SOURCE: “The ‘Anguish of Being Russian’: A Note on the Life and Works of Vassili Rozanov,” translated by Arch Tait, in Glas: New Russian Writing, No. 6, 1993, pp. 184-200.

In the following essay, Gulyga examines contradictions in Rozanov's life and character, noting that such dualities are common to Russians.

In April 1912 Maxim Gorky wrote to Vassili Rozanov:

I returned from deeply provincial Paris, where everyone poses as the life and soul of the party, to find your Solitary Jottings on my desk. I read it and I re-read it, and was filled, my dear Rozanov, with deep melancholy and anguish for us Russians. I don't mind admitting that I broke down and wept bitterly. God have mercy on us all. How agonizingly difficult it is being Russian.

We are re-discovering Vassili Rozanov, a major intellectual force in the early years of the century. Not only was his work banned...