‘Let the state do as it wishes, but I value my conscience more than anything else, and I will not lift a finger for the sake of the state’.

Leo Tolstoy (not verbatim)

‘I don’t need your Romanov state or patriotism!’

Nikolai Lieskov

We seldom think about how much simpler life has become since the 19th century. Such a statement seems crazy if we think about the machines that serve us, which would look too improbable even in a fantasy novel of earlier times. However, machines have become more complex and life has become simpler, and this applies to all areas of human relations, including social life, the sciences and the arts.

It is worth remembering that in the second half of the 19th century there were people who dreamt of just such simplification, known as ‘nihilists’. Of course, the word ‘nihilist’ originally meant only the rejection of the prevailing values, but the real nihilism does not stop there.  Already Bazarov does not just reject values, he puts other values in place of some values.

Any denier of this kind asks us (if not himself) an important question: are our values immutable? Which of them can be discarded without damage to the human soul; which should be kept?

At certain time the whole corpus of our values was considered inviolable. Now we realise that only its foundation is solid; everything above it is the fruit of search and error, the fruit (as far as the experience of the spirit and conscience is concerned) of repentance and divine punishments. Over the last centuries we have grown a whole tree of such particular and derivative values, values of art and science, in a word, of culture. Initially it grew in the shadow of the Church, but it was soon transplanted into unconsecrated soil.

What is the difference between culture and the Commandments? Firstly, of course, by its mobility. Another difference is more subtle and can be expressed as follows: while the Commandments teach how to live righteously, culture tells us how to live complexly. Complexity is a natural need of the spirit that cannot be eliminated, but can only be suppressed. This breadth and complexity — the inevitable fruit of spiritual development — has always been a stumbling block for heretics.

And nowadays, seeing the easy reversibility of the ‘ability to live complexly’ to both good and evil, many are tempted: ‘living simply, our ancestors were moral, as they are told about them; living complexly, we do not know how to fulfil a simple commandment. Isn’t culture evil?’

In Russia, this was preached by Leo Tolstoy and others, lesser ones. What mankind has accumulated during its long life, they declared to be trash, unnecessary rubbish. Truth is simple, and for it all the tricks of literary, social or scientific life are superfluous. It needs no state, no school, no printing presses. If the world dislikes it, or is inconvenienced by it, or, finally, if it harms it, well, let the world perish. This kind of preaching was especially successful and dangerous in Russia, where not so long ago complexity itself had to be introduced with a club…

With what most of us call Christianity, such a doctrine must inevitably have diverged, because the Church has long since accepted culture and the state as instruments. Culture as an instrument of the spiritual and intellectual life; the state as an instrument for the preservation of the least moral order. It should be recognised that both these instruments not only did not wear out with time, but became more and more sharp and wanted more and more independence, which they received not so long ago (by historical standards), and when they received it, they aspired to an indifferent, self-sufficient existence, each of them away from their own original goals.

Indignation against this world is indignation against its complexity, and Tolstoy attacked the very nerve of modern life, demanding simplification, that is, the rejection of culture in all its forms. Proposing to throw away books (except for ‘ideological’ ones), to abandon education (except for what is needed to saw wood and make boots), and to abolish marriage as a ‘satanic temptation’, he and his supporters, it seems to me, demanded to eliminate difficulties instead of overcoming them, and the very means of overcoming difficulties (education, books) were about to be put into a common pyre and burnt…

However, the thinking of Tolstoy and other deniers is quite transparent. Seeing that we live complex lives, but not as we should, they demand that complexity be removed, hoping that righteousness will shine underneath. But complexity is only a tool in the hand of the spirit. In itself it is indifferent. Moral deflection is in man, not in his instruments. We want to break the instruments because our hand has misbehaved. However… ‘Culture is immoral’, one of our deniers insists. ‘All literature is depraved, except that which serves honest ideas’, echoes another. ‘I fear poetry because in its essence it is immoral’, adds our late contemporary. And finally, ‘Our cause is not of this world, but let the world perish’. But if the world does perish, a new one will take its place, and we will again have the choice of participating in its affairs or ‘self-improvement’ with our eyes closed, letting stupid or evil people do as they please.

The deniers liked to say that this is what ‘true Christianity’ is all about. But when they assert that ‘this is what follows from the Gospel’, one cannot but reply that the Gospel is broader than our reasoning, and teaches, among other things, that there may be more than one truth about one subject; to say nothing of the commandment, ‘he who destroys will be called the least; but who will create and teach…’, which they have forgotten from the beginning. (For the perplexed I will add that the meaning of this commandment is the unconditional justification of creation and condemnation of destruction.)

Moreover, this kind of man is characterised by an excess of a peculiarly understood ‘spirit’ with a lack of mercy — a trait of the Old Testament, but by no means Christian. The harshness of the prophets is easily explained by the excitement of the man who alone knows the truth. But these prophets were abolished by the New Testament. Christ knew the truth, and was yet merciful. Besides, modern prophets should be softened by the thought of their own unworthiness, which is not seen in them; but passions directed to matters of the spirit are seen. Hence the apparent contradiction between the appearance of Lieskov and Leo Tolstoy — and their teachings. They, if I may say so, preached not from the fullness of their own spirit, but in constant struggle with this spirit.

The main point is that ‘the art of living a complex life’, so fervently opposed to the ‘simple life according to the Commandments’, is invariably inherent in man, and stubbornly rises up after every destruction. Complexity is vital to us. The healthy soul reaches for complexity, creates it and feeds on it, and every success of the ‘simplifiers’ is for the time being. What can I say? The ‘simplifiers’ in Russia had a loud and, it would seem, final victory. I am talking about the unfortunate 1917th year. And what happened? It came out not according to their wishes. The invincible complexity of human life, with all its merits and vices, has ‘grown through granite’, as Vladislav Khodasevich says.

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

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