Vasily Rozanov: writing and the ethos of testimony

Abstract

The article considers the concepts of writing, testimony and ethos along with the category of understanding as basic in Vasily Rozanov’s work. It is in the center of these concepts and categories that Rozanov’s original idea affirming life and literature is formed, where the topological construction of reasoning reduced in heterogeneous interaction makes it possible to talk about events relevant to modernity. Behind the apparent arbitrariness and impressionistic writing, there is a single position in its multiplicity, which allows us to talk about the ethos of creativity in a particularly significant for Rozanov form of testimony, in which attention to materiality, objectivity and specific experiences is deeply correlated with the tradition of the lifeworld and with the utmost attention to symbolic meanings and images of culture. The ethos of testimony and ethics of events, considered on the material of Rozanov’s work, allow us to turn to the themes of the correlation between the aesthetics of creativity, the ethics of acting and actual politics, which appears as the area of life structure where it is impossible to abandon decision-making. The author, acting as a subject-witness, is significant for understanding the subject and subjectivity in the epistemological context and the value aura of modernity.