Creativity of Vasiliy Rozanov: interaction between public and private worlds as the realizing understanding

Akimov Oleg Yur'evich ORCID: 0000-0003-0941-7382 PhD in Philosophy Leading Researcher of the Western Branch of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) 236016, Russia, Kaliningrad region, Kaliningrad, Artillery str., 62 aktula1@gmail.com Other publications by this author

Introduction

Russian philosophy, unlike European philosophy, "lives by symbols and images" ^{[1, p.213]}. The work of V.V. Rozanov confirms the "thoughtful attention" of the philosopher ^{[2, p.11]} to various issues of his surrounding life. It is typical for a thinker to highlight the "abstract" concepts of metaphysics (soul, morality,... etc.) in the context of a person's private life. Rozanov's "view", as we assume, corresponds to the tendency of anthropologizing the Absolute, when it is considered as a humanly meaningful and humanly lived subjectivity ^{[3, p.369]}. This gives rise, as A. A. Reznichenko points out, to many interpretations of the thinker's work ^{[4, p.50]}. The "constant" of these interpretations is the convergence of understanding and knowledge, the interpretation of understanding as an "analogue" of innate knowledge ^{[5, p.118]}. Rozanov's position, for whom "knowledge is a reflection of an infinite series of phenomena"^{[6, p.15]}, in contrast to understanding, which seeks to reveal the hidden goals behind phenomena, is close to Kant's vision. He called "transcendental any cognition that deals not so much with objects as with the types of our cognition of objects" ^{[7, p.121]}. The common point of Kant's and Rozanov's early vision is the postulation of the abstract nature of knowledge, in which Kant emphasizes the rational, and Rozanov the irrational aspect.

A special feature of Rozanov's understanding is its substantial character, when the existence of the world is reduced to self-disclosure of understanding, with these features it approaches the concept of "spirit" in Hegel, for whom "all activity of the spirit is therefore only comprehension of itself ..."^{[8, p.7]}. The connection of Rozanov's work "On Understanding" with Hegel's philosophy A. F. Losev noted, "... Rozanov tried to find the meaning of life and reached — with his mind — what Hegel became famous for" ^{[9, p. 511]}. It remains unclear whether Losev is talking about the convergence of specific aspects of understanding and philosophy of the spirit, or only about the generality of the principle according to which abstract problems of comprehending the world are directly related to "things". However, the fact of such a convergence suggests that Hegel and the early Rozanov have a common rational foundation, and therefore similar grounds for criticism of their teachings.

P.P. Gaidenko in his work "Breakthrough to the Transcendent", characterizing the philosophy of the spirit of Hegel, notes: "Paradoxically, in this pantheistic teaching, where man is given such an exalted role in the divine-human world-historical process, there is no place for the individual as a finite single being" ^{[10, p.5]}. The researcher believes that the unfolding of the spirit in Hegel obeys natural necessity, leveling the individual. A.V. Zolotarev notes similar features in Rozanov's early treatise "Rozanov dissolves a person's personality in the natural principle" ^{[11, p.112]}. S.V. Skorodumov also reduces understanding to natural necessity ^{[12, p.20]}. The line of spontaneous rapprochement between Rozanov and Hegel is continued by Fr. And Glebov, for whom "Rozanov's appeal to the problems of understanding is an attempt to find and identify new foundations for the unity of the world as a semantic concept and existence as existing" ^{[13, pp.89-90]}.

We assume that the result of Rozanov's search for a "balance" between the world as a concept and being (life) was irrationalization, which began in the thinker's first treatise.

Understanding emphasizes the human (individual) the nature of the vision of the world, emphasizing that the foundations of this vision are "irrational" ^{[6, p.66]}. Rozanov transforms abstract concepts into images in his later works, which determines the connection between the thinker's early and late work. The nature of irrationality is associated with intuitions "About understanding", realized in later works ^{[14, p.80]}.

