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Excerpts from Nikolay Berdyaev's Letters to Mme K

Title: Excerpts from Nikolay Berdyaev's Letters to Mme K
Subject: Personal reflections, Suffering, Materialism, Atheism, Relativism, Rationalism, Politics, Personalism, Women and Love, Society and idolatry, Communism, Soviet Regime, Personality, Art, Cross, Creativity, Power, Freedom, Christianity, Mme K, God, Good and Evil, Truth, Slavery, Man, Humanity.
Creator: Nikolay Berdiaff's
Nicholas Berdyaev
Source: Berdiaev museum in Clamart France
Date: 1931-1939
Language: English
Type: Letters/correspondence, person

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Title: Mme K, 1
Description: Excerpts from Nikolay Berdiaeff’s
letters to Mme K.
(1931 - 1939).

You write that you stopped at my house entrance, not daring to enter. The doors of my house are open — particularly to those who are in anguish and distress.

The place of the son of God is on Calvary. That is the meaning of the Cross, and everything in life has to go through the Cross. This is the greatest truth.

In the first place I love the freedom of the spirit; and I love God and Truth more than any man.

You ask me whether I don’t feel life’s injustice, and how is it that I can live? Not only do I feel, but I know that the world is evil. I feel most keenly the evil and the suffering of the life of the world. But I believe that the last word belongs to God, i.e. to meaning and not to nonsense. I also feel that the very existence of man is in greatest peril, namely that men will change into an ant. Nevertheless I believe that man is destined for eternity and for a royal purpose.

I quite believe in woman’s love and think that women are most capable of it, but the character of that love is repulsive to me, does not attract me at all. At times I feel genuine disgust for feminine love, to be more exact, with regard to the past, because now I am far from all that.

You say you are interested in art. Indeed, there is prophetic premonition in art. I think that futuristic art reflects the transition of culture to technical civilization. It is a process of analytic disintegration of natural organic wholeness — a dismembering of the human image. In cubism man is mixed up with objects. It is a disincarnation of

Title: Mme K, 2
Description: things; the limits separating man from the cosmos are removed. I feel that objectless, geometrical art is a premonition of the coming, of new, technological reality.

You are interested in Lenin, but Lenin was an imperialist and not an anarchist. Lenin was a statesman who combined the maximalism of an idea with opportunism. His mind is crude, elementary, restricted.

My faith in God is absolute and unshakeable. I believe in God, because I do not believe in the self-sufficiency of the world and of man. The meaning of the world is in God. To believe in God is a duty of noblemindedness. There is something ignoble in godlessness, in the belief in the “world.”

You are right - my soul is youthful. I feel as in the first day of creation, despite tiredness and infirmities.

You say that I indicate no real way out. First of all I am not a politician, nor an economist, and am under no obligation to evolve social programmes and political tactics. I am a philosopher and am interested in communism in the first instance as a spiritual phenomenon. You are mistaken in thinking that communism has found the “real solution.” First of all communism is a symptom of the old world coming to an end. Russian communism has in no way realised itself. I am afraid it is creating a new type of cruel bourgeoisie — soviet bureaucracy.

The Cross should be borne creatively and actively, whereas communism denies the Cross altogether, because it has worshipped this fallen world and has deified it.

I consider myself to be a socialist, and have my idea of the desirable social structure, but I am inimical to socialism based on the deification of the State and society. I sympathise with the socialism of a syndicalist type, which
Contributor: Chat GPT-4o

Title: Mme K, 3
Description: sees ultimate value neither in society, nor in the state, or the nation or party, but in man.

It is true I do not like rich people very much. But my attitude to wealth is not of class character, but is an evangelical one. I do not like wealth, and I think that it is difficult for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but that is according to the Gospel and not according to Marx.

You think that Marx knew and understood man well. Marx did not understand anything in man and was not at all interested in him. Marx shared the old rationalistic ideas on the nature of man, which means that he understood nothing in man. He is an outstanding sociologist and had striking thoughts about men, but he is not an anthropologist. Marxism is not at all modern, it does not correspond with modern thought or modern reality. As marxist-communists employ only material weapons - fist blows, imprisonment and executions, one cannot and one should not judge their mental processes and their understanding of man. Marx himself was of course quite different, but since then his movement has become bestialized. Considering man to be a beast and having become a beast himself, a marxist cannot understand man, he is no longer connected with the human world. You, like many in our days, have been tempted by triumphant force. But this force is only apparent, spectral. Real force is in truth. (1937).

You very often see in the conduct of men interests, intrigues, etc., and you probably consider me naive, because I do not want to pay attention to this. In fact I see and know it all perfectly well, but I do not want to direct my attention upon it. I find the laws of the world repugnant. I feel stronger than ever that I am not present in this world as a part of the whole. My attitude towards the world is very active, but as if I had come from outside. At the same time I feel responsible for the world and for men.
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Title: Mme K, 4
Description: You always expect some bright future, and consider that the road to that future is unavoidably repellent. But a disgusting road can lead only to a disgusting future. This is proved by all history. The main thing is that road. All human life - individual and historical - is only a way. This world is a way.

You place love in the centre of life and you write the word Love with a capital L. And that is why I would like to tell you some bitter words about love. Love (I mean erotic love between man and woman) has been debased and sullied to such an extent that soon it will be impossible to use that word in human language. Real love has a deep meaning, but it is rare and it must be expressed by other words and other gestures. Modern love novels bear the imprint of ineffaceable sordidness and vulgarity. This was not always so. It was different in the period of the Renaissance. In our time, when beauty is dying, this requires serious consideration.

Most professors are fools, it is one of the silliest trades (classes). I have met many peasants and labourers who were more intelligent and understanding. Bukharin belongs to those who do not understand anything. He cannot even understand the absolute difference between the individualism of Spencer and my idea of personality. But dishonesty is added to this lack of understanding.

