The boundary between literature and waste paper is where a writer, instead of talking about what is most important to him, starts talking about things that may be interesting to the reader, but which are indifferent to the writer himself. In the first case he risks losing the reader’s attention, in the second case he risks losing his self-respect. I will talk later about how to call a writer of the first kind, but the name of a writer of the second kind is known: ‘professional’. In Russia, some people were very pleased with the appearance of this unprecedented ‘professional’, that is, treating of immaterial, but heavenly profitable matters of literature. In the word ‘professional’ they see something strong, Western, opposite to Russian vagueness and unreadiness. ‘Professional’ for the Russian Westerner is something like ‘good (i. e., fit, worthy) officer’ for Peter the Great: a technical ideal without which we cannot resemble Western Europe. Even Sergei Bulgakov at the time of Landmarks spoke with reverence about Protestantism, which had developed the notion of a ‘professional vocation’ (calling, Beruf), which gave Vasily Rozanov the opportunity to joke wickedly: ‘What is Landmarks? It’s a Protestant sect. Down with the icons, bring brooms and hammers!’ With our usual respect for everything Western, we (always taking something limitedly useful for the last word of progress) see in ‘professional’ labour a good, ‘conscientious’ labour.

This is when it turns out that in any translation of Western concepts into Russian (as well as vice versa) something escapes the translator, and something, on the contrary, is added. To our surprise, there is nothing of ‘conscience’ in the word ‘professional’, Fachmann, as the Germans say. These notions are in no way connected. There is nothing ethical about a ‘man of duty and skill’. Ethics is where ‘duty and skill’, law and money are not omnipotent and do not determine human relations. One could say even stronger: ethics is outside the law. Accepting this assumption, one may not be surprised, for example, that a ‘professional’ may be morally dishonest. That he may love money rather than work. That he works not ‘out of love for work’, as it is customary to say in Russia, but because of the habit of labour, love of life’s comforts and fear (or reverence) of the law.

Dostoevsky once remarked that one cannot be a good cobbler without a bit of poetry in one’s soul — otherwise the boots will come out badly. Dostoevsky, of course, was not referring to a ‘professional’. The cobbler of this new type rejoices first of all not in good boots, but in good profit, whereas it is necessary to do the opposite. Gogol — in Nevsky Prospect, I think — portrayed a German craftsman who, having asked too much from a customer, tried to fulfil the order better, so as not to be ashamed of himself. I think this was a craftsman of the old Protestant school, in whom labour and ethics were not yet separated by an impenetrable barrier, as they were later. The general rule seems to be this: law comes in as a generally accepted expression of morality (including here duties not only to one’s neighbours but also to the state), and develops into a self-sufficient authority declaring that what is moral is what is lawful. The religious and moral ground of the law is weathered away gradually, leaving its edifice unsupported, or rather, without any other support than its own power.

Let us return, however, to the writers. The ‘professional writers’ glorified by the new Russian criticism are, simply put, people who write not about what they love, and love not what they write about. In essence, this is very similar to sold love, the servants of which for some reason are spoken of with less respect, although they are in the highest degree people of ‘duty and skill’, in a way — exemplary professional people. I think it would be worth remembering this comparison more often, in order to treat with less reverence for the universally glorified writers, whose whole virtue consists in their ability to adapt themselves to the desires of the consumer. Literature is beyond them, and they are beyond literature.

The ‘professional’, however, did not only come into literature or was born in literature. It is really a new spiritual type in which labour and ethics, the working person and the individual are definitively separated. What does this mean? It means, in the first place, that with the advent of the age of the ‘professional’ the soul is set aside as a secondary and perhaps even unnecessary thing. ‘Down with the icons, bring brooms and hammers!’ Certainly the soul, with its moral and aesthetic demands, is a thing entirely superfluous to ‘increasing productivity’, and more than that: animality, the ability to be stirred by truth and beauty, somehow hinders productivity. If a knight or a monk (I take medieval ideals on purpose, as the most vividly different from the present ones) could perform their work without compromising their personality and inner life, moreover — for the monk, and to a lesser extent for the knight, their outer work was inseparably connected with their inner life, then the labour morality of the modern era is the morality of the performer loyal to the management, for whom the inner life is only a drawback, if not a direct vice, hindering ‘professional growth’.

