The question, ‘what is good style?’, entails another question, ‘Why and for whom do we write?’ It is impossible to judge the style in itself, abstracted, independent of the purpose and meaning of literature. After all, the style has no independent value and acts only as an intermediary between the reader and thought, as a conductor of thought in the same sense in which metal is a conductor of electric current.

A bad writer is not one who does not possess a style, but one who knows how to put words together without having thoughts. There are other varieties of it, but this one is probably the worst. The labour of such a writer looks very much like the real thing, but there is nothing behind it, whereas the value of true literature is not in the letters and words, but in what is behind them. A good style, any style, is good only when it has something to communicate to the reader.

Isn’t this a utilitarian view of literature? The resemblance is only superficial. The utilitarian (as well as ‘ideological’) view requires literature to serve some external values (‘ideas’), in relation to which the book is only a means. I, on the other hand, say that literature has an intrinsic value, and that this intrinsic value is thought. The two views are similar only in that they oppose nihilism, which maintains that there can be no goals and values, and the task of the book is only to give the reader a pleasant entertainment.

All ‘sophisticated’ writers, then, are condemned in advance. But what if literature does not exist for the reader’s pleasure? What if the meaning of a book is not to give the reader amusement, but to convey to him something of which he was deprived before; to supplement his incompleteness; to raise him at least a little above his own level; in short, if the aim of literary labour is the perfection of man? In this case the commandment, ‘whosoever shall do and teach shall be called greate in the Kingdom of Heaven’, applies to the writer. His soul (as a rule, not sinless) in this commandment finds justification for his labour, often thankless and apparently fruitless…

So, let us try to believe that the virtue of a style lies in the extent to which it serves thought, and let us ask ourselves: what can be a style faithful to thought? Let us call Socrates to our aid again — he has helped us before and will not refuse to help us again.

— Is there a good style that entertains the reader, as we have said before?

— No, Socrates. The pleasure with which the eyes glide over a line is different from the pleasure the mind feels at the sight of a thought new to it.

— Quite right. So, the virtue of the style is more in pleasing the mind with thoughts than in pleasing the eye with the smoothness of the lines?

— You have strangely opposed smoothness and thought, Socrates. What do you mean by that?

— You’ll see. Don’t you think that a developed thought is ashamed of a smooth expression? And don’t you find it much easier to write lightly and beautifully than to express strong and deep thoughts?

— It seems as if you were right, Socrates, but we see no reason that could prevent an intelligent man from expressing his thoughts easily without making them difficult for the reader. Can’t you explain it in more detail?

— Let us resort to a comparison. Imagine a man who collects stones to build a strong wall; raises them to a height; joins them with mortar — and finally shows this wall to others. Those, wishing to assess the strength of the construction, try to tear off stones from each other, and if they succeed — to lift them and move them to another place. What do you think, if the man was strong and the wall was strong — would it be easy?

— No, Socrates. To dismantle, or at least to test the strength of a strong wall built by a strong man, one must also have strength.

— Then why do we believe that a sophisticated book should not make it difficult for the reader, so that he can glide through it with his eyes without making any effort?..

As you see, Socrates responds to our appeals willingly, even too willingly: it seems that over the past centuries the old Hellene’s passion for dialectics has not diminished, and perhaps even increased. So, thanks to him we have found out that complaints about ‘difficult style’ at closer examination turn out to be complaints about difficult thoughts, i. e. about one’s own unfamiliarity with thinking. The notorious ‘difficult style’, as a rule, turns out to be the reader’s unreadiness — a thing common in literature. However, the writer is also to blame: the complexity of writing is a sign not only of the complexity of thought, but also of its extreme condensation, i. e. the author’s unwillingness to dilute his thought with water… What to do! Although it cannot be said that the complexity of thought requires a complex presentation, but it undoubtedly requires concision and saturation.

I know that the reader has in store a strong objection to our opinions with Socrates, namely, the reference to Pushkin. Pushkin is often seen as an example of simplicity and clarity (moreover, this simplicity and clarity prevent us from seeing his thoughts — they are too easily and lightly expressed). What does he have in common with later Russian writers: Dostoevsky, Berdyaev, whose speeches do not resemble at all the transparent style of The Captain’s Daughter? Do they not betray Pushkin’s clarity for the sake of an imaginary depth of thought?

The mistake of this reasoning is that Pushkin is identified with the simple-minded narrator of The Captain’s Daughter, and in vain. It is enough to take his aphoristic statements to see that they are distinguished by a complex and concise language; that the chronicler of the Bielogorsk fortress is not yet the whole Pushkin. [1]

— You preach cruelty to the reader, — I hear with my inner ear. — He is not a hammer-wielder, not a strongman to take down your Greek walls. He works elsewhere, and with a book he would like to relax, to have a rest. Spare him!

But should the reader be spared? It would seem a strange question. The writer works for the reader, and the customer, as it is known, ’is always right’. That’s why they say to the writer: ’Write first something that everyone will like, and then write as you wish’. But it is impossible to agree with this. When applied to simple things, such words mean: ‘Accustom the child to the sweet, and he’ll love healthy food on his own’.

After all, the reader does not fall from the moon, is not delivered to us ready-made, but is brought up by generations of writers — and it is much easier to spoil his tastes than to improve them, and once you lose a reader, you can lose him forever — or at least for a long time.

So let us not complain about the cruelty of the author; let us not feed the reader with sweetness and only sweetness. Let us remember that literature is born without a reader and creates one through the labours of generations of writers. And the reader, however (if he is good), does not remain inactive: he works as an apprentice, weaning himself from the simple, learning the complex…

Like education, literature is a labour of two.

[1] ’Inspiration is the disposition of the soul to the liveliest reception of impressions and to the consideration of concepts, and consequently to the explanation of them. Inspiration is needed in geometry as well as in poetry’. And here is another, quite about the subject of our conversation: ‘Accuracy and brevity are the first virtues of prose. It requires thoughts and thoughts — without them, brilliant expressions serve nothing’.

Timofey Sherudilo.
From the book Knowledge and Creativity. Essays on Cullture.

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