I know that the nature of woman has an unusual capacity to deceive itself, to give a false or illusory expression to what is taking place in the unconscious. And other people fall victim of the false interpretation, which women give to the state they are in. Woman is a riddle to herself, she does not understand what is taking place in her and whither she is striving. Moreover, the nature of woman has a tendency towards obsessions.
Contributor: Chat GPT-4o summary

Title: Mme K, 5
Description: The woman is now undergoing a terrible crisis in the world. One does not know what she has become, this applies particularly to talented women.

Women are easily becoming victims of some particular condition (state of mind) to the exclusion of everything else, of the whole variety of the world. That is why women are so particularly prone to being obsessed. If a woman suffers from unreturned love, then to the question "what is the world?" she could easily reply - the world is unreturned love. Man is not likely to give such an answer. He can suffer from unreturned love, but at the same time he can be absorbed in science or in his political work. The typical masculine nature is of several planes, it can at the same time embody suffering and joy, oppression and elation, suffering from one cause and joy from another. It is exactly because of this that man was able to do so much (in history) in all fields. It is also because of this that women is more genial and more whole in love, while man, with rare exceptions, is partial. I can feel depressed by financial circumstances and at the same time undergo a great increase of mental creative tension.

I always feel that I live not in one world, but in two, even in several worlds, and never belong to one manifested world.

With reference to love and salvation in connection with Jouhandeau - the love of another being can help, but it cannot save on its own account. The theme of hell is more deeply treated by Jouve.

The principle thought of my books - The meaning and of creation, and The Destiny of man - is that all the fruits of the creative effort directed towards men is a cooling down of the creative fire, they lead to heaviness and pull down to earth after the creative flight upwards. A pure creative fire would burn the world, and this the world could not bear.
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Title: Mme K, 6
Description: There are two types among those who strive to rise above the drabness of life - the one seek an intensification of vitality, happiness, and joy within limits, they look for means how to do it; the others search for truth and meaning, they want to pass into a world of truth and meaning, they seek an exit into a what. I very definitely belong to this second type. I do not understand and am quite foreign to the type of A. Gide, who, having puritan sources, was looking for joy of life and reached a pitiful philosophy which considers that happiness is the purpose of life. I believe that there is a real Truth and a real Meaning. One ought to seek Truth and Meaning and to assert them, even at the price of suffering and unhappiness.

I feel the agony of the world, but I feel that it is necessary. It is a characteristic aspect of our time that personal destiny becomes involved with the destiny of the world, there is no isolated personal destiny. Man has never yet been so cast out into the world, into history, into the collective, and he has never yet been so alone.

The feeling of the divine mystery of the world is the greatest reality, and reality is also the spiritual world into which our soul is sunk. But not everything that we sense and feel is reality - there are false sensations and feelings.

Man can’t bear the faith into himself, which should be directed not upon man, but to something higher than man.

I had very kind feelings towards my parents, but I always felt that I was not born from my parents, but that I had come from some other world.

You mention a magazine, which combines the symbol of the Cross with the symbol of the Hammer and Sickle.

Title: Mme K, 7
Description: I know it, I have seen it. I object to the junction of the Cross with the Hammer and Sickle, but not at all because I am against the symbol of the Hammer and Sickle. On the contrary I very much sympathise with that symbol of industrial and agricultural work. But one cannot join into one the Cross which belongs to eternity and the Hammer and Sickle which belong to time.

I wonder whether you would be interested in my book "Spirit and Reality." It is very far from everything in which the modern world is interested today. Though I think that such an impression is obtained if it is viewed from the outside, and that from the inside the book has an important bearing on what is now happening in the world. I am not capable to completely abstract thought.

I consider that Jouhandeau is possibly the greatest talent in French literature. But I have no moral confidence in him. He is not a man who seeks truth and justice, and who would value them most of all. He is more interested in something else, some account with himself.

I should like to give some explanations to define my attitude to the Moscow trial, to which I attach great importance. The baseness and vileness of this trial is not in the fact of the executions (though I am absolutely opposed to capital punishment, terror and murder), but that the left communists, the only ones who remained faithful to international communism were represented as Fascists, counter-revolutionaries and defenders of capitalism, this having been done because of political considerations in a struggle for power. This has not been equaled in history. The principal collaborators of Lenin and the creators of the communist revolution have been called murderers and thieves. What prosecutors and what defendants! Danton died in a different manner. He was given the right to die without dishonouring himself.

Title: Mme K, 8
Description: Revolutions are sometimes inevitable and may lead to positive consequences, but they strike one by an absence of nobility and by their ingratitude, they devour their children. But never has this happened with such cynicism, in such a fraudulent and vile form. And here I must say that I have no political sympathy towards the victims of the trial.

The present Government in Russia, tending to a particular form of Fascism, has common sense and the feeling of reality; for Russia’s interests it is politically better than the doctrinaires of the old communism. I think that the work of Trotsky was harmful and dangerous for Russia. But the political evaluation of a government is one thing, another is its moral value. Not everything is permitted, there is an eternal law of God and an eternal law of humanity. Everything that is accessible to baseness and vileness will bring terrible fruits in the future. I am glad that the socialists in the west have found the moral freedom and independence to condemn this trial, as being without example in its lawlessness and falsification. Communism is unacceptable not because it assails property, which in itself it is based on force, but because it denies the value of man, because it produces moral slavery and plunges men into an unceasing terror and fear.

I have already been told that my manner of writing has an element of imperialism and a kind of arrogance, which can irritate. This is very interesting, because in life I do not like power, I do not like dominion over people, in fact I feel uncomfortable at any power over others, as I do not tolerate any power of others over myself. I love freedom very much, am very open to the thoughts of others, to all sorts of young and new currents of thoughts and am able to understand them. But my thinking is authoritative and didactic. This becomes apparent in the manner of my writing and also in debates. And at the same time I do not want at all to lead, am not interested to have disciples and followers, and lack all will for power.

Title: Mme K, 9
Description: Only Christianity denies substantially and to the very depth the temptation of wealth, which is only one of the manifestations of the temptation of the world in general.

