“I am not yet such a scoundrel to think about morality. Millions of years passed until my soul was released to take a walk on White light; and suddenly I would have said to her: you, my dear, do not forget, walk "in morality."
No, I'll tell her: walk, darling, walk, dear, walk, kind, as you yourself know. And in the evening you will go to God.”
V.V. Rozanov. "Solitary"

I. Levitan. At the cottage at dusk. 1890s

PRO ET CONTRA

In Greek mythology, there was such a deity - the son of the god of the seas, Poseidon Proteus. He could endlessly change his appearance and became a symbol of variability, the elusiveness of being and the diversity of the human personality.

The same quality in the highest degree Possessed by a Russian writer, critic, thinker Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov. Actually, Proteus did not have his own face, but only masks that replaced one another. In Rozanov, behind all his virtuoso variability, there was always a certain unchanging block.

“Whatever I did, whatever I said or wrote, directly or especially indirectly, I spoke and thought, in fact, only about God: so that He occupied all of me, without any remainder, at the same time , somehow leaving the thought free and energetic in relation to other topics, ”Rozanov admitted in one of his autobiographies in 1909.

During his lifetime, his “many-sidedness” provoked furious attacks from the press. What nicknames were not given to him: Smerdyakov of Russian literature, the genius of foolishness, Judas (after Vladimir Solovyov's article "Porfiry Golovlev on Freedom and Faith"). For "double-dealing" he was scolded by everyone: both right and left. And he seemed to be laughing at it. And after it was discovered in 1910 that he was simultaneously published in both the conservative Novoye Vremya and the liberal Russkoye Slovo (under the pseudonym Varvarin), as he himself said, he wrote “in all directions”, “black-hundred” and "serialized" - and so, when it turned out, he stopped hiding and even flaunted it: "I don't give a damn what articles to write," to the right "or" to the left ". It's all nonsense and doesn't matter."

Who is considered Rozanov? Writer? But where are his novels, stories, short stories? Philosopher? But where are his volumes scientific papers? All the huge heritage of V.V. - at first glance, some crazy chaos. But this is not an accident, this is the essence of his personality, his creative genius. This is, so to speak, "principled" chaos. All his life he denied the system as such with all his being. And his top works - such as "Solitary", two boxes of "Fallen Leaves", as well as unpublished during his lifetime "Saharna", "Fleeting" and the famous "Apocalypse of Our Time" - this is the living, instantly grasped life of the human spirit. in all its variability, whimsicality and inconsistency, and life, immersed in everyday life. This required a completely new form from the writer: essayistic fragmentation, external incompleteness, spontaneity, references to oral, colloquial speech - all these observations, rumors, "casual conversations", memories, etc. - create a unique feeling of sincerity and confession, a cool mixture of eternity and everyday life. .

“Peoples, do you want me to tell you a thunderous truth that none of the prophets has told you ...

- Well? Well... Hh...

– It is that privacy is above all.

– He-he-he!.. Ha-ha-ha!.. Ha-ha!..

- Yes Yes! Nobody said it; I am the first ... Just sit at home and at least pick your nose and watch the sun go down.

- Ha, ha, ha...

- Hey-she; this is what religions have in common… All religions will pass away, but this will remain: just sit on a chair and look into the distance.” (V. Rozanov. "Solitary".)

"SCARY CHILDHOOD"

He himself admitted that childhood had a tremendous impact on the formation of his entire personality. “I came out of the abomination of desolation, and this is how I should be defined: “coming out of the abomination of desolation.”

Rozanov was born in 1856 in Vetluga, a modest provincial town in the Kostroma province, in the family of a petty official, a native of the clergy. V.V. himself with merciless frankness (however, as always with him) describes his childhood and youth with their terrible poverty and early orphanhood, which seized him with a passion for reading and with anguish from a misunderstanding of others. It is deeply symbolic that he called his first great work, a treatise on which he worked painfully for several years, “On Understanding” ...

"Oh, my terrible childhood ... Oh, my sad childhood ... Why do I love you so, and you always stand in front of me ... "Sick child" and love. This is how Rozanov wrote about his childhood years. “Of course, poverty was to blame. All the rubbish and all the enmity were rooted in hard to imagine poverty...

A lighted lamp blew on our “not peaceful home”, as it were. But there was none (there was no money either for oil or for the lamp itself). And the whole house was some kind of - u! u! u! dark and evil. And we were all unhappy."

After the sudden death of his father, V.V.’s mother, who came from a family of impoverished nobles, but who had not received an education (“without “yats”, as they said then), was left with seven children in her arms and with a small pension. “Sometimes for whole months they ate baked onions with bread,” Rozanov recalled. The mother, tortured by work, unkind, but immensely devoted to her children (which the future writer only realized later), died early. V.V. moved to his older brother, who received a teacher's job in Nizhny Novgorod. He did not study well at the gymnasium, but he read a lot of Belinsky, Pisarev, Dobrolyubov, Bokl, Fokht - the "rulers of thoughts" of the youth and left the gymnasium a "perfect atheist." But he did not remain in this power for long, because ... He wrote about himself: “It seems to me that there has never been such a“ pensive boy ”.

"It's all the same how to live"

Rozanov himself considered himself a weak-willed person who “goes to open doors”, for whom there is no problem of choice. So he ended up at the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University (“because his elder brother studied there”). The university, however, graduated in 1882 "with a deep disgust for the science taught." In the next 10 years, Rozanov served as a teacher in Bryansk, Yelets, in the Moscow province. But it is not the service that becomes the core of his life. “I am, in fact, forever in a dream,” he later wrote. - I lived because wild life that I didn't care how to live. I should curl up and pretend to be asleep and dream.” These dreams, philosophizing, unknown internal work are almost a perpetual motion machine: this is how positivism is eliminated and the unknowable foundations of being are revealed.

As V.V. years later, already in the first year of the university, a “feeling of God” came to him, which never left him again. It was a real spiritual upheaval that determined his future fate. At the same time, his acquaintance with N.N. Strakhov, a well-known critic and philosopher of the late Slavophile trend, the “literary nanny” V.V. And then a very important and deep correspondence began with Konstantin Leontiev, an outstanding Russian thinker, unfortunately short, interrupted by the death of the philosopher.

And Rozanov entered the great literature after the release in 1891 of his famous work “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor” by F.M. Dostoevsky". Two years later he moved to St. Petersburg, developed a stormy literary activity. Since 1899, he became an employee of the largest Russian conservative newspaper Novoe Vremya, becoming friends with its editor-in-chief Alexei Suvorin, a talented, extraordinary man, but who in the recent past was referred to in our country as nothing more than a "terry reactionary."