The peculiarities of Rozanov's work make it possible to consider him in a dialogue with M.M. Bakhtin's isomorphic world, in which the relations of the world and man are considered through the opposition of public and private ^{[15, p.41]}. The commonality of the thinkers lies in the fact that, based on rational assumptions, they justify the irrational nature of the relations between the world and man, which cannot be reduced to a conceptual paradigm, which we discussed in our other work^{[16, p.114]}. The experience of such a dialogue is given by Rozanov in his later works, where he linked his vision of the world with the reflections of his contemporaries: Shperk, Rza and Florensky ^{[17, p.349]}.

Rozanov's world of understanding explicates issues of a public nature (the interaction of science, philosophy and religion, important for public life), emphasizing the privacy of the individual: "The knowledge is valuable, which is drawn like a sharp needle to the soul"^{[17, p.206]}.

The purpose of our work is to consider Rozanov's work as an understanding realized through the interaction of public and private principles, which determines the relationship between the early treatise "On Understanding" and the later works of the thinker.: "Solitary", "Fleeting", "Fallen leaves" in the context of M.M. Bakhtin's installations.

The topic "The work of V.V. Rozanov: the interaction of public and private worlds as realized understanding" will be revealed through the consideration of the "dialogue" of the world of understanding of V.V. Rozanov and the novel world of M.M. Bakhtin; the opposition of public and private in the work of V.V. Rozanov.

The dialogue between the world of understanding by V.V. Rozanov and the novel world

M.M. Bakhtina

V.V.Rozanov's work is determined by an intention determined by the main theme — the phenomenon of understanding. V.V.Bibikhin, a researcher of Rozanov's work, called understanding the "alphabet" for the thinker's work ^{[18, p.259]}, which actualizes even problems unrelated to understanding that were considered in the thinker's later works. The specificity of understanding lies in the fact that it "results in a number of truths of formal meaning" ^{[6, p.8]}, suggesting the realization of many possibilities. A.A. Gryakalov calls uncertainty a characteristic feature of understanding ^{[19, p.82]}, which means the realization in the real world of any of the possibilities pre-established in understanding. Understanding is metarational, it is not related to real life and manifests itself in it at certain moments ^{[18, p. 259]}, which shows the possibility for understanding to identify both real and unreal "sides" of the real world ^{[6, p.65]}. Rozanov's position boils down to the fact that "understanding" creates new connections between things. "The spirit broke into facts and integrated them into philosophy"^{[9, p.47]}, testifying to a world that, according to Rozanov, is "in eternal decay" ^{[17, p.323-324]}. Rozanov is talking about the real world, which is indefinable rationally. For him, the world is the "collection of facts" mentioned earlier, a new vision of them, which has a number of features. One of them is that the world of his later works, created or designed by understanding, is the world of human experience, regardless of whether it manifests itself in real life. Rozanov's individual thoughts have a common intention of understanding, therefore they can differ quite seriously in different periods of life "there should be at least a thousand points of view on the subject" ^{[20, p.527]}.

Understanding the World Rozanov seems to occupy a middle position between the world of material necessity, which is compulsory for a person, and the world of "dreams" ^{[17, p.323]}. In this sense, an understanding that recreates the order of facts combines the real world and the world as a project, that is, the world as it should be. Rozanov emphasizes the difference "between what is and what should be" ^{[21, p.26]}. The thinker not only "establishes" this difference, but also believes that the opposite of the real world and the world of dreams cannot be removed by human efforts, entering into the order of the world, which is not subject to man ^{[17, pp.316-317]}.

Another feature of the world designed by Rozanov, which brings science and philosophy, theory and real life closer together in understanding, is that this world is connected with the fate of an individual, the bearer of understanding. This is evidenced by the description of religion, which the thinker considers as a connection between the creator and creation, God and personality ^{[6, p.430]}. The description is based on the thinker's own experience, the intention of understanding realized by him in relation to religion. For Rozanov, religion is not a dogma or an objective phenomenon, it is a part of his own life, his privacy. The thinker focuses on the private nature of human life, its lack of control over heteronomous principles: religious, scientific or otherwise.

Actualization of the private nature of religion, as we believe, brings V.V. Rozanov's world closer to the world of M.M. Bakhtin, who combined an ideal idea of life and real life ^{[15, p.11]}. Bakhtin believed that the authors of works of art use images to rethink the real world of the vertical (public) and the horizontal (private) world ^{[22, p.306]}. In this case, the vertical world is an artistically transformed real world.

