Jacob's Ladder

3 From the Willow Chest

The Diary of Jacob Ossetsky

(1910)

JANUARY 6

I was sick for more than a week, sicker than I’ve ever been in my life. For several days it felt like it was all a dream. Suddenly Mama would show up with a cup of tea, and Dr. Vladimirsky and some others I didn’t recognize, some of them very nice. But always, in back of them, was someone very dangerous, even terrifying. I can’t describe it; even recalling it is unpleasant. From time to time, I felt like I was in some sort of dark, flat space, and I realized I had died. I feel that if I don’t write this down it will all evaporate, disappear into oblivion. But there was something enormously important there—about my life in the very distant future. I envy writers; I just can’t find the words.

JANUARY 10

I’ve started reading again. Voraciously. I was starving for books the whole time I was sick. Now I’m reading the biologists. I’ve read all the Darwin that Yura brought over for me.

(Karl Snyder, Picture of the World in Light of the Natural Sciences.

Troels-Lund, Cosmology and Worldview.)

Thoughts on Darwinism: The theory of the evolution of organic life suggests to me a kind of fundamental axis, surrounded by myriad bifurcated branches. Representatives of the existing animal world are arranged around the tips of the branches. We don’t know all of them from the central axis, since the transitional species don’t live long. Having fulfilled their purpose (so to speak)—i.e., having served as a phase toward another species—they disappear.

The most intriguing problem is to place the human being in this scheme. Is he just a transitional step on the way to something else (for example, Nietzsche’s Übermensch), or does he occupy a place on the tip of the branch, which would account for his relative youth as a species?

Just now an answer to this problem has occurred to me. If we breed some animal that reproduces very quickly—for example, one of the lower organisms or protozoa, or bacteria—then, after a time, we may have hundreds of generations, and according to the law of evolution, the last ones may differ radically from the first. Observing how many generations must pass to produce a distinction, knowing how much time is necessary for one generation to become extinct and succeed in passing on its life to another, we might deduce the relationship between the origins of life and the stage when distinctions will emerge.

This relationship may be applied to humans, to discover when such distinctions could have emerged, or might do so in the future, thus making it possible to determine a person’s place in the taxonomy of existing and previously existing species.

This little theory of mine follows from the fact that I presuppose a direct correlation between the age of the human species and the culmination of a phase after which he can pass on life to something else.

Now, having written this, I am already questioning it. Even as I was writing the last page, I already knew that when I finished the “theory” I would have to refute it. Darwin proved only the law of evolution of organic life, attaching to it an explanation: natural selection. Darwin stopped short of including humans in this process. It was Thomas Huxley who did that, acknowledging that the closest relative of the human being is the ape.

As a matter of fact, this isn’t true. Darwin often repeats: “The origin of humans from some species of lower animal is irrefutable. The monkey evolved from the same ancestor.”

The biogenetic law of Ernst Haeckel states that the “ontogeny, or the growth of the embryo, schematically recapitulates phylogeny, or the history of development of the species.”

Asexual reproduction, or parthenogenesis, or reproduction without participation of males and their spermatozoa, is widespread in nature (drones, for example).

If the spermatozoa could be artificially emulated, their role, most likely, would come down to a shove, a push, given to the female egg. Both artificial coercion and chemical manipulation work in this way.

On the other hand, we also know of several cases of so-called merogony, or the independent development and reproduction of the spermatozoid. Thus, the process of fertilization turns out to be only one of the ways nature achieves the goal of reproduction, including in higher animals. If I didn’t want to study music, I would study biology. It’s the most fascinating branch of science I’ve read for a long time.

But music is more important to me!

JANUARY 15

By now, I’ve already started to love my journal and the pleasure of writing.

I’m already finishing my first volume of the Complete Works of J. Ossetsky.

I’ll begin the second volume with even greater enthusiasm than the first.

It’s quiet around me …

I opened the window a crack—the sparrows are chittering away, and my heart feels calm, a bit sad—I have a feeling of satisfaction after making notes in my journal. And, somehow, sadness about the unknown future …

Today I went outside for the first time since my recovery.