The trouble is not only in the discrepancy between means and ends, the trouble lies in the fact that the aim is only a means. The most perfect organisation of society is only a means. The end is in man, while in man is revealed eternity and infinity - the spirit. Communism applies its methods to realise only means, i.e. to achieve a certain social organisation, which, it is true, is more just than other organisations, but the end remains hidden. Such means were used to create all states, empires, national unions. But the ends continued to remain hidden. It is this likeness of ends, this hiddenness of ends, inspires the greatest anxiety.

My passion for ideas is my greatest passion.

Venus was born from the foam of the sea. She was a goddess in Greece. In our world she became a cabaret singer and a cocotte.

It was funny to read that you compare my Christianity with Marxism - one of the most dogmatic, immovable and petrified teachings, which has ever been formed in the history of human thought. The dynamism of the Russian Marxism made idiotic, Marxism is entirely superficial and apparent. It lacks all dynamism of thought, there is no movement of the spirit, it is the complete suffocation of a dungeon. I always held the view that organised materialism will lead to dynamic immobility.

I am inimical to the spirit of communism, it is horribly foreign to me. I am for the destruction of social classes, for the creation of a purely labour society.

The need of God in man is very deep. It is deeper than the problem of love, and at the same time it is a problem of love.

Title: Mme K, 10
Description: It is obvious that you have never read the Gospels. If you had you would not have said with such lightheartedness and with such lack of wisdom that simplicity is from man and that non-simplicity is from God. Christian revelation teaches us that simplicity is from God, that everything great is simple, as simple as the snow white Montblanc, which these days I see before me. But it is from men that comes lack of simplicity, involvement, separableness, dimness, contortion, crookedness. Simplicity is the victory of spirituality over non-wholeness and the disunion of our mental and physical life. You are honoring me by saying that everything in me is so calm, so fluid, so shapely. But such a characteristic is due to your not knowing me. I am a man who is far from calm, I am a man of a rebellious spirit, and perhaps one has to regret that there is no fluidity and shapeliness in me. But I possess the knowledge and the faith in simple Truth. I love simplicity and I strive towards it, but myself I am not simple or not simple in the principle of things.

You ask me what I think of modern art. I consider that art is not only undergoing a crisis, as many now think, but I think of the possibility of its end. There have been many crises in art. But now the question has become more serious. It is true there are still talents, the modern novel is interesting, but there is no great art and creative imagination has completely weakened. I am surprised by the indecision of our men of art at the face of present day social conflicts and revolutions. Some of them give themselves more and more to solitude, draw away from life, while others compromise with communism. The whole Soviet literature cannot be called true literature. Literature has lost its teaching importance, it drags behind. And at the same time art has ceased to be pure art, beauty has disappeared from it. In the past man was the main object of art. It was so in Greek art, during the Renaissance and in the 19th century. But now art

Title: Mme K, 11
Description: is undergoing a process of dehumanisation. I wrote about this some 30 years ago in Russia in an article on Picasso. I wrote then that the entirety, wholeness, of the human figure is disappearing, and that only the component elements of man are left. Futurism was a mingling of man with machines and objects. But the neo-classicism, e.g. Valéry, wants to get away from the human and to reach pure form. Genuine classicism was not like that. The theatre of Racine was human, and so was the music of Mozart. Tragedy does no longer exist, it has become impossible in a tragic era. The modern novel is not a novel of psychological analysis, in it there is a decomposition of emotions, a split of mental consciousness. Man has become mainly a function of sex. The modern novel has rather a scientific significance and is a sign of a deep crisis in art. There is no catharsis, no elevation over what is being described by the artist. The meaning of art has been lost, as well as the anticipation of life’s transfiguration. I think that we are on the threshold of art passing beyond its limits.

In the course of the last few days I have been thinking about nationalism. It is one of the most dangerous idols torturing mankind. This is deeper than etatism. Modern nationalism is not interested in national culture, it is only interested in the power of the state, it creates armies, technology and police. In nationalism there is a shutting up and expansion. The nationalism of the Bolsheviks becomes imperialism or messianism (having messianic claims). The internationalism which charms you so much is not less a fallacy. And not only because it deprives workers of their Fatherland.

Like all communists you speak about exploitation and oppression of workers. And that is true - there is exploitation. But you forget that materialism and atheism have no idea of exploitation. If man is matter, as it is being taught

Title: Mme K, 12
Description: taught by communism, then the power of the stronger ones is natural and justified. In the struggle for survival it is the best and the strongest who win. That is why the kulaks and the exploitators rule because of natural necessity, and are the best people.

The people in the West do not understand what is happening in Soviet Russia. The Russians are an apocalyptic people. They had carried out the experiment of creating socialism. They did not accept the humanistic civilization with its parliamentary democracy, and in their tragic experience there were revealed the ultimate limits of socialism, which lay bare its nature. The people in the West should learn a great deal from this experience. Reality has shown that the question of socialism is not an economic and political one - it is a question concerning God and immortality. I advise you to ponder over this.

I expect and believe in the coming of the millennium, though my expectation and my faith are not orthodox. The millennium is the third sphere, neither earth nor heaven. It is the limit between the other world and this world. It is a melting of the petrified, fallen world.

You like poetry, but you do not understand that great creative activity, and in general every genuine creative work is impossible for its own sake. One can create only in the name of God. Creative work has two opposite parents. It can spring from poverty, deficiency, and also from wealth, from an abundance of forces. When the natural man creates not for God, but for himself he produces the void. In genuine creative work, in the creative ecstasy there is more renunciation than in humility, there is greater thinking about God than about oneself. Creative work is always sacrificial. Creative work which does not involve sacrifice - is emptiness.

You do not fully understand that I have a mystical feeling and understanding of life and that I am a Christian.