The world of understanding that Rozanov discovered is also the real world, seen in a special way, "captured in an understanding gesture"^[2,p.21]. If in the early treatise understanding turns out to be related to the highest interests of the human spirit (science, religion, being), then in later works, as already noted, it it extends to a person's private life. Reconstructing the world of "Understanding", V.V. Bibikhin noted that Rozanov's abstract questions of being were connected with the problems of real life ^{[18, p.259]}.

The commonality of the thinkers' searches lies in their focus on this world and its human vision. The possibility of such a "dialogue" is described by M.M. Bakhtin in his work "On the Methodology of the Humanities" ^{[23, p.382]}. The common moment of Rozanov and Bakhtin's work was also the convergence of the world of philosophy and the world of "literature" (Bakhtin noted the proximity of his concept to the teachings of M. Scheler, M. Buber, A. Bergson, expanding the framework of "conceptual" philosophy ^{[22, p. 135]}). V.V. Rozanov's research can also be interpreted as a presentation in the language of positivist philosophy of the meanings characteristic of the teachings belonging to a later stage of the development of philosophy, in particular for phenomenology ^{[2, p. 13]}. This makes it possible to interpret the meaning of V.V. Rozanov's late work as an intuition of the relationship between public and private, which later appeared in the novel world of M.M. Bakhtin, which will be discussed further.

The understanding to which Rozanov's early treatise is devoted is privately "there are individuals and entire nations deprived of it" ^{[6, p.14]}. The understanding "possessing a person"^{[6, p.25]} is realized in an internal connection with a person, her attitude to the world. Rozanov, describing his "thoughtfulness" ^{[17, p.175]} (understanding), emphasizes the peculiarities of seeing the world, which he is burdened with in everyday life. Thus, for a thinker, the public meaning of understanding becomes relevant when its private meaning is expressed. Unlike Rozanov, Bakhtin's interaction between the private and the public is "schematized", that is, the gradual "restriction" of the public leads to the activation of the private ^{[15, p.410]}.

The convergence of the worlds of thinkers gives us the opportunity to consider the world of understanding Rozanov, which defines his work, through the concepts introduced by Bakhtin to describe the novel world: public and private; vertical and horizontal; high and low; big and small; "meeting". This will make it possible to concretize the connection between the early (based on abstract concepts of "Understanding") and the later (constructed as a description of specific things) stages of Rozanov's work. The reason for this is the commonality of coordinates of the Rozanov and Bakhtin worlds. We are talking about the distinction mentioned earlier between the public (the world of official culture, vertical) and the private (the life of a private person, horizontal). The interaction of these worlds is ensured through the correlation of the public (public) and private (private, unofficial) aspects of their existence. A specific aspect of the public and private relationship is the interaction of the big and the small. For Bakhtin, the small is associated with the public world of the vertical, and the large with the private world of the horizontal. In modern culture, the horizontal prevails over the vertical, causing a gradual "privatization" of the public, which the thinker defines by the term "meeting"^{[22, p.237]}.

In Rozanov, the small, while remaining private, is introduced into the public space of the "big" world. He has a dialogical interaction between the public (vertical) and private (horizontal) with an emphasis on the vertical, which will be covered further. The scheme proposed by Bakhtin does not fully describe the nature of the interaction between public and private in Rozanov's work. This is due, in our opinion, to the fact that the thinker's understanding "demonstrates, along with the rational, the irrational aspect of the world, therefore, the transition from the private to the public and in the opposite direction in Rozanov cannot be subordinated to the rational principle. Based on this, we have supplemented Bakhtin's "scheme" with the concepts of "self-abasement", "grinding", "deviation", rationalizing the images of the thinker's late work. Rozanov, unlike Bakhtin, describes the real world, therefore, the convergence of public and private in his work is characterized by an element of unpredictability and irrationality, which leaves an open "space" for research.

