my time to accurate knowledge. Physics, and partly geology and astronomy, as well as mathematics, were the things that I worked on with persistence and passion, mutually reinforcing. However, my answer, quite truthful, would be incorrect, although I myself did not allow myself to give an account of this. In fact, it was not the laws of nature that worried me, but the exceptions to them. The laws were only a background that favorably set off the exceptions. I wanted to know the iron rules of nature. I remembered all the constancies and uniformities that natural science presented to me as laws. On some level, there was trust in them, that is, the belief that they were truly unshakable. Otherwise there would be no interest in them. In any case, there was no easy denial of them: after all, the basis of my mental makeup from childhood was trust in the testimony of others and an inclination to suspect others of mistakes or untruths. And the more clearly this or that law was presented to me, the more respectful fear I walked around it, with a secret feeling that this seemingly rational law was only a revelation of other forces. I would not have admitted this feeling to myself, but it pushed me into an internal struggle. With inner anxiety I looked for exceptions to which this law would not apply, and when there were exceptions that did not obey it, my heart almost stopped with excitement: I had touched a secret. It is difficult to precisely formulate this taste of mine for exceptions. It has nothing to do with the desire to refute the law as such, to put in its place some new, expanded one; in general, this was not at all from the realm of rational knowledge of nature. On the contrary, I was satisfied with the existing laws as such and cared about strengthening them; methodological and logical undermining of scientific concepts and premises seemed, rather, to be nit-picking, perhaps curious sharpenings of thought, not contributing anything significant to science. Rationally - they are solid, these concepts, premises, laws; but nevertheless, nature overturns any law, no matter how reliable it is: there is the irrational. Law is the true fence of nature; but the thickest wall has the thinnest cracks through which mystery oozes. I was interested in strengthening this rational fence; but I tried here only for the sake of confidence that what seeped through it was probably already irrational. And therefore I strenuously sought to know these laws. It was they who constituted my scientific understanding of the world. I kept the secret to myself, but laws were proclaimed for myself and for others. II. This scientific worldview developed and strengthened into an unshakable system by the age of fifteen or sixteen. Probably my statement will be read here as a conditional phrase or called self-confidence. But I express it quite consciously, and not with boasting, but sadly: I know better than anyone the cyclopean labor spent first on the construction of these walls, and then on their destruction, and when you think how much really great could be done with these efforts, boasting will not come to mind. But nevertheless, considering from afar what happened, we have to repeat what was said. There were, of course, besides my personal efforts, favorable circumstances for this scientific approach. Firstly, a penchant for scientific thinking, inherited from several generations, and the entire family in its various branches produced many thinkers. They were not of the first magnitude, and the impression from them is precisely that they were favored in their activities not so much by extraordinary personal properties, as by general characteristics of the genus, increased activity of thought, transmitted with the ancestral plasma. In this regard, my personal well-being since childhood has always been that I, in fact, have nothing to learn, that is, in the field of general concepts, but only need to remember what is half-forgotten or bring to consciousness what is not entirely clear. I always recognized general things from half a word or a quarter of a word, and therefore there were very few cases when I had a feeling of novelty in the field of thought. But I consider my personal abilities to be relatively small and perhaps less than average. What was required not to remember, but to actually learn - words of foreign languages, chronological dates, geographical and similar information, even data from physics, with which I was constantly dealing, was given to me with the greatest difficulty, incomparably more difficult than, for example, to my comrades, and, in addition, jumped out of my head very soon. Those who know me always underestimate labor, which, despite my inclination to get rid of it, has always been one or the other in my life. Another favorable condition for being scientific was the upbringing, which was mentioned earlier, and the entire solitary structure of our home life, which was conducive to scientific thinking and study. Partly by direct knowledge, partly by guesswork, not having the necessary books and not having sufficient knowledge of mathematical analysis, I nevertheless assimilated the basic concepts and premises of scientific thinking, physical thinking about the world in their true and exact sense and, most importantly, became completely akin to his style. A small comparative number of books by first-class physicists were not only mastered by me, but almost memorized. Somehow in my own way, but then I was at the pinnacle of physical thought, and since then, of course, I have fallen in this regard. After that I didn’t study physics, and the university course didn’t give me anything and it doesn’t count. Subsequently, there was no contact with physics at all, and if I remembered it, it was only coldly and disgustingly. When, twenty-six years after that time, I had, due to necessity, to again take up this kind of questions and restore forgotten physics through the effort of memory, the basis of this later activity was precisely what was formed at the age of fifteen or sixteen. 1923.XI. 26.III. Those around me understood these subjects much worse than I did and, most importantly, they were not at all concerned with them and were not worried. This increased my sense of responsibility for knowledge. You still need to remember that I grew up in the province, although it was called the capital of the Caucasus. Many people talked about science, but I did not see in those around me a real dedication to knowledge (I exclude our family from here), or real scientific work. And therefore, all the more, I was aware of this burden lying on me, and it seemed to me that if for any day or hour I weakened my efforts and spent my time carelessly, then some enormous damage would occur. This was not just an activity because it interests me or seems useful, but rather resembled the effort of Atlas holding up the firmament. Preoccupied with my studies, I could rarely devote myself to them with full pleasure, because they were covered by service. A day on which I did not write down several paragraphs of my “Experimental Research”, as I liked to call my notebooks after the beloved Faraday, or did not write down any observations of nature in special notebooks, did not take several photographs of geological, meteorological or archaeological content, or did not write at least a few pages that summarized my experiments and considerations and called them, following the example of French physicists of the late 18th and early 18th century. half of the 19th century, “memoirs” - such a day seemed lost to me, almost criminally missed, and by the evening retribution was inevitable for him - self-loathing and dirt in the soul. The least that was required was to write down some new data for me, mainly of a physical or geological nature from the books I had read. I read a lot on physics and related sciences, everything I could get my hands on. I mainly valued books that grew up on English soil and French ones. “Traite de l'Electricite et du Magnetisme” by Becquerel, in the form of thick numerous volumes, “Course of Observational Physics” by Petrushevsky, the magazines “La Nature” and “Revue rose”, scientific reports in “Revue des deux Mondes”, “Cours de Physique” by Janin, “Fundamentals of Chemistry” by Mendeleev, “Dynamic Geology” by Mushketov and Inostrantsev's "Geology", Yovel's "History of Inductive Sciences", Rosenberger's "History of Physics", "Scientific Review", numerous encyclopedic dictionaries in all languages, etc., etc. were constant companions of my youth. This is not the place to go into detail about what exactly I read. But it is important to note that my reading was never a passive assimilation: on the contrary, I always approached the book as an equal to myself, looked for in it what I needed, mainly facts, and always had in mind some specific question that I posed for resolution. This was both my strength and my weakness at the same time. Weakness - because I could not and did not want to surrender to the general flow of scientific thought and let it carry me, without labor and criticism on my part; and therefore I have always been uneducated and even hostile to education. And therefore, what was easy for others and, one might say, cheap was given to me only after long efforts, while other things were not given at all. So, for example, I could never understand, and without understanding, I did not accept the basic principles of mechanics: all three of Newton’s axiomata sive leges motus seemed to me not only unproven and not self-evident, but also simply incorrect. The meaning of inertial motion was completely incomprehensible to me; the equality of actions and reactions and the impossibility of independence of acceleration of existing speed seemed contrary to common sense. In my fairy-tale worldview, I found completely different ideas about space and time and completely different prerequisites for the structure of the world. Of course, verbally I mastered the simple mechanics of Renaissance mechanics and could reason before others with impeccable mechanical orthodoxy. I knew how to express the principles of Lagrange and D'Alembert. But, I admit, I never understood them, just as I still don’t understand them now. Under the protective cover of pleasant scientific concepts, other concepts lived in me, not fully expressed to this day. But I was so alone in them that I would not have dared to speak out, and probably would not have found the appropriate words. When, in the first year of the 20th century, the first information appeared about the experiments, if I’m not mistaken, of Kauffman, who established the existence of an additional electromagnetic mass in cathode rays, depending on the speed, they flashed to me something long familiar, they were exactly what I was expecting. The further development of this kind of concepts led to the principle of relativity, which I accepted not after a long discussion, or even without study, but simply because it was a weak attempt to put into a concept a different understanding of the world. The general principle of relativity is, to some extent, my fairy tale about the world, chopped off and simplified. But a hole has been made in the mechanics, and now the exits to my cherished aspirations are open. But I don’t need these exits now, because I came out much simpler and without scientific apologies. So, my independence in reading always forced me, despite extreme credulity in factual reports, to bristle against all sorts of foreign theories, so they were not assimilated by me, I treated them as someone else’s matter, at best, indifferent to me, did not give myself the trouble to delve into their pros and cons21 and, despite handling books seriously, remained, as said, uneducated. But there was also an advantageous side, of course, not at all advantageous for my natural science education, but which had a positive significance in my general mental training. I learned to make the tools I needed myself, both literally and figuratively, speaking of concepts, and therefore, whether my scientific concepts were good or bad, I knew how they were made in general. The tools of scientific thought are taken by the majority of even educated people, or, rather, are obtained ready-made from abroad and therefore enslave thought, which is not able to work without them and has a very unclear idea of ​​exactly how they were developed and what their real strength is. Hence the tendency towards scientific fetishism and ponderous clumsiness when the question of criticizing their premises is raised. If the majority rejects some concepts, it is only because they have believed in the opposite, that is, they have become so enslaved by them that they are absolutely unable to think without them. So, the positive side of my lack of education was to a large extent independence from the prevailing concepts - an attitude like a blacksmith may have towards a nail or a horseshoe, which he himself, if necessary, will forge, but not at all like a histologist, for example, towards his microscope, which he not only will not make or correct himself, but also the physical theory of which he does not clearly understand. Of course, a histologist is incomparably more subtle than a blacksmith, but the latter in his field is both more independent and bolder - he has a firmer sense of the ground under his feet. And I: from childhood, having become accustomed to building everything on my own, I did not experience fearful trepidation in the scientific worldview and managed there as if at home. I won’t argue that this may not have been useful for physics; that under such conditions, if I continued to move forward in the same way, my physical career would be little successful, this also seems probable. But there is no need to worry about that, because I have long since finished a career of this kind, and one can only talk about my later forced studies in physics as a joke. The very essence of this attitude of mine to the scientific worldview, in its universal meaning, that is, independence, some disdain for concepts that usually evoke sacred awe, evaluation of them only as working tools of thought - this was important in my life’s path, and, speaking spiritually, it was the justification and meaning of my studies in the sciences. Simply put, physical phenomena mean little to most, but physical theories and diagrams are awe-inspiring; Providence raised me in awe of phenomena, but blew away the poetic fog and mystical aura from theories before me. What remained was human, too human, which I strengthened in a secret feeling of enmity. IV. But when this work was determined in its results, and after enormous stress, both internal and external, I could say to myself with satisfaction, and perhaps even complacency: “Rest,” - then all the previous work quickly began to crack and collapse from tremors, and suddenly it became completely unnecessary and far from hostile to me. My whole life has generally turned out in such a way that I still don’t know whether I am inclined or not to self-satisfaction: every time a certain period of life began to lead to the results of work and objective data for self-satisfaction appeared, either an internal or external earthquake occurred, during which the thought of what had been done could no longer enter my head. This happened, especially this happened then, at the age of fifteen or sixteen, in the presence of especially favorable external and internal data for self-satisfaction. If you understand very deeply what happened and how it happened, then you can perhaps see in what happened the sudden opening of the doors of another world, where I had been semi-consciously knocking all previous years; or even like the fall of a barrier, the destruction of which, also not quite consciously, but worked hard, knowing neither peace nor rest. Then it would be possible to understand my original feeling of the mysticism of many phenomena, my subsequent work on exceptions to the rules - as a vague call to me from Eternity, which, however, made its way everywhere and looked for cracks and passages in the building of scientific rationalism. In this sense, nothing unexpected happened to me. Indeed, this was so. Despite the blockage of communications with my childhood paradise, its vapors passed through to me and awakened deeply hidden experiences, until, finally, being destroyed on both sides, this blockage fell. And then I also saw something that I was not aware of as a child, or, if I delve very deeply into myself, that I was aware of, but once upon a time, very, very long ago, directing it at my parents and merging with them into one image. However, in the narrative, it seems to me wrong to insist on the essence of these internal turns and it would be more useful, without delving into them, to describe closer incidental circumstances. They also somewhat close the gap and in this sense contribute to the understanding of what happened. But whatever this understanding may be, it should not hide the main thing in my own well-being, that there was a rift, a break in my biography, a sudden internal collapse, the fact of suddenness of which will not be covered by any indication that it was being prepared gradually. When a house collapses, the collapse happens suddenly, and suddenly a new fact compared to the previous one is announced: the house has collapsed, whereas it was standing before. And cracking and settling, it used to be a home; from a certain point it is no longer home. In my experience of what happened, the most important thing was: its unexpectedness and catastrophic nature. The streak of life, the most laborious of all, the most recklessly ardent, the most, as it seemed to me, the most selfless, suddenly went to waste. Oh, with what acuteness did I then feel the futility of human affairs! And how, in comparison with those, the destruction of Russia and the previously experienced destruction of Europe and its culture sounded dull in me. This is not because it was about me personally. On the contrary, then I knew, perhaps even better than now, that the scientific worldview is the soul of Western culture, the very heart of Europe. And when this heart suddenly began to stop before my eyes, when I saw that it was not a heart, but only an elastic band, then, although, perhaps secretly and wanting it, I recognized everything that was happening now in the world as destined to happen. In what happened to me, I experienced a break in world history. It suddenly became clear to me that “time had run out of its grooves” and that, therefore, something very important not only for me, but also for history had ended. It was a feeling of mortal melancholy, and burning pain, and an unbearable consciousness that what had been built with the greatest efforts was being destroyed - I’m not talking about our own people, but about common, European ones. But in this pain, burning to the point of screaming, at the same time, the beginning of liberation and resurrection was felt, also not only mine, but also everyone’s. 1923.XII.2. V. There were several immediate circumstances that prepared or, more precisely, accelerated this internal collapse. If we take into account the ferocity with which I studied physics, the degree of my knowledge, then the conditions of my studies were unfavorable, and by the time described they had become simply impossible. I had no leaders or even approximately my equals in eros and physics with whom I could feel understood. I also did not have the necessary books and magazines. And as for the main subject of my attention, physical experience, then, despite the dexterity I acquired in circumventing difficulties and building my own instruments, everything available to my efforts had long been exhausted, and there were neither financial nor technical means to experimentally solve the problems that faced me. My thoughts and desires grew rapidly, while the possibility of their implementation almost stopped. Due to the lack of outcomes in physics, creative energy looked for other ways, although this was painful for me. The very conditions of work taught me to resign from the field of technical knowledge and thereby prepared a deeper rejection of it. I could not breathe freely because my chest, figuratively speaking, had already developed too much by that time. But this tightness of breathing had reasons that were more inevitable than just provincial poverty. In physics itself at the end of the 19th century, despite its successes, one felt the exhaustion of guiding principles and the inconsistency of the system of physical knowledge, which had developed canonically and seemed to be an almost completed building, with physical experience. The circle of basic concepts had already closed, possible consequences from it had been deduced or seemed to be deduced, the researcher was faced with either measurement or formal-analytical tasks, both equally difficult, as well as thankless, not promising new horizons. As a reward for his work, the researcher could only expect a quantitative expansion of knowledge, but what was required of him was either experimental or formal analytical virtuosity, the virtue of old age - both of science and its workers. Here it was possible to get results with self-confidence, a steady hand, a firm thought and sufficient social influence; the available results would once again confirm the internal closedness of the system, which was already recognized by everyone as closed, became a scientific creed, and about which the question of criticism was considered as heresy and lese majeste. It is clear that everything that I had, both positive and negative, went against the existing nature of physical knowledge and created in me a feeling of constraint and dissatisfaction. I had neither a social position that would open the doors of libraries and laboratories, nor experience in precise measurements, nor mathematical analysis in my hands. On the contrary, eros and the trembling of my thoughts, criticism of the foundations, physical premonition and a living feeling of the impending catastrophe of physical knowledge, and finally, a certain dislike for the German spirit of the system, which then captured the majority of minds, despite the English spontaneity with which I felt an inner affinity - all this made me perceive modern physics as someone else’s clothes that fit poorly on me. I knew enough about physics not to say something stupid and not get into trouble, but its concepts were not my own concepts, and I used them like a foreign language. 