FEBRUARY 1

How weak man is! I have, it would seem, principles, my own worldview, and some notion of freedom, and of sexual morality. But it only takes a single glance at the décolleté of a washerwoman and I feel a rush of blood to my heart (yes, my heart), I can’t see or think straight, and something draws me to her …

When she disappears, I am well again, except that my hands tremble slightly. It is outrageous that I can’t keep myself under control. I’m sure that a woman would just have to wink at me and I’d run after her like a puppy; I’d forget Ellen Key, and Tolstoy, and Jules Payot.

What contrasts! After this, I sit and read Ellen Key. To fortify my nature—most likely that same nature that tomorrow will start chasing after a washerwoman.

FEBRUARY 15

Today I decided to speak to Papa about my further studies. I’ll graduate from the Commercial High School in the spring, and want to study music. I was too impassioned about it last time; I understand that now. Papa listened to me with complete indifference, as though he had made up his mind long before, and it was final. He said I had to enter the Commercial Institute, and agreed to pay for my further musical studies only if I enrolled in the university. This conversation was very unpleasant to me. Precisely because of the money. Whatever he talks about, it all comes down to materialism, to money.

APRIL 7

I read The Chronicle of My Musical Life by Rimsky-Korsakov. It made a strong impression. Now I desperately want to perform with real talent, to go to Petersburg to be around talented people. I want to be a talent myself. While I was reading, I started believing I could embark on that path. Maybe in five or six years I’ll laugh at these dreams of mine …

APRIL 11

Music lessons. A new teacher, Mr. Bylinkin. It feels as though I didn’t know anything before. It’s ANOTHER kind of music altogether! I began to hear it completely afresh. Up until now I’ve been playing all WRONG!

APRIL 19

Beardsley has an illustration for Chopin’s Ballade (op. 47).

APRIL 20

Today I discovered something that I have already managed to disprove.

Because of how a piano is tempered, the same notes in the higher and lower registers are not in unison. Thus, for the C in the contra-octave, C-sharp will be in unison in the four-line octave, not C. Just now I hit upon the following idea: continuous C octaves played in the contra-octave.

On top of it, a short melodic pattern played around the C in the four-line octave—a consonantly sounding chord. Then the pattern—without change—moves downward toward the three-, two-, one-line octaves. Then it continues down to the small, great, and finally the contra-octave.

The small error grows, and in the contra-octave already turns into dissonance.

One might call it “the gradual transition of consonance into dissonance.” Very interesting idea!

You can actually do all kinds of “tricks” with piano temperament.

APRIL 24

I could never live alone. I love company. Only in company do I feel alive, happy, witty.

I cannot imagine myself without society around me. I dream about a group of people, a society, where I am at the very center.

In my heart of hearts, I dream of being raised up on a stage, to the people’s cries and applause. All around there are frock coats, ribbons, bare shoulders … seas of flowers … But without society?

“Gentlemen, you cannot imagine how hard it is when a man has nowhere to go. A man needs to have someplace to go to.” Even Dostoevsky, the gloomiest, darkest of writers, speaks about the pain of loneliness, through the words of Marmeladov. Even such a giant among men as Dostoevsky feared the horror of loneliness!

I become afraid. The picture of a man sitting alone in a dark room—this is what fills me with fear. Now I’m writing in a comfortable room after my lessons. I’m thinking about how I’m going to visit some girl students from the women’s college. My heart warms at the thought. Yet someone else might be sitting in a room, alone with his thoughts …

I’d like to go to him, to take him gently by the arm and lead him into society, to make him start talking. I would tell him how he makes his own life difficult and absurd … but I have no skill, no dexterity, no strength to accomplish this …

MAY 11

Why don’t they write études, exercises, for the orchestra? It is especially necessary for “melding” all the sounds to form a particular “orchestral” tone.