The opposition of public and private

in the works of V. V. Rozanov

Rozanov's work is private and at the same time public, as it embraces an understanding that does not relate to the world, but defines it. The world of the private (religion, philosophy, literature) correlates with the public: printing, technology, things, etc. Their rapprochement occurs through the relationship of phenomena (for example, literature is public) as an "exit" from the private to the public and vice versa^{[20, p.351]}.

The peculiarity of Rozanov's work, as already noted, is that public phenomena related to the sphere of high in traditional culture become part of private life. It is about the transition of private understanding into the public world, a return to the unity of the world and man ^{[15, p.170]}. Understanding, being both private and public, activates the thinker's intention^{[17, p.93]}. A. F. Losev characterized Rozanov as "knowledgeable about everything, not seriously interested in anything^{[24, p.151]}. It can be assumed that Rozanov was "possessed" by an "understanding gesture" ^{[2, p.13]}, which he did not control: "you sit down to write one thing, and you write something completely different" ^{[17, p.23]}. By bringing the public and private spheres closer together, Rozanov does not reduce this to a specific course of action. This leads to a complication of the thinker's position, which distinguished it from Bakhtin's position, in which the material (public) prevails over the spiritual sphere ^{[15, p.159]}.

The interaction of private and public Rozanov shows through the image of the "tsar". In "Fleeting" he writes: "The tsar is dear to me, the emperor is alien to me"^{[20, p.520]}, indicating that the emperor This is both privacy (closeness, formality) and publicity (his position is officially fixed). The image of the emperor is impersonal to the thinker, while the image of the tsar, his privacy is based on his public position as the father of the people. In the image of the king, the kinship with each person is expressed ^{[21, p.227]}.

For Rozanov, the emperor's privacy becomes the negative pole of publicity, and the tsar's publicity becomes the positive pole of privacy, activating genuine rapprochement between people^{[21, p.76]}. The thinker brings together the public and the private through the interaction of the big and the small. He prefers small or old things that have lost their value among others ^{[17, p.341]}. They occupy a place in the microcosm, and then the small replaces the big, gaining in its privacy the meaning of the authentic ^{[17, p.286]}. We are talking about restoring the connection of the private with the "big" global cosmos, that is, according to Rozanov, the small is included in the macrocosm ^{[20, p.351]}. The thinker admits that he loves the small ^{[17, p. 95]}, not raising his low position, but making him the property of the world "... let's make a big one and call him a king, let's make a flea and call him a democrat"^{[20, p.205-206]}. The thinker equates the small that preserves its ontological self with the big one. Bakhtin called this connection, established by Rozanov, "a new connection between things ^{[15, p.203]}. If for Bakhtin this presupposes the emergence of a new world, then for Rozanov the small remains small, and the big remains big.

Rozanov points out that the meeting of the private and the public becomes possible due to the self-abasement of things, as follows "along the curved lines" that make up Rozanov's cosmos ^{[21, p. 81]}. The individuality of the thinker is manifested in the fact that Drawing the crooked lines of his life, he informs the reader: "Through sin I learned everything in the world, through sin (repentance) I touched everything in the world" ^{[17, p. 66]}. The thinker notes that "there is no definition of sin" ^{[17, p.233]}. This indicates that the world with all its "mistakes" is beautiful, and a full understanding of it is not accessible to people ^{[17, p. 230]}. Rozanov, in "Fleeting," therefore points out the need for a person's self-abasement through sin, so that things can "adjust" to the "curved lines" of a world created not according to a textbook^{[21, p.81]}. It is no coincidence that the thinker, comparing "the whole violet in a lie" ^{[21, pp.23-24]} and "the truthful brick", concludes about the importance of lying, considering it a defense of his freedom. Through lies, guilt and sin are actualized, with the help of which self-abasement is achieved, which brings the worlds of public and private, big and small closer. The recognition of the lie factor according to Rozanov determines the plasticity of human relations ^{[21, p.199]}.