1923.XII.4. VI. In myself I had an approach to physical phenomena that prevented me from assimilating with an open mind the school approach of that time, its language and its methods. But my approach was still vague or, rather, undifferentiated: I did not have the appropriate language, and I did not have it due to the absence of an interlocutor, at least a mental one. The surging level of the new worldview was powerful enough to flood and blur high school physics; but he did not have the power, and most importantly, the time, to provide a clear system of new concepts. I came too close to physics, to the very sources of its creation, not to see the conventions of school physics with its rationalism and simplification, but I did not have the strength to express my feeling that it was possible and should approach the same area more deeply. Maybe the latter is not even entirely true: rather, I had no impulse or reason to try to do this. I hid my feeling deeply within myself, realizing that an attempt to talk about it would lead to a complete break with everyone around me and that my inarticulate words would be taken for something delusional. More than a quarter of a century has passed since then, dizzying in the speed with which the catastrophe of physical knowledge has approached and passed in the upper layers of thought; some of what I foresaw in those days was revealed and partially expressed; There is also no doubt that physical knowledge has already taken a turn in a new direction, which, although it is not yet what I knew at that time, is much closer to it than the previous school physics. And yet, would it be possible now to decide to speak about one’s own, about the foreseeable future of physics, out loud, in a full voice, abandoning caution and philosophical equivocations? Perhaps only hints of this kind get away with impunity, but in an artistic environment, which, moreover, gives such statements a conditional and subjective meaning. But you can’t say this directly and point-blank anywhere, and even an attempt of this kind does not come to mind, and therefore an expressive word is not sought. This is deeply wrong when they pretend to speak with future generations: my word is needed not only for my interlocutor, but first of all for myself, and, therefore, the birth of a word presupposes this interlocutor. If there is no interlocutor, then I cannot speak out and cannot become clear to myself, no matter how strong the need to speak out and no matter how powerful the consciousness is that under favorable conditions I could say clearly and accurately. I repeat, to this day I am not far from what I was a quarter of a century ago. The difference, however, is that then physics was everything to me, and therefore dumbness in this area doomed me to complete loneliness, and I was more serious; now, having also other options, and, in addition, having become more frivolous, I treat my physical dumbness as an old and already familiar wound, almost indifferently, and perhaps with hidden revenge, on the topic, approximately: “If you didn’t take what was offered, it’s worse for you, look for it yourself with long efforts.” In addition, in those days the triumph of school physics was great, and I, in the provinces and at my age, was worried about whether the embryo of true natural philosophy would perish with me (I liked and still like this English term); but since then I have learned to be complacent, when I firmly learned that the life of each of us, and peoples, and humanity is led by Good Will, so that one should not worry about anything other than the tasks of today. Well, history itself convinces, in addition, that the worldview has already entered a new path and that therefore “mine” belongs to the victory, which will be achieved without me, so my personal participation in this matter is a secondary circumstance. A little earlier, a little later, a little this way, a little differently - but the sensations that worried me will be expressed and will determine the nature of future knowledge. Now I'm sure of it. Then it was different, and I felt like I had gone out into a gorge, from which to return would be a betrayal on my part of everything that I had hitherto strived for, which I would not have enough strength to go through, and most importantly, it would be useless, because I would be cut off, as it seemed to me, from all living things; by all living things, in this case, I was inclined to consider only those involved in physical research. And anxiety and a feeling of hopelessness rose within me. They appeared at first as separate black dots, without sufficient external reasons, appeared and disappeared, breaking up the continuous working day of science, which was my existence at that time. These relatively short times of gloom were all the more noticeable because my main state was always cheerful, lively and overflowing with thoughts, plans and interests. I had no time to be bored, every minute was accounted for, and my entire existence was a continuous celebration of science, which I tried to extend to the unbearable loss of time in the gymnasium, thinking about something during the lessons when circumstances allowed it. And yet, sometimes everything became dark. Nothing externally penetrated into my well-booked preoccupation with science. Self-confidence, whether understood in a bad or good sense, provided reliable protection from unpleasant impressions. On the one hand, I was protected from them by family conditions and family environment, and on the other hand, I was so devoted to the objective that I never delved into myself and had no taste for it; As for the gymnasium, I looked at it not only from above, but simply as an inevitable nuisance, which my self-esteem forbids me to notice and take into account in any way. My comrades, who were subtler and more cultured, were irritated by the gymnasium, were angry, others burned with hatred and talked, I don’t know how closely, about terrorist attempts (a few years later they actually began in secondary schools in the Caucasus) and in general they demanded something from the gymnasium and somehow took it into account. As for me, on the contrary, I tried to calm them down, defended our teachers and did not feel hostility towards them; but the reason for my calmness was that I did not expect anything from the gymnasium and did not assume anything, I treated both it and the teachers with a condescending and arrogant attitude and was deeply convinced that all these were not subjects worth spending time and attention on discussing. Naturally, therefore, in the gymnasium I studied among other things, prepared lessons during breaks, and was completely indifferent to the troubles of the gymnasium, especially since my father frowned with displeasure at good grades, apparently fearing (he was deeply mistaken here) them as a source of vanity. However, I studied well and in this sense I did not encounter problems in the gymnasium either. So, black dots appeared by themselves, as the first harbingers of a deep internal shift. VII. Another circumstance accelerated this shift, this time personal, although it also rested on the same interests in science. This is my relationship with Elchaninov. During these years he was the only one I wanted to approach internally. My contact with my schoolmates and other acquaintances was superficial, and deliberately superficial. We could chat, they treated me well, but what really occupied me, that is, physical thought, I kept silent, as obviously inaccessible to the interest and understanding of my comrades. In Elchaninov, with whom we were connected both by habit and warmth of feeling, there was a talented receptiveness and mental mobility that allowed him to approach with attention the area that occupied me. At least that’s what I thought about him and he about himself then. This gave me hope for a way out of loneliness and encouraged me to try to be around it. But my, and perhaps his, efforts were in vain, and as it became impossible to turn a blind eye to their futility, the awkwardness of mutual relations arose, too friendly to have the ability to evade when necessary, and not friendly enough to destroy all mental mediastinums. This was the only aspect of life where I did not move without shocks, and these shocks, without any obvious reasons, led to a rupture, not a cooling, but a rupture that had all the formal properties of a quarrel, but without a reason for a quarrel. One day we suddenly switched to you, then we stopped talking and seeing each other, we didn’t bow on the street and didn’t say hello. I repeat, we were too close to move on to a simply polite and external relationship; maintaining the previous relationship has become unbearable; there was nothing to explain, just as there was nothing to admit that we were guilty of, because none of us, in the everyday sense, did anything wrong. If we talk about guilt, then this is metaphysical guilt, a certain character trait on his part, and the inability and reluctance in my fascination with physics to understand this and act further, taking into account this essential circumstance. But I loved him too much, almost lovingly, to internally agree not to seek from him similar attention to my own in an area outside of which I saw neither satisfaction nor (to put it bluntly) true human dignity; and on the other hand, all my thought and the strength of my conscious passion were concentrated precisely in natural philosophy, so I did not allow myself to think about the possibility of simply becoming attached to a person, simply loving him, and even more so, being in love, apart from natural philosophy, in general, apart from mental interests. I wanted to consider both Elchaninov and myself as an application to physics, and our relationship with him as a service to it; and therefore I demanded from him what he did not have, and behaved under the artificial assumption that what was required already existed. When the opposite turned out to be true, I was offended, assessing this opposite as undermining the very foundation of our relationship, and saw in it negligence and frivolity. In all this the fault or error lies with me; but it’s still good that it was so, it’s good that the crack between us, which I felt almost before the vision, widening daily, was attributed to me by physics; no matter how cruel my suffering was, in this thought it had something softening. I thought about all this many years after we had completely reconciled with Elchaninov, but without resuming the previous one, I clearly see that a break, much more significant and much more painful, would still have occurred if I had judged more sensibly both the value of physics and Elchaninov’s inner alienation from in-depth reflection. Simply put, the instinct of life prompted me, under the pretext of physics, to break away, albeit with the greatest torment, from Elchaninov before he could abandon me, no longer under any pretext, but due to metaphysical inconstancy, which constitutes both the charming and spiritually criminal essence of his character. Here it was mentioned about his talented receptiveness. Indeed, I have probably never met people as plastic as he is, so easily and voluntarily molded by those with whom he meets and with whom he is interested. Almost exclusively his ability and, most importantly, desire to enter into the interests of others, but not out of kindness, but completely, with animation and fervor, to penetrate them more strongly than the interested one himself, to subtly apply to them, again more subtly than the interested one, to show great sensitivity, tenderness, attention - so that then, after a short time, he will completely cool down to these interests, which had just been his own, and to the matter, and to the person. Almost instantly enchanting and enchanted, even, perhaps, at first enchanted, and then enchanting precisely with this fascination, Elchaninov very quickly gets satiated, gets tired, cools down and leaves, and leaves almost rudely, at least cruelly. He needs a constant change of impressions, otherwise he feels withered. Even with literally the most pleasant, dear face for him, with the most interesting book, it is difficult for him to sit for more than half an hour, he begins to yawn irresistibly, turns gray and rushes off for new impressions. In those years described, these properties were not yet expressed so clearly, and only I guessed something about them. Subsequently, they were established indisputably for everyone who knew him, just as the nickname “moth” became common among all his friends and acquaintances. Indeed, this moth fluttered from flower to flower, barely touching a drop of nectar. If anyone knew this essentially unstable character, one might say, stubborn in his instability, then the relationship with Yelchaninov was easy, pleasant and charming, but under the indispensable condition not to believe either his feelings or his explanations, in general to take half an hour of a date as such, without extending this half an hour either into the past or into the future. And then the moth could fly to one place many times, and everything would go so smoothly. But as soon as the inexperienced heart imagined that these half an hour was only the beginning of something lasting, to adapt his life plans and his spiritual hopes to this beginning, in general, in return for Yelchaninov’s dedication, to give himself up to himself, then a drama began, a drama about a Don Juan, and Yelchaninov’s Don Juan list, in any case, many times exceeds that of his ancestor. But there is no doubt, without any exaggeration, that Elchaninov is a Don Juan; but this definition should not be taken roughly. // However, this lack of rudeness concealed the main poison: Elchaninov eluded the opportunity to condemn his behavior and in his own mind did not have sufficient material to be clearly convinced that he was not at all innocent, at least not as innocent as he thought about himself. He avoided intimacy with those equal in age and strength, and especially his elders, and preferred younger ones, who were more unrequited in his advances. Elchaninov used all his abilities to charm and consolidate his charm. He elevated the one with whom he was dealing to the throne and instilled in the inexperienced soul a fairy tale about its chosenness, exclusivity, its right to worship, and at that time he himself drank this soul, which opened up before him with a trust that it had never had before itself. All other relationships, affairs and responsibilities paled in front of her, the love and attention of loved ones began to seem insipid, too moderate and restrained, her soul was burdened by everything that was not Elchaninov. And as soon as this happened, he got bored, grew cold and abandoned her, if possible - he simply tried to leave and disappear from sight. He could be faithful only if someone else's soul held on and, despite the seduction, did not give itself to him; then Elchaninov renewed his attempts from time to time, lost weight and was tormented by failure. This, however, was not an action according to a calculated plan, nor was it pride, but was driven by some irresistible instinct, very feminine. Victories were especially easy and were most sweet when the victim of love was still very young, and the younger, the more desirable. Teenagers, or even better children—Yelchaninov’s unrest was primarily directed at them. Those around him, that is, adults (how blind these adults can be!) unanimously considered Elchaninov a born teacher. They chased after his lessons, his upbringing, even just pedagogical advice, like visits from a famous doctor. In particular, at one time they tried to involve him in raising the children of Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich, but Elchaninov rejected this invitation. And indeed, having no pedagogical callousness in himself and not at all taking into account the pedagogical recipe, Elchaninov approached each individual case directly and with interest, forgetting about his studies as a craft and surrendering to the responsibilities he had assumed, which, however, were not responsibilities for him, but rather another novel. In each case, he invented new teaching methods, aroused thought and interest, and excited. They studied with interest, his instructions were willingly listened to and even carried out, in general he could lead his students in most cases wherever he wanted, although occasionally there were those in whom he did not inspire confidence and who definitely did not like him. The program was assimilated, and everything seemed fine. But in fact, Elchaninov tore the child out of his family and, unnoticed for himself, instilled in him distrust of his loved ones and taught him to isolate himself from them; the pupil discovered a new for himself, either dismissive or reproachful-condemning point of view on his parents and everyone else, for everything and everyone now seemed to him petty-bourgeois, prosaic, petty, and all duties and life relationships - conditional and insignificant. It was a kind of hop, but not innocent like hops. Having severed the threads of life and left, Elchaninov left in his soul confusion, a feeling of emptiness and a wound, to which was added the poison of increased self-esteem and corresponding demands from life. VIII. But everything told here was clearly defined in Elchaninov after our divergence with him and is included here for the sake of a clearer understanding of the personality of my late friend. I call him that because, having suffered through our painful separation and then, after some time, again establishing a very short relationship, I could not and cannot feel him differently than how the dead are felt. Initially, I was his elder (although for years we were the same age) and therefore, probably, I did not surrender to him as an authority and did not see him as a fairy-tale prince, and this was intolerable to him even then. Subsequently, when he felt that he had died for me, he wanted love, moreover, he felt that now I did not expect anything from him, I sincerely did not think about any of his responsibilities towards me and that I would not be upset either externally or internally whether he acted one way or another - and Elchaninov’s main feeling, it seems to me, has always been a female rebellion against the norms: “Marriage is the grave of love.” So, he became convinced that I was not digging any grave for his feelings, and therefore he began to treat me with tenderness and, from time to time, when one or another of his novels, the ones that worried him more, ended, he returned to me as his elder. However, all this should be discussed further, but now I’m going back to where I started: despite my almost love for Elchaninov and a long habit, I, without any obvious motives, was the first to actively move away from him and, in hindsight, I see this as a correctly performed operation. If the latter had not existed, then I would not have been left in the loneliness I needed, and I would still have lost Yelchaninov, but only more painfully. When I parted ways with him, I felt like I had descended into a dark cellar. I had a connection with the world through him, and then it broke. The light faded, I heard the descent slam shut above me. Now that the excitement and external pain had subsided somewhat, I could turn to myself and reconsider, for the first time consciously, what I had lived until now. IX. My first concern was to double and triple my efforts in science. I carried out a number of interesting experiments, read intensively; my thought had already covered vast areas, as, for example, in the work “On the