Ilya just proposed that I join his circle and present a piece on art. I still don’t know whether I’ll accept the invitation, but I am considering it. I have a very interesting idea for such a piece: “Description of the Contemporary Musical Moment.” It seems to me that what characterizes the current moment is a longing for strength, for power … And, when it comes right down to it, not only in music …

JUNE 19

Listening to Glière’s quartet. In a sense, there is a parallel between newer trends in visual art—pointillism, impressionism—and modern music. In painting, there is haziness, lyricism, and, the main thing, something ineffable, a lightness. A picture covered in points and strokes seems to be covered with a light veil of air. In music, there is polyphony, complexity, also an indistinct lyricism, as well as that same elusiveness.

It is, naturally, a good thing that these parallels exist.

This means there is an idea, a theoretical basis, common to all art forms.

Now I want to write, to write a great deal.

They are playing vivace, the third movement …

They finished the scherzo, a small, elegant part.

But, altogether, it’s complex. I like this composer, Glière.

He creates a heady mixture of the Russian style with modernism.

The Russian melody alternates with its striking absence.

The fourth movement begins with an Oriental theme.

This quartet develops in the most complex possible way.

A decadent treatment in the Eastern theme, on the violin.

Here is something strange. Some sort of new, sinister touch or flavor.

And again the Russian melody.

AUGUST 4

“Where words fall short, music begins. Impotent in conveying an act of will, music can, with deep intensity, reveal the inner state of a human being, expressing pure emotion.”

AUGUST 20

I haven’t written in over two weeks. Many things have come to pass. I started the Commercial Institute, and, most important, the music conservatory! My dream came true! I managed to do it.

I’ve got so many plans for this year—they would fill an abyss!

I’ll study music very hard. At Christmas there will be five exams to pass, and in May another four. I’ll also take some classes in German. I’ll be at the university for four whole years. Everything I need for “real life,” with a residence permit. After that, it’s goodbye to music, and pedagogy, and to travel … All I’ll have to look forward to is working as a lousy bank clerk—with an annual bonus. Little by little, you plod away, until you realize it’s too late to quit your post … If I give up music as well, I’ll die. There are times when I live completely in dreams, when I retreat from everyday reality altogether. There is a great deal of Rudin and Peer Gynt in me …

I’m afraid that, through my own weakness, I’ll never realize a hundredth part of my dreams.

NOVEMBER 5

A terrible day. Tolstoy has died. I’m now completely calm, and I even feel comforted to recall how, half an hour ago, I was standing in the darkened entrance hall, sobbing into my handkerchief, and terrified that someone would notice me. After the tears, my heart was less heavy. Truly, one pours out grief through tears.

They’re selling little pamphlets on the streets. My chest constricted; somehow I felt scared, and I walked past the people reading the pamphlets with a sinking heart. The rain pours down, slow, stupefying, inexorable.

In the window of a store was a large portrait of Tolstoy, and a little piece of cardboard next to it: “Died November 4, 1910.”

I came home. Shall I tell them? No, I won’t.

Whenever you get a piece of news, your first thought is: I have to hurry and tell others! But I won’t say anything at home.

Even though the world, the whole world, is grieving, I’m constantly thinking of myself. I heed my own thoughts, sympathize with my own grief, think about the sad expression on my face.

In Odessa, Genrikh is probably crying, too. Lying in bed, crying. My closest friend, my elder brother. It’s a pity that he’s not here with me.

I’m standing by the table, and the rain is pouring down. I can’t hold it back: “Mama, Tolstoy is dead.” I couldn’t stop myself from crying, and I ran out into the dining room, into the front hall, and cried my heart out … But they understand nothing.

I wonder to myself: Is this a general law of some sort? Or is it our personal family tragedy? Why can’t my parents—good, loving people—understand how we live, what we live by? Why do they understand neither my feelings nor my ideas? Will I really be the same way when I grow up? And will my children look at me with indignation and think: “Father is so good and loving, but I have nothing to talk to him about. He’s buried in his own concerns, his own world, boring and dull”? No, that can’t happen to me! I have given my word that I’ll try to understand my children’s lives, even share a common life with them. But I still don’t know—is it even possible?