Title: Mme K, 13
Description: To a Christian philosopher everything in this world is a symbol of another, spiritual world. After all its "stages," materialistic and atheistic communism will never overcome the symbol of money, because the power of money is a symbol of the power of "the Prince of this world," whom the spirit of communism worships, accepting the temptation of wealth. To the symbol of money is opposed the symbol of the Crucifixion, to the mystery of money - the mystery of the eucharist. To you all this is myth and poetry, to me it is reality, a supreme reality. And I am not going to abjure these realities just because most of humanity have abjured them.

I am certainly looking for meaning, but I want not only to understand that meaning, but also to realize it in the fullness of life.

Christianity was distorted and could not realize itself in the world, because it is directed to man's freedom, and does not tolerate compulsion. Spirit can get estranged from itself, which happens when it strives to objectivity, it can decrease and dry up. The spirit can be cut off from the world. This is the tragedy of the spirit and the tragedy of life. The materialist possesses spirit, but he is alienated from it in his consciousness. Man can be thrown up the surface, and his own depth can close up.

I am very tired. I have a pet tom cat. In general I love animals. He got sick, and out of anxiety I did not sleep several nights.

I cannot bear fear and fright, and have never experienced such a state of mind, even when I talked to Dzerzhinsky in the Tcheka.

The article by Malraux that you sent me is not silly, but one cannot call it having insight of and penetrating into phenomena, it is a discussion of an abstract character.

Title: Mme K, 14
Description: Malraux is a type of modern man, who is chained in the relativity of the various types of civilization. He does not suspect the existence of realities which are not connected with civilization and which are not relative, i.e. which have no connection with time and place.

I am indeed not a man of 'yesterday' or of 'today', or even of 'tomorrow'. I am looking into a more distant future, not even into the future, but into eternity.

Step out of the world of scepticism, in which everything appears double, and enter the world where there is God, where 'good' and 'evil' are realities of existence, and not human feelings and thoughts. I am least of all liable to perish through some relations with women. This is contrary to my conception of my mission in the world.

For me resurrection can only be through Christ.

I consider it terrible that the first attempt to achieve greater social justice in Russia is associated with tyranny and servitude. Christianity harmed itself in history not by its aims, not by its pure source, but by the means through which the Christians wanted to fulfill it. And thus everything will be lost.

What hinders my natural inclination to sympathise with the emigrants - and they are poor, miserable, and have suffered defeat - is that they, too much conscious of being the bearers of higher principles, which is not true.

I must confess that I do not love the personality of Dostoyevsky, I am even repulsed by him.

Dante is a great genius, who has expressed an enormous world. But I do not like him. I consider him to be a genius of revenge.

The world is burning. Those who think that history is directed by reason are mistaken.

Title: Mme K, 15
Description: Suicide is always selfishness and a concentration in oneself; incapability to think of others. I consider that suicide is the greatest sin before God, oneself and other people for which the human soul will be held responsible in eternity.

I am not at all afraid that an attack is being prepared on me during the discussion with Nizen. In general it is not easy to frighten me. After the receipt of your letter I looked up Lenin's philosophical book, the only one referring to absolute truth, and was once more convinced that I am completely right. It is Malraux, whom I told it, who does not know Lenin. It is not pleasant to argue with people who do not seek truth, but only victory.

I am disgusted by Bergamin's speech against Gide. He is a sincere man (not like A. Tolstoy) and is moved by love to his people. But it is evident from his speech that he is not at all interested in truth and justice, as so many modern people. He looks upon Gide's book as well as on the Russian people solely from the viewpoint of guns and aeroplanes helping the Spanish people in war. But there is a more important question, the question whether it is true and correct what Gide writes about Russia, the question of the tragic fate of the Russian people. Every truth should be accepted even if it were unprofitable. Truth is always unprofitable, falsehood is more profitable. The unbelievable falsity of our atmosphere is due to the demand of complete acceptance and approval. This is slavery. There has never been such cowardice as in our days. There has never been so little of revolutionary heroism. One has first of all to denounce morally the ugliness and baseness in revolution of its ideas and beliefs. I am a Christian, but I do not defend and justify all the vile and base deeds of the Christians, but consider it my duty to indict them. But to do this one has to believe in the existence of truth. The dialectical materialism unavoidably denies the absoluteness of truth.

Title: Mme K, 16
Description: and subordinates it to the struggle for force. On this theme I had endless discussions with Lunacharski in my younger years.

Andrei Belyi, as **, a writer and an artist, stands many heads above Gorkyi, he had traits of genius. While Gorkyi was a talented Asian barbarian, who organically was unable to commune with European culture. His attitude to western civilization is one of worshipping an idol.

I consider the book by Suares as one of the most remarkable in recent years. In communistic thinking, this is the first step forward since the time of Marx. Marx was a genius, but marxists are in most cases idiots, repeating like parrots one and the same thing, without any movement forward of thought. In modern, young Soviet philosophy, which I know fairly well, there is a change in comparison with classical marxism (a denial of determinism), but one cannot compare this with Suares in originality and depth. He would probably be considered a heretic and would have been imprisoned. He is the first to pose ** not the problem of society, but the problem of the revolution of human ** consciousness. It is a mysticism of communism and of godlessness. I consider the thesis of Suares to be philosophically indefensible; it is based on an incomprehensible and unfounded optimism. But his attempt is brilliant and original, and completely confirms what I think about communism. Lenin did not know this yet and did not understand. His mind belongs half to the old world. What Suares is saying is strikingly like Christianity. It is a godless Christianity. This makes this book so frightful. Christianity also demands the overcoming of one's self, of one's egocentrism; it demands the inclusion of the universal, which in a moment overcomes time, the replacement of reaction causing the isolation of the I by a reaction that is whole.

Title: Mme K, 17
Description: Since my childhood, a state of mind is inherent in me—a melancholy best defined by the word "longing" (Germ., Schwermut). It was strongest in my youth. In the later years, it has again become acute. The source of this melancholy is the aloofness of the world, the mortality and the transience of everything in the world. It is a longing for eternity, for kindred eternity.