The peculiarity of Rozanov's texts is that his vision is polyphonic. The world-historical image of the king, mentioned earlier, unites the private and the public, the sacred and the profane. The description of everyday things in Rozanov's later works defines a gradual transition from big to small, uniting the world ^{[20, p.351]}, which also applies to the religious sphere "a Christian has become a stingy person"^{[20, p.470]}. "Private" interests have replaced the global mission of saving the world, and in place of the larger, a small one appears; therefore, Rozanov finds Christ to be a "small" private "person" ^{[17, p.427]}.

Bakhtin also describes the process of grinding the world, considering "the sublimated world of the top, where small and big change places" ^{[15, p.190]}. For Rozanov, this happens as the inclusion of small things in the life of more, so he emphasizes his self-abasement "the surname was given to me in addition to the meager appearance" ^{[17, pp.33-34]}. The self-abasement of the big and the small brings them closer in universal kinship ^{[21, pp.68-69]}. This can be interpreted as the refusal of the small to occupy the position of the larger, and the refusal of the larger to suppress the small. Every thing occupies a certain place in the world. Rozanov justifies everything that exists: paganism and Christianity, philosophy and literature, religion and everyday life ^{[20, p.464]}. All this, in Rozanov's understanding, is included in the "economy of being" ^{[2, p.10]}.

Rozanov does not offer an alternative for things other than their shredding from the standpoint of privacy; this is the vision of a private person who captures details, differences, beauty, etc. and thus attracts the reader's attention^{[17, p.73]}. In this context, Rozanov's statement that "every line of mine is holy scripture"^{[17, p.61]} and his comparison with the prophet ^{[17, p. 81]} becomes understandable. Rozanov realized that he was ridiculous in the role of a prophet, just as a democrat is ridiculous in the role of a tsar^{[20, p.206]}.

A "parodic" self-deprecation of things appears in Rozanov's texts. In Rozanov's understanding, which combines public and private (vertical and horizontal), profane and sacred "parody" self-abasement shows that the world familiar to man is inauthentic. Knowledge that replaces understanding does not reflect the patterns inherent in the world. The thinker therefore considers the world in a thoughtful "attention" that provokes privacy ^{[17, p.175]}. In The Solitary, Rozanov ridicules himself, "maybe I'm a fool, maybe I'm a cheat"^{[17, p. 68]}, self-deprecating himself, while simultaneously writing, "I had a lot of firewood" ^{[21, p.13]} (unrealized ideas; most likely these topics turn out to be outside the understanding gesture"^{[17, p.128]}).

We assume that Rozanov's awareness of his own philosophical mission is actualized in the context of the shredding of everything that makes up the world. He represents Rachinsky, Solovyov and himself as small, and Buslaev, Klyuchevsky and Tikhonravov as big ^{[17, p.67]}. The transformation from big to small is fixed by the thinker as a tendency. In Rozanov's works, a parallel is built between spiritual self-abasement (a writer as opposed to a baker) ^{[17, p.33]}, physical (belittling one's own appearance) and moral (awareness of one's own imperfection and sinfulness)^{[17, p.325]}; at the same time, the private sphere determines the life and activity of a person in the public space.

Rozanov is characterized by considering serious problems when discussing small unpopular things (combining the other world and the fan in the "Secluded" ^{[17, pp.78-79]}. The comic effect is used by the thinker to draw the reader's attention to a serious point concerning life and death. The author's position as a buffoon was taken seriously by his contemporaries. In an understanding gesture, metaphysics is connected with Rozanov's personality, with his emotions, exaggerations, and mistakes. The author's revelations are therefore an expression of privacy, even when considering public phenomena, such as religion. In Rozanov, this is revealed in the fact that the soul is private ^{[21, p.125]}, and the body is the embodiment of publicity ^{[20, p.513-514]}. This feature allowed Rozanov to bring two worlds closer together: the big world of reality and the "small" world of everyday life, that is, we are talking about real life, built like a novel^{[9, p.350]}. Rozanov's texts therefore include photographs and letters, which attest to the material side of the world^{[17, p.247]}. This is due to the installation Rozanova on "self-deprecation" things", in which a small (private)actualized as a large (public) "build a small one and you will build Heaven"^{[20, p.351]}, Rozanov refers to the private sphere such phenomena as understanding God, philosophy ^{[17, p.209]}.

