ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE

BY

LEO SHESTOV

AUTHORISED TRANSLATION
BY S. S. KOTELIANSKY
WITH A FOREWORD BY
D. H. LAWRENCE

LONDON: MARTIN SECKER

1920

NOTE

Leo Shestov is one of the living Russians. He is about fifty years old.He was born at Kiev, and studied at the university there. His firstbook appeared in 1898, since which year he has gradually gained anassured position as one of the best critics and essayists in Russia. Alist of his works is as follows:—

1898. Shakespeare and his Critic, Brandes.

1900. Good in the Teaching of Dostoevsky and Nietzsche: Philosophy andPreaching.

1903. Dostoevsky and Nietzsche: The Philosophy of Tragedy.

1905. The Apotheosis of Groundlessness (here translated under the title"All Things are Possible").

1908. Beginnings and Ends.

1912. Great Vigils.

FOREWORD

In his paragraph on The Russian Spirit, Shestov gives us the real clueto Russian literature. European culture is a rootless thing in theRussians. With us, it is our very blood and bones, the very nerve androot of our psyche. We think in a certain fashion, we feel in a certainfashion, because our whole substance is of this fashion. Our speech andfeeling are organically inevitable to us.

With the Russians it is different. They have only been inoculated withthe virus of European culture and ethic. The virus works in them like adisease. And the inflammation and irritation comes forth as literature.The bubbling and fizzing is almost chemical, not organic. It is anorganism seething as it accepts and masters the strange virus. Whatthe Russian is struggling with, crying out against, is not life itself:it is only European culture which has been introduced, into his psyche,and which hurts him. The tragedy is not so much a real soul tragedy,as a surgical one. Russian art, Russian literature after all does notstand on the same footing as European or Greek or Egyptian art. It isnot spontaneous utterance. It is not the flowering of a race. It is asurgical outcry, horrifying, or marvellous, lacerating at first; butwhen we get used to it, not really so profound, not really ultimate, alittle extraneous.

What is valuable, is the evidence against European culture, impliedin the novelists, here at last expressed. Since Peter the Great Russiahas been accepting Europe, and seething Europe down in a curiousprocess of katabolism. Russia has been expressing nothing inherentlyRussian. Russia's modern Christianity even was not Russian. Hergenuine Christianity, Byzantine and Asiatic, is incomprehensible tous. So with her true philosophy. What she has actually uttered is herown unwilling, fantastic reproduction of European truths. What shehas really to utter the coming centuries will hear. For Russia willcertainly inherit the future. What we already call the greatness ofRussia is only her pre-natal struggling.

It seems as if she had at last absorbed and overcome the virus ofold Europe. Soon her new, healthy body will begin to act in its ownreality, imitative no more, protesting no more, crying no more, butfull and sound and lusty in itself. Real Russia is born. She willlaugh at us before long. Meanwhile she goes through the last stages ofreaction against us, kicking away from the old womb of Europe.

In Shestov one of the last kicks is given. True, he seems to be onlyreactionary and destructive. But he can find a little amusement at lastin tweaking the Eur