You are mistaken in your interpretation of the truth that one has to die in order to resuscitate—the Christian truth. This truth speaks of a voluntary bearing of the Cross and death, and not of murder. In any case, it is the murdered who will resuscitate and not the killers. It is the killers who indeed perish. One should pity these perishing people. The dictators are the most defunct, the most fallen—and one should cease to pity them and not admire them.

You consider that the center of gravity lies in the life of the race, which always projects itself into the future, while to me, the center of gravity is in the life of a person, of any person, and the life of the person is an eternal present; it can never be a means. Communism as a philosophical worldview has a false doctrine of time. It is only a metaphysical error, as a result of which it does not know man in the present time, but only a man in the future.

You obviously confuse the fact that I am a philosopher and act in the intellectual sphere, and that therefore I must on account of my calling and specialty possess intellectual skill—with "rationality." I possess from childhood the absolute feeling of the reality of another, spiritual world, of an invisible world, and I always had difficulty in recognizing the reality of the visible world we know through our senses. This feeling is not connected with any philosophical ideas. Moreover, I possess a very strong feeling of the instability of the earthly world, the feeling that

Title: Mme K, 18
Description: This world stands at a precipice, that there is a constant imminence of the end. In this respect, I am an apocalyptic person. One could say that I defend myself from the chasm opening on the other side by philosophical intellectuality, by efforts of thought.

The struggle against hell is one of my strongest motives.

The link of a man with life cannot and should not be determined exclusively by another man, whoever he be. In this, I see a radical falsehood in the attitude to life. With women, their relations to God and to truth are often determined by their attitude to some man. But this in fact puts this man above God, above truth. You accept an exclusively lyrical significance and justification of life. But the lyrical element, which of course has a great importance, is inevitably egocentric. Lyrical poetry transfigures this egocentrism.

Now we come to the most important. The spiritual world cannot be the result of something that has nothing in common with spirit. This is a fundamental lie. The lower can never create the higher; matter cannot create spirit; absurdity cannot create meaning; the world cannot engender God. The spirit is in the beginning and not in the end. That is why I am by conviction an aristocrat (not in the social but in the spiritual meaning of the word). Quantity never creates quality; darkness and evil will never engender light and goodness. This, my aristocracy of spirit, is felt by those who call me a reactionary. I am a reactionary not only in the eyes of a Marxist, but also in the eyes of a French radical-positivist; also in the eyes of Miliukoff. In my capacity of ‘reactionary’ I deny the supremacy of reason, I deny evolution, I do not believe in progress, I do not believe in human happiness on earth. At the same time, I am a passionate defender of freedom.

Title: Mme K, 19
Description: By means of a tyranny one can only create tyranny and nothing else. Blood begets blood, compulsion - compulsion, wickedness and hatred beget wickedness and hatred. Freedom is not created by a compulsory economic organisation. A personalistic revolution is necessary, a revolution in the name of every human personality, which would overthrow all fetishes and idols. Marxism expresses itself in abstract notions and not in concrete ones. The proletariat is an abstraction, concrete are working people. Bread is required not for society, not for a collective, but for people, for man.

You have not understood well what conscience is. Stalin and Hitler have the same kind of "conscience"; they both determine their ethics not in relation to men, but in relation to society and the state. The British prime minister Baldwin has the same "conscience" as Stalin and Hitler, for him too the state and society are above man and humanity. It is an eternal conflict, described by Sophocles in his Antigone (read Greek tragedies). You also follow Creonites and not Antigone. You are for the law of society and state, against man. The last man is greater and higher than the "world" with all its kingdoms, - monarchal, democratic, communist. Nothing that is general, nothing that is abstract exists really, only the concrete, the individual, and unique exists really. And this is the true revolution, and not a massacre like all political revolutions. There is eternal conscience as a revelation of God in the depth of man. Do not kill, do not steal, do not lie and deceive, do not hate, do not revenge - love God and your neighbour, the man. It is this eternal that is punished by Hitler, Stalin and by all men of power, who worship "society."

There is a deep difference between the eternal in time, and the mortal, transient in time. Here is an example. In the future no one will read marxist-communist writings, perhaps only in the course of historical research.

Title: Mme K, 20
Description: Because everything in these writings is so inept and insignificant. But as long as mankind exists people will be reading the prophets, Greek tragedies, Plato, Dante, and the great philosophers, as well as our Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Communism is inspired by hatred to human genius, to the sublime and the eternal.

I have read in a journal excerpts from the speeches made at the conference of writers. Moreover, I have read the entire texts of the speeches made by Gide and Bend. On the whole the speeches appeared to me to reveal a great deal of insignificant thoughts, unable to understand the depth of the world crisis. Everything remains on the surface, they all use old words and categories, whereas everything has changed. I have the clear impression that a misunderstanding is occurring between French writers, who have always been humanists, but sympathise with communism, on the one hand, and the Soviet writers on the other. The Soviet writers attribute to the word "freedom" quite a different meaning than the French and other writers. It is only because of this different meaning attributed to the word "freedom" that one can say that freedom of thought and speech now exists in Russia, while in fact this freedom is being denied there not less than in Germany. It would be difficult to convince me that freedom exists there, because as proof I'll require to be allowed to publish one of my books in Russia or to have one imported into Russia. Germany has just banned one of my latest books. It is just the same.

A. Gide, to whom I have sympathy, is a humanist and an individualist in the old sense of these words, and naively tries to combine his boundless individualism with communism. In fact he does not understand what integral communism is, and stands much closer to my "personalistic socialism". The most interesting speech was delivered by Malraux—it was fresh. But he is much more of a follower of Nietzsche than of Marx. The speeches by the Russian delegates, of which

Title: Mme K, 21
Description: I read only extracts, appeared to me to be uninteresting, and this even saddened me. I was surprised by Nizan's assertion that communism is eclectic - this is quite absurd. But in general I am of the opinion that the conference was not sufficiently free, and that the preoccupation of being politically organised played too great a role. Free speech and free thought should avoid being politically organised like the pest. No one spoke about the prophetic mission of the word and of the thought. And prophetic meaning is free and there is an eternal meaning.

