During these hours I made observations of the American crowd and still cannot "formulate" them in myself. Perhaps the main impression – or feeling? is something "impersonal". Of course, the crowd, the "average man" is always and everywhere impersonal, but in Europe there is a "mystery" behind each person, it seems to shine through in the expression of his face, in his gait, in everything. And it is this secret that is not felt in the American. It seems to me that he is terrified of her, does not want her, kills her in himself. And that the entire American civilization is aimed at helping man in this. It is all built and acts in such a way that a person will never, if possible, come face to face with this mystery. This does not mean at all that the American is "stad". On the contrary, the same civilization is built on individualism. It seems to be addressed to everyone, but to everyone it says: look how good and comfortable it is for you, how everything is done for you. And everyone accepts it individually, for himself, although he accepts exactly the same thing that is offered to any other "everyone". It is a civilization à l'échelle humaine, only l'humain[611] is "aseptic" here. And so, knowingly or unbeknownst to himself, everyone represses the secret in himself, and from this repression comes the American neurosis. The success of psychology and psychoanalysis in America began with a passionate desire to reduce the "mystery" to a law of nature, to a multiplication table, to classify and thereby "discharge" it. He, an American, "blurts it out scientifically". He is grateful to science, first of all, for the fact that it gives him a ready-made explanation, a liberation from the search (which in man is the expression of his relationship with the imprisoned "mystery" living in him). It is wrong to say: the American is "not deep". He is as deep as all people, only, unlike others, he does not want depth, he is afraid of it and hates it. The real question is: why? Where, what are the roots of this rejection of the "mystery," of the deep, of the "personal"? I don't know if I'm right, but it seems to me that this is because the experience of "primitive" man was repeated in America: an encounter with the alienity, vastness, mystery of nature, fear of it and the desire to overcome this fear – by "ritual", repetition, regularity... Religion was born out of fear, we are told, and this is mostly true. And America was born out of the same fear. The religion of fear overcomes fear by ritual, that is, by such a sacred symbolization of the world, nature, life, which "removes" the mystery, "discharges" it, frees it from that which is the most terrible and unbearable for man: the uniqueness and uniqueness of everything. Ritual, sacredness is the reduction of everything to an "archetype", to a law. In this sense, and strange as it may seem, America is extremely sacred and religious (and not at all "secular," if secularism is understood as the rejection of the sacred, freedom from it). It was the "ritualism" of American life that I felt with special strength when I came from Europe. In everything, absolutely in everything, the American wants the reassurance of the rite: in food, in what he eats and how he eats, in the way he dresses, walks, laughs, brushes his teeth. Otherwise, everything is scary. Between himself and the "secret" of life, that is, the one and only, he posits a rite; Thus, for example, the "uprisings" of young people in the 1960s, the rejection of "conformism," the proclamation of everyone's right to one's own thing[613] instantly resulted in a ritual developed to the smallest detail: clothing, behavior, language.

All this does not contradict what is usually perceived as the quintessence of Americanism: the cult of novelty, change, advertising, entirely built on the principle of "it's different..."[614], the cult of openness, experimentation, etc. For it is precisely the function of this almost phrenetic "novelty," of constant renewal, that it protects man from encountering the mystery of life, with himself, with essence. This meeting is possible only with the cessation of life, with the liberation of internal attention, its liberation from the external, which is possible in traditional civilizations, which have grown up around a "mystery"... I have always asked myself why every American firm should not only constantly change its products, but also modify itself by rearranging furniture, changing the appearance of its offices, changing the uniforms of its employees, etc. And now it is clear to me that this "changeability" is the basic rite, the essence of which is always the repetition of the unrepeatable. Change and novelty are frightening as long as they are the "mystery" and the essence of the mystery ("what does the coming day have in store for me?"). Therefore, the only way to make them "not frightening" is to introduce them into the ritual, to make them "repeatable": everything is always "new" and everything is the same, because it is aimed at the same thing: for benefit, for pleasantness and convenience, and so on.

Gradually, slowly, the Frenchman discovered that cheese washed down with red wine was delicious. And, having opened it, he eats cheese, washed down with wine, and enjoys. There is no ritual here, but the "truth of life" itself. An American goes to France, "learns" that the French eat cheese with red wine, and on his return to America establishes a new rite: the "wine and cheese party." And this is all - huge! –difference. But the Frenchman, who is delicious, does it exactly as his ancestor did it under the Louis, for it was delicious then and now it is delicious. And the American, because he is not looking for taste, but is performing a ritual, will certainly introduce some novelty into this rite: he will put a piece of pear or raisins or something else on top of the cheese. Why? Because the ritual requires constant renewal, because he brought cheese and wine to America as evidence that everything in life is improving all the time. "The same", always offered as "new" and "improved", satisfies his need not to face the very mystery of life...

