All Things are Possible - Lev Shestov

We very often express in a categorical form a judgment of which we do not feel assured, we even lay stress on its absolute validity. We want to see what opposition it will arouse, and this can be achieved only by stating our assumption not as a tentative suggestion, which no one will consider, but as an irrefutable, all-important truth. The greater the value an assumption has for us, the more carefully do we conceal any suggestion of its improbability.

Literature deals with the most difficult and important problems of existence, and, therefore, littérateurs consider themselves the most important of people. A bank clerk, who is always handing money out, might just as well consider himself a millionaire. The high estimate placed upon unexplained, unsolved questions ought really to discredit writers in our eyes. And yet these literary men are so clever, so cunning at stating their own case and revealing the high importance of their mission, that in the long run they convince everybody, themselves most of all. This last event is surely owing to their own limited intelligence. The Romans augurs had subtler, more versatile minds. In order to deceive others, they had no need to deceive themselves. In their own set they were not afraid to talk about their secrets, even to make fun of them, being fully confident that they could easily vindicate themselves before outsiders, in case of necessity, and pull a solemn face befitting the occasion. But our writers of to-day, before they can lay their improbable assertions before the public, must inevitably try to be convinced in their own minds. Otherwise they cannot begin.

"The writer is writing away, the reader is reading away"—the writer doesn't care what the reader is after, the reader doesn't care what the writer is about. Such a state of things hurt Schedrin very much. He would have liked it different; no sooner has the writer said a word, than the reader at once scales the wall. This was his ideal. But the reader is by no means so naive as all that. He prefers to rest easy, and insists that the writer shall climb the wall for him. So those authors succeed with the public who write "with their heart's blood." Conventional tournaments, even the most brilliant, do not attract the masses any more than the connoisseurs. People rush to see a fight of gladiators, where awaits them a scent of real, hot, smoking blood, where they are going to see real, not pretended victims.

Thus many writers, like gladiators, shed their blood to gratify that modern Caesar, the mob. "Salve, Caesar, morituri te salutant!"

Anton Tchekhov tells the truth neither out of love or respect for the truth, nor yet because, in the Kantian manner, a high duty bids him never to tell a lie, even to escape death. Neither has he the impulse which so often pushes young and fiery souls into rashness; that desire to stand erect, to keep the head high. On the contrary, Tchekhov always walks with a stoop, his head bent down, never fixing his eyes on the heavens, since he will read no signs there. If he tells the truth, it is because the most reeking lie no longer intoxicates him, even though he swallow it not in the modest doses that idealism offers, but in immoderate quantities, thousand-gallon-barrel gulps. He would taste the bitterness, but it would not make his head turn, as it does Schiller's, or Dostoevsky's, or even Socrates', whose head, as we know, could stand any quantity of wine, but went spinning with the most commonplace lie.