You somehow reproach me that my attitude to money is like that of a poet, and that I see in them a symbol and a mystery. You do not understand sufficiently well that I have a mystical feeling and comprehension of life, and that I am a Christian. For a Christian philosopher everything in this world is also a symbol of another, spiritual world. When I was saying that the power of money was not overcome, even by communism, I had in view not at all the elementary fact that money exists in Russia, and that there exists also the inequality connected with money. This latter fact is being explained by saying that it is impossible to establish real communism in one country; that one has to pass through a stage when money is retained. But going through these stages communism, which is of a materialistic and atheistic spirit, will never succeed in overcoming the symbol of money and the power of money, because money is the symbol of the power of the 'prince of this world,' whom the communistic spirit worships, accepting the temptation of 'wealth.' The symbol of money is opposed by the symbol of the Crucifix; the mystery of money is opposed by the mystery of the Eucharist. To you these are myths and poetry (thank God that you at least think them to be poetry!) - to me they are a reality, the primordial reality. And I am not going to renounce these realities just because the greater part of modern mankind has renounced them and worships the reason of this world.

Title: Mme K, 22
Description: You continue to use seriously such words as 'right' and 'left', and are interested to know whether I am more to the 'right' or more to the 'left' than you had thought me to be. But these words are miserable street words of the press, deprived of any deep meaning and content. One should be interested not in 'left' and 'right', but in truth and justice and verity. But people do not strongly believe in the existence of truth and verity, and therefore falsify the criteria of truth and falsehood by the criteria of 'left' and 'right'. What does it mean when you say that you thought me to be more to the 'right' than I actually am? Did you think that I am an enemy of freedom, and am against justice and humanity? And why did you come to hear the lectures of a man of the 'right' like me, why did you start a correspondence with him? Why did you want to go over from your world into my world? It is all incomprehensible. In so far as I have a negative opinion of Russian communists (not to communism in general) I consider them to be 'right', i.e. that they are enemies of freedom and humanity. The French communists are less to the 'right'.

I am quite sympathetic to L. Blum, and wish him success from all my heart. But I am afraid that he will not achieve real success in his enterprise, just because he is a very decent man - he is not a demagogue, he is not malicious, he does not use lies as his chief weapon. Present day demagogues and dictators, the masters of the masses are malicious and deceitful. The weakness of Blum's Government lies in that he will not be able to deal with the Banks. The communists on the other hand are quite ridiculous, they continue to say their usual platitudes, which have already been said by all, even by Laval. The world is in a terrible spiritual state, and this is most frightful.

Title: Mme K, 23
Description: I certainly seek the 'meaning', but I not only want to understand the 'meaning', I must also realize it in the fullness of life. The modern world seeks the benefits of life, the force of life, but does not seek the 'meaning'. In this respect it is on a lower plane than the ancient Egyptians, Hindus, Persians, Greeks and Hebrews.

With regard to your remarks, I’ll say that the spirit can estrange from itself, which happens in objectivation, and can wane and dry up. The spirit can be cut off from the life of the world. The materialist has the spirit, but he is estranged from it in his consciousness. Man can be thrown out on the surface and his own depth can shut up. The refinement of suffering is not happiness, its significance is in something else. And refinement is not always good.

Arrivism is very congenital to modern people, the whole modern life predisposes to it. But in all periods men were inclined to play a part, even in little things, if not in great ones. This is a ridiculous and deplorable trait, and is met with even in people of great spiritual stature. Men sometimes join some particular movement, because it is easier for them to play a part in the movement. There is nothing more comical and grotesque than man's egocentrism and the transformations of this egotism.

I did not express myself correctly, when I said that I belong to a third type, neither bohemian nor family loving. In fact, I think that in general I belong to no type at all. Any crystalized environment and any type of society is foreign to me. Even bohemian society, despite its anarchical character, is also a crystallized type. I was sometimes told that I am like a feudal lord of the Middle Ages, who sits in his castle with the bridges raised. This is only a symbolical comparison, but this type is too definite for me, I have also something quite different. To tell you the truth

Title: Mme K, 24
Description: I have an aversion to every kind of life custom (BYT). I dislike everything final and I like the infinite. All the same it is most painful this solitude in society, this feeling of terrible estrangement, which I know so well. The terrible solitude without people, about which you write, is not solitude, but anxiety, fear, horror.

I have been little interested in Pavloff. He is a great physiologist, but I do not consider it right to apply the theory of reflexes in psychology. But one thing is curious. The communists attached great value to Pavloff, thinking that his theory of reflexes is favourable to materialism. But Pavloff was not only a learned physiologist - he was also an Orthodox Christian, who went to Church and participated in the sacraments of the Church. This is an interesting fact, which is not known to many, as well as it is little known that Claude Bernard (Dostoyevsky called materialists - 'Bernards') was a practising Roman Catholic.

You are right in saying that I am very young. According to my eternal age (everyone has his eternal age) I am a young man. I do not have the feeling of mature age, of solidity of ripeness and respectability. I hate all this.

Your last letter is interesting. 'Meaning' is not identical to 'purpose' (aim). The purpose usually refers to the future, and the present is considered to be a means to this end, whereas 'meaning' is present at every given moment; it is for each man. The 'meaning' considers as its purpose each individual person, and not the future generations.

I am shocked by your defence of the Soviet regime. I have read in the paper 'vozrozhdenie' that I am a 'red general,' that I defend the Tcheka and Solovki, that in the background of my philosophy there hides a defence of bolshevism. What a paradoxical situation.

Title: Mme K, 25
Description: When you describe an official supper with the Soviet 'generals', then everything in me turns over. I remembered Tchernyshevsky sent to forced labour, Zheliabin going to the execution. Truth is only in this. Victory, triumph, fulfillment are always vile and base. The Soviet 'generals' live on the moral capital, which had been accumulated by those who transformed their life by saintliness, sacrifice and suffering.