Electrical and Magnetic Phenomena of the Earth” - a work that, at that age, was satisfactory not only in concept and basic concepts, but also quite complete in terms of literary information. Not a single impression was to be left unattended: I photographed, sketched, wrote down, and all the material was brought to some kind of unity. In short, it was the height of activity. But at the same time I felt a secret dissatisfaction, and it was not drowned out by the incessant work. It was not a specific feeling, and I was inclined to explain my condition to my loneliness, but wrongly. Previously, nature brought me into ecstasy, and my heart was ready to burst with delight; Now I continued to love nature, but, being left alone with it, I began to experience especially acute attacks of inexplicable and pointless melancholy. This feeling, which was generally not characteristic of me and unknown to me until that time, was experienced especially painfully due to its unfamiliarity. It was rare to feel moved at the sight of a flower or a stone. My walks and excursions continued, and in general my preoccupation with knowledge, but this was done, although zealously, but rather out of a sense of duty and habit, rather than out of a passionate feeling of the true importance of this. I intensified my reading in philosophy, which, however, had happened before, but it left me cold and slipped without touching my soul. In my mind, philosophical concepts formed into philosophical systems, I felt a certain pleasure from these bold mental moves, but for me they were nothing more than virtuosity. By the way, I also re-read Tolstoy’s philosophizing, but they seemed mostly tedious to me, and I did not give myself the trouble to understand them in essence. What attracted my attention more was Carpenter’s famous article on science, translated by Tolstoy, but even here, rather, finding fault with some of his instructions about the vagueness of the concepts of temperature, I began to think intensely on this subject and tried to build something in this direction. By the way, while living with my dad in Kutaisi in the summer, I resumed my reading of works on spiritualism and other related phenomena, but my attitude towards them was external: as before, I was willingly and trustingly ready to admit the facts themselves, with less trust, but not hostilely listening to theories, but for all that I did not make any spiritual use of either of them, because for my mysticism this was an area too close to the laboratory, and for my scientific bent – too approximate and unclear. So, no beneficial impulses from the outside made it easier for me to emerge from spiritual languor, I remained left to my own devices, and between me and I lay a scientific worldview that was alien to me, but not overcome. X. Meanwhile, voices from the depths called, although I did not hear them; and when they became so loud that I could no longer hear them, still, shocked by them, I did not know what to do next and how to navigate them. Now I barely remember when exactly what happened, but it doesn’t matter, because it characterizes one phase of my life. 1923.XII.20. Here it seems to me necessary to make one reservation, relating both to the immediate subsequent chapters and to the entire narrative. Namely: from this time in my life I still have diaries; from others - various modern written data. When I tried to look into them, my present consciousness was pushed out by their alien element, like a piece of wood by the water of the Dead Sea. And if the reader of these lines ever came across those notes, he would feel a deep difference between them and the present presentation and would be inclined to see some kind of fiction in it. But in this case, the author owns both, and in addition, he is the subject of his composition. Naturally, one should also listen to his opinions about this disagreement, and such an explanation makes sense in general, because this is a favorite topic of critics - to establish the fictionality of autobiographies. So, first of all, the diaries, letters and notes belong to me, and it would be a deep mistake to rely on them as the unconditional truth, only for their modernity. Measuring the truth of later memories with them means recognizing my complete impartiality at that time towards myself and others and some kind of inhuman wisdom that allows me to evaluate the meaning and significance of events in themselves, in addition to the general lines of life. Modern records are necessarily more subjective than a later view of the same events, which already generalizes and has reason to push forward or push back this or that particular circumstance. Much that, above the noise of life, was not then heard carefully enough, in the further course of events it turned out to be the most significant, while much, much that worried us passed almost without a trace. I listen to my own old diaries and so on, like stumbling reading through a poorly written and inaccessible to the understanding of the reader: punctuation marks, and logical, even musical accents, and the rhythm of reading - everything is mercilessly distorted, and I, of course, do not agree in my later understanding of my own life to be guided by this old thing that is alien to me. In some places I simply don’t recognize myself in the records of that time, but I know that this is not due to a lack of memory, but because the record itself is incorrect. I either didn’t write about the most important and deepest things then, or wrote incorrectly, and I couldn’t write; these were still too subtle and not brought to full consciousness impressions and internal movements for me to find words for them at that age. Now, when this subtle thing has already come to the surface of consciousness and, having sprouted, shaded what was there then, it can now be expressed. And on the contrary, what was then in the focus of consciousness was probably there because it was already dried up old skin, from which, despite its torment, it was not possible to free oneself and which with one’s conscious efforts everyone wanted to revive and stick to one’s soul. Yes, looking back, I, like everyone, not only see individual incidents of life crumbling and arising from external shocks, but also understand their inner meaning in the whole of life, that is, their place and mutual connection in the whole of life, and evaluate their specific weight. Much has been forgotten; but when you consider what exactly belongs here, the emptiness and superficiality of this forgotten thing becomes clear. On the contrary, something else, apparently fleeting and then half-noticed, turned out to be unforgettable and even over the years becomes more and more vivid among the fading images of the past: these are the seeds of the future. The picture of the past, as it appears now, does not correspond to the one I saw in my very experience. But let them not tell me that my present representation is a retouching of a biased and biased memory. Of course, even now, without dying, I cannot talk about myself without bias; but I am sure of one thing: I can now speak about the affairs of that time with greater interest than then, in the very boiling of these affairs. And what I will say now presents the life of that time differently than it was presented then, to the advantage of truthfulness. It is very likely that, having ascended to some new level, I would be able to understand everything that happened in a new way, and then the present presentation would turn out to be in some sense unnecessary and erroneous; but it is not the early records that are to be contrasted with the present narrative. Ultimately, I know what I have written about myself is better and what is worse. It seems that critics of autobiographies and confessions should be guided more often by this consideration, and then much would be written by them differently from what was written. XI. But I return to what I interrupted. The summer of 1899 was a time of particularly rapid internal change and therefore seems to me to be extremely long and full of events, unlike those that preceded it and many that followed. I frantically clung to physics and similar sciences, overwhelmed by many very broad ideas, each of which would be enough for an extensive book. But at the same time, there was a very large amount of artistic, philosophical, and historical reading going on. True, I always read a lot before, and almost at one glance, snatching from the book everything that was really useful to me, so that further attentive reading of the same book rarely yielded anything more nutritious. But this reading went on in its own order and therefore was somehow not noticed, just as individual books were not remembered for later. After the age of childhood, the summer of 1899 stands like a stone bull in my mind, and everything in between, although I remember it in detail, does not have significant weight and connects these foundations with the arch of a bridge. The same applies to books: reading here has become stormy, lightning-fast and very exciting. My time and energy were occupied to the last degree, and in addition, the teachers of the gymnasium willingly assigned me several free lessons, which I taught with excessive jealousy. This busyness not only did not stop [but also could not stop] some rapidly developing events in the subconscious, from where only dull rumbles reached me. But there was no doubt that it was uneasy there. At the end of spring of this year, shortly before leaving for the dacha, I remember a very difficult night for myself. To this day she remains vividly in my feelings, but I can’t find the words to tell what was the matter, because there are no images. No, and it wasn’t then, despite the power of the experience itself that shocked me. I clearly remember the entire external situation: my room in the wing of our house, with white bare walls, according to my taste, high, with huge windows directly on the long balcony, the wing in which it was located. I remember huge closets made of unfinished ash, which contained my personal books, papers and instruments, and two huge ash tables, which occupied almost the entire large room. I studied and experimented with them, built my own devices with them. An English vice with an anvil was screwed to one of the tables, and in the box lay tools, plumbing and carpentry. It won’t take long to list the rest of the room’s inventory: this is a wooden ottoman with my bed, a chair and an inkwell on the table. I couldn’t bear anything in my room, especially on the table, even a book. So, I slept in this room. The windows and doors were wide open. Judging by the fact that in my mind’s eye I don’t see anyone from the family, they have probably already left for the dacha. I slept in a deep sleep, similar to a faint, so that I didn’t even have dreams, or, in any case, they were forgotten before I woke up. But the feeling was correspondingly strong, or more correctly, the mystical experience of darkness, non-existence, imprisonment. I felt myself in hard labor, perhaps in the mines - I did not see myself in such a state, but only had an extremely significant consequence of it for my inner life - I felt as if I was in such a mine. Using terms that I had not yet used, I would say: this ugly and inexpressible experience, which shook me like a blow, was mystical, and, moreover, in its purest form. I experienced enormous suffering that overwhelmed me, although there was no reason to be aware of my destruction and my death. It was like the feeling of being buried alive, when whole miles of black, impenetrable earth lay above him. It was darkness, before which the darkest night seems bright, thick and heavy darkness - truly Egyptian darkness; it enveloped me and crushed me. There was a feeling that now no one would help, none of those whom I had grown accustomed to counting on as something unshakable and eternal would come to me, or even know about me. I also felt powerless in all my interests and activities. Not that there was any doubt about the rightness or wrongness of physics and everything else, even in nature itself. No, all this simply remained on the other side of something impenetrable to me, became undiscussed, devoid of any vital meaning, rags that you would neither praise nor blame in your agony. With an acute conviction that did not allow any doubt, I felt the powerlessness of everything that had occupied me until then, in that new region of darkness where I found myself. It has its own needs, its own suffering. Obviously, you must have your own means and your own joys. With a direct feeling I looked for them, but did not find them, I rushed to the exits, but ran into walls and got confused in dungeons and passages. I was overcome by hopeless despair, and I realized the final impossibility of getting out of here, the final cutoff from the visible world. At that moment, the subtlest ray, which was either an invisible light or an inaudible sound, brought the name - God. This was neither illumination nor rebirth, but only news of possible light. But this news gave hope and at the same time a stormy and sudden consciousness that either death or salvation in this name and no other. I did not know how salvation could be given, nor why. I didn’t understand where I had ended up and why everything earthly was powerless here. But a new fact came face to face with me, as incomprehensible as it was indisputable: there is an area of ​​darkness and destruction, and there is salvation in it. This fact was revealed suddenly, as an unexpectedly menacing abyss appears on the mountains in a breakthrough of a sea of ​​fog. It was a revelation, an opening, a shock, a blow to me. From the suddenness of this blow, I suddenly woke up, as if awakened by an external force, and, without knowing why, but summing up everything I had experienced, I shouted to the whole room: “No, you cannot live without God!” 1923.XII.24. Having said that, I myself was surprised - both by the sound of my voice, which broke out involuntarily, and by the very content of the words: what I experienced in the dream was strong, but too deep, in the exact meaning of the word, and therefore did not have any formula. When this latter was expressed, a feeling of surprise naturally arose, despite the internal recognition of this formula as expressing what had been experienced. Here a generalization suggests itself to me, which applies to the most different, but more profound activities of my life and, moreover, at all times. This is precisely the appearance of verbal formulas of what I experienced, completely independent of direct intentions and, more often than not, contrary to foreseeable combinations and conclusions from ready-made formulas. If I weren’t afraid of falling into Rozanov’s tone, then plagiarism would be most appropriate here: “Every word of mine is a revelation.” Of course, not in the sense of claims to the highest spiritual truth, not even in the sense of indispensable correctness, but still a revelation, because they arose and arise in my formulation, always floating or, more precisely, jumping out completely ready from the subconscious and pushing apart, tearing apart the existing content. This means: individual formulas in my mind do not stick to each other, most often they have gaping gaps among themselves and contradict each other. Their entirety forms something strong due to the connection of these verbal formulas with spiritual centers, regarding which I myself cannot say what they are. A superficially rationalistic worldview resembles the “flashlight” of a Jewish cherry; a deeply rational worldview can be compared to the successive shells of some fruit, such as, for example, a coconut. And the structure of my thought has radical connections, and I imagine the image of my favorite fruits from childhood […], similar to blue hedgehogs. Usually, no matter what area I was thinking, the thought came by itself and almost without my knowledge, while my consciousness was occupied with something completely different, often the opposite of what was being prepared at great depths. This was not a logical thought at all, but, rather, looking at some new area, feeling it and internally adapting to it. When it was achieved, its word itself arose. As a word, in the process of its formation it was in no way related to other words and therefore was not harmonized with them; That’s why at first it seemed to me something unexpected. By its root, which grew it, it was native and well-known, it suited the structure of thought as a whole even better than the usual, worn-out other words. It appeared in consciousness as alien to him and at the same time as cherished and defended with much greater sincerity than everything else, which no longer evoked a feeling of mental awkwardness. This happened with new thought in all areas, and therefore the new at the same time surprised me and felt like it had long been my own and assimilated. The above word about life without God had the same effect, but in a more acute way. But there were cases when this involuntariness of the word seemed to me already directly given from the outside, as a perception of what appeared in the external world, which was at the same time internal. Was this a hallucination, if the psychological mechanism of these perceptions is approached, as they say, “scientifically”? - Don't think. My psyche has always been tightly knit, and influences on it from the depths did not suppress the ingrained self-control that was familiar to me since childhood; no matter how excited and shocked I was, the investigation of what was happening never failed. And regarding the cases mentioned here, no matter how alive the deep confidence in their otherworldly reality, at the same time an account is taken of the external environment in which the otherworldly reality was embodied. So this was not a hallucination; but they were not, however, illusions either, if by the latter we mean the erroneous reinterpretation of perceptions and the substitution of their meaning by some others of the same kind, to which they give rise, but for which they cannot be recognized as a sufficient basis. What I am talking about should rather be defined as the coexistence of two different meanings, belonging to different planes of reality in the same perception, and one meaning does not destroy the other, but both are recognized simultaneously, although with a different coefficient of value. When such an interpenetration of meanings has the greatest reality from the side of the lower meaning, we consider perception as a symbol, with the coloring of subjectivity. But there are, although less often, cases to the contrary; here the more valuable meaning of perception is also felt as more real: it is an objective symbol, a vision. 