It is strange, but it is true: American civilization, American life is religious through and through, but it is not at all a post-Christian world, as they like to say, but, in a very deep sense, a pre-Christian world, that is, a world that is not freed from natural "sacredness" (the opposite of Christian "sacramentalism"). For sacredness is not at all a feeling of the divinity of the world, but on the contrary – its demonicity, not joy, but fear, not acceptance, but flight. This is a system of "taboos" with the help of which a person puts between himself and life (and this means between himself and his "secret") a certain impenetrable barrier, a filter that filters life and does not allow "mystery". And in this sense, America's puritanical past and its anti-Puritan present are phenomena of the same order at the depths. Rejection, the removal of one "taboo" is only the replacement of it by another "taboo".

During these two or three days I read two thick tops by Paul Leautaud (Journal Litteraire, X, XI)[619]. And it seems to me that this "militant" (in words) atheist, so to speak, cannot but be loved by God. Precisely for truthfulness, for ruthlessness in depiction, retelling of oneself, for "humility" without any knowledge of him... I don't know, I don't know: all these words are somehow inappropriate, but I always read Leoto with spiritual benefit, with which, alas, I almost never read so-called "spiritual literature". He denounces in me any spiritual cheapness, unnecessary excitement, addiction to beautiful words, somehow inwardly liberates. And the 18 volumes of this man's diary without a biography turn out to be more necessary than all the stories about growths, crises, crossroads, insights...

Wednesday, February 4, 1976

Bogdan Khudob's book "Of Light..."[620]. Disorderly, but interesting: about time. I am very close to his basic statement about time as a "mode" of man's ascent to God. Another example of how books come "on time". This one, for example, was on my desk for a whole year.

Yesterday – all day at home and, since everyone thinks I'm in Colorado, without phone calls. Bliss. I think that if I had two of these days a week, my life would be very different, not "fragmented."

Attempts to write a chapter on the Symbol of Faith in the "Liturgy". It's always the same: at first, before I started writing, it seems that this paragraph is nothing. Then you start writing – almost immediately you feel that it is not right, a dead end. You quit, thinking that you are "not in the mood". However, it soon becomes clear that the impasse was also necessary, for it debunks the original error – the feeling of "trifle" – and poses the real question: what is the unity of faith? Having reached this point, you already know that you need to start from the beginning, that is, to be surprised by this seemingly self-evident concept, to discover it anew. And a trifling chapter turns into many weeks of torment: gestation, thinking, pregnancy, childbirth...

Monday, February 9, 1976

Reading Leoto, I suddenly realized that – among other things, or perhaps before everything else – his truthfulness is both rooted and expressed in language. He was the last French writer who was painfully aware of the falsity and falsehood of the language that gradually disintegrated the French language from within, the correlation in it of words, sentences with meaning, the triumph in it of abstraction, of "ideologism". He writes "les jeunes" in quotation marks, because the word has come to mean something new, a collective "youth," something -- and that's the whole point -- which is not really there. "Non, vraiment," he writes, "la langue française, c'est ne pas cela. Tout peut s'exprimer clairement, et ne pas savoir etre clair est une inferiorite ou s'appliquer a ne pas l'etre ou s'en faire un merite, est pure sottise…"[622] (XII, 86). However, everyone writes this way now, and not only in French. Our epoch has gradually created not only a new language, but a new "sense of language." The reason for this is twofold: ideologism (the assertion of what does not exist as concrete, real: "les jeunes," "the working class," "History," "l'humain," etc.) and, more banally, the separation of culture from life, its transformation into something self-sufficient: creativity out of nothing, but therefore of "nothing," an irresponsible play of "forms" and "structures."

All these days on television - the Winter Olympics in Innsbruck. It is impossible to tear yourself away. The amazing beauty of the human body, transformed into effort, movement, becoming weightless, "embodied spirit" before our eyes, releasing its own heaviness, empiricism, utilitarianism ("organs"). No, not the "prison of the soul", but its life, impulse, freedom and beauty. Of course, in sports, this victory is symbolic in the deepest sense of the word. These bodies will grow old and heavy. This is only a breakthrough and therefore a symbol. But the essence of the symbol is in what it manifests and to what, therefore, it calls... Christ walked on the water not because He was incorporeal, but because His body was Him to the end, His freedom, His life... Everything in sport – asceticism, purposefulness, inherent chastity, organic and not artificial beauty manifested in it – everything indicates, proves, and manifests the possibility of transformation. This probably does not mean that everyone should go in for sports. This, however, reveals how the body should be treated, reveals and reveals the body itself. The limit of sport is not pleasure, but joy, and that's the difference.

Yesterday is the ninetieth anniversary (!) of A.A. Bogolepov. His response was amazing – in terms of clarity, brevity, and inner discipline. Another "phenomenon" is of the same victory. A person without promiscuity.

Tuesday, February 10, 1976