One of V.V.’s books, published in 1913, was called “Literary Exiles” and was dedicated to Russian thinkers of the 19th century, favorites, friends of Rozanov - K. Leontiev, N. Strakhov and other literary outcasts who were pushed to the sidelines of Russian culture frisky liberal rivals, who already then ruled the ball in literature, criticism, journalism. “Yes, they defeated us!” - Rozanov exclaimed in his hearts a hundred years ago, referring to liberals, socialists and others like them. And a hundred years later, the picture is the same. The only consolation can be that those who were enrolled by the “progressive press” even before the revolution in the ranks of obscurantists and reactionaries (the Bolsheviks only picked up these “nicknames”) suddenly began to personify the brilliance and originality of Russian thought. K. Leontiev, N. Strakhov, P. Florensky, N. Berdyaev, S. Bulgakov, S. Frank, V. Rozanov... Truly "a stone that the builders neglected" and "lay at the forefront."

Apollinaria Suslova

Love and Harpies

“I talked about marriage, marriage, marriage ... and death, death, death came to me ...”

Having lost his parents early, having not experienced affection and care in childhood, Rozanov over the years more and more established himself in the idea that the family is the main thing in a person's life. Although his first family experience was terrible.

What guided a young, twenty-three-year-old man, a third-year student at Moscow University, when he committed such an insane act as marrying a forty-one-year-old Apollinaria Suslova? Only that she was the beloved of Dostoevsky, whom he adored? This, as an anecdote, was repeated by many researchers of Rozanov's work from the words of Dostoevsky's daughter and his wife Anna Grigoryevna, who hated Suslikha (as Rozanov later called her). Perhaps this fact played some role, but, of course, was not the main reason.

As V.V. himself recalled, at first glance he was “bruised” by Apollinaria Prokofievna: so unusual, her appearance and her manners were not like anyone else. An experienced coquette, of course, could not fail to notice the impression she made on the young man. And she herself took the first step towards their rapprochement.

This "marriage-fantasy" was unsuccessful. The extravagant and selfish Apollinaria frankly tormented and mocked Rozanov. “You start to wash, take off your glasses, and she will come up and in the face - fuck!” - said V.V. later in a friendly letter; and recalled that Apollinaria “was a terribly pathologically cruel person; and I fell in love directly with the style of her soul ... and became attached like a dog ... ”After several years of such a crazy life, Suslova left him forever, but did not give him a divorce, despite the fact that V.V. there was another family.

It was the revenge of an evil woman. And the fact that his children were considered "illegal" terribly depressed Rozanov. It was from this time that his rejection of church asceticism began and the opposition of Christianity with its dogmas on the indissolubility of marriage to Judaism (“Judaism,” as he wrote), which he considered the religion of life and fertility. God-fighting motives, either intensifying or subsiding, will accompany him to the grave. Love for the family is unchanging.

Small Temple of Being

Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov and Varvara Dmitrievna Butyagina with their daughters

“The family is the most aristocratic form of life,” V.V. He found this most desired family happiness in an alliance with Varvara Dmitrievna Butyagina. His second wife was the complete opposite of the frantic Suslova. Very devout, faithful, devoted and compassionate, she devoted her whole life to serving her family and husband. In this marriage, V.V. five children were born. “I have 10 people sitting at the table with servants. And everyone feeds on my labor,” he wrote proudly.

But family happiness turned out to be fragile. First, in 1910, a serious illness of his wife led to partial paralysis. Then, after 1917, the final disintegration of the "Rozanov's nest". In 1918, the only son of the writer, twenty-year-old Vasya, died of a Spanish flu. A month later, a fatal illness overtakes Rozanov himself. The last days he did not get up, continuing to dictate his thoughts to his daughter Nadezhda. Indeed, "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." Shortly after his death, on January 23 (old style), 1919, his twenty-three-year-old daughter Vera committed suicide. Varvara Dmitrievna outlived her husband by three years. The fate of the remaining household members of V.V. was unkind. They had to adapt to the new, "Soviet" reality. But, to the credit of Rozanov's daughters, they carefully, despite all the troubles of life, preserved his archive, which was already unsafe then. The "singer of the most aristocratic form of life" did not have direct descendants, only one of the daughters, the youngest, Nadezhda, was married, but she had no children.

“A genius is usually childless - and this is his deepest and perhaps most explanatory trait. He cannot give birth, and who knows if this is necessary for him? The offspring of a genius, even if there is one, is stunted and quickly perishes; for the most part, these are female offspring ”(“ Solitary ”).

Damn questions

Paul's Trouble Came
Debel fefola,
And roaring merrily.
Sasha Black

Considerable efforts were made by Rozanov to the arrival and accession of this "fefely". He wrote: "The fact is that, as I discovered without any difficulty, through the study of my native writers, the sexual feeling is somehow connected with religious mysticism." This is one of the favorite ideas of V.V., which he developed in many of his books (“In the world of obscure and unresolved”, “Family issue in Russia”, etc.). This was facilitated by the rapprochement and even friendship of Rozanov with many figures Silver Age: with Merezhkovsky and Zinaida Gippius, with Vyacheslav Ivanov (V.V. was his man at the Tower). In this environment, refined eroticism was in vogue. And again, in some incomprehensible way, Rozanov’s decadent break was combined with the most “terry” (as Z. Gippius considered) guarding.

The house where he lived in Sergiev Posad from September 1917 and died in February
1919 Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov

"What to do?" asked the impatient Petersburg youth. “How to do what: if it’s summer, peel the berries and make jam; if it’s winter, drink tea with this jam.” But now this irony was not enough to keep calm. The "impatient youths of St. Petersburg", and not only young men, became more and more radical and impudent. And they didn’t really take into account other, different from their own opinion.

After the scandalous articles in connection with the Beilis case, Rozanov was obstructed and expelled from the Religious-Philosophical Society. It was a kind of cup of hemlock, as one of the researchers of his work A. Nikolyukin writes, “which Rozanov drinks without hesitation.”

The outbreak of war causes V.V. oppressive feeling of anxiety and premonition of trouble. Troubles, but not disasters! The disaster was unexpected for him.

“With a clang, a creak, a screech, an iron curtain descends over Russian History.

- The show is over.

- The audience stood up.

It's time to put on your coats and go home.

We looked back.

But there were no fur coats, no houses.

The image of the Iron Curtain, which would later become the image of the Soviet era, appeared for the first time precisely in Rozanov. (Our wonderful literary critic P. Palievsky wrote about this.)

“To what extent should we love Russia? ... to torture: to the torture of his very soul. We must love her to "the opposite of our opinion", "conviction", head. So Rozanov thought and loved.

In their last years he wrote "The Apocalypse of Our Time" - a book full of terrible world anguish and pain, a book in which madness is difficult to separate from prophecy: "Russia faded in two days. The most is three. It is amazing that it crumbled all at once, to the details, to particulars ... "

And again, as in childhood, the specter of hunger rises before him: in the letters of 1918 from Sergiev Posad, where he and his family moved to escape from "revolutionary cataclysms", there is a constant motive: "Now I think about food all the time ..." "Kashki would be, sour cream ... ”But while there were still forces and there was an opportunity to work, he first of all takes care of the children and his wife, giving them the best piece.