1923.XII.26. Here is one of the cases that was especially memorable, perhaps because it lay on the main stream of my thought. It dates back to the same summer and was a short time later, perhaps two or three weeks after the incident described above. It seems to me now more definitely that there was no one in the house except me and my father. I slept in my room. It was quite hot, the doors to the balcony were open. I don’t remember any dreams, and, as it seemed to me even then, the sleep was very deep and also like a failure. But suddenly something woke me up, some kind of inner push. It wasn't any image, it wasn't any thought. Perhaps it would be most appropriate to compare it with an electric shock, but with the significant difference that an electric shock is felt by the body, and this one had nothing to do with the body. A shock that did not affect either bodily or conscious mental states, and yet was forced, imperious and sharp - some kind of spiritual electricity. It was a feeling as if a strong will, immeasurably superior to mine and immeasurably more authoritative than mine, was acting for me before I myself had time not only to fulfill its demands, but also to understand, feel and want what it demanded of me: this is probably what a baby feels like, swaddled by a skillful hand and only realizing at the end of everything that it’s time for him to cry. And my independence was determined in relation to what was happening only in retrospect. This spiritual impulse instantly and completely awakened me, and such an awakening was like falling off a roof. In the same manner, he threw me out of bed into the yard, and, I remember, the onslaught of will was so strong and decisive that I did not have time to walk along the balcony to one of the exits, but jumped straight out of my door over the railing. To say that I was scared would be completely wrong: I didn’t have time for this. Only when it was all over did I realize that I had to be afraid of the mysterious and powerful presence of a will that was unknown to me and, in any case, did not at all comply with the conditions of courtesy in which we were brought up. She is like a menacing, instantly consuming fire that does not apologize and does not give an account of its actions; but in the very depths of consciousness it is clear that this is necessary and that this necessity is wiser and more beneficial than human cautious approaches. I stood in the courtyard, bathed in moonlight. Above the huge acacias, right at the zenith, hung the silver disk of the moon, very small and terribly distinct. It seemed like he was falling on his head, and he wanted to hide from him into the shadows, but an imperious force kept him in place. I was terrified to remain in the streams of lunar silver, but I did not dare to return to the room. Little by little I began to come to my senses. It was then that the reason for which I was called outside happened. A completely distinct and loud voice was heard in the air, calling my name twice: “Paul! Paul!" - and nothing more. It was not a reproach, nor a request, nor anger, nor even tenderness, but a call, in a major mode, without any indirect shades. He expressed directly and precisely exactly and only what he wanted to express - a call. I remember well his timbre, neither masculine nor feminine, elastic, sonorous and very clear; there was not the slightest taste of gutturalness, or any desires beyond that basic, objective, expressed command, which was conveyed to them here with imperious dispassion. This is how the messengers proclaim the commands entrusted to them, to which they do not dare and do not want to add anything beyond what has been said, any shade beyond the main idea. This whole call sounded with the directness and simplicity of the Gospel “she, she - neither, nor.” It tore apart my consciousness, which knew the subjective simplicity and subjective illusoryness of the rational and the objectivity of the shimmering, infinitely complex and mysteriously indefinite irrational. Between one and the other, tearing them apart, something completely new appeared - simple and thoroughly clear, but powerfully real and indestructible, like a rock. I hit this rock, and here was the beginning of the consciousness of the ontology of the spiritual world. As far as I understand, it was from this moment that an aversion from Protestant and intellectual subjectivism in general appeared, not yet expressed in words, but acute in its definiteness. I did not know and do not know who this voice belonged to, although I had no doubt that it came from the heavenly world. Reasoning, it seems most correct in terms of his character to attribute him to a heavenly messenger, not a person, even a saint. However, with all this, both then and now, in some background mental plan there was a question, albeit of little interest, about the physical material of this voice. This does not mean that I deny the existence of heavenly suggestions and voices that have no physical basis. But regarding this case, I am inclined to think that such a basis was still in the form of a voice in the neighboring courtyard behind us, behind a high brick wall, and I even admit that this voice shouted out my name, although, of course, it did not refer to me. Why he needed to scream like that in the middle of the night is incomprehensible, and, if we generally proceed from external circumstances, then everything that happened to me seems incomprehensible. But my immediate sensation then, as well as my consciousness of what happened subsequently, came from the opposite: the first and indisputable in this case is the spiritual reality of the voice from above, which directed all external circumstances in such a way as to pierce the crust of my consciousness in the most accessible way to me. If, in fact, someone called my name in the neighboring yard for some reason, then he, without knowing what he was serving, was moved to do so by the same force that woke me up. I don’t know who exactly he wanted to call and why, but in fact, he gave his throat and his lips to another voice and called me. It is very likely that my hearing was too crude to hear directly, without this vocal mouthpiece, the angelic voice; but with the help of a physical medium I heard not him as such, but in him his spiritual engine, a heavenly voice, and therefore the timbre and expression became spiritualized and became unearthly. 1924.1.1. I. The situation with the calls described above and similar ones was the same as with my feeling of another world in general. I accepted them with an open soul and completely trustingly; skepticism, duality in perception, a rattling sense of existence have never been characteristic of me. Moreover, they worried me and deeply exploded some inner layers. One might say that an experience of this kind was established in my consciousness as something unconditionally solid and not encountering any internal opposition. But... the other world, although known to me on a different level, was never rejected by me, and something much more important than the thought of it was always alive: the direct feeling of its reality. The other world, in my deepest sense of self, always came into contact with me as a genuine reality that did not inspire the slightest doubt. This feeling concerned not only the elemental depths of nature and all its life, the spiritual appearance of plants, rocks and animals, but also human souls, in particular saints. In particular, there was a constant feeling of the presence of the late Aunt Yulia, her refined closeness, much more soulful than during life. If someone had told me then, together with Bergson, that all existence passes through us and is therefore given to us in depths that do not, however, reach consciousness, and had been able to say all this not as a scientific theory, but simply as my own feeling of well-being, then I would have responded vividly, for this was precisely my feeling of well-being, and, moreover, the feeling of well-being from birth. So, there was a feeling of something other than just the surface of life. And yet this living and fundamental sensation of mine in consciousness, or more precisely, in a coherent conscious-scientific worldview, did not take any part, except perhaps negatively, like an enzyme. The experience, undeniably genuine and about the genuine, was in itself, and the scientific thought, which in some spiritual layer I simply did not believe, was in itself. This was a characteristic disease of all new thought, of the entire Renaissance; Now, in hindsight, I can define it as the separation of humanity and science. Inhuman scientific thought on the one hand, thoughtless humanity on the other. Scientific abstraction dancing with the triumph of victorious death on the bones of the man it destroyed and the downtrodden human spirit hiding in the corners. All modern times have suffered precisely from this duality, first in the hope of completely destroying the spirit, and then, when the failure of these hopes became clear, in melancholy and despondency: Amiel. In me, these two elements collided with special force, because Renaissance scientificism was not an external appendage or plumage, but second nature, and I understood its true meaning not because I learned it from someone, but knew it directly, as my own desires. But this understanding was opposed by an equally strong experience, which fundamentally denied the Renaissance ideas. That is why it was in me, when the revival was forced and brought to the last tension, that an explosion of all these plans occurred. I was raised and grew up as a completely modern man; and therefore felt like the limit and end of a new time; the last (of course, not chronologically) man of modern times and therefore the first of the coming Middle Ages. In saying this, I am sufficiently aware of the self-confident connotation of all these words. But such an impression, probably almost inevitable, would be completely wrong: here we are not talking about dimensions, which do not seem significant to me at all, but about the type of spiritual life, about the structure of the personality, which in this case is new - in quality, and this historical novelty can be completely combined with the small dimensions of the personality, its abilities and deeds, so that there is still no evidence of increased self-esteem in this novelty. Simply put, the worldview that emerged from the aforementioned explosion will become self-evident in ten, twenty, thirty years, and people will come to it not at all depending on my thoughts, but by themselves, in exactly the same way as recently they realized with their minds that “There is no God,” that “everything is written about lies, and in general.” II. Thus, my previous studies proceeded as usual, according to the discipline of thought I had developed, although my immediate sense of the need for them was undermined. This way of thinking seemed to split off from me, so that an alienating current of cold began to ooze between them and me. It intensified rapidly, every day. But this alienation was a direct feeling and did not have behind it sufficiently expressible grounds. On the contrary, the reasons remained the same, and since the feeling resisted them, the stability of thought required self-defense from this destructive, but irresponsible feeling. And I, consciously, resisted it, this feeling, and tried to conscientiously continue the previous line of physics. If before I would not sleep at night from the exciting thought of the upcoming experience the next day, now, when the experience could be truly significant and new and when my mental horizon expanded and mental habits were formed, now experience became for me a duty imposed by a sense of duty, and only in short flashes aroused tenderness towards myself. I felt physics and everything connected with it, like someone else’s clothes on me or some kind of lifeless skin peeling off from me. But I didn’t dare tell myself about what had happened and tried to convince myself that my state of health was temporary. This old skin, which I had previously mentally adapted to myself and altered in my own way, and now appreciated it in its true deadness, still remained on me, constrained and obliged me. If anyone expressed hostility towards her, I would defend and defend her; however, this would not be out of stubbornness, but out of a clear consciousness that there is no other verbal clothing, and that if I gave up this one, I would have to remain without thought at all. Other instruments of thought had not yet developed in me, and what philosophy provided seemed inapplicable to real experience. Thus, there was nothing left to do but to intensify my zeal in the same sense. Previously, I was naively unselfish in my studies and completely immersed myself in them, not thinking about myself and not being equal to anyone around me. Of course, I was aware of some of my superiority in the field of physics, etc., but I treated it as something external, and therefore I was calm in both my strength and my weakness. Now, on the contrary, the objectivity of thought, occupied only with its subject, has been lost. Once the consciousness of duty appeared, the subjective side of the matter thereby gained weight. I began to realize that I should study and reflect, and therefore it became important that I do it or, on the contrary, do not do it. Hence it was necessary to compare myself with others, with all the ensuing inequality of such assessments, depending on the measure of comparison and my current state at a given moment. It seemed to me that I seemed to be doing something, achieving something and being capable of something, then vice versa; the former calm self-confidence seemed to split into self-confidence and despondency struggling with varying success. I set myself exorbitant demands and enormous tasks; The phosphorescent lights of decisions, as it seemed to me, were enormous in value, flickered in front of me, and I began to imagine myself as something. But it immediately became clear that the equipment needed for all this was missing; The phosphorescent light could not find a medium to solidify itself, and I was overcome by oppressive powerlessness and a feeling of disgrace for an unfulfilled duty. Until now in my life I had sailed in a shuttle on a calm sea, but now I rushed at a gallop over rocks and ruts. It would be wrong to think that I was worried about external assessment from the outside. It was a matter of my self-awareness about something much more burning, about the fulfilled or unfulfilled meaning of life, and a high assessment of anyone would not console or reassure me. The habit of independent thought and independent evaluation was too developed for me to not understand that I was not what I thought I should be. But if I actually did something significant, my well-being would improve for a few minutes, only to then fall even deeper into dissatisfaction with myself. The immeasurable and beyond the powers of both man and humanity stood before me as a duty and threatened me for failure to fulfill it; Moreover, not in the future, especially in the indefinitely distant future, but now, this very minute. And the failure to achieve this task now seemed like some kind of irrevocable condemnation. I lost the consciousness of just a person and just a human measure. Of course, the approval of someone and for something could not take anything away from the gloom of such self-esteem and soften my leaps. And the less important and valuable my activities felt in the depths of my soul, the more intensely my consciousness clung to them and the more anxious my well-being was. In fact, I was overcome by an inner anxiety and melancholy that was much more significant than my interpretation of them at that time indicated. I simplified things and clung to my simplification because I secretly felt the destructiveness of the spiritual states rising in me, not only for my existing way of thinking, but also for the worldview of an entire cultural cycle. And at the same time, I did not dare to tell myself and did not have the necessary words about the possibility of another worldview, also reasonable, also expressible in words. And I fought off the resurrecting spirits of the Middle Ages as if from death, although these spirits were my most cherished and tender inner word, and the fact that I fought off them sat on me like an alien and constricting skin of a principle hostile to me. But, despite my efforts, I was finally forced to admit my complete defeat. 1924.1.8. III. At the beginning of summer, I went with my dad to Kutais, where he lived for the last year, coming to us on holidays. There, in silence, alone with my father or completely alone, I read and observed a lot, with an interest that, however, skimmed the surface and did not force me to give one answer or another. By the way, my former teacher, now an inspector of public schools, Vladimir Egorovich Vorobyov, ended up in Kutais. We did not develop any close relations with him, but he supplied me with books. So over the course of several years I re-read “The World of Art,” “Russian Thought,” etc. It was easy reading for me, but I understood it only with my mind, and was more deeply occupied with other thoughts. In particular, I did not feel the sharpness of Merezhkovsky’s study5 about Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, which was then published, in contrast to the painfully wary attention to the same study a year later. The local city library found some books on physics and spiritualism. Habit forced me to learn both; but I had already begun to lag behind the former internally, and the spiritual tonality of the latter was alien to me, although I did not deny the authenticity of the phenomena themselves. What seemed more attractive to me was the book, which I have never seen since then, by Delliouen, which contains long narratives about some mysterious cases - about duality in the Baltic governess Emilia Sazhe, about the spinetta that belonged to the beloved of Henry IV, etc.; the author tells quite simply how, step by step, he came to believe in spiritualism. My brother Shura, who was 11 years old at the time, also went with me to Kutais. It was entrusted to me, since dad was often absent. Sometimes I also had household responsibilities - various orders, ordering dinner, giving money to servants, etc. I was very embarrassed by the advantages of power, but it was necessary to bear them. Soon after the arrival of the time, an excursion around Racha was organized, which lasted from July 9 to July 16. For part of the road, my brother and I were accompanied by our old friend who served with dad, the carpenter Amiran, and we had to do the rest of the road alone. First we drove along the Tkvibul narrow-gauge railway, past the Motsamet and then the Gelati monasteries. In my notes of that time, predominantly geological and physical-geographical impressions were noted, and photography, which was invariable during the trip, was directed in the same direction: growing colder towards physics, I returned to childhood, going through childhood hobbies in reverse order, and geology gave reason to turn to nature under the pretext of being scientific, of course, dubious, like geology in general. Outside the carriage windows one could see bluish-gray limestones, sometimes covered with ocher clay. The layers here are distorted, crumpled, and there are often folds. In some places you can see outcrops of the igneous rock syenite. Around half past ten we arrived in Tkvibuli, the main coal deposit in the Caucasus, and stopped in Dukhan. While waiting for lunch, I wrote down reflections on pantheism, in which several theorems revealed Spinoza's conclusions, I played with them, internally hostile to them, but still did not have the strength to tell myself about this hostility. After lunch, the boy guide led us to the coal mines. I had to walk about five miles. The road cuts first through shale, then Jurassic sandstone; It is in them that the layer of brown coal lies. The rails reach the briquette factory, which was not in operation at that time, just as the mines were abandoned, and from there, up to the mine, there is a cable car for transporting coal. We went up to the mine and, taking Davy's safety lamps - a name that has excited me since childhood due to its proximity to Faraday - entered the mine. Water drips from the ceilings there, enveloping the ceiling and walls of the ottoman in a white crust of lime deposits; Numerous stalactites hang here, but, empty inside, they are very fragile and break in the hands. There was impassable mud below, which forced us to stop soon. You feel buried here. “I would rather agree to starve, but I wouldn’t work here,” Amiran said for his part. With a feeling of liberation, we left the mine and began to descend, taking care of the blueberries and blackberries that covered the entire slope. The top of the Paqueral ridge, with spruce trees sticking out like bristles and looking like wild boars, was shrouded in fog. The next day, the 10th, we set out on horseback and climbed the ridge in three hours along extremely steep shortened paths. Sometimes I had to get off the horse and drag it by the bridle. I sketched the order of the strata. After the pass, the character of the area changes dramatically. The air is saturated with moisture. Among the dark spruce trees one can see countless ferns that look like large bushes, and due to their density there is no way to get through the rhododendron shoots. Without noticing the time, we drove up to the round mountain lake Kharis-Tvali, spreading out like a heavenly vision. It is small, only about five fathoms in diameter, but deep: according to the measurements of Tsarevich Georgy Alex[androvich], the depth turned out to be equal to 35 fathoms or even 60, as others say. The lake is filled by an underground spring; The water here is icy and tastes good. It is a wonderful blue color here, but not sky-azure, turning into purple on the mountains, but greenish-blue, with opalescence, and reminiscent of aquamarine. Is it not from the glacier that the spring that feeds it comes out? This natural well is especially beautiful when the air breath twitches it with sparkling ripples. Its name means in Georgian the same as the Greek epithet of Hera βωσμις22: eye of a bull. It is probably explained by the presence right there, nearby, of another similar lake, even smaller, but not amazing, however, either in depth or color. The mysterious blue of a bottomless well is, of course, a consequence of the smallest turbidity. But where do these small particles like glacier grinding come from? Likewise, how do the trout that live here, which we ate at breakfast in the neighboring dukhan, get here? And here the thought of an underground river arises. Such a thought would have excited me as a child until my heart beat violently, and I would have forgotten everything, just to see with my own eyes the underground rivers that I heard about from my dad. Now I have entered the realm of karst phenomena, where a number of typical and striking examples are combined in a small space. But I, giving them due attention, sketching and photographing, and peering through the discipline of thought into this natural geological museum, was no longer worried about it with my whole being, although I myself clearly did not know what exactly was internally