NOVEMBER 5

Tolstoy isn’t dead! He’s alive! A message was sent to the whole world by telegraph that he had died, but it turns out the message was false!

NOVEMBER 7

Yes, Tolstoy has died; only it happened today, November 7, at 6:00 a.m. I (again, I!) received the information with absolute calm. My grief was already spent beforehand …

At one time, I said the following: Death is such a terrible thing that it’s best not to think about it at all. Someone who thinks constantly about death will probably see no meaning in life, not just in the larger sense of life, but in the sense of our small, day-to-day matters. A person like that might as well go hang himself.

But people don’t hang themselves, so that must mean that there is sense in our day-to-day matters. So you ought not to think about death.

These thoughts seemed so resonant, so well constructed in my mind, but when I put them down on paper they sound naïve and half formed, simply childish. But I know what I want to say. A person has died—so, right away, everyone should just forget about that person. I once said that when I am on my deathbed I will tear up all my photographs, my papers, and I’ll ask my children not to talk about me. I’ll forbid them to wear mourning garments.

We must hasten and push forward the processes that time sets in motion anyway.

In general, the entire past, everything you can’t bring back, is terrible and oppressive. Life rushes by at an extraordinary pace.

“Life is but a moment.” This is why we can’t allow memories to poison the present, the only thing that has meaning. What could be more fleeting than time?

NOVEMBER 8

There are times when I positively can’t stand my parents. It usually happens when I talk seriously to them. When I don’t see them for a while, I start to miss them. Once, I was telling an acquaintance about my father, and I talked so much that I almost started weeping; I was choked with tears. But now it’s even unpleasant to me that I have to have dinner with them. We are complete strangers, yet I am for some reason dependent on him for my survival. When we have to go somewhere together (which I try always to avoid), I begin to jabber and to spew all kinds of nonsense so as not to say nothing at all. He takes no interest in me whatsoever; he doesn’t respect me, or my convictions and habits, at all. Yet he loves me all the same, most likely. A strange kind of love!

I feel that I get angry and annoyed with them, for the most part because of trivial things. A lot of the time, my only fault is that I tell them things I shouldn’t; I goad them into discussions that don’t convince them. Now I find I talk to them less and less.

I sometimes love Mama, but I don’t respect her at all. It’s terrible, in fact. Like strangers coming together and nagging at each other, spoiling one another’s lives, and all the time living at someone else’s expense. And Papa works like an ox. But from the outside it looks like life as “a happy family.” The worst thing of all is that I’m starting to feel that, sooner or later, I’ll end up with the same sort of life, the same sort of family.

No, it’s not true, that can’t happen to me! I firmly believe this.

NOVEMBER 9

Rodenbach. Bruges-la-morte. Art that feeds on death, rooted in death. It’s horrible. I shouldn’t think about it.

Two years ago, Grandfather died. His death didn’t affect me in the least.

Recently, I was holding little Rayechka on my knee. She’s weak, sickly; her pale, pretty face is sensitive and thoughtful. I thought about her dying. It seemed to me that I was walking through the room, holding the dying Rayechka in my arms. Suddenly I understood that moment when you press a cold little corpse to your chest and you feel an overwhelming powerlessness to stop the life that is ebbing away.

As I write this, I get a lump in my throat, just remembering … Rayechka is in the other room now, singing a little song about a mosquito.

The best thing would be to yank out the whole place in your heart that belongs to the dying, to cross it out of your memory, to forget about love. To forget!… Impossibly difficult; but necessary!

On the other hand, why should a person force his feelings? Time itself will smooth out all the bumps and wrinkles of experience. A person wants to weep, to grieve, to complain about the unjustness of fate. Wants to give himself over to memory, like he wants to dream about tomorrow …

Something in my soul is restless. I have a vague feeling of oppressiveness, that something has to happen …

And in Astapovo, Tolstoy is lying peacefully, washed and dressed in a clean shirt. His face is full of peace, absolute peace.