In this world matter is more solid and firmer than spirit. It is just because of this that the world has to come to an end, such a world cannot exist eternally.

My reaction is different from yours. The falsehood and the absurdity of life does not weaken, but strengthens my faith. The evil of the world testifies to the fact that this world is not self-sufficient.

To feel constantly the yawning chasm of non-existence is the inhuman life.

I have a sober feeling of reality and do not believe in the possibility of doing without the state, this 'cold monster', as Nietzsche said, but my heart belongs to anarchy.

It will be difficult for you to understand to what an extent my life has passed without all that is called 'life', without everything to what people aspire - success, desire for power over contemporaries, and wordly life with its restaurants, receptions, etc. I have an aversion to a role in life. All this seems to me as 'non-existence'. And all this is not due to any feeling that I stand on some particular moral height. There is a lot of badness in me, but of other...

I have observed a long time ago that whenever a man wants something there appear obstacles in the form of 'accidental convergence of circumstances'. As if desire engenders obstacles. Chance, which has no law, plays in human life a greater part than necessity obeying law.

Title: Mme K, 26
Description: Communism is one of the significant forces which act in the mortal convulsions of the dying world and in the similarly convulsing emergence of a new world.

I think that the perception of man can only be whole—of his spirit, his soul, and his body. The face of a person expresses most of his soul. The expression of eyes, the sound of voice, movements, the face of the man, not only his physical face, it is also the face of his spirit and soul.

I cannot express to you to what extent I am hurt by the atmosphere of the world. I am completely lacerated by this atmosphere. The air is saturated with vapours of malice, hatred, thirsting for violence and blood, of falsehood. Men have never been so far from the freedom of spirit.

It is painful for me to read in a novel descriptions of love scenes and words of love, it is painful to hear when I am being told about the love of someone or other. As if I have retained the memory of another life, of another world, of some incomprehensible past.

I did not want to say that lyricism is self-centredness. The charm of lyricism is just in this that it has the power to transform self-centredness, which is so ugly in life, into beauty. Self-centredness is by itself heavy, it oppresses, in lyricism there is liberation. Liberation from heaviness is the attribute of every art.

Sometimes it seems that I can no longer bear the excess of human suffering, and also the excess of falsehood.

I know very well that phenomenon of woman’s nature, which could be called being possessed, and which is called the ‘witch’ element. It is a great misfortune, this existence in a spectral and false world. A person who is ‘possessed’, who has submitted to the power of a force that is foreign and inimical to everything human ceases to own his own self, and at the same time is interested only in his own self, relates everything to himself as if he were the centre of the world.

Title: Mme K, 27
Description: You may think it strange that I should consider any man, who evaluates life events and judgments in accordance with political expedience, to be a being morally degraded, having lost human likeness.

I think that man at every moment of his life should be facing eternity. The denial of eternity – is a vileness which is so strong in our days. Social justice should also be realized in the name of eternity.

I must now once for all explain to you what I call to be a politician and to participate in political struggles, and why I am not a politician. I call politics a struggle in which people use falsehood, deception and compulsion. I am also a fighting man, and am not indifferent to social life. But I fight with spiritual weapons, and do not use falsehood, deception and compulsion.

I take a favorable view of the fact that those who can work in Russia – engineers, doctors, technicians, etc. have gone back. But I am a philosopher and a philosopher of the most unsuitable school. I can exist only in conditions of complete freedom of thought. I cannot adapt myself and submit. I never did it during the five years I spent in Soviet Russia, and for that I was expelled from the country.

Jmando sent me his book. The book is astonishing and very deep. It contains a thought which is very close and akin to me – on God’s dependence on man. It contains a problem much deeper than the problem of love. Jmando is a most remarkable writer and has not yet been understood.

Russian literature of the 19th century and of the beginning of the 20th is on an incomparably higher level than western literature of the same period. It stands on the level of Greek tragedies, Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Goethe.

Title: Mme K, 28
Description: Russian culture will not soon reach higher levels than those achieved by the Russian genius of the 19th century. We are entering the kingdom of the common.

When I read Soviet philosophical and literary discussions I am horrified by their unrelieved tastelessness. It is like a satire or a lampoon. In a textbook on geometry they found a Trotskyist deviation.

I am a defender of freedom, I fight for it. I strongly dislike those who are politically "to the right", conservatives. I am in favour of a classless society and of socialised economy. I combine the aristocratic conception of personality with the socialistic conception of society. There will always be conflicting judgments regarding myself, people will speak about the black-red tones of my world conception.

If I remember something with disgust, it is not because something particularly disgusting happened in my life, but because I am disgusted by the whole of "this world", by the whole life, in which everything that attracts you so, is happening.

The technical achievements of modern art are great, but there is no great art, and no great creators. We are entering a period of collective, mass art. The beauty of human feelings and the beauty of the soul are dying out.

I am even somewhat repulsed by the feminine element. There are many philosophers, who discourse about love and women without having any experience, in an abstract way. I do not belong to them. I have had many observations during my life, and my thoughts are based on experience. On the basis of an extensive experience, which I have tried to make meaningful, I know that women deceive themselves very easily and are capable of living in a world of spectres, that they are very despotic, demanding subjugation to their dream.

Title: Mme K, 29
Description: Here’s the transcription of page 29:

29 -
I always preferred workers to the bourgeoisie, and am always for them, but I do not believe in the loftiness of any mass. The increasing bourgeois tendencies in communist Russia is nothing else than the demand of the average man of the masses to have a regulated, tranquil, stable and pleasant life.

My own emotional life is being formed mainly unconsciously, although it may not appear so to outside observers. I like order, because in the depth of my being there stirs chaos. But this is a chaos of soul and body, the spirit in me is always stronger. Night appears to me always deeper and wider than the day - this little strip of light. In the night there is not only what appertains to the soul, but there is also spirit, all that is creative has its roots in the nocturnal foundations of the spirit.

