The relationship between the poet and the values contained in his creations was considered as early as Pushkin. ‘Whilst now unneeded by Apollo for his most sacred offertory…’ — it is not only said that the poet has two souls, leads two lives. More precisely, this is only the top layer, the simplest meaning of the poem. What is the poet’s attitude to his own values? This attitude (Pushkin answers) is a constant betrayal. It is impossible to say otherwise.

However, are there any ‘values’ in poetry at all? Is not poetry in kinship with the ability to whistle beautifully and other equally useless arts that serve the external adornment of our lives, and sometimes — only entertainment? And what are these ‘values’ in general?

These are perfectly justified questions. Many concepts in our time have faded to complete indiscernibility, so that they need to be comprehended and explained to others anew. ‘Creativity’ and ‘values’ are from this range of faded concepts. Let us try to bring them back to colour.

Creativity is a real mystery for our time. Materialism saw it as a disease, a reflection of class struggle and the experience of sex… So many explanations, and all unconvincing. (Not least because materialism and creativity, materialism and inspiration cannot not live together at all; all the analytical handiwork of the mind has a destructive, divisive character, that is, in its ‘modus operandi’ it is directly opposed to poetry, art and inspiration.) A faithful understanding of creativity is inaccessible to one who coldly observes it from the outside, and such observers are the ones who have been judging it lately.

What does he who judges creativity by observing it ‘from within’ see?

He sees that creativity is a strong anchor, a firm foundation, the centre of balance of mental life. It does not simply ‘release experiences’, its action is not simply the magic of a word, the right name for an object, the knowledge of which gives power over that object (although it does have that in it). Creativity is a necessary part of inner life, the absence of which is a sign of lack of development or illness. The materialistic understanding of inner life as a flow of scraps and fragments carried by the wind of impressions does not give an explanation of creativity. The materialist sees it as a whim, not a necessity. In fact, it is necessary for the soul to create, just as it is necessary for the body to digest food, with the difference that the soul life produces more complex things out of simpler things, unlike the bodily life. The soul needs, urgently needs, having taken the simple, to convert it into the more complex; otherwise it shrivels up and becomes sick. The soul which, having taken the simple, produces the more simple, is a sick soul.

Artistic whistling is a whim, creativity is a necessity, not only for the creative soul, but also for the society in which it is placed. The artist (in the broadest sense of the word, encompassing both the poet and the prophet) supplies his society with values — this is how we can express the meaning of his labours. He transforms mere impressions into meanings or values — a work without which the stream of life events, sweet or terrible, will remain a stream, but will never become Life. Our days — I will digress here — worship facts, the flow of events, without realising that the flow of events without the evaluating and judging personality is the same as objects without light falling on them.

The personality of our day falls through time, experiencing — alternately or simultaneously — a spasm of voluptuousness or horror, and makes no attempt whatsoever to defend its own existence against the onslaught of the notorious ‘facts’. It needs solid values like a navigator needs fixed stars, but it has been taught to think that ‘values’ either do not exist, or that one must refer for them to the same ‘real facts’… I would say that this is naïve, if it were not deadly dangerous.

Our epoch has also long forgotten what values are. The measure of this oblivion is the demand for ‘critical discussion’, without which even the smallest thing cannot be accepted. For the approval of values, we go to reason — to the very force of destruction that makes complex things simple. But the action of reason on things is well known — it destroys everything it touches.

Value, in the first place, is an indissoluble unity in which there is nothing to ‘critically discuss’ and which can only be entirely accepted or entirely rejected. ‘Critical reason’ has nothing to say about values, because all but the most base of them have no rational origin. Even if reason, in its struggle against old values, declares new ones —these ‘new values’, too, are as arbitrary and unreasonable as the previous ones. No value, it must be emphasised, can answer the question ‘Why?’ If the admirers of ‘critical thinking’ think that there is a certain limit beyond which values begin to be ‘positive’, ‘confirmed by reason’, in a word — provable, they are mistaken: there are no such values in nature.

On the path of creativity, we are forced to extract complex perceptions from the flow of simple events, thus creating culture (starting from its original source — religion), and we cannot stop unless we wish the destruction of our own souls. The inspired poet is a seeker of truths, a man who lights a fire on a high tower but, unable to live permanently in the light of that fire, retreats into darkness and bitterly regrets his inability to live in the light. The gift of poetry involves constant betrayal of the Truth hidden in poetry. The poet is not a saint; his artistic sense is strong enough to recognise the truth, but not to follow it; he loves the light, if I may say so, while wandering in the darkness.

But is every poet really a ‘producer of values’? Certainly not. Creativity has its steps. Artistic instinct leads the creator higher and higher — or deeper? — and sooner or later he reaches the necessary inner clarity and depth, achieves — but cannot keep them. In fact, poetry does not begin with this and does not necessarily lead to it. The poet, like any human being, does not necessarily go onwards and upwards at all. He is distracted by many things: worries, the desire for success and success itself; his desire for clarity and purity — if he has it — competes with the thirst for the fullness of life, a self-destructive thirst… But still the way of the true poet is the way of wisdom, even if he cannot stay on that path. It may seem that I am painting an image of Pushkin — the true Pushkin, not the one known to schoolboys and Pisarev. But Pushkin is only a great example, a model, but not an exception.

The poet finds values and goes away from them, and comes back again, and goes away again. His relation to his own values is a constant betrayal. But without this chain of betrayals, we would not know much about ourselves. Though the poet is not always a prophet, and almost always not a saint, he knows true revelation, though it speaks most often not of the divine but of the human. The poet’s truths are truths about man, and the deeper the poet, the brighter on them is the glow of the divine. The poet will not replace the prophet, will not teach us to seek God, but will tell us how he himself sought Him, and lost without end, and sought again…

The poet is a traitor. All truly captivating poetry is an endless chain of betrayals.

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

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