Witnesses say that when Rozanov was dying, there was a terrible cold in the house, for several days there was nothing to heat the stove. To the daughter’s question: “Aren’t you scared, daddy?” - dying V.V. replied with a calm smile: "No, I'm very, very good." Before his death, he reconciled with the church, confessed and took communion.

by the way

There is a stunning description of the last days, death and funeral of Rozanov in a letter from Fr. Pavel Florensky to the artist M. Nesterov: “We took V.V. on the sledge, through the snow, on a jubilant sunny day to Chernigovskaya (to the Chernigov skete. - Auth.) and buried side by side with K. Leontiev, his mentor and friend. Everything was peaceful and splendid, without frills, without false words, in a friendly way. However, it was only a light. And then it went and went ... As if all the demons rallied to avenge the fact that V.V. eluded them... For the grave cross, I suggested from the Apocalypse, on which V.V. reconciled with the whole course of world history: "Righteous and true are all your ways, Lord." Imagine our horror when we saw our cross, placed on the grave directly by the undertaker, with the inscription: “Righteous and unmerciful are all Your ways, Lord.”

Natalia Yartseva

Rozanov Vasily Vasilievich
Born: April 20 (May 2), 1856.
Died: February 5, 1919

Biography

Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov (April 20 (May 2), 1856, Vetluga, Kostroma province, Russian Empire - February 5, 1919, Sergiev Posad, RSFSR) - Russian religious philosopher, literary critic and publicist.

Vasily Rozanov was born in the city of Vetluga, Kostroma province, into a large family of Vasily Fedorovich Rozanov (1822-1861), an official of the forest department. He lost his parents early and was brought up by his elder brother Nikolai (1847-1894). In 1870 he moved with his brothers to Simbirsk, where his brother taught at the gymnasium. Rozanov himself later recalled:

There is no doubt that I would have completely died if my older brother Nikolai had not “picked up” me, by this time he had graduated from Kazan University. He gave me all the means of education and, in a word, was a father.

In Simbirsk he was a regular reader in the public library of N. M. Karamzin. In 1872 he moved to Nizhny Novgorod where he graduated from high school.

After the gymnasium, he entered the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University, where he attended lectures by S. M. Solovyov, V. O. Klyuchevsky, F. E. Korsh, and others. In the fourth year he was awarded a scholarship named after A. S. Khomyakov. Then, in 1880, 24-year-old Vasily Rozanov married 41-year-old A.P. Suslova, who before her marriage (in 1861-1866) was the mistress of the married Dostoevsky.

After university

After graduating from the university in 1882, he refused to take the exam for a master's degree, deciding to engage in free creativity. In 1882-1893 he taught at the gymnasiums of Bryansk, Simbirsk, Yelets, Bely, Vyazma. His first book, On Understanding. Experience in the study of nature, boundaries and internal structure science as integral knowledge” (1886) was one of the variants of the Hegelian substantiation of science, but was not successful. In the same year, Suslova left Rozanov, refusing (and refused all his life) to go for an official divorce.

Rozanov's literary-philosophical sketch "The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor F. M. Dostoevsky" (1891), which laid the foundation for the subsequent interpretation of F. M. Dostoevsky as a religious thinker by N. A. Berdyaev, S. N. Bulgakov and other thinkers, gained great fame ; Later, Rozanov became close to them as a participant in religious and philosophical meetings (1901-1903). In 1900 Merezhkovsky, Minsky, Gippius and Rozanov founded the Religious-Philosophical Society. From the late 1890s, Rozanov became a well-known journalist of the late Slavophile persuasion, worked in the journals Russkiy vestnik and Russkoe obozrenie, and published in the Novoe Vremya newspaper.

Second marriage

In 1891, Rozanov secretly married Varvara Dmitrievna Butyagina, the widow of a teacher at the Yelets Gymnasium.

As a teacher at the Yelets gymnasium, Rozanov and his friend Pervov make the first translation in Russia from the Greek "Metaphysics" by Aristotle.

The philosopher's disagreement with the formulation of school education in Russia is expressed in the articles Twilight of Enlightenment (1893) and Aphorisms and Observations (1894). In sympathetic tones, he described the unrest during the Russian revolution of 1905-1907 in the book When the Bosses Left (1910). The collections "Religion and Culture" (1899) and "Nature and History" (1900) were Rozanov's attempts to find a solution to social and ideological problems in church religiosity. However, his attitude towards Orthodox Church(“Near the Church Walls,” vols. 1-2, 1906) remained controversial. The book "The Family Question in Russia" (vols. 1-2, 1903) is devoted to the questions of the church's attitude to the problems of the family and sexual relations. In the works “Dark Face. Metaphysics of Christianity” (1911) and “People of the Moonlight” (1911) Rozanov completely disagrees with Christianity on gender issues (while contrasting the Old Testament, as a statement of the life of the flesh, with the New Testament).

Break with the Religious-Philosophical Society

Rozanov's articles on the Beilis case (1911) led to a conflict with the Religious-Philosophical Society, in which the philosopher was a member. The society, which recognized the Beilis trial as "an insult to the entire Russian people," called on Rozanov to withdraw from its membership, which he soon did.

Later books - "Solitary" (1912), "Mortal" (1913) and "Fallen Leaves" (parts 1-2, 1913-1915) - are a collection of disparate essayistic sketches, cursory speculations, diary entries, internal dialogues, combined by mood. There is an opinion that at that time the philosopher was experiencing a deep spiritual crisis, which could not be resolved in the unconditional acceptance of Christian dogmas, to which Rozanov vainly strives; following this view, the result of Rozanov's thought can be considered pessimism and "existential" subjective idealism in the spirit of S. Kierkegaard (which, however, differs in the cult of individuality, expressing itself in the elements of sex). Subjected to this pessimism, in the outlines of "The Apocalypse of Our Time" (Issues 1-10, from November 1917 to October 1918), Rozanov, with despair and hopelessness, accepts the inevitability of a revolutionary catastrophe, believing it to be the tragic end of Russian history.

The views and works of Rozanov provoked criticism from both the revolutionary Marxists and the liberal camp of the Russian intelligentsia.

