Art and religion, which at first glance seem to have nothing in common, have a common root: belief in the meaningfulness of existence.

The artist may not be a believer in the conventional sense, but he retains the ability to create as long as the link between him and this faith is not broken. After the break with faith, there is little left for the creator. He may pour out his disappointment in a vivid and admiring form, as Herzen did, and win the approval of cynics by his ‘stern confessionality’, as Georgy Ivanov did, but this does not conceal his emptiness. There is nothing to write about without faith.

Human life, seen as ‘devil’s vaudeville’, provides no basis for a novel. Nor is it difficult to imagine poetry inspired by faithlessness. However, both are possible, but for a short time — as long as the refusal of faith still looks not escape from reality, but a feat, a challenge to public tastes. Tastes, however, quickly become accustomed to the challenge; faithlessness becomes commonplace; and the charm of the eternally indignant Herzen and the eternally longing Ivanov fades.

Chesterton was quite right in noting that even nature cannot be admired without a certain faith, even if it be the most vague and unconscious. I would add: not only does contemplation of natural beauty require at least a vague sense of the world’s wholeness, of the non-accidentality of the moon, the sky and the man who contemplates them, but in this contemplation itself there is the thought of such unity. To see beauty outside of us, it is necessary to have it within ourselves. If there were no measure of beauty within us, the stars, the mountains, and the beasts would remain the same — but there would be no one to look at them. Chesterton, however, failed to grasp the last possibility of admiration for nature: admiration in terms of expediency and power, expressed by saying, ‘Look — a tiger! What a splendid killing machine!’ This admiration might be called demonic; it is particularly prevalent in our day.

All arts affected by the loss of the meaning of the inner life degenerate. Painting was probably the first to fall. The masses have learnt to ‘appreciate’ meaningless paintings, but this is not an artistic appreciation, but rather a training, calling for a fake aesthetic feeling. ‘We don’t understand it — so there’s depth here!’ This ‘aesthetics’ was mocked even by Nietzsche. The equalisation of personal development inherent in our time, inseparable from the lowering of the average level, has led to the fact that the measure of a painting’s value has become the amount that can be obtained for it. I would like to know: if someone destroys the original ‘Black Square’ and places a fake in its place, will the admiring public notice the replacement?

The same thing happens with literature. Writing a novel about the student Raskolnikov, for example, is worth writing only if the student’s life has meaning. A senseless incident — the murder of an old woman moneylender — can be reported in a criminal chronicle, along with other spicy news. One might object to this: non-believing writers also composed good books in the old days. I would reply that the ‘unbelief’ of these writers was purely cerebral, superficial; they accepted the whole ladder of values and meanings that believers also accept, refusing only its head — God. Consistent unbelief — that is, inner emptiness, incoherence of impressions, loss of values — is generally unproductive. A writer afflicted by this disease has only to tickle the reader’s sensuality, to ‘surprise’ in every possible way; he is left with painstakingly collected facts, words, quotations, from which he builds his farce. The debris of other people’s meanings becomes his food and material for his literary house… However, it is impossible to live in this house.

All that an age of faithlessness can produce is a motley, varied stream of sensations, attractive to the crowd, but devoid of any substance. A succession of ‘great’ writers pass before the nations, and none of them will leave a memory.

We are what we believe. He who believes in Nothing has chosen his own destiny.

Timofey Sherudilo.
From the book Knowledge and Creativity. Essays on Cullture.

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