Speaking of understanding, we assume that Rozanov's intention is of a private nature, since it affects everything that happens in the world^{[6, p.8]}, and his transition to the public is forced. The private needs the public and vice versa (Solovyov's combination of silence —privacy and the revolving principle—publicity^{[21, p.223]} Rozanov entered the public sphere, engaging in literature and journalism due to external circumstances and did not like public speaking ^{[17, p.66]}, and leaving the private space for the public, Rozanov retained the spirit of the private.

The peculiarity of Rozanov's works was that the same statement turned out to be an actualization of both the beginning of the private and the beginning of the public ^{[17, pp.130-131]}. When the public or private principle became dominant, the author shifted the center of attention to its opposite, which allowed him to consider the subject from different points of view ^{[20, p.527]}. Rozanov's vision, while maintaining the focus of private and public interaction, compares different sides of the same subject ^{[17, pp.29-30]}, which is related to the field of information, contributing to its interpretation (interaction of philosophy and literature, literature and the press) ^{[17, p. 84]}. The difficulty lies in the fact that in the process of transferring information during the transition from private to public, there is a "loss"; this is due to the inexpressibility of the presence of the thing ^{[20, p.196]}. Rozanov's understanding gesture conveys this presence, whereas publicizing demonstrates only certain properties of a thing, which determines the privatization of the public ^{[20, p.227]}. As a result, religion becomes a private matter, and philosophy becomes literature. The convergence of the private and the public through the transition from one to the other and vice versa does not occur when one of them prevails over the other ^{[20, p.195]}. It is no coincidence that a thinker contrasts everyday things with a mood or thought: "It is not our language that is our beliefs, but our boots that are our beliefs, so classify yourself" ^{[17, p. 112]}. Rozanov writes "why do they need thoughts when they own the word"^{[20, p.327]}, defending privacy and contrasting thoughts and words as their public expression.

Rozanov's understanding gesture creates an image that appears in contrast to the abstract idea and the material component of a thing (phenomenon), which became the basis for criticism of Rozanov by his contemporaries (Berdyaev et al.). They accused him of justifying a philistine life. The thinker responds to this with his creativity, bringing the private and the public closer together. Rozanov correlates the books of Kant and Schopenhauer with the bathhouse ^{[20, pp.432-433]}, while the bathhouse and the cigarette, belonging to the private sphere, prevail over the public ^{[20, pp.432-435]}. Rozanov's private and public thus diminish themselves, leading readers to the possibility of combining Kant and a cigarette (Kant goes from being the bearer of an idea to becoming an author who must be read in order to be considered educated). In the fragment about Kant, Rozanov lacks the very ideas of Kant, and the content is reduced to the titles of the sections of the Critique of Pure Reason ^{[20, pp.432-433]}

Rozanov's macrocosm is predetermined by the simultaneous movement from public to private and from private to public, while the number of possibilities for their mutual transition is unlimited ^{[17, pp.316-317]}, which can be compared with the worldview of the pre-Socratic Empidocles (the one and the many cross each other through enmity and return to each other through love ^{[25, p.133]}). In Rozanov, the private is actualized through different levels of the public, and the public explicates different degrees of privacy. "I feel good alone and with everyone, I am not a loner or a social activist, but I am better off alone, because I am alone with God"^{[17, p.47-48]}.

Rozanov's life is an "invented" meeting of the private, "our history is the most permissive and our way of life is the most permissive" ^{[20, p.573]}, and the public, "because without form the world is not worth it" ^{[20, p.195-196]}; their meeting "prevents one of the principles from prevailing over the other. An example of the meeting of the public into the private and the private and the public is Russian life "it is dirty, weak, but somehow sweet" ^{[17, p.125]}.

The convergence of public and private because of its multidirectionality has a certain degree of deviation, which determines binary oppositions in Rozanov's world (big—small poetry— everyday life, philosophy—literature, paganism — Christianity, body— soul, soul — technology, etc.). For Rozanov, therefore, the definiteness of the boundaries of a thing, event, phenomenon is unacceptable. It means that something about a given subject is "overlooked", the idea of it becomes a "template" ^{[17, p.124]}.

