Word: rozanov
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What kept him going, in part, was something he read in his youth by the early 20th century Russian author Vasily Rozanov: "What he remains in my mind for is a piece in which he said, 'I opened my eyes and here was the world. Here was this great human and divine enterprise.' And it was as though I had just opened my eyes on what human existence was, really. It was my turn." Bellow takes that turn again, childlike wonder and all, in Ravelstein, when Chick says, "In the interval of light between the darkness in which you awaited...
...George McCaffrey, an apparently deranged man in his middle 40s who is first seen trying to push a car containing his wife into a canal. What, or who, could have got into George? In addition, how does the reappearance of George's old philosophy teacher, John Robert Rozanov, figure in what appears to be an attempted murder...
...arrival of Rozanov, a native Ennistonian of Russian ancestry who is also a philosopher of worldwide renown, does nothing to calm these waters. Rozanov, who is supposed to have all the answers, is rumored to be writing the book that will cap his brilliant career. Privately, he is in despair. His lifelong search for truth, for a logical edifice that will support the notion of morality, has arrived at a culdesac. He now admits that "at the bottom, which isn't very far down, it's all rubble, jumble. Not even muck but jumble...
This is the figure to whom George McCaffrey appeals for help. Rozanov had been his professor, the one who told him upon leaving the university to give up philosophy because he was insufficiently intelligent. "You ruined my life, you know," George tells his old tutor, during the first of several unpleasant meetings. "You were Mephistopheles to my Faust." Met with indifference, George tries again: "I want to be justified, you can justify me, I want to be saved, you can save...
...construction of the novel has not helped matters. Ararat is built on the ancient practice of poetic improvisation. Its key character, Rozanov, a Soviet poet and a scoundrel, has mastered the art of making up a story or a poem when presented with a subject by someone in his audience. The theme of Rozanov's current improvisation is-improvisations. He proceeds to spin out tales about other poets who then go on to invent tales of their own. The effect resembles a garishly colored Russian matryoshka: wooden dolls within wooden dolls...