Moving to Sergiev Posad

In the summer of 1917, the Rozanovs moved from Petrograd to Sergiev Posad and settled in three rooms in the house of a teacher at the Bethany Theological Seminary (the philosopher Fr. Pavel Florensky chose this housing for them). Before his death, Rozanov openly begged, starved, at the end of 1918 he turned from the pages of his Apocalypse with a tragic request:

To the reader, if he is a friend. - In this terrible, amazing year, from many people, both familiar and completely unknown to me, I received, by some guess of my heart, help both in money and in food products. And I cannot hide the fact that without such help I could not, would not have been able to get through this year. For help - great gratitude; and tears more than once moistened the eyes and soul. "Someone remembers, someone thinks, someone guessed." Tired. I can not. 2-3 handfuls of flour, 2-3 handfuls of cereals, five hard-baked eggs can often save my day. Save, reader, your writer, and something final dawns on me in the last days of my life. V. R. Sergiev Posad, Moscow. lips., Krasyukovka, Polevaya st., house of the priest. Belyaev.

V. V. Rozanov died on February 5, 1919 and was buried on the north side of the church of the Gethsemane Chernigov Skete in Sergiev Posad.

Family

Daughter - Vereshchagina-Rozanova Nadezhda Vasilievna (1900-1956), artist, illustrator.

Rozanov's personality and work

Creativity and views of Rozanov cause very controversial assessments. This is due to his deliberate tendency to extremes, and the characteristic ambivalence of his thinking. “It is necessary to have exactly 1000 points of view on the subject. These are the “coordinates of reality”, and reality is captured only after 1000”. Such a "theory of knowledge" really demonstrated the extraordinary possibilities of his specifically, Rozanov's, vision of the world. An example of this approach is the fact that Rozanov considered the revolutionary events of 1905-1907 not only possible, but also necessary to cover from various positions - speaking in New Time under his own name as a monarchist and a Black Hundredist, he, under the pseudonym V. Varvarin, expressed in others publications of the left-liberal, populist, and sometimes social-democratic point of view.

The "spiritual" homeland for Rozanov was Simbirsk. Here he described his teenage life vividly, with great memory of the events and the subtlest movements of the soul. Rozanov's biography stands on three foundations. These are his three homelands: “physical” (Kostroma), “spiritual” (Simbirsk) and, later, “moral” (Yelets). Rozanov entered literature as an already formed personality. His more than thirty years in literature (1886-1918) was an uninterrupted and gradual unfolding of talent and the revelation of genius. Rozanov changed themes, even changed the problematics, but the personality of the creator remained intact.

The conditions of his life (and they were no easier than those of his famous Volga countryman Maxim Gorky), nihilistic upbringing and passionate youthful desire for public service prepared Rozanov the path of a democratic figure. He could become one of the spokesmen for social protest. However, the youthful "coup" changed his biography radically, and Rozanov found his historical face in other spiritual areas. Rozanov becomes a commentator. With the exception of a few books ("Solitary", "Fallen Leaves", "Apocalypse of Our Time"), Rozanov's vast legacy, as a rule, is written about some phenomena or events.

Researchers note egocentrism Rozanov. The first editions of the books of "fallen leaves" by Rozanov - "Solitary", and then "Fallen Leaves", - soon included in the golden fund of Russian literature, were received with bewilderment and confusion. Not a single positive review in the press, except for a furious rebuff to a man who, on the pages of a printed book, declared: "I am not yet such a scoundrel as to think about morality."

Rozanov is one of the Russian writers who happily knew the love of readers, their unwavering devotion. This can be seen from the responses of especially sensitive readers of the "Solitary", though expressed intimately, in letters. An example is the capacious review of M. O. Gershenzon: “Amazing Vasily Vasilyevich, three hours ago I received your book, and now I have already read it. There is no other like it in the world - so that the heart trembles before the eyes without a shell, and the syllable is the same, not enveloping, but as if not existing, so that everything is visible in it, as in pure water. This is your most needed book, because, as far as you are the only one, you have fully expressed in it, and also because it is the key to all your writings and life. Abyss and lawlessness - that's what's in it; it’s even incomprehensible how you managed to not put systems, schemes on yourself at all, had the ancient courage to remain naked-soulful, as your mother gave birth - and how you had the courage in the 20th century, where everyone goes dressed in a system, in consistency, in evidence, to tell aloud and publicly their nudity. Of course, in essence they are all naked, but some do not know this themselves, and in any case they cover themselves outwardly. Yes, without this it would be impossible to live; if everyone wanted to live as they are, there would be no life. But you are not like everyone else, you really have the right to be completely yourself; I knew this even before this book, and therefore I never measured you with a yardstick of morality or consistency, and therefore “forgiving”, if I can say this word here, I simply did not impute your bad writings to me: the elements, and the law of the elements is lawlessness " .

List of significant works

“About understanding. The experience of studying the nature, boundaries and internal structure of science as an integral knowledge ”(M., 1886) - a plan for understanding the world.
"Target human life” (“Questions of Philosophy”, 1892, books 14 and 15) - criticism of utilitarianism.
"The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor F. M. Dostoevsky, with the addition of two studies about Gogol" (St. Petersburg, 1893)
"Beauty in nature and its meaning" (M., 1894) - a presentation of aesthetic views, the book was written about the views of Vl. S. Solovyova.
"Religion and Culture", a collection of articles, (St. Petersburg, 1899) - the philosophy of history, in connection with the needs and requirements of its present.
"The Place of Christianity in History" ("Russian Bulletin", 1890, 1 et seq.)
Articles on Marriage (1898) - opposed dogmatics.
"Twilight of Education" (St. Petersburg, 1899) - a book of articles of pedagogical content.
"Literary Essays" - a collection of articles (St. Petersburg, 1899)
"In the world of the unclear and unresolved" (St. Petersburg, 1901)
“Nature and history. Collection of articles "(St. Petersburg, 1900)
"Family issue in Russia" (St. Petersburg, 1903)

Philosophy

Rozanov's philosophy is part of the general Russian literary and philosophical circle, however, the peculiarities of his existence in this context highlight his figure and allow us to speak of him as an atypical representative of him. Being at the center of the development of Russian social thought in the early 20th century, Rozanov engaged in an active dialogue with many philosophers, writers, poets, and critics. Many of his works were an ideological, substantive reaction to individual judgments, thoughts, the works of Berdyaev, V. S. Solovyov, Blok, Merezhkovsky, and others, and contained a detailed criticism of these opinions from the standpoint of his own worldview. The problems that occupied Rozanov's thoughts are connected with moral and ethical, religious and ideological oppositions - metaphysics and Christianity, erotica and metaphysics, Orthodoxy and nihilism, ethical nihilism and the apology of the family. In each of them, Rozanov was looking for ways to remove contradictions, to such a scheme of their interactions, in which individual parts of the opposition become different manifestations the same problems in human existence.