Probably solemn, as well. Listening to the babble of the whole world around him.

NOVEMBER 10

In church. A funeral service. Thoughts about religion visit me these days, and about glory and fame—fame, in particular. Reason suggests its uselessness, but with my emotions I passionately, intensely desire fame. Fame, the most paltry of all things, devoid of all inner meaning. Andrei Bolkonsky—that is, Tolstoy—pondered this. The vanity and insignificance of “human love.” But I want people to shout my name at the crossroads; I want them to praise me, to admire and adore me.

I know very well that if I achieved this, I would soon be disillusioned. All famous people attest to this. Tolstoy, Artsybashev, Chekhov, etc. I know that fame is about external trappings, but inner emptiness. It is accompanied by deprivation, unpleasantness, and bitterness, in particular the hardship of a lack of solitude, constant company. And I know that fame is nothing before the largest thing in life—death (as Artsybashev put it). He spoke so warmly and eloquently about the poet Bashkin: “Before the dying face, before the chest growing ever stiller, the last spasmodic breaths—how paltry, how trivial my own fame seemed, my name, my literary merits.”

My reason accepts all of this, but my heart wants to see “J. Ossetsky” printed in bold letters above an article in the newspaper. It’s trivial and pathetic, but I still want it.

Evening of the same day. Study some music theory.

I ride in the trolley, standing on the back platform, staring out at the road.

Evening. The trolley races along, and the tracks, gleaming and spinning swiftly away, lay themselves down neatly in two strips. This is a moment I recall very vividly.

It was then that I felt especially urgently the rush of time, the leap of seconds …

Just now, you were on that particular spot—you look back, and it’s several feet, several blocks, finally several versts behind you.

What a chatterbox I am! If there’s someone to listen to me, I’ll talk till the cows come home, only to regret it later. Why should I tell everyone how I dream of a career as a conductor?

Tolstoy says … Oh, apropos of Tolstoy: today the newspapers are reporting on the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Pirogov. And about Tolstoy, there were only two articles. Tomorrow there will be just one, and the day after tomorrow, just a chronological note—and on the first page of the news there will be a piece on the anniversary celebration of the Kiev railroad stationmaster.

Yes, this is how it will, and should, be. Time smooths out all memories and ushers in new events.

Newspaper articles bring this into sharp focus.

It’s a bit sad …

NOVEMBER 20

I think that Osip Dymov describes dreams better than anyone. He knows how to talk about that elusiveness, and that feeling you have in the morning in bed when you feel sad after a dream you’ve already forgotten.

Sometimes after you’ve just woken up, there’s an inkling of something you can’t quite recall, something you dreamed about.

I’m studying German now. I finished reading a story and leaned back in my chair, realizing that I just finished the lesson. A pleasant sensation … a light dream … I wake up and remember that it had several different scenes, with different characters, different events, but I remember only one scene, in the lobby of a theater, a woman is unbuttoning several buttons on her bodice …

I don’t remember any of the rest—no details, not a single word, nothing in specific …

I remember only that it was very pleasant … I found a description of gymnastic exercises for two-year-old children: throw a few pillows on the floor and force the children to roll around on them. The children will expend a great deal of effort trying to get off of them. I have to play this game with Rayechka. I think she’ll like it. It’s movement as an educational approach. Movement is a natural part of learning, but this exercise develops the capacity.

NOVEMBER 22

Recently, I’ve been very productive. Like never before. I’m now studying many subjects and doing well in almost all of them. A month from now (it’s November), I will take three exams at the Commercial Institute: statistics, political economy, and the history of political economy. I already know the statistics; I’m studying now for polit. econ. I study German for one hour every day, and am making great progress. Every day, I play for about three hours. Twice a week, I attend music lessons (two hours each time), and twice a week, lessons in music theory. The only thing I don’t get to do is read every day.

… Things are actually very fine at the moment … so fine it almost feels strange—I don’t know what else I might need.