Inner life in the modern world is allowed only as a ‘pastime‘, a so-called ‘hobby‘, which is given a very private and very limited place. Remember Dickens’s Mr. Wemmick, who had two faces — one for the City and one for his private life… The Fachmann (I use a short and sonorous German word on purpose, meaning both ‘professional’ and ‘specialist’) came and killed the soul. It seems very modern to us (lest we say ‘progressive’ — here’s one of modernity’s favourite words, but meaning nothing), but it’s actually very bad. When an employer says to an employee: ‘Only your death can apologise for being late for work’ — it means that both the life and death of the employee mean nothing. The wide personal freedom which is granted to these employees during the hours not occupied by labour does not cancel the slavery in which their weary souls are held.

One of the most important modern industries is the production of entertainments. Has man become more carefree in the last century? I do not think so; on the contrary, he has become much more gloomy and fearful. But there are more and more entertainments, and the masses are demanding new ones, precisely because ‘professional’, i. e. dehumanised, labour needs a counterbalance. Personal development has been sacrificed for the sake of ‘increased productivity’; with each successive generation, society (I am speaking, of course, of the West) is getting richer materially and more homogeneous and simpler culturally… Should we be glad that the ‘professional’, i. e. the homogeneous working mass, faithful to its duty towards its masters and carefree with regard to its own soul, has come to Russia, too?

I think it is even possible to express some sociological axiom, like those formulated by Konstantin Leontiev: 1) there is no higher culture in societies based on equality of rights, upbringing and education; 2) a highly productive society needs a mass averaged in its feelings, habits and education; 3) a society possessing higher culture is not economically efficient. Let me make it clear that by ‘culture’ I do not mean general average, mainly technical, education, but fruitful mental and spiritual life peculiar (it always happens) not to the whole society, but to a part of it. Superficial literacy, which is so necessary to increase productivity, has a largely counter-cultural character. The masses take up reading not to think about books, but to forget about books; in other words, the book in the society of ‘mass culture’ takes the place of alcohol. One can call this ‘progress’, but in essence it is a path of simplification, if not direct deceiving of the masses, and — by some cruel irony — the further this simplification and flattening of society goes, the greater and more expressive are its technical achievements.

It doesn’t take much personal development to be a ‘professional’ and move the machinery of ‘progress’ forward. A certain mental simplicity, a love of easy explanations, and ignorance in a field outside one’s speciality, on the contrary, lead to success. Modern science is surrounded by a cloud of superstition, as it surrounded the medieval Church. The reason is not only the mental simplification of society, but also the mental simplicity of the specialist. Specialisation in one’s own field means total ignorance of everything outside that field. The delusional but confident judgements of a mathematician about history, of a physicist about theology, are a consequence of this specialisation, and even more so of the loss of the philosophical foundation of science. With all the abundance of experimental data, modern thought has reached a dead end, because it does not even suppose that the so-called ‘common sense’, i. e. the principle of saving mental effort, is not sufficient to interpret the experience obtained. It requires the right methods of thinking, without which the most undoubted experience will only be the ground for the most irresponsible mythology, the famous examples of which are the teachings of Marx or Freud. Philosophy, to summarise what has been said, is the education of the mind. An uneducated mind cannot go in search of truth, it is better not to go after it, because, unlike Ivan the Prince, he will bring home not a Princess, but a frog. And here the specialist who looks contemptuously at the profane finds himself below the man of the 19th century, whose soul received its education unconnected with the ideals of productive growth…

Timofey Sherudilo.
From the book Knowledge and Creativity: Essays on Culture.

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