One of the interpretations of Rozanov's philosophy is interesting, namely as the philosophy of the "little religious man". The subject of his research is the vicissitudes of the "little religious man" alone with religion, so much material indicating the seriousness of issues of faith, their complexity. The grandiosity of the tasks that the religious life of his era poses to Rozanov is only partly connected with the Church. The Church is beyond critical evaluation. A person remains alone with himself, bypassing the institutions and institutions that unite people, give them general tasks. When the question is posed in this way, the problem is born by itself, without the additional participation of the thinker. Religion, by definition, is association, gathering together, etc. However, the concept of "individual religion" leads to a contradiction. However, if it is interpreted in such a way that, within the framework of his individuality, a religious person seeks his own way of connecting and uniting with others, then everything falls into place, everything acquires meaning and potential for research. It is he who is used by V. Rozanov.

Journalism

Researchers note an unusual genre of Rozanov's writings, eluding a strict definition, but firmly established in his journalistic activities, suggesting a constant, as direct as possible and at the same time expressive reaction to the topic of the day, and focused on Rozanov's desk book "The Writer's Diary" by Dostoevsky. In the published works "Solitary" (1912), "Mortal" (1913), "Fallen Leaves" (box 1 - 1913; box 2 - 1915) and the proposed collections In "Sugar", "After Sugar", "Fleeting" and " The Last Leaves" the author tries to reproduce the process of "understanding" in all its intriguing and polysyllabic pettiness and lively facial expressions. oral speech- process merged with everyday life and conducive to mental self-determination. This genre turned out to be the most adequate for Rozanov's thought, which always aspired to become an experience; and his last work, an attempt to comprehend and thereby somehow humanize the revolutionary collapse of the history of Russia and its universal resonance, acquired a tried and tested genre form. His "Apocalypse of Our Time" was published in Bolshevik Russia with an incredible two thousand copies for that time from November 1917 to October 1918 (ten issues)

Religion in the work of Rozanov

Rozanov wrote about himself this way: “I belong to that breed of “expressor of myself forever,” which in criticism is like a fish on the ground and even in a frying pan.” And he confessed: “Whatever I did, whatever I said or wrote, directly or especially indirectly, I spoke and thought, in fact, only about God: so that He occupied all of me, without any remainder, while while somehow leaving thought free and energetic in relation to other topics. Thus, Rozanov spoke about himself, - not forgetting God.

Rozanov believed that the rest of religion became individual, while Christianity became personal. It became a matter of every person to choose, that is, to exercise freedom, but not faith in the sense of quality and confession - this issue was resolved 2000 years ago, but in the sense of the quality of a person's rootedness in common faith. Rozanov is convinced that this process of churching cannot proceed mechanically, through passive acceptance of the sacrament of holy baptism. There must be active faith, there must be deeds of faith, and here the conviction is born that a person is not obliged to put up with the fact that he does not understand something in the real process of life, that everything related to his life acquires the quality of religiosity. According to Rozanov, the attitude towards God and the Church is determined by conscience. Conscience distinguishes in a person the subjective and the objective, the individual and the personal, the essential, the main and the secondary. He writes: “It is necessary to distinguish two sides in the dispute about conscience: 1) its relation to God; 2) its relation to the Church. According to Christian teaching, God is a personal infinite spirit. Everyone will understand at the first glance that the attitude to the Person is somewhat different than to the order of things, to the system of things. No one will definitely say that the Church is also personal: on the contrary, the person in her, for example. any hierarch, deeply submits to some bequeathed and general order.

Gender Theme

The central philosophical theme in the work of the mature Rozanov was his metaphysics of sex. In 1898, in one of his letters, he formulates his understanding of sex: “Sex in a person is not an organ and not a function, not meat and not physiology - but a constructive person ... For the mind, it is not defined and comprehensible: but it is also everything that exists - from Him and from Him." The incomprehensibility of sex in no way means its unreality. On the contrary, sex, according to Rozanov, is the most real thing in this world and remains an insoluble mystery to the same extent as the meaning of being itself is inaccessible to the mind. "Everyone instinctively feels that the riddle of being is actually the riddle of being born, that is, that it is the riddle of the born sex." In Rozanov's metaphysics, a person, united in his spiritual and bodily life, is connected with the Logos, but this connection takes place not in the light of universal reason, but in the most intimate, "nightly" sphere of human existence: in the sphere of sexual love.

The Jewish theme in the work of Rozanov

The Jewish theme in the work of Vasily Rozanov occupied important place. This was due to the basics of Rozanov's worldview - mystical pansexualism, religious worship of the life-giving power of sex, the affirmation of the sanctity of marriage and childbearing. Denying Christian asceticism, monasticism and celibacy, Rozanov found the religious consecration of sex, family, conception and birth in the Old Testament. But his anti-Christian revolt was humbled by his organic conservatism, sincere love for the Russian "everyday confession", for the family virtues of the Orthodox clergy, for the forms of Russian statehood consecrated by tradition. From this came the elements of Rozanov's open anti-Semitism, which so embarrassed and outraged many contemporaries.

According to the estimates of the Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia, Rozanov's statements were sometimes openly anti-Semitic. So, in the work of Rozanov "Jewish cryptography" (1913) there is the following fragment:

“Yes, you look at the gait: a Jew is walking along the street, stooped, old, dirty. Lapserdak, sidelocks; like no one else in the world! Everyone does not want to give him a hand. "It smells of garlic", and not just garlic. The Jew generally “smells bad.” Some kind of worldwide "indecent place"... He walks with some kind of not straight, not open gait... A coward, timid... The Christian looks after him, and escapes from him: - Fu, disgusting, and why can't I do without you? Universal: “why can’t I do it” ... "

However, when evaluating Rozanov's views, one should take into account both his deliberate tendency to extremes and the characteristic ambivalence of his thinking. He managed to pass for both a Judophile and a Judeophobe.

Rozanov himself denies anti-Semitism in his work. In a letter to M. O. Gershenzon, he writes: “I, father, do not suffer from anti-Semitism ... As for the Jews, then ... I somehow and for some reason“ a Jew in sideways “both physiologically (almost sexually) and I love them artistically, and, secretly, in society I always peep and admire them.

During the Beilis case, Rozanov published numerous articles: “Andryusha Yushchinsky” (1913), “The Fright and Excitement of the Jews” (1913), “An Open Letter to S.K. trial near the Yushchinsky case (1913), etc. According to the Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia, Rozanov tries to prove the justice of the accusation of Jews in ritual murder, motivating him by the fact that the basis of the Jewish cult is the shedding of blood.

The combination of enthusiastic hymns to biblical Judaism with a fierce preaching of anti-Semitism brought accusations of double-dealing and lack of principle on Rozanov. For his articles on the Beilis case, Rozanov was expelled from the Religious-Philosophical Society (1913).

