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PARTISAN REVIEW
all of a sudden, all those individualistic creative actions were united into a
mass creative action; a general inspiration and intoxication by Freedom.
Such miracles, however, happen extremely seldom in the course of
history; meanwhile, in the routine development of modem super-civi–
lization, more and more often, a discouraging question arises: does any–
one need yours or somebody else's creative Self?
In the super-civilized, computerized, all but completely classified and
calculated world turns up a new hoi polloi, a new breed of plebeianss,
obsessed with self-indulgence and a cheap hedonism. For all that external
multifariousness, these people, as we see, are very well organized into the
consuming masses. There is a society in which the cats' front paws are
being declawed, the dogs are being deprived of their basic delights, the
Pegasuses' wings are being carefully clipped. Those horses still can show
off their feathers, but they already cannot fly. The question is:
will
the
new Western plebeians ever be able to get inspired in a mass individualis–
tic spontaneity, in other words,
will
they be able to say "no" to the new
masks of totalitarianism? Among other things, it depends on the presence
of that above-mentioned "smaller writer."
Finally, let me tell you a parable about one Soviet Christian. As a
boy during Stalin's years, he wore a neck-cross.
An
excursion to a com–
munal bath-house or a medical examination in a regional military re–
cruitment center was usually turned into a sheer ordeal for him. Every–
body made fun of him. Look, this guy has a cross on his neck, what a
jerk, wearing a cross like an old woman! Some people demanded: "Take
it off immediately, or you'll be kicked out of school!" He didn't take it
of[ He kept on wearing this symbol of the Crucifixion, and doing so, he
was becoming an example of pure individualism in an atheistic, totalitar–
ian society. He believed in God and had no desire to part with a small
object of persecution and alienation.
One day, a few decades later, he found himself on a fashionable
beach in Yalta. There everybody wore neck-crosses; some semi-criminal
nouveau riche and their Schwarzenegger-like bodyguards, the over–
weight matrons and the slim ladies of virtue, racketeers, gamblers, former
Communists and KGB-men ... And all of a sudden, our Christian be–
came part of that crowd because he still had his same old little cross on
his neck. The object of his innermost personality has turned into a trendy
decoration. What should I do, he thought, shouldn't I take it off just
because
all
of them sport neck-crosses nowadays? He didn't take it off
and it gives to anyone an opportunity to draw any conclusion, even in
the Freudian fashion.
