My God is my infinite intimacy

Abstract

"The Russian writer Vasilij Rozanov (1856-1919) is "one of the philosophical representatives of Russian modernism" (A. Flaker). With his two books of autobiographical- essayistic, non-fabular prose (Lonesome Things - Uedinennoe, 1912 and Fallen Leaves - Opavšie list'ja, I-II, 1913-1915) he provoked and shocked a readership brought up on traditional art and accustomed to realistic (therefore, mimetic) texts. "By juxtaposing and placing in opposition different thematic clusters" (A.Flaker), a procedure characteristic for avantgarde culture which he himself heralded, Rozanov did not only demolish the institution of the novel but also, simultaneously, dehierarchized and decanonized the entire system of classic Russian literature. This non-belletristic, as V. Šklovski labels it, "non-narrative prose" ("vnesjužetnaja proza" in Russian) represents a collage of seemingly unordered notes (a system within a non-system) about various themes. The individual/the intimate makes contact with the collective/the all human: documentary autobiographical fragments with the previously "low" "kitchen theme" (V. Šklovski uses the term in referrring to the banal everyday and domestic sphere, the theme of one's own person such as physical appearance, financial and marital affairs) are to be found on equal footiong with the author's thoughts on literature and publishing in general, on Russian literature, Russia, ideology, Orthodox religion, the phenomenon of Jewery, belief and God... The author has chosen notes dealing with God, interesting and unusual to the extent that they speak of a loner's and rebel's God - a "private" God, only Rozanovljev's own and nobody else's God.