Compositions

Literary essays. - St. Petersburg, 1899.
In a world of uncertainty and uncertainty. - St. Petersburg, 1901.
Decadents. - St. Petersburg, 1904.
Weakened fetish. - St. Petersburg, 1906.
Italian impressions. - St. Petersburg, 1909, 320 p.
Moonlight People: The Metaphysics of Christianity. - St. Petersburg, 1911.
L. Tolstoy and the Russian Church. - St. Petersburg, 1912.
literary exiles. - St. Petersburg, 1913.
Among the artists. - St. Petersburg, 1914, 500 p.
Olfactory and tactile attitude of Jews to blood. - St. Petersburg, 1914, VIII + 302 p.
The War of 1914 and the Russian Renaissance, 2nd ed. - Pg., 1915.
Fallen leaves: Box 2nd. - Pg., 1915.
from the last leaves. Apocalyptic of Russian Literature // Book Corner. - 1918. - No. 5.
Favorites. - New York, 1956.
K. Chukovsky. Poetry of the coming democracy. Walt Whitman
More about "democracy", Whitman and Chukovsky
V. V. Rozanov. Two letters of VV Rozanov to the Jewish people (inaccessible link - history). Notes on Jewish History (No. 8(155) August 2012). Retrieved 15 August 2012.

Literature

Galkovsky D. Happy Rozanov (inaccessible link from 05/21/2013 (988 days) - history, copy) - an article in Literaturnaya Gazeta about the fate of Rozanov as a writer and philosopher in Russia.
Gollerbach E. V. V. Rozanov. Life and art. - Pg., 1922.
Griftsov B. Three thinkers. - M., 1911.
Gryakalova N. Yu. Gender project of V. V. Rozanov and the “Russian idea” // Gryakalova N. Yu. Man of modernity: Biography - reflection - writing. - St. Petersburg, 2008. - p. 120-130.
Lebedeva V. G. The phenomenon of "paneutychism" in the concept of Vasily Rozanov // Lebedeva V. G. The fate of mass culture in Russia. Second half of the 19th-first third of the 20th century. - St. Petersburg, 2007. - p. 136-140.
Mikhailovsky N. K. About Mr. Rozanov, his great discoveries, his machanality and philosophical pornography.
Sventsitsky V. Christianity and the “sexual question” (About the book by V. Rozanov “People of the Moonlight”) // New Earth. - 1912. - N 3/4, 7/8.
Selivachev A.F. Psychology of Judophilia // Russian Thought, 1917, book. 2, p. 40-64). There is a separate print.
Selivachev A.F. Psychology of Judophilia. V. V. Rozanov // V. V. Rozanov: Pro et contra. Book 2. - St. Petersburg, 1995. - S. 223-239.
Shklovsky V. Rozanov, in: Plot as a Phenomenon of Style. - Pg., 1921;
Leskovec P. Basilio Rozanov e la sua concezione religiosa. - Roma, 1958: Rozanov. - L., 1962
Rubins M.O. Vasily Rozanov and Russian Montparnasse (1920-1930s) // Yearbook of the Alexander Solzhenitsyn House of Russian Abroad 2013 - M., 2014. - p. 541-562.
Rudnev P. A. Theatrical views of V. V. Rozanov. - M.: Agraf, 2003. - 380 p., illustration.
Ravkin Z. I. V. V. Rozanov - philosopher, writer, teacher. Life and art. - M., 2002.

Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov (1856 - 1919) left behind a great literary legacy. Among his largest works are: “On Understanding”; “About writing and writers”; "Literary Essays"; “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor F. M. Dostoevsky”; “Near the church walls”; "Russian church"; “In the world of obscure and unresolved”; "When the authorities left"; "Solitary"; "Fallen leaves"; "In the courtyard of the Gentiles"; "Saharna"; "Fleeting"; "Last leaves"; "Apocalypse of our time"; "Literary Exiles"; “Family issue in Russia”; "Foliage".

The well-known historian of Russian philosophy V.V. Zenkovsky noted: “Rozanov is perhaps the most remarkable writer among Russian thinkers, but he is also a true thinker ... That is why he had such a huge (albeit purely underground) influence on Russian philosophical thought of the 20th century” .

Sometimes Rozanov is ranked among the neo-Slavophiles. He himself writes about himself: "I was a Slavophile only at some points in my life."

The peculiarity of the philosophy of V. V. Rozanov lies in the fact that when answering two key questions of philosophizing that stood in his time: “What is happening (Who is to blame?)? What to do?”, he ignores the second question. He explained the reason for this in this way: "I came into the world to see, not to do."

According to the thinker“Philosophy is the refuge of silence and quiet souls, calm contemplative and enjoying the contemplation of minds.”

According to Rozanov, “the world is infinite”, it has a form and cannot exist without it. He considers the world to be real and manifested in being, which is opposed by non-being. The forms of existence of being are: “non-existence, potential being, being formed and real being”. Forms of being, according to Rozanov, replace each other. He calls form and process the most important characteristics of being. The ontological ideas of the thinker, as well as the foundations of his philosophical doctrine of man, are revealed in his first major work, On Understanding (1886). The ideas expressed in this essay became the basis for philosophizing in subsequent years.

Rozanov attached great importance to the problems of sex. He saw in love, family, childbearing the source of the creative energy of the individual and the spiritual health of the people.

Rozanov believed that the development of civilization narrows the scope of freedom, which turns into an illusion, due to the fact that each person becomes more and more dependent on other people. A man, even in the USA, in his opinion, is not free "from hairstyle to faith, from the choice of a bride to the" style "of the coffin in which he will be placed." Assessing European civilization, he writes: “This civilization cannot be normal for all mankind; it is not normal even for the European part of it, if it ends in suffering.”

According to Rozanov, power is a means of organizing the efficiency of people. He believed that in order to establish effective work, faith in the value of our national labor is needed, but affirmed by calmness that what has been done next year will not be betrayed, abandoned, covered with contempt, plundered. According to Rozanov, without this faith in a caring continuity in the understanding of labor as a value, only the continuation of the barbaric attitude to work is possible. Addressing the people, the thinker emphasizes: “Do not hope, people, that you will get wealth from anything, except from labor, patience and thrift.”

He advised fellow tribesmen to learn from the Germans how to save, make money, and not “squander” the wealth of people. He writes: “The Russians squandered their fatherland, there is nothing to hide. But he was squandered in a terrible way by both ... the government and .... Russian Society".

Reflecting on the fateful role played by democracy in the fate of Russia, Rozanov notes: “The fact is that it was the Russian “democracy” that threw its nurse on its side, robbed her pockets and threw her at the mercy of the enemy.” Addressing his compatriots, he bitterly writes: "We are dying from the only and fundamental reason: disrespect for ourselves."

Discussing the connection between philosophy and religion, he notes: “The pain of life is much more powerful than the interest in life. That is why religion will always overcome philosophy.”