distracting me. From Kharis-Twali the area becomes treeless, and the rather high calcareous plateau is decorated only with sparsely growing bushes. Having driven about seven miles from the pass, we stopped at the sinkhole of the Shaora River. This decent-sized river flows down from the Nakeral ridge and, at the place where we stopped, it completely disappears underground into several limestone cracks. A mill is placed above the main opening, and a smaller part of the water passes through the dam and disappears much further away. In the white dense limestones of this place many fossils were found - shells and corals, similar to tree branches; however, it was not possible to knock out good specimens. Let's move on. The entire surface is pitted with sinkholes of various sizes. They look like funnels and during spring floods, when Shaora overflows rapidly and in full flow, they serve as underground drains for its water. Such failures form annually and, moreover, apparently suddenly: obviously, the entire area is corroded by internal cracks and spills. One of the sinkholes, which, according to Amiran, formed this year and therefore was not yet clogged, I examined and even descended into it. This is a funnel in limestone, which has a slab-like structure. The base of the funnel is oblong and in the longest direction is about three fathoms; The depth of the funnel, as far as can be traced, is about two fathoms. The bottom of the hole is visible, and passages diverging from it in different directions, draining water. During the inspection, this sinkhole was completely dry, like the others. In the village of Nikor-Tsminda there are also interesting karst phenomena that were examined, sketched and photographed. The cave called Ice, which I heard about from my father, is a vast underground room with a slit-like entrance at the surface of the earth, after which there is a steep descent. The shape of the cave can perhaps be defined as a tetrahedron, with the base upward. Below, at the back wall, there are two or more side entrances, which I did not dare to walk through due to the lack of flashlights. The cave walls are wet and covered with a slimy sediment, perhaps amorphous alumina. It is very difficult for outside air and light to enter the cave; semi-darkness and cold reign there, more than usual in caves, despite the strong July heat outside. Until recently, as my father told me, it retained winter snow and ice all year round, so that the troops stationed nearby used the snow all summer long. But, probably, they completely destroyed it, and during our visit the cave did not live up to its name. But it is extremely interesting, as it shows the outlet of underground rivers: there is no doubt that this cave represents the dried up outlet of some tributary of the Shaora. Not far from it is the exit of the Shaora itself, as well as a small tributary of it. Shaora's exit is both more picturesque and interesting than its failure, and is located, as far as I remember, four miles from the latter. The river emerges from a huge grotto with an overhanging white limestone cliff and, upon exiting, forms a lake of amazing deep green color; as if the emerald is poured in a deep layer, and this emerald glows throughout its entire depth, giving the impression of fluorescence, but spread throughout the entire volume. In color, the lake is very similar to Kharis-Tvali, but somewhat greener: apparently, the Shaora outlet located below it also contains Tyndall’s turbidity of less subtlety. The water here is extremely cold and contains numerous trout. Clean and surrounded by rocks that protect it from the wind, the lake reflects everything around it, like a beautifully polished mirror, and the sun's rays, hitting the mirror surface, illuminate the semi-dark stone vault. This reflection gives a magical play of light when the trout disturbs the emerald surface of the water with its circles. The same thing happened when Shura threw a stone into the water. The density of the green color is so rich that the reflected lighting on the wall of the limestone grotto is green. Even shadows are reflected in this mirror. Sacred silence envelops this enclosed space, and it’s somehow scary to say a loud word. But the lake is creepy in the literal sense: shallow at the exit from it, the water of Shaora in the lake itself has a depth that has not yet been accessible to measurement; Most likely, Shaora resembles a huge cave, like the one we saw nearby. But as soon as you move a few fathoms away from this emerald depth, which threatens the defiler of its purity with immediate death, the appearance of the landscape changes dramatically. Shallow water Shaora gurgles silver along a steep rocky slope, further on there is a small mill, peaceful trees can be seen on the banks, idyllically peaceful above the crystal cold water with trout playing in the sun. Not far away there is another similar grotto, from under which flows a stream with remarkably cold water. It immediately flows into Shaora. We spent the night in Nikor-Tsminda. The next day, July 11, I got up in the morning at five o'clock. A sea of ​​fog filled the valleys, but soon cleared. I examined the ancient cathedral here yesterday and sketched an inscription there. At a quarter to six we left; the road turned out to be of little interest. Bare hilly mountains, no shade anywhere. We follow the flow of the rivers, and after the town of Ambrelauri, where there is an ancient watchtower, we go to Rion; Ambrelauri near Abastuman. Near Cessi, the Rion flows through a narrow gap in the limestone strata standing on the heads. This beautiful place is called Khidekari, which means gate in Georgian. There is a wooden bridge over the seething Rion, and on both sides of it, in the rocks, there are fortresses. This is the gateway to the conquest of the Caucasus, and many battles took place there. If I’m not mistaken, it was to these rocks that, according to a legend still alive among the natives, Prometheus was chained. In these places, without even thinking about your surroundings, you feel like you are touching the nerve centers of history, nature, gods, and people. Having crossed the bridge, we went out onto the Ossetian Military Road and approached the Tsessi station, and from there we went in the opposite direction, but along the right bank of the Rion - downstream. After a difficult and steep climb in the heat, we reached the village where Amiran’s house was located. Here a warm and honorable, even to the point of complete awkwardness, welcome awaited us. Amiran’s family consists of his father, an 82-year-old man, mother, brother, his wife and Amiran himself and children. It is clear from everything that they are friendly and peaceful, and the old people are full of freshness and vigor. An ancient, perhaps already half-forgotten culture is felt in the way of life. In the Caucasus, the restraint and politeness of even the simplest people is generally noteworthy. Thus, despite their curiosity, they will never allow themselves to ask about the circumstances or even the name of the person they met or whom they are hosting in their home. Leaving Shura at Amiran’s house, the next day, the 12th, with Amiran and two guides, I began the ascent to Svaneti. This is a difficult road, and many times I thought how good it was that I didn’t take Shura with me. However, he didn’t worry about it either, having busied himself with plums and pears in Amiran’s garden. We walked, but had a horse under a pack, loaded, among other things, with wineskins of white wine. Amiran was in charge of these fees, and on the road I was convinced that he had grabbed everything by the way. We climb a very beautiful and equally steep path upstream of the Ritseuli River. However, it would be more correct to call it not a river, but a continuous waterfall. Abundance of water: streams, rivers, springs. Lush vegetation: huge spruces and other trees, ferns taller than I am tall, entire forests of horsetails that could easily be removed and passed off as a picture of coal vegetation. On the way we came across some kind of rock with black crystals, apparently a grenade. We all rise [I nrzb.], overcoming the rapid overthrow of Rizeuli, and with the rise the vegetation changes noticeably. According to some fantastic assumptions, heaviness comes from the ethereal current constantly rushing to the earth. When moving on a plane or making short-term ascents, we usually do not feel heaviness; but during a long, steep ascent, I am ready to believe in this ethereal current, as if washing you away from the slope, and, as you rise, you feel like you are in a fast river, the current which you have to overcome with constant effort. But there is something liberating about this long climb, despite its difficulty. With exactly this feeling, at nine o’clock in the evening, I approached the confluence of the Ritseuli and the Zhrinavi River, where the night stop was scheduled. Here, in the gorge, among the centuries-old spruce forest, a fire was lit, and we had dinner. Hardly anyone else spent the night here. Fireflies hover over the roaring river, and the sound of waterfalls merges with the all-night crackling of the fire. It’s cold here at night, and besides, there’s no fire and it’s dangerous because of wild animals. This forest frightens you at night with the swaying of long white beards of Spanish moss hanging several fathoms from the mast trees. And to these fears were added more unpleasant surprises in the form of grasshoppers and some large insects suddenly jumping up on the face. That night, which left a strong impression, I only dozed off, shivering from the cold and jumping up every minute in fright. The next day, July 13th, we set off at a quarter to five. We walked through a dense forest, and there were probably few people visiting these places. At first there is a steep climb, then a slow one. Coniferous trees become more and more dominant, and in the end only fir and spruce remain. Next - alpine meadows and again a very steep climb. We climbed among rocks, overgrown here and there with mosses and lichens. Only occasionally does grass appear. We have reached the line of eternal snow. Coarse-crystalline firn ice whitens in the hollows, and you often have to walk on snow that crunches under your feet like fine gravel. I came across a source that is called sour, although the acidity is barely noticeable in taste, and is not at all evidenced by litmus and turmeric papers. The ascent becomes very difficult. We move with effort, stopping every minute. Those accompanying me mix firn ice with white wine in a glass, and a scorching cold sip of this mixture gives me the strength to fight the gravity of the earth, which here is no longer felt as something taken for granted, but as a special force, according to Newton. Those living below see in the heaviness of their body their own property, inseparable from it; but here, above, you realize with complete conviction that heaviness is caused by an external force, and then it seems alive, with which a conscious struggle is required. You fight it the way you fight off an advancing enemy. But, despite the conscious effort, mountain sickness takes its toll: apathy towards the ascent; weakness – I can barely lift my leg. Breathing is rapid, knees become weak, and the whole state is close to faintness. I have a habit of mountain climbing, but the altitude has never made me feel like this. Finally, at a quarter past two, we climbed the Utini mountain pass. This is the border of Racha and Svaneti. From it you can see the view of the country of the Svans, access to which is only three months a year. In front of us stand the Svaneti Ganges Mountains - a bare rocky ridge with a number of peaks, in many places covered with sparkling snow. Under our feet we have slate and crystalline schists. One slate slab is placed vertically and secured in a standing position. It is considered sacred here, and no one dares to overturn it. On this slab there is a system of concentric ellipses with corresponding arcs of another similar system. Ellipses act as bas-relief lines. Similar images are found on the most ancient monuments of prehistoric Egypt and on Cretan antiquities; but, on the other hand, the same bas-reliefs are sometimes naturally formed on sedimentary flagstone rocks such as sandstone. Therefore, neither when sketching this stone, nor until now, have I been able to figure out the origin of these lines. The sky is deep blue, almost black. There is a feeling of perfect harmony achieved. Consciousness is ecstatically expanded, and there is no longer a definite boundary between me and external existence. This usually happens at high altitudes: from the air or from something else there appears an ecstatic going beyond oneself, communion with the Great Mind and therefore mastery of the universal fullness. The unearthly joy flowing here permeates. Everything small, anxious, fussy remains infinitely far away, it is no longer yours, but some kind of swept away rubbish. There is no longer a restless memory of tomorrow, and all the low-lying misunderstandings there have completely disappeared behind their insignificance. All earthly cares are put aside, and blue ether flows inside you in a wide stream. To die and to live at this moment is equally blissful. The feeling of lightness of the whole being begins: the body has lost weight. This sensation can only be compared with flight in a dream, when the will directly moves the body. I don’t know what the scales would show if the weighing were done in such ecstasy; no one has carried out such an experiment, but I admit the idea of ​​genuine levitation, of a decrease in weight, which is also taken into account by the methods of physics; in any case, such an outcome of the experiment, if anyone needed it, would not seem surprising to me. Here, on the mountains, an astral exit from oneself arises, but not painful and not in accordance with environmental conditions, as below, but lawful and joyful. Here, despite your fatigue, you don’t walk, but fly, take steps that are unthinkable down there, as if carried away by some kind of stream, warningly arising in accordance with your intentions. Here, above the steepness, by the way, you make a jump, which is scary to think about below, even when there is nowhere to fall. Here, after a tiring climb, you don’t want to sit down for a minute, but rush around the rocks almost without a specific goal. So I went down somewhat along the opposite slope of Utini into the Svaneti plateau and examined a small lake. Its water is clean, but it is very shallow: it is surrounded by fragments, blocks and sandstone rocks. I don’t know how long I could have enjoyed myself here, but the fog covered the entire neighborhood; There was no point in staying any longer, and besides, one could be afraid of rain. At four o'clock in the afternoon we began our descent, which turned out to be comparatively very easy. We did not descend, but rolled, especially since we had to hurry because of the fog, which was thickening and threatening rain. However, it turned out that we would not be able to make it home that day, and therefore at seven o’clock in the evening we stopped for the night in a hut made of branches that we found on the border of alpine meadows and a coniferous forest of spruce and fir. In this hut it was possible to sit only huddled, but it partially protected us from the pouring rain. The mourners lit a fire. Then one of them disappeared and after a while surprised me by bringing tree mushrooms, which he explained grew on beeches. These are yellowish-gray and white lamellar mushrooms, as I later learned from my sketch of them, […]. Those accompanying me said that this was our dinner. Probably, the hut was built by them: they easily found homemade pottery under the dry leaves, something like flower trays of a very rough appearance, similar to Stone Age utensils. They baked mushrooms on these trays, sprinkling them with salt. The mushrooms turned out or seemed tasty. Until then, I had no idea that tree mushrooms were edible. We slept the night in the hut, and in the morning, with continued heavy fog, we began to descend. The path was easy, and, leaving at a quarter past six, by noon we were in the village of Amirana. The next day, July 15, at half past ten, we left the hospitable family. Having arrived on horseback, accompanied by Amiran, to the Chrepali station, we hired a crossbar and said goodbye to Amiran. Now I found myself left to my own devices, in addition to having Shura in my responsibility. It was painfully awkward for me to tip the coachmen when shifting horses, and it was especially awkward to refuse the cigarettes they offered, which I bought for them at the stations at their request. We are driving along the Ossetian Military Road. Between the Chrepali and Alpani stations, near Saerim, magnificent limestone structures suddenly stood before us, looking like pyramids, pillars and towers. It is difficult to get rid of the thought that this is not a magnificent city of an unknown, but close to medieval style - I will say vaguely. Local legend recognizes these rocks as an enchanted city. Next, the path goes through the Riona gorge, which constantly makes sharp turns. The area is picturesque, but monotonous. Narrow gorge. There are white limestones everywhere, darkened on the outside, and in them there are many inclusions, interlayers and nodules of red flint. It is very possible that these are fossils; at least one of the flints turned out to be belemnite. We spent the night in Alpani, and the next day, July 16, at about one o’clock in the afternoon we entered Kutais. Soon after that, dad left for Kvishkhety for several days, taking Shura with him, and left me in Kutais, where I lived for about two weeks in total. I walked outside the city a lot, both alone and with my father. Most often, along the Ossetian Military Road, along the Riona gorge, I headed past white limestone cliffs, with their washouts and caves along the slope of the road, to the ruins of Bagratov Cathedral. Bushes of wild pomegranates with dark green glossy leaves and coral-red flowers, wild vines entangling tall trees, and generally lush vegetation awakened memories of early childhood in me. I felt a correspondence with my inner life when I climbed alone, not without eeriness, into the colossal ruins of this exceptionally large church with its collapsed vaults, wandered among the huge stones that cluttered its interior, jumped on the gigantic capitals of its columns. Even when he came here with his father, he remained sitting at the entrance, looking from above at the flow of the Rion and not having the desire to jump with me over the stone chaos. Various ornaments and mysterious images could be seen on the stones. At the corners of the tetrahedral capitals sat some birds, like huge eagle owls, and on the very edges were carved mysterious compositions with animal or semi-animal figures. As much as I could, despite my inability, I tried to sketch these writings of the spiritual world in my album, not understanding them, but being excited by them, as if touching something close. Sometimes I climbed high into the apse window of the side nave and looked from there at the majestic structure. Directly opposite me stood the well-preserved opposite apse. Dark ivy, which grows all over itself in this area, wrapped itself around the back side of the wall and, reaching the narrow window, burst inside the building and literally doused the entire concave side of the wall. One day, while balancing on the ridge of the roof and risking falling off the wall, I took a photograph of this ivy covering. Nothing in these ruins reminded me of the worldview with which I internally struggled; on the contrary, from these collapsed walls emanated the spiritual trends of a different culture, to which, without knowing it, I strove with all my soul. These stones lived and continued to live, I could not help but feel the spiritual forces hovering here and speaking for themselves, but against physics, much more than what can be said by philosophical and theological reasoning. My natural-scientific education served here, as it served many times since, against the scientific thought that it was supposed to serve: it forced one to reckon with directly perceived facts more than with abstract concepts. With such a fact, there stood before me the undoubted, although inconceivable by physics, spiritual life of these ruins, harmoniously united with the life of nature. In addition, I was alone with my father, and this led to a relationship similar to a child’s, and to the awakening of a child’s perception of the world. Once we went to an ancient monastery, which is also a fortress - the ancient Gelati monastery, the repository of the Khakhul Mother of God. This is a bright corner of the Georgian Middle Ages, arousing the feeling of a different culture, even in the absence of concepts directing attention in this direction. My being was too busy with internal struggle, and my consciousness with physical concepts, for me to be able to really examine this