I have everything I need, I’m studying what I want to study … except for the lack of someone who would be as happy about everything as I am myself. That’s true enough. Right now I don’t have a real friend (age, ethnicity, “sex” are immaterial).

DECEMBER 1

I’ve just come home from the theater, from Khovanshchina. I came home and wanted to write … I listened to the first act with great attention; I nearly always listen closely to the first acts in performances. I paid attention to the unfolding of the plot, to the different performers, and especially to the orchestra, the conductor.

It seems to me that the Russian style in music is monotonous and wearisome. But Glinka is unsurpassed. Even Rimsky-Korsakov, who has written heaps of Russian opera, called himself a “Glinka-ist.” Still, Khovanshchina is quite middle-of-the-road … though there are a lot of dramatic episodes in it. The music is always calm and unhurried, even monotonous … One wants to hear some outburst of energy, some tragic passion, but that is lacking.

During the intermission, I noticed a young girl. She was sitting near me. I liked her very much. I couldn’t concentrate on the last act; I was thinking about her. I felt sad that I liked her so much, and that she didn’t even know, that I would never see her again, and—this was the worst thing—that I would soon forget what she looked like. I stared at her, trying to memorize her face. In the middle of the act, she started coughing uncontrollably. This alarmed me. I had already suspected she might have weak lungs. I became very sad. She had such a nice face, even beautiful. She wore a blouse with a large white collar, and a blue tie. It suited her very well. There were two disgusting students with her.

When I try to resurrect the image, I see that it’s already very pale and blurry, and will soon fade away altogether.

On the way home, I felt angry with myself. I remember dozens of faces I see in passing, on the street, on the trolley, but I am already forgetting this particular sweet face.

Just now I started dreaming: I’m walking down the street, and I run into her. She is alone (definitely alone). I go up to her and introduce myself; then we go together to the theater … I just imagined what I would say to her at that moment …

If I see her on the street … I’ll immediately recall her face and remember it for a long time. If only I could run into her.

I sat down to write about something else, and saw the last line I had written: “If only I could run into her.” The thought already seemed stale and old. Today I’ve only thought once about that young lady, in the morning. That was the only time.

Recently, I’ve started being aware, truly aware, of my own happiness. Truly, I have everything I need. I have music, my studies, a clean room, a new suit, a good coat to wear, Beethoven’s sonatas … What else do I need?

If someone were to give me twenty rubles right now, I wouldn’t know what to do with it. Of course, I could spend it: I’d buy sheet music (which I can’t play), I’d buy a harmonium, or something. I could “make an effort” to spend it. But I have no strong urge, no strong desire—just small desires, bordering on vulgarity (and I have money—enough to go to the theater, at least).

I’m sitting in my room now, studying German.

I brought a cup of tea into the room for myself. When I drink tea, I am enveloped by a feeling of peace, comfort, and … domesticity.

The nickel-plated lamp reflects a small figure drinking tea. And it seems to me that, from somewhere up above, I’m watching the miniature person, J. Ossetsky, watching his life. He’s as tiny as can be.

Quiet … Calm …

DECEMBER 5

I read some of Chekhov’s stories. He writes a great deal about women. And for the most part, it seems, pejoratively. Like someone who had suffered a great deal at the hands of women might write. I have to think more about this. “Anna on the Neck”! How Anna, sensing her power, drives Modest Alexeyevich away: “Be off, you blockhead!” It just takes your breath away. In a split second, such a reversal of character! And how she rides down the street, and her drunken father, her brothers, are described with such sympathy, but she drives right on past … “Slime” is especially horrible. What a terrifying woman. As though he is taking revenge for the fact that he himself can’t refuse her! And with a touch of anti-Semitism, too. But after Tolstoy, Chekhov is our greatest writer! There is something here I don’t understand—as though all the charm of a woman, her elegant hands, her white neck, and the curls that escape from her hairdo, are created just to awaken the basest instincts in a man. But this is not at all the case!