The thinker believes that Russian literature has become the misfortune of the Russian people. And it is unsuitable for the upbringing of the younger generations, as it is saturated with curses and ridicule against its land, its native home, its native threshold. “In terms of content, Russian literature,” writes Rozanov, “is such an abomination—such an abomination of shamelessness and insolence, like no single literature.” He called Kantemir and Fonvizin traitors. The answer to them, in his opinion, should not be critical articles, but the gallows. Griboedov, according to Rozanov, a writer who was looking for dirt. He made a mockery out of what was not to be mocked at. The thinker regretted that Russian literature "passed by Sergius of Radonezh." Rozanov sharply criticized N. V. Gogol, V. G. Belinsky, A. I. Herzen, N. M. Dobrolyubov, V. S. Solovyov for their disrespectful attitude towards the fatherland.

The result of such an attitude of Russian writers to their homeland and their people was the deepening of immoralism in society, the growth of disrespect for people to each other. There are more and more people in it who ignore the fulfillment of public duty. Moreover, it does not even occur to them that their neighbors may demand something from them. And there is nothing to be surprised, Rozanov wrote in 1916, that "now the Chichikovs began not only to rob, but they became teachers of society."

An essential problem in the philosophy of VV Rozanov is the problem of purpose. By purpose he means that which becomes actual through another. The idea of ​​a goal is considered by the philosopher as an internal subjective act, which, through an expedient process, is embodied in reality. Considering the goal, he singles out three sides in it: a) as a decisive link in the chain of expediency; b) as the final form of everything developing; c) as what is desirable and what should be striven for. Proceeding from this, the philosopher divides the doctrine of goals into three parts: the doctrine of goals in general; the doctrine of goals as final forms; the doctrine of goals as expressions of the desired.

According to Rozanov, the purpose of human life is to serve other people. A person should not forget that he is only a part of society. A person, realizing the purpose of his existence, strives to know the truth, remove obstacles on the path to goodness and maintain his freedom. This is its three purposes.

Rozanov teaches: “Live every day as if you had lived all your life just for this day.”

The philosopher believed that a person's life is determined by three ideals that lead him to the moral, fair and beautiful. The individual must also strive for the peace of his conscience. A calm conscience when achieving the desired and satisfaction with what has been achieved mean, according to Rozanov, a state of happiness. Glory is not a condition for happiness, since, according to the thinker, "fate protects those whom it deprives of glory."

In conclusion, it should be noted that V. V. Rozanov did a lot to establish the diagnosis of the disease of his fatherland. He left the choice of methods of treatment to the philosophers of future generations.

Russian religious philosopher, literary critic and publicist Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov was born on May 2, 1856 in the town of Vetluga, Kostroma province, into a large family of an official.

After graduating from the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University in 1882, Vasily Vasilyevich worked in the gymnasiums of the Russian provinces.

From August 1887 to July 1891 he taught history and geography at the Yelets Men's Gymnasium (now School No. 1).

Yelets was the beginning of his entry into great literature. In Yelets, he began to correspond with N. N. Strakhov, with whose support, since 1889, he published in the Russian Bulletin and Questions of Philosophy and Psychology. His articles also began to appear in Moskovskie Vedomosti and Russkoye Obozreniye and soon attracted the attention of readers and critics.

In Yelets, the views of VV Rozanov on many phenomena of Russian philosophical thought were formed, here he revised his views on Orthodoxy. During the Yelets period, his philosophical works were created: “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor F. M. Dostoevsky”, “The Place of Christianity in History”, “The Theory of Historical Progress and Decline”, a study on the philosophical views of K. N. Leontiev “Aesthetic Understanding of History”, a number of articles later included in the book "The Twilight of Enlightenment".

It was in Yelets that V.V. Rozanov found happiness and therefore began to call Yelets: “My moral homeland.” At the beginning of his "Yelets life" he was deeply unhappy and, by his own admission, "close to despair", as he came here after a tragic break with his wife A.P. Suslova, who left him, but never gave him a divorce . In Yelets, Vasily Vasilyevich met a "friend", as he called his second wife all his life, Varvara Dmitrievna Butyagina (nee Rudneva), the young widow of a teacher at the Yelets gymnasium. On May 5, 1891, Vasily Vasilyevich secretly married her in the house church of the Holy Trinity at a shelter for petty-bourgeois girls (now it is the territory of the Children's Park on Kommunarov Street). The condition of the priest was the immediate departure of those who were getting married from the city, which was done. Vasily Vasilyevich did not return to Yelets again. V. D. Butyagina gave V. V. Rozanov a family, having raised six children, their house became for Vasily Vasilyevich a “small temple of being”, and her death in 1910 put a tragic shade on his work.

He mentions the Yelets period of his life on the pages of the books “Mortal” (1913), “Fallen Leaves” (1913-1915), in letters to N. N. Strakhov, K. N. Leontiev.

Since 1893, V. V. Rozanov served in the central department of state control, since May 1899, at the invitation of A. S. Suvorin, he became a permanent contributor to the Novoye Vremya newspaper (where he had been published since 1895). This work gave him not only material security, but also the realization of his creative potential. Many of Rozanov's books and pamphlets (in total he published 37 separate editions, not counting reprints) were compiled from articles published in Novoye Vremya.

V. V. Rozanov is the author of philosophical works "On Understanding" (1886), "Religion and Culture" (1899), "Nature and History" (1900), "In the World of Obscure and Unresolved" (1901), "Near Church Walls "(1906)," Dark face. Metaphysics of Christianity” (1911), “People of Moonlight. Metaphysics of Christianity" (1911); "Solitary" (1912), about 200 works about Russian writers and many others.

He perceived the revolutionary events of 1917 as the end of the history of Russia.

V. V. Rozanov died on February 5, 1919 in Sergiev Posad. He was buried in the Gethsemane skete of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra.

In 2006, a memorial plaque was installed in Yelets on the building of the former male gymnasium (now school number 1 named after M. M. Prishvin) and a bronze bust of the philosopher in the estate of E. P. Krikunov.

Author's works

• The legend of the Grand Inquisitor by F. M. Dostoevsky: an experience of critical commentary: with the addition of two studies about Gogol. - 3rd ed. - St. Petersburg. : edition of M. V. Pirozhnikov, 1906. - 283 p.
• Vasily Rozanov: I hate colored clothes // Our heritage. - 1989. - No. 6. - S. 43-63.
  Contents: Mortal. Letters to B. Griftsov / entry. Art., publ. and comment. E. Barabanova. - S. 46-61.; S. 46 - mention. Yelets; P. 55 - MP Butyagin - died in Yelets.
• About myself and my life: Solitary. Mortal. Fallen leaves. Apocalypse of our time. - M. : Moskovsky worker, 1990. - 876 p. - (Voices of the times).
• Another land, another sky ...: a complete collection of travel essays 1899-1913. - M.: Tanais, 1994. - 735 p. - Yelets, city - S. 48, 613; Dace. county - S. 453.
• Fallen leaves: lyric-philosophical notes / ed. intro. Art. A. V. Gulyga. - M.: Sovremennik, 1992. - 543 p.
• Fallen leaves. - M. : AST, 2001. - 591 p. : ill. - (Aphorisms. Maxims. Thoughts).
• secluded. Fallen leaves. - M.: World of Books: Literature, 2006. - 576 p. - (Great thinkers).
• literary exiles. Memories. Letters. - M., 2000. - 368 p. - Contents: Letters of N. N. Strakhov. - S. 86-258.