My hatred of politics and of its vile falsehood acquires a morbid character. I consider that the main evil in life is - lie. Not enough attention is being paid to this fact. Everyone who strives towards strength and power, who at any cost wants to realize his end in this world is doomed to lie and is even compelled to consider lie to be a virtue. This is the foundation of the state.

Lately I have been very depressed, I am distressed by the unhappiness of men.

Man and eternity are now being betrayed.

When Christians became victorious, they ceased to be confessors of crucified truth and they began to assert the crucifying truth. It is equally correct to say that the son of God has his place in the hearts of men and on Calvary. This is the tragedy of the world. The Cross is a paradox - it is the consequence of the evil in the world and it is at the same time salvation from evil. That is why it was said that the Cross is temptation to the Jews and madness to the Greeks.

Title: Mme K, 30
Description: We live in one of the most servile epochs. In the old days the slaves were serfs, but even in them the feeling of man's worth was awakened and they rebelled. Now everyone has become a slave.

The love of the mob and the worship of its opinions and tastes is certainly the most debased state, but that state of mind is the most sublime, which freely absorbs not only the fate of the mob, but also the fate of the whole world.

The social problem not only causes me anxiety but it torments me. Personalism (recognition of the supreme value of the concrete human personality) has a social projection. Society can be organised personalistically in the name of every human personality, its worth, its right to life and work, the realisation of the possibilities contained in it. Personalism requires the triumph over the power of money, the doing away with classes, the substitution of class distinctions, by individual aptitude for professions. This system is closer to Proudhon than to Marx. Besides I disagree with Proudhon on many points.

The man who told you about the radical change in the psychology of Russian peasants, did not say anything that is new to me. I have written more than once that a new anthropological type has appeared in Russia. The new generation of peasants is probably in its majority materialists, atheists and interested in technology. All the same they have nothing in common with the impotent French, because scepticism is always impotency — a lack of vital force. The Russian peasants do not move towards the French rationalistic humanism, to which the French reduce everything. The Russian people is an apocalyptic nation.

The talk of impotent sceptics asserting that everything is relative I consider despicable. The world is ruled by the absolute, only the absolute has strength and life. Lenin saw the absolute in matter and asserted the possibility of absolute knowledge.

Title: Mme K, 31
Description: He considered that relativism was a bourgeois ideology. The relativistic-sceptical French intellectuals, who view communism favourably, are the result of disintegrating bourgeoisie. The French do not understand that Russian communism has raised the ultimate problems of the spirit and of God... Nizan mumbled something about the value of man being the principal idea of marxism and communism, as if a piece of matter can have any worth. Betrayers of the spirit, traitors to eternity - are the most despicable, two-dimensional creatures, i.e. flat beings, bourgeois in the deepest sense of this word.

I cannot tell you how much I am repelled and disgusted with any conspiracy, machination and secrets. In this respect, although I am a revolutionary, I could never be a political revolutionary, or a political counter-revolutionary.

The free act of the spirit I place against fate. This act means not determination by periodical returns of cosmic life, not the power over man of a magical circle, but an internal force, when man does not depend from anything that is external to him. The feeling of oppressing fate means that man is dependent not from God, but from the world, from other men. The free act of the spirit means that man refuses to depend from cosmic or human forces. All my religious life is based on the fact that I do not agree to depend from anything or anyone. God is thus my independence.

I was surprised that in your letter you put forward the argument that justice should be realized not only in the life beyond the grave, but also in the life on earth. But I have said exactly this many times in my books and articles. If you have carefully read my book Spirit and Reality you would see clearly that I consider false the usual viewpoint which contrasts the so-called life on earth with eternal life. This is a false objectivisation of eternity; it is an expulsion of eternity.

Title: Mme K, 32
Description: In connection with the commemoration of Pushkin I can say that there is a chasm between the reformers (novators) of the past and those who honour them now. The fate of creators of genius is tragic, not only during their own life, but even more so after their death. Nietzsche is the most telling example.

You profess the most banal rationalistic theory of progress, you believe that man can completely rationalise life, subordinate it to reason. This rationalism which was proclaimed by the French philosophy of enlightenment in the 18th century, which was deepened by Hegel, inherited by Marx, and has become superficially-stupid in the teachings of his followers. I do not like optimism, I think it is a mockery of the unbearable human sufferings. Even the bliss of the future, if it could be attained would not atone for the sufferings and the injustices of the past. The problem of progress is very complex. I do not deny progress, but it is not a straight assent. The good grows, but the new evil grows too. A great regress in the moral consciousness of mankind is now taking place, in respect of murders, executions, cruelty. The consciousness of people of the 18th and 19th centuries was on a higher level, as well as that of the stoics, and of course of the Christians of the first centuries. I hope you do not exclude Soviet Russia from among the ‘totalitarian’ states. It is the most accomplished form of a totalitarian state, completely Fascist. It is a military-police, bureaucratic state, which in its dogmas leans on the masses.

When you say that there is a different ‘good’ and a different ‘evil,’ that every man has his God, you repeat the usual arguments of the sceptics against any faith.

Title: Mme K, 33
Description: To this I can only retort by saying – come out of the world of sceptics, in which everything seems double and multiple, enter the world where there is a true God, in which the 'good' and the 'evil' are realities of existence, and not human feelings and thoughts.

Where did you get the idea that there are undefinable laws of 'society'? Such laws do not exist, it is a wishful invention or an illusion of men. Marx understood this very well. The worship of 'society' as a supreme value and end, is the most disgusting form of idolatry. Society exists for man, and not man for society. One cannot realize freedom and establish the worth of man, by suppressing freedom and the worth of man.

Collection

035
Папка 35, Тексты на английском
[Folder 35, Texts in English]

Citation

Nikolay Berdiaff's Nicholas Berdyaev, “Excerpts from Nikolay Berdyaev's Letters to Mme K,” Nikolai Berdyaev Library, accessed February 10, 2026, https://berdyaev.omeka.net/items/show/1.

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