In Rozanov's later works, there are definitions of "I don't know", "I'm scared", "I'm terrified" ^{[17, p.107]}. This indicates the difficulty of the subject's transition from privacy to publicity, which is compensated by Rozanov's guessing, his understanding gesture "... I didn't think, I didn't think, I was just struck by something, a thought or an object" ^{[17, pp.153-154]}. Rozanov's moment of "speaking out" is either a horror of the mystery of the world, or a game of this mystery, because the thinker calls for seeing "not only things, but also shadows of things" ^{[21, p.328]}.

The meeting of the public and the private occurs as a deviation. The thinker therefore considers metaphysical problems either as private and in need of articulation, or as public, expressed in a scheme, template, which presuppose a new consideration in the private sphere ^{[17, pp.29-30]}. Phenomena such as Rozanov's encounter and deviation are caused by different levels of privacy and publicity, each of which passes through all the others ^{[21, pp.82-83]}.

In Rozanov, the opposition of public and private is concretized, as already mentioned, through the opposites of vertical and horizontal (high and low), big and small, therefore, the thinker, describing specific things, assumes the existence of their different forms. The opposite of big and small, for example, actualizes the apology of small and private, expressed in Rozanov's love and pity for small things ^{[17, p. 95]}.

The author's vision of the world presupposes a set of meetings at different levels of life that are mystical in nature; for example, the public tsar mentioned earlier, who, unlike the emperor, is dear to Rozanov, "obeys" the peasant who "plows on him^{[20, p.206]}. A high value of the private is thus found in Rozanov with a low value of the public — work ^{[20, p.206]}. The tsar, however, remains the tsar, expressing publicity, and the peasant is the personification of privacy. They continue to live their own lives, but when they move to a more specific level of privacy and publicity, they begin to interact: the peasants depend on the tsar (the state), that is, there is a deviation that brings the private and the public closer^{[21, p. 76]}.

The author separates close things or phenomena from each other, blurring the boundaries between different meanings of private and public, big and small. The author's statements on various issues seem to violate the context of "not our language, our beliefs, but our boots, our beliefs" ^{[17, p.112]}. In Rozanov's texts, there is a shift from the public to the private sphere, and from the private to the public sphere. Rozanov's images, despite their literality, have an abstract character, being concretized through comparison with things and phenomena from the private world "... accounts of debts and payments" ^{[20, p.263]}. The movement from the vertical emphasizes the horizontal and vice versa, realizing the contradictions between the phenomena (things) being compared, and at the same time, actualizing their compatibility, "mixing" the deviation.

Rozanov's texts show a vision of phenomena that is not limited to describing things ^{[17, p.316]}. In "Fleeting," the thinker therefore compares reality to a policeman who is not interested in what is happening on the street ^{[20, pp.302-303]}. Rozanov's position is to shift the private and the public in relation to each other, which implies vertical and horizontal parity — the predominance of the public over the private and the dominance of the private over the public. The thinker, as a rule, describes in "Solitary" and "Fleeting" phenomena that are on the border of public and private, so Rozanov's later works are constructed as a series of random approaches that are difficult to bring to unity. This unity is the convergence of public and private: heavenly and earthly, vertical and horizontal, high and low, big and small Rozanov's texts associate the material accessible sky and the sky as a symbol of the top: "... build a shallow one and you will build the sky"^{[20, p.351]}. Their connection is based on the parallelism of heaven and earth postulated by Rozanov ^{[20, 571-572]}. In Rozanov, the "sky", symbolizing the public high (vertical), converges with the world of an individual, it is private (horizontal). The thinker does not have a specific image of identifying heaven with the human world due to the fact that there are many individual worlds, rather one can talk about routes of convergence, about transitions from public to private "my God is special" ^{[17, p.48]}

