Rozanov, who Gorky couldn’t rate

Rozanov was a gifted, contradictory, and fascinating personality of the Silver Age. As a writer, he has never created a literary work in the traditional sense; as a thinker, he often breaks his own unique philosophical system; as a literary critic, his in-depth analysis often runs counter to the aesthetic taste of most readers ; as a theologian, he often slipped into marginal paganism, and his relationship with the official church was always delicate; as a theorist, he preferred to replace general logical reasoning with antinomian paradoxes. Many famous figures have mixed opinions on Rozanov, and both have reached the extreme. The famous Russian literary theorist Bakhtin advocated “read Rozanov” many times. Gorky praised Rozanov as “the most interesting person in contemporary Russia”. Gippius said: “He is not so much a person as he is a ‘phenomenon’.” Shestov believes: “Rozanov is the most outstanding philosopher in Russia at that time.” On the contrary, Solovie Husband called him the Udushka of Russian thought. Trotsky abused Rozanov as a scum, a coward, a sycophant, and a sycophant. Merezhkovsky even bluntly stated that Rozanov has done more shameless and ugly acts than anyone else. Religious people at that time called them “heretics” and “whores” because they advocated “sex religion”. It is these contradictory evaluations that make people want to know more about Rozanov’s personality, creation and thought.
　　Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov (В.В.Розанов, 1856-1919), a thinker, religious philosopher, literary critic, and writer in the Russian Silver Age. Rozanov was born in a petty bourgeois family in Vitruga, Kostroma Province in the Volga River Basin, and spent his entire youth in Kostroma Province. Due to the early death of his parents, he was brought up by his elder brother, who was like his father. Rozanov studied at Simbirsk secondary school, where he spent a period of frantic intellectual curiosity, during which time he read more books than at any other time in his life. Rozanov has three hometowns: Kostroma is his physical hometown, Simbirsk is his spiritual hometown, and Yelets is his moral hometown. Rozanov said in “Hermitage”: “There has never been a smile or love in our house.” He also used “I came from a desert” to describe his childhood. Overall, Rozanov’s childhood was sad and lonely.
　　In 1878, after graduating from junior high school, Rozanov was admitted to Moscow University to study history and language. During the university, he listened to the lectures of famous scholars such as Se. M. Solovyov, F. O. Klyuchevsky, F. Ye. Cove Scholarship. During this period, he developed a strong interest in Hegel’s philosophy, and at the age of 35, his worldview changed suddenly, and he became a “god seeker” who turned to religion. After graduating from university in 1880, he worked as a history and geography teacher in junior high schools in other provinces (Bryansk, Yelets, Bely) for 11 years. In fact, he had no interest in the job, nor was he gifted in teaching, just to support his family.
　　After graduating from university, Rozanov married Apollinaria Suslova, who was already 40 years old at the time. This marriage was extremely unfortunate. Apollinaria was indifferent and arrogant, and made things difficult for the young and weak Rozanov. Apollinaria lived with Rozanov for about three years before falling in love with him, and at the same time despicably refused to divorce Rozanov. In 1888, after being separated from Apollinaria for many years, Rozanov met the priest’s widow, Varvara Dmitrievna Bugarina, in Yelets. They admired each other and held a secret wedding in 1891, but they had six children: the eldest daughter Nadya (due to meningitis, died shortly after birth), the second daughter Daniya, the third daughter Vera, and the fourth daughter. Daughter Varya, youngest son Vasya, and fifth daughter Nadya are all “illegitimate children”. Because Apollinaria got in the way and refused to divorce Rozanov, she is still Rozanov’s legal wife in law. In sharp contrast to this, Rozanov’s second informal marriage was very happy, and the happiness index was comparable to the unhappiness index of the first marriage. Rozanov often called Varvara “my friend”, Compare Varvara to pure water. Moisturized by “water”, Rozanov finally regards the family as “a temple of his own life”, but because he cannot formally marry Varvara as his wife, he is in extreme pain, which just prompts him to create a lot of thoughtful works. , family, and marital issues.
　　The first period of Rozanov’s creation was from 1886 to 1889. In 1886, Rozanov’s debut work “On Understanding: A Study of the Essence, Boundaries and Internal Structure of Science as a Complete Knowledge” was published, but it was not recognized by most people. It was the setback of this philosophical attempt that became the turning point of his success in his life, and his writing style took a huge turn, from rigorous philosophical discourse to irrational and non-systematic essay style. In 1889, Rozanov met the Bole of his own life – the famous Slavophile critic N. N. Strahov (1828-1896), who shared the same goals with Strahov. In 1891, Rozanov’s famous work “On the Legend of the Grand Inquisitor” came out, which occupies a very important position in the history of Dostoevsky research. The book studies Dostoyevsky’s creations from a religious perspective, discusses the contradictory features of Dostoyevsky’s creations and the eternal philosophical propositions about human beings, such as human existence, human personality, human freedom, and human immortality etc. Rozanov became the first person after Solovyov to study Tuoshi’s creation from the perspective of religion again. It is worth mentioning that the second chapter of this book is a wonderful chapter on Gogol. Rozanov first proposed Gogol’s “non-realism”. Russian literature is not an inheritance of Gogol, but a It is the criticism of Gogol and other arguments that have caused considerable controversy.
　　The second period of Rozanov’s creation was from 1890 to 1911. With the help of Strahov, Rozanov left school in 1893 to work in the Petersburg supervisory authority. In 1899, Rozanov was invited by the editor-in-chief A. S. Suvorin (1834-1912) to work as an editor in the weekly “New Era” until 1917 when the magazine ceased operation. Suvorin is a person who loves talents, and he loves prodigies like Rozanov even more. Suvorin allowed Rozanov to write what he thought, but he could not make too much space in one issue of the magazine. This combination of freedom and restriction had an important impact on the formation of Rozanov’s style. At that time, celebrities in Petersburg’s literary and art circles would gather at Rozanov’s new home every Sunday to discuss various fashionable topics, forming a very lively “Rozanov’s Sunday”. In 1900, Rozanov, Merezhkovsky, and Gipius jointly founded the Philosophy of Religion Assembly (in 1907, the Philosophy of Religion Assembly was renamed the Association for the Philosophy of Religion, with Berdyaev as chairman), becoming the The center where religious and philosophical people freely discussed church and cultural issues opened the iron curtain between theological and intellectual circles. During this period, Rozanov published “The Darkness of Education” (1893) and “Proverbs and Observations” (1894), strongly criticizing the school system and advocating that schools should follow the three principles of education, namely, the principle of individuality and the principle of integrity , the principle of unity, which is still relevant today; in addition, “Literary Essays” (1899) brings together his early literary criticism articles; The popular unrest in the era of the Revolution in 1907; Religion and Culture (1899) and Nature and History (1900) attempted to solve social and philosophical problems through the religiousness of the church; Near the Church Wall embodies Rozano husband’s ambivalence towards Orthodoxy; “Family Questions in Russia” (volumes 1-2, 1903) and “In a World of Ambiguity and Suspense” (1901-1903) are explorations of church and family, marriage and sex, and ancient Works on religion and other issues; “Dark Face: Metaphysics of Christianity” (1911) and “People in the Moonlight: Metaphysics of Christianity” (1911) criticized church asceticism and affirmed the sanctity of sex, showing that Rozanov Eventually parted ways with Christianity over sexuality.

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