monument. I didn’t look enough at the glorious icon of Our Lady of Khakhul, with its gold enamel and stones that amaze archaeologists. Since childhood, having had a habit and taste for archeology and art, I, of course, was interested in everything I saw; but only the subtlest vapors of the life of this antiquity were really felt by me, the rest was quickly forgotten. Dad and I traveled even further when his service required it. So, one day my dad unexpectedly invited me to go with him to Batum. In ten minutes we got ready and left. It was July 21st. Here comes the sound of the distant surf, which makes something in the pit of your stomach clench in sweet excitement. Batum seemed even smaller to me than I had imagined him to be, but even nicer than he seemed to me during the years of my going into physics. The city was pitiful and became even more pitiful than before, but it was all familiar and connected to the soul with every street and every house. Just as Tiflis has always remained alien to me and I have pushed myself out of it with hostility and pushed it out of myself, so I enter Batum as if I were entering my own body and prepare a tender meeting for it in advance. I walked around the city here, sat on the boulevard, swam in the sea. Dad and I also visited the engineering house, even several times, where the Novomeyskys once lived. This two-story house still stood, hidden under the protection of the battery near the corner of the boulevard, with the same wide balcony from which Batumi high society once looked at Emperor Alexander III when he ascended to the battery. I remember how, after a long wait, I became hungry, and a slice of French bread with Swiss cheese seemed incredibly tasty. This house was for me at one time a magical haven of muses and graces. Maria Sergeevna Novomeyskaya lived there, who in my eyes was a charming creature, almost a rival to the hummingbird. Petite, blue-eyed and blond, she loved to dress and please and knew how to be dressed exquisitely and even more to charm with courtesy, polished in the Polish environment where she had moved since childhood. She was disposed towards me, so she kept me in a state of constant admiration. And everything around her seemed fabulously charming and magnificent. I considered the glass heap with porcelain and trinkets as a treasury, almost inaccessible to man, although I did not know that some things, including a vase with a palm trunk and leaves, which captivated my imagination, were donated by us. But the general atmosphere of charm around Maria Sergeevna was so great in my eyes that if even a simple cobblestone had come to her, it would have seemed full of grace and significance. What especially attracted me was her nervousness - evidence of an unearthly sophistication that brought her almost closer to princesses and fairies. I always listened with satisfaction to the conversations of the elders about how Maria Sergeevna again felt ill due to this or that unpleasant impression. What gave me the most pleasure was when Maria Sergeevna, while bathing her little daughter Eva, pricked her with a gold brooch, causing her to faint. Then Maria Sergeevna, at the sight of a drop of blood, also “fainted,” as I enthusiastically reported to the right and left, and, finally, the fullness of exquisite feelings was completed by the little son Felix, in the above-mentioned way. It seems that her husband Severin Feliksovich found his entire family lying unconscious. In our house this kind of elegance was considered reprehensible; Our tone was more strict, partly in the English spirit. Among the Novomeyskys, probably through Poland, trickles of pre-revolutionary France made their way, and in mutual relations and way of life there was something of the Louis XVI style23. We had seriousness and a cult of truthfulness, while the Novomeysky house strived for elegant staging and an easy game of life, with true feelings hidden behind courtesy and brilliance. My attraction was twofold between one and the other. That is why the Novomeysky house captivated me and seemed incommensurable with what I saw in my own home; I liked his irrationality, he seemed to me infinitely large and full of significance and grace, and everything that I knew and saw seemed like a small fragment of a huge invisible whole, and all the graces accessible to me were only small, for example, from what else was contained in it. This house, and especially Maria Sergeevna, became the center of crystallization and the point of application of all my aspirations for grace. With a sinking heart, I entered there, with secret admiration I met Maria Sergeevna each time and then followed her for a long time, looking at her tightly covered hand with a kid glove with exquisite and somehow unusually folded fingers. It was into this house, on the corner of the boulevard and near the battery, that I now walked, more than ten years after my former charm; Dad was on some business and, if I’m not mistaken, some boss, and I was partly on his instructions (the engineer who lived there, an old friend of ours, whose last name I can’t remember, wanted to see me), partly by my own free will: I wanted to renew the impressions of childhood. A warm welcome awaited us there, and, in addition, deep disappointment awaited me. Instead of endless enfilades of huge halls, decorated with all possible luxury, I found myself in the most ordinary, decent, but small apartment with the most ordinary furnishings. The battery, which seemed to me like a mountain range, turned out to be a low earthen embankment. Nothing fabulously elegant or fabulously mysterious. As happens in dreams, this house seemed to me like a Rembrandt painting, where the illuminated planes of the foreground seem to protrude from an endless, inexplicably mysterious shadow that hides countless secrets. But the same thing happened that happens upon further acquaintance with the Rembrandts: the calling shadow turns out to be a deception, a nod to the mystery and, when trying to delve deeper into it, instead of infinity, we immediately, after an arshin or two, come across a fence or wall. Likewise, the mysterious dots that cut off the part of the house accessible to me were reflected by Rembrandt’s shadows, containing no more than corridors and human space. It was unpleasant for me to see this refuge of poetry empty and shabby. I tried to leave it as quickly as possible, despite the invitation of the hospitable host, and did not go there again. And yet, while I was there and after, I thought and continue to think that the real truth was my first, childhood impression, due to my greater ability at that time to touch living poetry and the presence within these walls of the soul of the house that enlivened them - Maria Sergeevna. I am sure that the atmosphere of this house was indeed different then than it is now. And the feeling of the enormity and unknownness of the entire room, I think, was a true spiritual coloring of some internal significance of the atmosphere of the house and its incommensurability with my understanding. Isn’t it so that Rembrandt’s shadow, which hides within itself several yards of depth and a wall that is not at all incomprehensible, nevertheless is and remains mysterious and, exposed, nevertheless continues to be impenetrable by analysis. Isn’t it so that a small room, completely known to us, in complete darkness receives a mysterious bottomlessness, and then the feeling of this infinity will not be dispelled either by the recollection of what we saw in it in the light, or by the touch of the walls and objects? // As before, I did not deny the secret of the outside world, but now, with the impending crisis, I felt little of it directly: the inner pain transferred almost all attention to another secret, or, more precisely, a secret in a different form, not yet born, but already making itself felt. As if saying goodbye, I looked around Batum, and indeed this visit turned out to be a farewell, because two or three other times, when I was still here, I had no time for the past, and Batum did not reach my consciousness. But really, I went with my dad farewell to my beloved Adjaris-Tskali and after that I never went there again. And I won’t, at least in my Ajarns-Tskhali: judging by the news, the rivers there are dammed and power stations are installed on them, supplying Batum with energy. On this last visit, Adjaris-Tskali turned out to have already changed. There is a village located near the bridge over Chorokhi; the gatehouse is overgrown with nuts, which we once planted in the form of pathetic reeds. The large garden, once planted by the pope, partly grew and went wild, merging with the surrounding vegetation, and partly died. There were people there unknown to me, and only Akhmet, who was very old, recognized his father and greeted him with joy, but he was surprised at me, remembering me as he carried me in his arms across the water. Adjaris-Tskhali became dim, partly captured by people, partly due to a change in my gaze. Returning to Kutais, I wanted to go to my mother, but my father persuaded me to stay and go with him to Poti. Poor dad was bored alone, but did not dare to simply express his desire and, from an excess of delicacy, only made it felt. This is how I ended up in Poti for the first time in my life, again doing along the way everything that I liked so much in my early childhood: at the Samtredi station, the name of which in childhood seemed to me something French - Santredit, the usual boiled crayfish were bought, at the Rion station - bunches of Isabella grapes tied into long garlands, and somewhere else - also unchanged at this station, chestnuts strung on a thread, boiled in salt water. Arriving in Poti, we were met by a gendarme assigned to this matter by the mayor. Dad, who did not tolerate signs of honor, flushed all over and announced to the gendarme that he did not need to be taken to the jail. The gendarme began to sheepishly explain that he was ordered to accompany his father to the hotel, but that if he was not needed, he could leave. Dad gave him some unexpectedly large tip that stunned the gendarme and got rid of his services. We went to the hotel. It was midsummer. Despite the evening time, the Poti air resembled a steamy section of a bathhouse. The miserable streets were deserted, but frog concerts could be heard from the numerous puddles that stood there forever. The next day, dad received some honored visitors, and I went to the botanical garden; However, there is nothing more to see here. The most remarkable thing I saw were huge magnolia trees, multi-story buildings; shiny large leaves and even larger flowers of archaic simple structure, in general the whole style of the tree, exquisitely simple, awakens feelings of half-forgotten primitive times and the open secrets of nature. These white flowers were held on the branches like incense burners, and the tree appears to be sacred, but from the cult of some other, more ancient race. Since childhood, I especially liked the stems, light brown and woolly, like deer antlers, but much clearer. Having soothed my senses with a magnolia grove and chewed eucalyptus leaves, I returned to the hotel. However, being in this swamp city is unbearable. The whole body is covered with some kind of sticky moisture, as if greased with glycerin, day and night; and washing does not help with this stickiness, because the towel itself is so wet in this air that it is not able to absorb water from the face, and after washing, you remain wet. 1924.1.9. The Pope came to Poti, by the way, for a meeting about work on laying a new channel for the Riona River in the area of ​​its mouth. Now I do not remember the details of what benefits were expected from these works; but on the other hand, the picture of the entire area, remarkable both geographically and historically, stands clearly before my eyes. A small steamboat brought us downstream of the Kaparchi River. This river flows from Lake Paleostoma, located among the peat bogs of the Black Sea coast. The name of this lake indicates it as the ancient mouth of some river, obviously Rion, ancient Phasis. It is easy to see from the map that it was here that the river bed was originally directed, but little by little the exit from it into the sea was covered with sand, and the bed moved along the peat lowlands somewhat to the north. The Caparcha River, high enough to allow the movement of a small steamship, flows absolutely amazingly: at first it heads north, in the direction of the present mouth of Rion, but then turns sharply to the south and flows parallel to the lake and the sea for several miles, being separated from both by narrow sand spits parallel to each other, the width of which is of the same order as the width of the river itself. The sea spit is rapidly lengthening, and at the same time the river bed is lengthening. The formation of this spit is understandable: with its very small fall, the waters of Paleostom easily precipitate sand and other impurities from the sea surf. As a result, the braid lengthens, and then the fall becomes even smaller, which in turn accelerates the growth of the braid. It is not difficult to verify that this is how the first internal braid was formed. And in fact, its sand is identical to the sand on the outside, and at a depth of about one and a half meters it contains the same shells that lie on the current seashore. Hence it is not difficult to foresee that in the future Caparcha will again turn to the north, besieging a third parallel spit, while the current external one will become internal. In this area, not only mineral particles are easily deposited, but also the fading life of peoples. Who has not been here, on the threshold of Colchis! The Colchian Egyptians, who gave the very name of the area, formed their colony here under Sesostris from part of the army; to this day they retain the ancient name and some of the customs of Egypt, such as circumcision. There were then repeated influxes of various Greek peoples, and the very name Paleostom testifies to the Hellenes. Then Roman campaigns and numerous remains of Roman fortifications and bridges. In particular, the name of the Moltaqua river, which flows into the mouth of Caparcha, speaks quite transparently about the Romans: Moltaqua is a spoiled Multa aqua - abundant, large water. Next come the remnants of the Venetians, then the Turks, Georgians, and, finally, the last layer - Russian culture. Being here, you feel like you are leafing through a chronicle, each page has its own vapors rising, and the past seems more alive, and closer, and incomparably fuller than the present. Here the coerciveness and authority of the physical worldview and, in general, of the entire new culture itself pales, and a different culture and a different, universal reality rises and fills with life. On July 30, early in the morning, my father and I left Poti for Kutais. In the evening, from 8 to 11, I sat with my dad on the balcony, talking. Many meteors streaked across the sky. They came from the northern side of the sky and during their long flight, sometimes more than half the sky, left luminous traces. The sight was amazing. One meteor was especially bright, significantly surpassing in brightness all the luminaries, even Jupiter. The meteors flew for so long and their movement seemed so slow that at first I mistook them for white birds at night, fluttering behind the trees and illuminated by some kind of lantern. This remark of mine prompted my dad to tell me about a legend of some Caucasian people that speaks of the existence of luminous birds. Dad said that some natural scientist believed this legend and became convinced of its truth. The next day, July 31st, my dad and I went to the village of Kvishkhety, where my mother, aunt Remso and all the children were. We arrived in the evening; the usual intense joy after separation. 1925.VIII.23. Now comes a story about one of the most important breaks in my inner life. This time appears to me with exceptional clarity to this day, as if the imprint of those internal events was burned and became forever unchangeable. Pleasure disappears from memory without a trace; joys are remembered, but as pale, bloodless shadows; Only deep suffering truly shapes our personality and leaves significant changes on it, which are always subsequently felt as an unchangeable “now.” And these, predominantly, are internal suffering. So, I remember all too well the whole fracture described and the circumstances that accompanied it. However, looking into the detailed diaries of that time, I find there a lot of carefully recorded little things, mainly natural scientific observations, information about books read, notes about comrades and acquaintances, and finally, numerous records of feelings that then worried and tormented me, but all this is like the surface of life, to a large extent - the rubbish and scum of something else, deeper; the most important thing, the true source of pain and what actually was the channel of inner life, is almost not mentioned in the diaries, at least not clearly attested to anyone else. I look through the diaries and do not deny the factuality of what is stated there; but I am surprised at how inappropriately the emphasis of importance is placed here, how carelessly the masses of soul are put forward and distributed. I know that the diary is as accurate as a protocol. But I don’t recognize the complete image of events in it. It is like a photograph of distant mountains; it was taken for the sake of the mountains, and only for them, and, however, the entire surface of the picture is occupied by some kind of grass, the dirt of the road or some kind of fence and who knows what, and the mountains are represented by barely visible gray arcs. Likewise, in the diaries of that time I hardly find anything truly important that determined the rest of my life. Of course, then I could not have written differently than I did, without falling into abstract reasoning: what was happening to me, or, more precisely, what was happening in me, despite the pain and strength, was rooted in the semi-conscious area and did not have intelligible words for itself and, therefore, no suitable forms of thought. These were blows from the deep center and therefore, despite their strength, were deaf. Only a number of them shook the tightly built cortex of consciousness, and then a new force came out. In hindsight, I now see and understand the most significant of the internal processes that I clearly saw and which I almost did not understand then. According to external accounting, all my time was completely occupied, perhaps even more fully than in previous years. Everything was a subject of interest and observation. I was interested in the relationships between the colors of the vegetation; I was enthused by the phosphorescent glow of the plane trees stacked in our yard at the dacha, which I had coveted since I can remember; I made observations on the streams of the Kura current, which I needed for my reflections on electric current; I examined the structure of the mountains, looked for minerals and found a thick vein of beautiful bluish-green jasper; measured the temperature of sources, observed weathering processes; I eagerly peered every evening into the tones of the rising shadow of the earth. All day long I climbed the mountains, taking photographs, making sketches, recording my observations, and in the evenings I put it all in order. Staying idle for at least a quarter of an hour disgusted me and even more tired me: both earlier and to this day, doing nothing is just as tiring for me as walking slowly, because a lot of effort is spent on delaying movement, internal or external. But all these observations of nature were not scientific impressionism, scattered and passive impulses from random encounters with nature. In a sense, I knew very definitely what I wanted, and directed my attention to natural phenomena that were internally very specific. Despite the variety of my interests, I could not and did not want to do just anything, even if significant in itself, in my mind. I did not have an abstract logical scheme that united the objects of my attention, and this repelled my mind. Nevertheless, my interests organically merged into a single picture of the world, and in a vague premonition I saw a new Cosmos, but more organized and more permeated with the consciousness of a single mysterious life of nature than Humboldt’s. This artistic and holistic view of the world was accompanied on another plane by theoretical thought. During my walks in the mountains, I constantly thought about questions of physics and partly mathematics. The attempt to give a definition of temperature as a quantity was especially intense in my head, and in my reasoning I partly used one thought about the same question by M. N. Gorodensky. These thoughts about temperature were prompted by Carpenter's remark in his article on science, which really offended me, that physicists themselves do not know what temperature is or how to logically determine it. Along with these reflections, I was