Literature about life and work

• Sinyavsky A.D. Fallen leaves of Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov / A.D. Sinyavsky. - M. : Zakharov, 1999. - 316 p.
• Boldyrev N. F. Seed of Osiris or Vasily Rozanov as the last Old Testament prophet / N. F. Boldyrev. - Chelyabinsk: LTD, 2001. - 478 p. - (Biographic landscapes).
• Nikolyukin A. N. Rozanov. - M.: Mol. guard, 2001. - 511 p. - (Life of remarkable people. Ser. Biogr.; Issue 788).
  Contents: "My moral homeland" (Yelets). - S. 85-135.
• Krikunov A. E. V. V. Rozanov: a philosopher in the provinces and a province in philosophy // Young voices: Russian provincial culture in the studies of young teachers and graduate students of Yeletsky state university them. I. A. Bunina. - Yelets, 2001. - Issue. 2. - S. 3-6.
• Belozertsev E. P. School and family in the philosophical and pedagogical journalism of V. V. Rozanova (1890s): monograph / E. P. Belozertsev, A. E. Krikunov, A. I. Pavlenko. - Yelets: YSU im. I.A. Bunina, 2002. - 275 p.
• Krikunov A.E. Yelets pages of Vasily Rozanov // Land of Lipetsk. - Lipetsk, 2003. - S. 143-145 .: photo.
• Krikunov A. E. Rozanov in Yelets: from the fact of biography to the facts of literature // Formation of the cultural and educational environment of the Lipetsk region (Yelets region). - Yelets, 2004. - S. 227-233.
• Krasnova S. V. Russian national pride nurtured by the Yelets pedagogical field (I. A. Bunin, M. M. Prishvin, S. N. Bulgakov): [incl. Prishvin's memories of Rozanov] / S. V. Krasnova, V. P. Kuzovlev // Formation of the cultural and educational environment of the Lipetsk region (Yelets region). - Yelets: YSU im. I.A. Bunina, 2004. - S. 188-224.
• Lotareva I. Parents of my soul: the family of the Rudnev-Butyagins in the fate and work of V. V. Rozanova / I. Lotareva, I. Ostapova // My Motherland - Lipetsk Territory: materials of the XI region. conf. participation tourist local historian. movement "Fatherland", dedicated. 50th anniversary of the formation of Lipetsk. region - Lipetsk, 2004. - Issue. 3. - S. 174-187.
• Gippius Z. Thoughtful wanderer. About Rozanov: [Yelets. period] // I'm not afraid of anything: [sat]. - M., 2004. - S. 334-376.
• V. V. Rozanov and the Russian Literary and Philosophical Tradition: Materials of the Rozanov Readings May 24-25, 2001 - Yelets: YSU, 2004. - 146 p.
• Klokov A. Yu. Church of the Holy Trinity at the women's shelter: [including the wedding of V. V. Rozanov and V. D. Butyagina] // Temples and monasteries of the Lipetsk and Yelets diocese. Yelets / A. Klokov, A. A. Naidenov, A. V. Novoseltsev. - Lipetsk, 2006. - S. 351-355 .: photo.
• Gorlov V. "... The need to defend against a young barich": in the life of Vasily Rozanov there were many, as they say now, extreme events, some of them were destined to happen on Lipetsk land // Lipetsk newspaper. - 2006. - 29 Apr. - S. 3.: photo.
• Gorlov V. Yelets - the moral homeland of Rozanov // Good evening. - 2006. - May 11-16 (No. 19). - S. 6.
• Sarychev Ya. V. Creativity of V. V. Rozanov in the 1900-1910s: the phenomenology of religious and artistic and aesthetic searches: monograph / Ya. V. Sarychev. - Lipetsk: LGPU, 2007. - 163 p.
• Sukach V. G. Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov: biogr. feature article; Bibliography, 1886-2007 / V. G. Sukach. - M. : Progress-Pleyada, 2008. - 222 p.
• Petrov V. Yelets years of Vasily Rozanov // Rise. - 2008. - No. 5. - S. 202-206.
• Rozanov Vasily Vasilyevich // Yelets male gymnasium / computer. layout S. V. Konyukhov. - Yelets: Trading House Vladimir Zausailov and Co., 2009. - S. 26-31. : portrait - (Our heritage).
• Lyapin D. A. Happy Philosopher // History of the Yelets County in the XVIII - early XX centuries / D. A. Lyapin. - Saratov: new wind, 2012. - S. 155-156. : portrait
• Borisova N. The brightest constellation of names ...: Yelets male gymnasium as an educational and cultural phenomenon // Petrovsky Bridge. - 2012. - No. 3 (July-Sept.). - S. 158-166.

Reference materials

• Lipetsk encyclopedia. - Lipetsk, 2000. - T. 2. - S. 165.
• Zamyatinskaya encyclopedia. Lebedyansky context. - Tambov; Yelets, 2004. - S. 310-323.
• Glorious names of the land of Lipetsk: biogr. ref. about the known writers, scientists, educators, deyat. art. - Lipetsk, 2007. - S. 331-335.
• Russian writers. 1800-1917: biogr. dictionary. - M., 2007. - T. 5. - S. 323-334.

He was one of the brightest and most paradoxical philosophers and publicists of the Silver Age. He was called the Russian Freud and the Russian Nietzsche. He was hated by revolutionary democrats and disliked by liberals. He managed to pass for both a Judophile and a Judeophobe at the same time. Cynic and paradoxical, he was afraid of pathos. His philosophy was dissipated in trifles, while trifles acquired a philosophical status.

He wanted to start literature "from the other end", to sing of solitude, the warmth of private life. More than once he will be reproached for the apotheosis of triviality, he will be called a philosophical layman, "the poet of the interior." And he protected and nurtured the “small” in himself. Answered the question "what to do?" a phrase that is destined to become winged: “If it's summer, peel the berries and make jam; if winter - drink tea with this jam.

Rozanov died in Sergiev Posad on January 23 (February 5), 1919, in hopeless poverty, exhausted by hunger and disease, trying to overcome despair and find solace in the Christian faith. He was buried in the fence of the Gethsemane Skete, next to the grave of K.N. Leontiev.

Vasily Vasilievich Rozanov

April 20 (May 2) 1856 - February 5, 1919

Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov is probably the most remarkable writer among Russian thinkers, who had an excellent command of style, who knew the magic of the word. He did not create any specific philosophical system, and did not strive for it. But Rozanov became the founder of the original style of philosophizing, which some researchers call philosophical impressionism.