In every person there is bad and there is good. I cannot believe there could be such a man who would not understand what it is to be vain, or a coward, or an egoist. In the artist this manifests itself especially vividly, and in this resides one of the surprising characteristics of the artist: the experiencing of others' passions. In each person are planted the seedlings of the most various passions—both light and dark. I can create the image of a coward on the basis of exceptionally trivial recollections of childhood with the help of my memory, in which there is preserved a hint, a trace, a contour of some action, perhaps barely begun, whose impetus was cowardice. When you depict a negative hero, you yourself become negative, you raise up from the bottom of your soul what is sordid; that is, you confirm for yourself that it exists within you, and therefore take upon your consciousness a very heavy psychological burden. Six years ago I wrote the novel Envy. The central character of this story was Nikolai Kavalerov. I was told that there was much of myself in Kavalerov. Right away it was said that Kavalerov was a vulgar and worthless individual. I took this accusation of worthlessness and vulgarity to apply to me, and it astounded me. I did not believe it, and I kept it to myself. I began to think that what I had thought to be my treasure was in fact my poverty. I imagined a very difficult, sorrowful life—the life of a person from whom everything has been taken away. The artist's imagination came to my aid, and its breath transformed the naked thought of social irrelevance into invention. I live, unneeded by anyone, vulgar and worthless. This is a terribly touching story to tell oneself; one terribly enjoys feeling sorry for oneself. I thought about it, and realized that my foremost dream was the dream of retaining the right to the colors of my youth. While I was searching for youth—the country was constructing factories. This was the first Five-Year Plan for the creation of Socialist industry. This was not my theme. I would have been lying, making things up; I would not have had what one calls inspiration. I grew alarmed and began to think that I was useful to no one, that there was nothing to which my peculiar abilities as an artist could be applied. In accepting the worker's and Komsomol member's suggestions as to how I ought to live and work, I have matured, my thinking has grown stronger, but the colors within have remained the same. Thus did my youth return to me. The people who were building factories, the heroes of construction, those who were collectivizing the countryside, those who were doing all these things that seem inconceivable to me —these people—Glory to them!—with all their amazing activity, which I had disregarded, have created a government, a socialist country, a motherland! Under this government the first young generation is growing; the young Soviet person is growing. As an artist, I rush toward him. I cannot write without finding an analogy between you and myself. I wish to create the type of the young person, endowing him with the best of what I had in my youth. I consider that the historical task of the writer is to write books that will arouse in our youth the feeling of emulation, the feeling of the necessity of being better. One must choose what is best within oneself, in order to create the portrait of a person who might serve as a model. The writer must be a nurturer and a teacher. Somewhere within me lives the conviction that Communism is not only an economic system, but also a moral system, and the first to embody this aspect of Communism will be the young men and women. My entire sense of beauty to the most complex psychological ideas—I shall strive to embody my vision in these things in such a way as to show that the new socialist relationship to the world represents a human relationship in the purest sense. Such is the return of youth. The treasure I once possessed remains intact; this treasure expresses itself in the knowledge that the world is beautiful, and that what has made it bad is the domination of money, the domination of man over man. Under the domination of money this world was fantastical and distorted. Now, for the first time in the history of culture, it has become real and just.
*****
by YURI OLESHA
Translated by David Powelstock
Brandeis University
By Nikita Vishnevskiy
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