finalizing an article on electric current, writing various notes on mathematics, devoting quite a lot of time to the written translation of Titus Livy and reading on philosophy, the history of literature, and studied Whewell’s “History of the Inductive Sciences,” writing letters and diaries. And yet, on some of the deeper planes, I languished as if unoccupied, and below - I suffered. The previously calm and naive work in its recklessness now began to be accompanied by sharp fluctuations in self-esteem and was either under the sign of extensive plans, or in the consciousness of nothing significant being unfulfilled and therefore unproven that these plans would ever be realized. These fluctuations gradually produced two coexisting self-esteem and a corresponding duality of well-being. A feeling of some vague illness that almost never left me appeared, although I could not perceive anything tactile, and there was no reason to complain about any physical symptoms. I tried to attribute this difficult feeling to various external circumstances, but I myself felt that it was not them. And the more tightly I clung to scientific observations, then the only reliable and strong refuge. But one day, or rather, one moment, this refuge was gone. I remember well how, on a hot afternoon, I took refuge in the forest on the mountainside on the other side of the Kura. It was quite a steep slope and you could slide down to the river. I tried to gather my thoughts to think through some scientific question; but the thought was sluggish and blurred. Suddenly, from under this loose cover, another thought emerged, like the tip of a dagger, completely unexpected and inappropriate: “This is nonsense. This question is nonsense, and it is completely unnecessary.” Then, in surprise and fear, I asked this thought, different from my usual one, how it could be nonsense when it is closely linked with such and such questions, already clearly recognized. And after a few seconds I received an answer that they, these questions, were also nonsense and were also not needed for anything. Then I again raised the question of all such questions, which, through their interconnectedness and mutual conditionality, form the fabric of the scientific worldview. And again the same answer as the entire scientific worldview - rubbish and convention, which has nothing to do with truth, as life and the basis of life, and that all of it is not at all necessary. These answers from another thought sounded more harsh, more definite and more merciless. I remember well the almost physical sensation of them, like a cold blade, effortlessly piercing into my spiritual body and cutting me, like something loose and without the strength to resist. The broader my questions were, the less strength I had to defend my values ​​and the more devastating this blade became each time. And finally, the last question, about all knowledge. It was cut, like all the previous ones. At some point, everything that I lived for was cut off and devalued, at least as it was accepted in my consciousness. All the objections to scientific thought that I had ever heard or read suddenly turned upside down in my consciousness, and from conventional, easily repelled at will and artificially invented quibbles, they suddenly became a formidable strengthening of that new thought, suddenly received the power to strike at the very heart of the scientific worldview. At some point, the magnificent edifice of scientific thinking crumbled into dust, as if from an underground shock, and suddenly it was discovered that its material was not valuable stones, but wood chips, cardboard and plaster. When I got up from the slope on which I was sitting, I had nothing to take even from the ruins of the entire structure of scientific thought, in which I believed and on which or around which I myself worked, sparing no effort. Not only devastated, but also in complete disgust, I ran away from this garbage. 1925.VIII.30. At the moment of the collapse, when it seemed to me that the vault of heaven was cracking and collapsing, I did not learn anything new for myself. But the direction of the will was radically reversed. In the very knowledge that I had a minute before this event, all semantic stresses were rearranged. If, first of all, I put forward the pro of the scientific worldview and supported it with hope for their better future, completing with my conviction the sluggish and non-existent lines of communication in them, and did not listen to the contra, also in the hope of their worst future, now pro and contra, in spite of my desire, exchanged their places. All the pros withered, as if beaten by frost, and suddenly lost the power of convincing sound. On the contrary, all the contras, also suddenly, raised their heads and became victorious, although I did not say yes to them at all. Some of them never received this yes, others received it, but not soon, and, however, now I felt in them the masters of the situation. A deep shift of will occurred, and from that moment the meaning of mental activity changed sign. The revelation of knowledge began, first only scientific, then in general. At one time I read Mach a lot and, despite the disagreement in my mind, in a sense I still accepted him. Now what was perceived began to grow wildly. The denial of knowledge at its very roots gave me joy, in which the pleasure came from the greatest degree of internal suffering. I felt broken as I fell into the abyss, and I wanted to at least secure this new place of mine in order to have at least some place. I read especially a lot on philosophy, but the only thing that satisfied me was that it undermined the possibility of knowledge; on the contrary, positive constructions were assessed as dogmatic, ridiculously unproven and lacking solid ground. It was not this or that statement that seemed strange to me, but the very possibility for the author to speak so arbitrarily. “The truth is inaccessible” and “it is impossible to live without the truth” - these two equally strong convictions tore my soul apart and plunged me into mental agony. Mortal melancholy and complete despair possessed me. True, outwardly I led a life full of work. Intensive classes at the gymnasium went on as usual; at the request of some teachers, I rehearsed some of my comrades and gave other lessons, drilling my students and overloading myself with extreme zeal, since all these lessons were free. On holidays, he read with younger students, also on behalf of inspector I.E. Gamkrelidze. With all these activities, the time was literally occupied until late in the evening. But behind all that I read a lot, studied mathematics, geology, wrote and even continued, although to a lesser extent than before, my physical experiments. Then time had a completely different capacity than it does now: one, and another, and a third could fit into the day, and yet there was scope to think through and feel a deeper inner life. And here I felt and was aware of the metaphysical emptiness in myself and the death that came from here. Kant and Schopenhauer, from the side of their negation, approached my then state of health, but seemed cheap and superficial in their positive constructions. Tolstoy’s suffering was much closer; I didn’t think at all about his moral and social views at that time. In connection with Carpenter’s and Tolstoy’s criticism of the scientific worldview, I came across it when I was writing an essay about it for a scientific circle we organized jointly with G. N. Gekhtman; I came across Tolstoy’s handwritten “Confession” and even rewrote it, and through Tolstoy, with “Ecclesiastes.” Both of these resonated with me, along with some Buddhist scriptures. These books deepened and expanded my inner failure and made it possible to accelerate the formalization of what was happening to me. Before them, I felt alone in my attitude to the scientific worldview; The doubt itself was sometimes inspired by those around him, doubts that were superficial, to be sure, but nevertheless demanded attention. With Tolstoy, Solomon and Buddha, I felt the security of my hopelessness, and this gave satisfaction and a kind of peace. // With them, the languor of emptiness was clearly no longer psychologism, but an essential consequence of some, unknown to me, laws of existence itself. The consciousness of this plunged me into hopelessness, but hopelessness itself was characterized by a gloomy calm, since there was nowhere to fall further. This state is accurately depicted by Tolstoy in “Confession”, and therefore there is no need to dwell on it. But, however, what I experienced was different in emotional tone from what Tolstoy described. In the latter, feeling prevailed, and Tolstoy felt himself dying because the sources of life had dried up in him: and life in his consciousness was something very close to organic well-being, to the feeling of the harmonious integrity of the body, taken very deeply, but nevertheless along a certain line. Perhaps this was due to Tolstoy, in addition to his personal make-up, with his age and lifestyle. My dying followed a rather intellectual line. I was suffocating from the lack of truth. In all human knowledge there was not a single reliable point, but the truth and meaning of life were clear and identical to me. Gradually, however, partly with the help of Tolstoy, it became clear to me that truth, if it exists, cannot be external to me and that it is the source of life. Life itself is truth in its depth, and this depth is no longer me and is not in me, although I can touch it. At first, vaguely, as if through a thick wall, then more and more clearly I began to feel some kind of breath from this depth. But these life-giving trends, undoubted and genuine more than anything else, were, however, in my consciousness completely undifferentiated, completely devoid of any verbal logical form. I felt their vitality and recognized them as the only truly real thing; but I could say nothing about this real except that it is; I did not have the word to name it and relate it to what I was calling. And what I named and knew how to name finally shrank from these life-giving influences and began to remain in my consciousness, like a dried flower corolla on gooseberries. It was a languid hang between knowledge that exists, but is not needed, and necessary knowledge, which does not exist: after all, untold touches on the source of truth could not be assessed as knowledge, and, due to their isolation, there was nothing to do with them. True, they offered vague hope for the possibility of knowledge; but it was precisely a hope that I could not confirm to myself. But my state of health was already improving: it was not yet clear that it was possible to construct my thought, much less how to construct it, but inner confidence was already repeating about this possibility, and the yearning for thought was active and militant. The need to construct a thought was clear to me, and Tolstoy’s amorphousness seemed like blurring with his own sleeve a newly sketched drawing. However, even approximately I could not imagine in what direction the work should be carried out and where to start it; nevertheless, what I knew seemed to have nothing to do with this work. Meanwhile, the decision came from where I had not expected it. Its source was the skepticism regarding human teachings and beliefs with which my father was imbued and which was absorbed by me from childhood. “Truth is life,” I told myself many times a day. – You cannot live without truth. Without truth there is no human existence." It was blindingly clear; but the thought stopped at these and similar statements, each time running into some insurmountable obstacle. One day, suddenly, on my own, the question arose in me: “What about them?” And with this question the wall was broken. “What about them, like everyone who now exists in the world, who lived before me? They, peasants, savages, my ancestors, all of humanity in general - were they really without truth? Do I dare to say that all people did not and do not have the truth and, therefore, are not alive and not even people? I. Before Batum: everyday mysticism. III. Tiflis until graduation] gymnasium: science. IV. Graduation from high school: crisis. V. University: the discovery of man as the beginning of the cognitive. VI. The end of the University: crisis: the discovery of religion. VII. Professorship: crisis of pharisaism: discovery of the race. FOR MY MEMORIES 1918.111.27. Serg[iev] Pos[ad] 3) Batum: Sandro tunnels. Planted snow - tunnels. Aunt Sonya's arrival from abroad. Music by Aunt Sonya. Pier. Boulevard. The sea (“the inviting smell and rhythm of the surf”). Storm. City garden. The last semi-girlish suit is mine. Mom's bouquet. Fishing rods. Frog. Sea storm. Needlefish. Chilim. Sticks. Pebbles. Question about sea foam. Jellyfish. Mol. Florins. Wormholes. Nanny Sofia Romanova. "Buka". 4) Lessons: Orlovsky House. Kolya. French teacher. Nerses. Delicacy. House fire. My drawing. Dad, classes with him. Blood. 5) 1 Religious views and religious character of my parents. 5) 2 Christenings of children. Escape to Passek. Introduction to theology. 7)2 Superstitions. Examples. 4-leaf clover. 8) Abundance. Kryshtafovichi. Aunt Sonya's trip. Myths about the power of vegetation. Dad's later delirium during his illness (game): Attics, nooks and crannies... Car, . Bolt in the head; fever; scary dreams (dream about a drowning mother). 11) Reading; especially summer in Hapagiai. Shakespeare. "A Midsummer Night's Dream." "Storm". "Faust" by Goethe; Walter Scott. Then - Jules Verne. 12) My childhood love for animals and plants; cult of flowers (and color); pantheism. Trips to Adzharistskhali and along the Batumo-Akhalkatsi road to Khulo. Life of nature. Wind. Branches. Hummingbird (see 15, 18). 13) Novomeyskys: Severin Feliksovich and Maria Sergeevna, “Felya” and Eva (Felix). Arrival of Tsar Alexander III. 14) Venetian shop; shrimp in the living room] “France”, gifts. My doll and Lucy's bed. The passion of my aspirations is all about desire and expectation. 15) Viskovaty’s book about plants (see 13). (See 13, 15). 16) Passion for sailors; "Sailor Charlot"; travel games (cement box). Liveliness of imagination is more than a game. 17) Fireworks, the desire for them - stars, sparkles. 18) Perfumes and odors (see 13, 15). 19) I am a “girl”; My first semi-boy’s suit was “hunting” as a transition to a boy’s suit. 20) Trips to Tiflis. With dad in the hotel in the light. Eiffel Tower and "strawberry". - Another trip. I got chicken pox. Hike to David's Mountain. My confusion is whether it is possible to catch a cold from cold to warm. Eagle feather. 21) Name days and birthdays. 22) My attitude towards violation of the word by elders (“” - Aunt Yulia). 23) Interest in magic tricks as mysterious phenomena. Rob[ert] Lenz. 24) Attraction to theater as a form of magic. Reading posters. 25) Attitude towards parents in early childhood. 5) How I rolled into the river and what came of it. What I liked and what I didn’t like: rudeness without , sharpness, too much impressionability], her sharpness. Soft iridescent halftones, sliding. The fear of men is their rudeness. Tiflis. Lightning strikes me. In the chapter about daddy’s, insert about mosquitoes: “Daddy can see mosquitoes.” Gr traits, . Stakhovsky. Find “Stakhovsky” in the Dictionary. Trip to Aunt Lisa 1st and 2nd. : aunt's stories about childhood. Dad's stories about childhood. Fairy tales. Tricks. Quote from Hoffman. Damn[s]. Notebook No. 97. Leman. Quote about . Echo. Fact. Focus is almost a miracle. Shadow. Exit. Science. Theater. Streams. Vibration of branches. First scientific experiments. Spiritualism]. Room. Vitriol (“poison – Yankel”). Fireworks. 1) Mages. 2) Theater. Changing clothes. Transfiguration. 3) Electric light, like a “peacock tail”. Kings, fairies, flowers... Aunt Julia. Maria Serg[eevna] Novomeyskaya. Hummingbird. fairies Aunt Sonya. Vibrations of branches. Flowers, streams. Dead men. Fears. Asbverisen. Cat Purr. messenger and terrible revenge. Religion. Theology. Gospel. Dogma[at] of the Trinity. Blasphemy. Glossology: Pompeii, Herculaneum. Love of words. Poetry. Poetry. Book one "Sailor Charlot". "Seeing off a friend." Walter Scott "Louis XIV". The press and prints are different. Birth of brothers. I didn't think anything. Classes. First lessons. Absent-mindedness. Unsuitability for . Drive. Adzharistskhali. "My point." Wind. Branches. 1) Fireworks - asterisk. Chilim. Sticks. Sailors. Sailor Shar-lo. Wormholes. Beech. Venetian shop. Shrimps. Viskovaty's book. Botanical Garden. I'm a girl. 1) Interest in attics, cellars, underground spaces, nooks and crannies. 3) First experiment with . My interest in wormholes, holes - interest in caves. Isn't this an interest in the womb, in the mother? Butterflies. Initial memories are lost in [vague] but definite sensations of blood, closeness with Parents, parental warmth, where I do not separate myself - from them and I am in them. 1) My interest in lace is not . 2) Aunt’s – black and so on. 3) My desire to fly and confidence that I’m about to fly. Flying with an umbrella, waving my arms – I’m almost flying. 2) Large date palm - from Passekov. 4) Manganese Black Mountain, 36 pp. (?), see 35 vol. 5) P. 40 – correct about minerals – expand and complement feelings. 6) 40 rev. science (loss of direction). 8) Find out more about the Adjarians and add more information. 9) Tarantulas in Adzharistskhali. 10) Christmas rose – green. 11) Crabs in Adzharistskhali, trout. 12) “Natalka-Poltavka”. Tiflis. Theater. Swordsman (royal spur). Euonymus. 2) In Batum (on walks). Eucalyptus (“And we have eucalyptus” - up to the beginning of the chapter). 3) Abundance. Chakwa. Chrysostomy. 1) Snowdrops Palanthus novalis. Tricolor leaf. 2) Meuscari (Peri Hyatinthe). 5) Oleander Nerium oleander. 7) Rhododendrons and azaleas. Nies – Helliborius viridos. SPECIAL Childhood. Mysterious red light when closing your eyes and red color of your fingers when exposed to the light. Toys. Dolls. Tailors. Sewing. 1) Aunt Yulia’s illness; her death. Mineralogical] box. Leinz microscope. Lessons from Khudadov, Latin from Mikhailov [sky]. 3) Lucy’s illness and prayer to Nicholas the Wonderworker]. Admission to the gymnasium. Kipiani Vakhtang. Vl. Fran. A[lexan] dr Elchaninov. M. Asatiani. A[lexan]dr Kizebov [?]. Vl. Ern. Jacob and Moses Rosenstein. In her earliest childhood, my mother’s family lived in Sighnag, 100 versts from Tiflis. We moved to Tiflis when my mother was less than 5 years old. Mom doesn’t remember how it was, and she remembers the Sighnahi house very vaguely. Mom went to St. Petersburg in 1878 or 1879. She traveled from Vladikavkaz along the railway. I listened to lectures at private courses of a natural nature. I studied a little anatomy at the Medical Academy. All this was accidental, without a system, all these activities. I listened a little to Sechenov and others. She also studied drawing from Stieglitz. Married on August 20, 1880. Dad graduated from college the same year, in 1880. 3 From here dad went to Yevlakh. Then my mother, not soon, went straight to Yevlakh. Aunt Lisa came there to stay. Her estate “Karachinar” is not far from Yevlakh. Sergei's uncle's father's name was Teimuraz Fridonovich. He was still alive then. At the end of his life, he was more cultured than Sergei’s uncle, and was interested in politics. He was a military man, a retired colonel, and behaved with dignity. We lived in Yevlakh for 11/2 years. One winter, summer and another winter. I left there when I was only a few months old. Aunt Remso also came with Aunt Liza; she was about 17 years old. In Yevlakh we lived in a wooden barracks built especially for us, lined with felt inside. The barracks had three rooms and a separate building – a kitchen. Aunt Yulia arrived in the same year of 1980, at the end or at the beginning, in January of 1981. See pp. 313–316 in the book: Travel through Dagestan and Transcaucasia by I. Berezin. Kazan, 1849. Page 126 – 0 named Kura. Page 130 – about the name Mugan. Senkovsky. Collection of works. Vol. IV, pp. 509–510. Thessaly, the Pinsk swamps of the Drevlyans, the Mugan steppe beyond the Caucasus are famous for their many snakes, ants and sorcerers. To my autobiography: the significant etymology of the word Yevlakh (EG...) In my early, early childhood I wrote poetry with Sonya Androsova. I remember I had a notebook for poetry. Some of my poems were later included in issue […] of our magazine, which the Saparovs and I created. Here are some of the poems that remain in my memory. 1) There is one cave above the sea, The queen of fairies lives in her, Once she was sitting on the shore, I don’t remember further. There was something romantic: 2) My friend asked me once, I don’t remember further. Or another way we teased Lyusya and Vanya Androsov: 3) Lucy, Vanya, cat, cat got married on the same day I don’t remember further. My favorite: greenish leaves; lights at dusk - especially. 