The thinker sets a difficult task for the reader: to build the sky, it is necessary to see the construction process. Rozanov attributes this to the fact that there is not only a convergence of public and private, but also an "update" that establishes connections related to both public (vertical) and private (horizontal) ^{[21, p.23-24]}, causing their "deviation". Rozanov understands this as an accident, confusion, and irregularity of events ^{[20, p.458]}, provoking uncertainty in the world and emptiness. When this does not happen, the world becomes a pure form ^{[20, p.195]}, in which it is impossible to express the public through the private and the private through the public. A person's perception of the interaction of public (vertical) and private (horizontal) is therefore limited ^{[21, p.95,]}. The degree of limitation is directly proportional to the rejection of "deviation" — the convergence of the public and private, which generates a rationalization of the world according to Rozanov. It consists in the fact that The phenomena existing in the world, when understood, "transform" the uncertainty of the world into harmony or vulgarity ^{[17, p.230]}.

Interpreting Rozanov's intuitions using Bakhtin's terminology, it can be noted that philosophy, religion and literature are the limits of the public (vertical) for Rozanov. "Literature" becomes a "place" of transition to the private ^{[21, p.222]}. The sphere of the private (horizontal) is expressed in Rozanov as the little things of life, the sexual question, and also as the public in a low sense: printing as a technique, editorial work, earnings ^{[17, pp.23-24]}. It can be assumed that the hierarchy of public and private is unstable for the thinker, that is, public phenomena are revealed by Rozanov in a private aspect, and private in a public one. The work of a thinker, therefore, can be considered as a meeting of the public and the private ^{[21, p.227,]}.

In Rozanov's macrocosm, several possibilities can be identified for the convergence of public and private: (the prevalence of public over private or private over public; the shift of public towards private and private towards public; identification of public and private, representing a moment of actualization of understanding).

The reality defended by Rozanov turns out to be outside the intuitively felt boundary between the public (vertical) and the private (horizontal), since such phenomena as religion and philosophy, correlating with this boundary, do not define it ^{[21, p. 95,]} Everything depends on Rozanov's "location" inside the public or private sphere ^{[20, p.527]}, which shows their conditional nature. The mediation of the conditional nature of transformations occurring with things is predetermined by the unconditional nature of the deviation, expressing an understanding of reality ^{[17, p.216]}. For Rozanov, deviation represents a departure from both the public and the private. This makes it possible to comprehend phenomena, allowing us to say that the thinker is dealing with genuine reality ^{[17, p.169]}, which determines the convergence of public and private, which cannot be described in a specific scheme. In a fragment about boots as the highest degree of publicity, contrary to beliefs ^{[17, p.112]}, Rozanov brings this convergence to the point of absurdity, when the point of absolute privacy is associated with the point of absolute publicity. The extreme degree of publicity (boots, kitchen, bill of lading) is, according to Rozanov, a part of private life in the public space ^{[17, p.127]}.

In real life, according to Rozanov, the reflection of the public and private in each other is actualized. They, shifting, define the world created not according to textbooks, but according to curved lines ^{[21, p.81]}, actualizing the true status of things and phenomena, that is, the world of understanding.

Conclusion

The world of understanding by V.V.Rozanov, which contains the features of rational knowledge, is internally inspired by the tendency of irrationalization, close to the tradition of Russian religious philosophy (it is no coincidence that V.V.Zenkovsky called the treatise On Understanding a "mystical interpretation of rationalism"^{[26, p.444]}).

The examination of V.V. Rozanov's work in the context of the opposition of public and private developed by M.M. Bakhtin demonstrated the possibilities of realizing understanding as the interaction of rational and irrational principles. Rozanov, pointing out the connection of private understanding with the public (history, nature, culture), considers it from the side of the private, which, outside of unity with the public, becomes one-sided (private life); the absolutization of the public principle, in turn, leads to the prevalence of a "dead" form (bureaucratic arbitrariness in public life).

Having considered the work of V.V. Rozanov as an interaction of the public and private worlds, we came to the conclusion that the "intention" of the thinker's vision remains private. As it unfolds, it reveals the general by means of the special, emphasizing the private nature of understanding as evidence of its authenticity. Understanding indicates the existing order of things, without being it, the convergence of understanding and real life, realized in the interaction of public and private, becomes for Rozanov an object of interpretation, speculation, and a project.