Strauss’s Sonata for Violin and Piano.

The muted violin, the piano passages, pianissimo.

Very pretty! Lately, because of my busy days, I’ve almost stopped dreaming. And it’s for the best! Good riddance! I think only about the most useful way to spend the day, about music lessons, about German.

They finished the second movement—“improvisation.”

Now for the finale.

My most distant dreams reach only to the end of this summer, which I’m hoping to spend productively.

The last few days have been frustrating in terms of my music. Quartet in E-flat minor.

I read about Brahms. He died in 1897. That means that I was already seven years old when he died.

On symmetry:

There is no symmetry in nature. Nature is neither symmetrical nor asymmetrical. Nature transcends it.

Symmetry is found only where there is a human being who notices it. Only a human being notices such a phenomenon in nature: two halves that seem to resemble each other.

Aesthetics don’t exist in nature, either. Physics, chemistry, especially mechanical physics, do exist, but aesthetics (and several other disciplines) do not. Nature has no classification, nothing significant or insignificant. All this is created by the human being.

DECEMBER 19

I’m sad … I’m also sad because I will now write about ordinary sensations in ordinary words.

I just finished a book by Dymov, the saddest, the tenderest poet I’ve ever read. Even more tender than Chekhov. Why am I so sad?

I listen to music—I feel sad because I can’t play that way, because I can’t even play my own pieces as well as I’d like …

I look at people who are strong, and people who are beautiful, and again my heart protests: why?

While I write this, I’m remembering Dymov’s story “Evening Letters.”

UNDATED (LAST ENTRY OF THE NOTEBOOK)

Perhaps it is precisely art that must proclaim what is unsubstantiated, groundless.

There are no criteria, there is no theory of art. There is just an artist; there is no history of art, but a catalogue of paintings.

Every person takes what he likes from art. There is no objectivity, only subjectivity.

The art of Isadora Duncan.

One can manage to capture the basic characteristics of modern art, but to delineate a theory that fits all epochs and media is completely impossible.

Tannhäuser (all of Wagner).

  1. An artist’s creative output depends on his personality, his epoch, and his milieu. And the artist does not mimic his milieu, but creates an ideal version of it.

  2. The lack of criteria in art. However hard this may be for artists, and particularly critics, and the public.

  3. The character of modern creativity: longing for might, the urge to power. Rodin, Vrubel, Wagner, Bryusov, Böcklin, Roerich.

  4. The reflection of Art Nouveau in architecture.

  5. The methods and technical means available to modern art.

  6. Modern art as a whole does not reflect what I have just described. It is only the outlines of these tendencies that are visible.

  7. The urge in modern art toward archaism, toward the Renaissance. Roerich, Somov, Benois, Borisov-Musatov.

  8. The inadequacies of this urge.

  9. Art must be contemporary. We must remember that history will understand the incomprehensible.

10. The weak reflection of modernity in our art.

11. The weak dissemination of art in its applied forms.

Artists don’t like to serve industry. But this is the truest path. The Old Masters.

In The Queen of Spades, at the moment when the old countess appears, there is a spectrum of whole tones in the orchestra.

Faust

6 petits préludes pour les commençants

12 petits préludes

ou exercices pour les commençants

Vrubel, Botticelli

Rodin, Böcklin, Beardsley

Riehl, Baumbach

Dominant chord (fifth, sixth, third, fourth)

Read:

Taine, Readings on art

Jean-Marie Guyau, Art from A Sociological Perspective

Lessing, Laocoön

Lieber, The History of Western Literature

Yudin, Art in the Family

Vasnetsov. Art

Andrei Bely, Vyach. Ivanov, The Book on the New Theater

Wilde

Hanslick, On the Beautiful in Music

Woermann, The History of Art from Ancient Times

R. Muther, The History of Modern Painting

Gnedich, History of Art

The New Journal for Everyone (1902)

Chekhov, “Betrothed”

Time! There’s not enough time! Sleep less! Somewhere I read that Napoleon slept only three hours a day.