1918.IV.6 Serg[iev] Pos[ad]. Night Everything exotic has attracted me since I can remember. Small, elegant, fragrant, colorful, proportional - I didn’t just like it, but almost painfully excited me, causing a passionate, all-consuming attraction, passing through my entire being: my heart beat - quickly, quickly at the mere thought of something like that, I couldn’t remember myself. I have never been able to be passionate, interested; no, with all my soul I was absorbed in what occupied me, almost to the point of ecstasy, to the point of self-forgetfulness. Or complete indifference, oblivion, complete coldness - or an all-consuming passion, passionately, completely, fieryly engulfing me. I knew almost no emotions, because eros suddenly flared up in my soul. I, Pavel-Savel, i.e. Eros, have always been an eroticist. The subject of eros was birds, small ones in particular, and especially like birds, mainly hummingbirds. Both the word and the sight of the hummingbird made me tremble with delight. Seeing a hummingbird on a lady’s hat seemed to me the height of happiness; worried and cold, I looked at the bird-fly. I tried to find out what they could tell me about hummingbirds. I knew the names of their varieties, and among them the “elf” with a tuft seemed to me the most beautiful creature in the world, a mysterious, non-eating creature close to elf-spirits. In my heart I almost prayed to him - at least I idolized him. And the ultimate dream of my desires was to see a hummingbird in my house, on Aunt Yulia’s or my mother’s hat, close to me, sometimes stroked and kissed. I dreamed for a long time. Suddenly one day Aunt Julia announced to me that she was making herself a new hat and, to please me, would attach a hummingbird to it. My joy knew no end, and even more so my impatience. One day after lunch, Aunt Yulia called me to the store - if I’m not mistaken, Bogdasarova, it was in Batum, somewhere near the Triandopulo pharmacy store - to choose a hummingbird for a hat. Went. It was already twilight. They chose the hummingbird, I chose the smallest and most elegantly brilliant bird (it was expensive, but seeing my pleading eyes, my aunt decided to take it) and I did not dare to breathe for joy, I did not dare to breathe for fear of spoiling it. The bird was wrapped in white tissue paper, and my aunt wanted to take it for herself so that I wouldn’t crumple it somehow. But I did not dare to entrust the jewel even to Aunt Yulia and promised that I would not doubt it. Then in the store they showed me how to take the bag - by the top edge, but not all of it in your hand. Went. I squeezed the top edge very, very tightly. It was getting dark outside. We walk halfway to the house, my aunt asks if I crushed the hummingbird. I show her the bag. And we see horror: the lower edge turned around, and the bird jumped out along the road. Frozen with despair and embarrassment. We went back, looking at our feet, looking around the entire sidewalk, but the bird was not there. The hummingbirds were never found. With the cold of the irreparable accomplished, we returned home. Aunt was no less upset than I was, it seems, but, seeing my deep grief, she not only did not reproach me, but, on the contrary, consoled me. However, there was no money for a new purchase, and the hat was left without a hummingbird. What I liked about hummingbirds (insert). Orlovskaya's hat. Hummingbird album. Schubert: 1) “The King of the Forest.” 2) Serenade “And my song flies with Glinka: “I remember a wonderful moment.” Someone else: “Oh Holy Mother, My impression is synthetic: Father - kindness, attention, protection. The mother is greatness, inaccessible, sits in her room with the little ones, like a queen in a hive. You can’t go to her for one reason or another - she feeds, clothes, etc. I almost don’t see her, but I hear her clear voice: she sings, and the house is filled with the fresh sounds of her singing. She is reserved, deliberately cold, and doesn’t even like it when we often go in for a kiss. But her love and pity pour out into our illness, then she does not restrain herself and caresses both dad and aunt much more warmly. Auntie is affectionate, attentive, always available, her own, childish, psychological, always her brother. MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH “THOLOGY” In church terms, I grew up completely wild. I was never taken to church, I didn’t talk to anyone about religious topics, I didn’t even know how to be baptized. Secretly I was very interested in all this. I felt that there was a whole area of ​​life that was interesting, mysterious, and protected from fear. But I didn’t know her and didn’t dare ask about her. I didn’t dare ask about her, in much the same way that a girl doesn’t dare ask her parents about marital relations. But I sneaked a peek at what I could, and secretly tried to apply my observations, again, as best I could. I saw that people were somehow baptized; but I didn’t have time to notice, or more precisely, I didn’t dare to “shamelessly” peer into whether they were crossing themselves with one finger, two, three or five and clenched at one point. I hesitated between two and five, secretly crossed myself at night, now this way, now that way - I was baptized, pulling the blanket over my head in an almost dark bedroom. When in Borjomi I walked through the streets - to the Androsovs, I was baptized, afraid of dogs, and, taking off my hat, I cried out to the Lord, Whom I did not know, and my childish heart was full of fear, melancholy and hope for miraculous help. And in my soul I already knew very well that the Lord hears me and will not leave me. One day Aunt Yulia offered to let me read her Gospel. She took the Holy Book from the chest of drawers. But the sight of the small black book frightened me, and I, with a barely restrained desire to take the book from her hands, refused. It seemed to me that taking it was both embarrassing—excruciatingly embarrassing—and scary. Aunt left, leaving the chest of drawers open. I immediately ran to the chest of drawers, took out the Gospel and read several verses of the Gospel from Matthew. The genealogy seemed so strange to me that when my aunt arrived, with forced laughter and fear, I began to tell her about what I had read. But my tone seemed to her inappropriate to the subject, and she took the Gospel from me with the remark that to read it was to read it properly, but apparently it was too early for me. But time passed, I didn’t know a single prayer, I didn’t see the Holy Gospel and I never took communion - moreover, I didn’t know that they took communion. Meanwhile, I turned 7 years old. Entrance to the gymnasium was approaching. My distance from the Church could also cause trouble. Or maybe my parents were ashamed to keep me at such a distance, especially since the fervor of my youthful denial of the Church had already passed. Be that as it may, it was decided to somehow prepare me for confession, or, more precisely, for a possible exam at confession and communion. Aunt Julia took up this matter; it seems that she insisted on the need to do all this. And so, I remember, one morning she called me to her, when we were alone in the room, and told me, trying to first approach from afar, that she had decided to study the law of God with me, and then about communion. This news stunned me. I don’t know whether I was more happy or scared; probably the latter. But I was extremely interested. For about a week or two, we learned the first prayers and commandments with her, then we began to go to church - (this was in Batum) - during Lent. Finally, we took communion with her. I remember there was a crush, a lot of people... I ate prosphora for the first time. Before that time, however, my dad and I walked past the church and met the local priest. Dad stopped to talk to him, and the priest gave me 2 service prosphoras from his pocket. I was afraid to take them. Then dad took it and brought it home, but I didn’t dare them and they didn’t. 1921. VIII. 7. Serg[iev] Pos[ad] Some childhood sins, perhaps, movements of evil will, my rudeness, were particularly etched in my consciousness, as well as the first awkwardness. Later sins, much more significant in appearance, were not so preserved in my memory, or even completely disappeared from memory, but these ones are not only remembered, but still burn my conscience, and with anguish I cry out to the Lord, seeking their cleansing. Several cases: “Jew” - in the Aivazovs’ apartment. “Gingerbread” - from the Androsovs (he condemned the children who gave these gingerbreads in the presence and laughed at them - criminal indelicacy). I pushed Vasenka, my cousin, a poor orphan, down the stairs, already driven down when his mother lay half dead with tuberculosis - we played games, then I got excited and became impudent. And then, seeing the gloomy condemnation of the pope, he took the opportunity - the elder began to cry and be capricious... I offended Lucy - I somehow repent of this a little. William Frey (Vladimir Konstantinovich Gaines, 1834; 1868; f November 5, 1888 in London). N.V. Reinhardt. An extraordinary personality. Kazan, 1889. M. Gershenzon. Russian Propylaea. M., 1915. Publishing house. M. and S. Sabashnikov. T. 1 (ts. 3 r. 50 k.), XI, pp. 276–362: “William Frey.” Bibliography on page 278. A. I. Faresov. Seventies. St. Petersburg, 1905, pp. 304–323. Everything special, unusual, mysterious, unknown to me, riveted my thoughts and, or rather, my imagination. Kings and queens, and especially princesses, “princesses” and “princes” seemed to me the only people worthy of attention. And even more mysterious seemed to me the mysterious creatures about whom it was not customary to talk in our house, considered as if indecent “nonsense” - these are brides. Death and mourning, again not allowed for discussion, attracted attention. The combination of all these mysteries in one person seemed the height of sophistication, interestingness and captivation. This was my favorite subject of art - the princess bride reading a letter about the death of her groom. I constantly drew her, with a crown and veil, with a mourning letter in her hands. Tears no smaller than a pigeon's egg or a hair nut rolled down her cheeks... FIRST VISIT TO THE CAUCASIAN MUSEUM 1916.XII.6 – 7. Night. Serg[iev] Pos[ad] My first visit to the Caucasian Museum is strongly etched in my memory, although I cannot remember exactly how old I was then. It seems that children under 7 years old are not allowed there, as the advertisement says. And at that time I was just that age that it seemed like I was more than a year away from turning 7. I clearly remember how the guard at the entrance resisted letting me in, and only his persuasion and, probably, a “tip” made him more accommodating. I also remember well that Aunt Yulia and someone else were with me, but I can’t remember who; probably aunt Lisa. I also remember that we went to the Museum on one of our trips to Tiflis from Batum. MATERIALS FOR MY MEMORIES 1) At first I studied with Yulia’s aunt and mother. Difficulties in working with mom. 2) Then - in Hapagiai - with Margarita, mainly in French according to Margot’s textbook. 3) Then the inspector of the Batumi National (4-grade) School Vorobyov. In addition to the usual subjects, he studied botany with me. I wrote descriptions of my trips in front of him. 4) Then, when I studied with Kolya Orlov, in the Orlovskys’ apartment in the engineering building, we were taught by Burliuk, an excise official. Mademoiselle is the Orlovskys' governess. Burliuk's son painted. Then Burliuk was transferred to Baku - painting flourished here. Burliuk was married for the second time, and had two litters of children. The family was somehow abandoned, degenerate. The father drank, and it seems that the sons drank too. One of them was my friend - long, awkward, with a red face and freckles. He lived in his own world and studied poorly. He was undeveloped like a high school student. I think that the sensational Burliuks - futurists - are that same family, and David D. Burliuk is my comrade. 4’) Two Mikhailovsky brothers. Under their guidance, I studied with Volodya Khudadov, and sometimes Vakhtang Kipiani joined us. 5) In Tiflis I studied with Barsukov (Andrei Nikolaevich]? Relative of the Semennikovs, cousins). Semennikova (Varvara Nikolaevna), a relative of Professor Miller in Moscow. He was a realist, then he studied at the Technological University. At my dad’s request, he took long walks with me and studied geology and mineralogy. From him I first heard about the truths of faith - convinced and firm answers. He especially struck me with the story about the blessed fire of Jerusalem. I owe a lot to Barsukov. I remember, as now, his calmness, his restraint and simplicity, his sparse beard and some clumsiness in his manners. Barsukov was a relative of the Semennikovs. 6) But Barsukov is a realist, he did not know Latin. Therefore, the high school student Mikhailovsky taught me Latin, first one brother, and then another, Barsukov’s relatives. I went to study Latin with Volodya Khudadov. Death of an aunt, Aunt Julia f 1894 May 20. 7) Lunkevich Vladimir Valerianovich, a fairly well-known popularizer of natural science, half-German, half-Armenian. He introduced me to chemistry. He owns, among other things, “The Science of Life. Public human physiology". Ed. F. Pavlenkova (220 pp. with 91 drawings), c. 1 rub. 1894, about which there were many approving reviews, for example in the “Scientific Review”, 1894, No. 6, column. 187–188. – During lessons with me, Lunkevich was suggested by Pavlenkov to start compiling popular biology. Then he abandoned his lessons and went to St. Petersburg, if I’m not mistaken. But Popular Biology was less successful than Physiology, and important errors were found in it. “Then Lunkevich went abroad, to Paris, and somewhere else he studied biology and worked with emigrants. Upon arrival in Tiflis, I once visited him with V. Khudadov and saw the entire Renan in French on the shelf]; Lunkevich gave me “Vie de Jesus”, and I looked through this book in parts, but was not at all satisfied with it. This was during the period of my fascination with Tolstoy’s works. 8) Bala(u?)gyan Samuil Agayevich, teacher at the Agricultural School, Armenian. Very kind, gentle. He taught me, in addition to the compulsory subjects, chemistry. I have the best memories of him. I visited him at home and after, he was kind of lethargic, sick, or something. 9) Mikhail Nikolaevich Gorodensky - he rehearsed me when I entered the gymnasium and immediately received 2 re-exams. Summer in Kojori. Trip to Armenia. Excursions. Physics. Valya ran after Mikhail Nikol[aevich] Gorodensky and demanded: “Teacher, fasten your trousers.” 4) Samuil Agayevich Balagyan. I spent the summer of 189[2] on the estate of Aunt Liza, or, more precisely, her husband Sergei Teimurazovich Melik-Beglyarov, whom we called Sergei Uncle or even Sergeyadya - in one word. This estate is located in the Dzhevanshir district of the Elizabeth[ol] province and is a vast plain along the right bank of the Inchy River, bordered by the converging ridges of low mountains. Almost in the very corner of this estate, on a hill, the owner of the estate, Sergei’s uncle, built a house, surrounded by a stone, almost castle wall with turrets at the corners and tightly locked gates. However, all this was necessary, as well as the evil dogs, to protect themselves and safety from the Tatars. The future (I mean 1905) showed that all these paramilitary structures turned out to be very useful. The house itself and the walls were built according to my father's plans. But when we lived there it was not available. Garden. Water. Ditch. Garden. Yard Dogs. My walks. Garden - apples. Cholera. Treat. Sappers. My classes. Margarita. Rusker of Sergei's uncle. The Florensky family left Batumi for Tbilisi in 1893–5. regarding the appointment of the chief engineer of the Caucasus as the head of the Caucasian Railways District. 1) Dad’s friend Stanislav Stakhovsky, an artist, and his brother a chemist in the Sericulture camp in Mushtab [?]. 2) My comrade Rosenfeld (Kamenev), later a famous Bolshevik. My comrade Seryozha (Sergei Nikolaevich) Fren. His brother Volodya, older than him (Vladimir Nikolaevich]). Fran is a technical engineer who served at the Kazansky railway station in Moscow. He was the grandson of Academician Frein. LETTER AND A. FLORENSKY TO L. TOLSTOY No. 21.18/X 99. Tifl[is]. L. N. Tolstoy Lev Nikolaevich! I read your writings and came to the conclusion that it is impossible to live the way I live now. I am finishing high school, and I have to continue living at someone else’s expense; I think that this can only be avoided by following your advice; but, in order to apply them in practice, I need to first resolve some questions: is it possible to use money? How to get land? Can it be obtained from the government and how? How to satisfy mental needs? Where can you get books and magazines if you can’t use money or if you can only feed yourself by physical labor? Is there any time left for mental work (self-education)? P. A. Florensky. My address 1916.X.4. Serg[iev] Pos[ad] I look into myself and my life. And I see that I have not had a moment when I sincerely and from the heart said, felt or thought: “partly,” “partly this way, partly that way.” But it was always completely “this way”, or “entirely this way”, or “entirely this way and completely that way, all at once.” I did not and do not understand the word “partly”... My palette of inner life has never had mixed colors, and especially gray ones. Every mental movement was always definite. But at the same time, in the very depths of the soul there was always a limitation, a replenishment. And in the most passionate certainty, in the most one-sided pressure, I never had passion, because in the depths of my soul an objective assessment was made. But this objectivity gave spiritual* 1916.X.4. Sergi[iev] Pos[ad] I look at my life - and I see that I always went to the end and to* 1920. VII. 16 While there were many exceptions before my eyes, I was breathing quite freely, my mind was worried and seething. But as the area of ​​laws expanded in the consciousness, it became stuffy, it became impossible to breathe. Breathing spiraled. Things were boring and dreary in the endless icy spaces, covered by the same laws. I was oppressed by the uniformity of the laws of nature, the same thing everywhere. A spleen developed, and therefore: for my whole life consisted of science. But this was by no means a strictly scientific conviction, but rather an emotional state of depression, crushed by social suggestion, public belief in the monotony of nature. Every step into the field of scientific worldview revealed extraordinary phenomena, and more and more of them were made. I understood this very well. But at the same time, pressure, suggestion, and hypnosis from books and others increased, which is all understandable. And I, actually thinking backwards, accepted the suggestion, yes, the suggestion. Gradually taking root, it began to oppress and torment my soul. But it clung tenaciously. There was a struggle for my beloved incomprehensibility, a crisis. Carpenter's article... fell on already well-prepared ground. This also included the influence of Kantian and Millian phenomenalism. I did not learn them from the positive side, but I used them as a means of polemics to throw off the hated yoke. TO MY CHILDREN. MEMORIES OF PAST DAYS. “Memories of Past Days” were written by P. A. Florensky between 1916 and 1926. The work is of undoubted interest, as it makes it possible to follow the formation of the personality of the future scientist-philosopher. However, it was not published during Florensky’s lifetime. The text is published by: Pavel Florensky. To my children. Memories of past days. Genealogical research. From Solovetsky letters. Will. M.: Moscow worker, 1992. 1. Nature is creative, creating (lat.) in contrast to natura naturata - nature is created, created. 2. How can the stream flowing through the hands pass by Danae? (lat.) 3. To swear by the words of the teacher (lat.). 4. Shyness (French). 5. “We must give him a glass of sweet water” (French). 6. “Poor fellow, he is very nervous” (French). 7. Delicate flowers (French). 8. “Whoever utters the word “impossible” outside of mathematics does not consider prudence.” 9 . Fullness of life (lat.). 10. Cold politeness (lat.). 11. Veneration of ancestors (lat.). 12. Pious, righteous (lat.). 13. Honoring children (lat.). 14. “Unbelief of the future” or “Irreligiosity of the future.” 15. “Leave him” (French). 16. “Leave her” (French). 17. Proto-phenomenon (German), first appearance. 18. From the outside, from the outside (lat.). 19. Miracle-working (Greek). 20. Axioms, or Newton's laws of motion (lat.). 23. Louis XVI (French, 1754–1793). If these sketches, after revision, were printed, then they should be entitled: “To my children.” (Hereinafter in the footnotes, notes by P. A. Florensky, except as specified by the compilers.) In the Great Encyclopedia, compiled according to Meyer, in volume 14, after page 228. table. 1. It seems that there is the same drawing of an orangutan from which dad drew, but he only added the body here, as far as I remember.