The Journals of Ayn Rand Read online

  Art: Old theater—and next to it the awkward new “proletarian” dramas. Movies: the foreign ones cut, the red ones—(!). Literature (books and magazines): all propaganda, and intentionally vulgar. Art: all “red.” “Ballet of the Toilers.”

  The pathetic intelligentsia: the operas, philharmonic concerts, futuristic book covers and china, “modern poets,” theatrical settings, foreign translations, and worship of foreign magazines. The pathetic “parties.”

  Morality

  Hypocrisy at an unbelievable height. Nepmen and “red fighters” like Victor. [NEP was Lenin’s New Economic Policy, which allowed some “private ” trading. “Nepmen ” was the name for those who grew rich through this policy; they are represented in the novel by the character of Morozov.]

  Characters

  The individual against society at a time when society is at its worst and makes itself felt most strongly. Therefore, show all the mass manifestations of humanity in general and of the Russian revolution in particular.

  Types who represent it:Kira—cannot be broken.

  Andrei—broken physically, broken life.

  Leo—broken spiritually.

  Pavel—“the best of the worst”; representative of those successful

  with the mob.

  Victor—same [as Pavel].

  Comrade Sonia—the “new woman,” mob womanhood at its most

  dangerous.

  Dunaev—the best in the old world and its tragedy.

  Antonina Pavlovna—the worst.

  Nepman—the triumph of the new order.

  Stepan—the sailor, the fighting idealist.

  Lydia—the dying old world.

  Galina Petrovna—the accommodating “intelligent” [woman].

  Alexander Dimitrievitch—the dying old world.

  Marisha—the new “loose, red youth.”

  Sasha—the old fighting student.

  Irina—an average girl, caught by events.

  Acia—the “new child.”

  Maria Petrovna—a frightened “nothing.”

  Vava—a “flapper” of the old world.

  [AR made the following notes on revising Part 1.]

  Chapter I

  More of Kira’s reaction—make Kira’s presence felt.

  Song of the “Apple”—twice.

  Incident of “official business”—? Out.

  Chapter II

  Their arrival and the station—shorter.

  Shorter description of Nevsky.

  Read again carefully the talk with relatives. Insert some touch of propaganda—very little.

  Chapter III

  Revise: Place and date of birth, family position, union membership, occupation. Quicker, short examples and sentences. More of Kira, her spirit of adventure, and not in love only—her hunger for practical beauty, for dreams and reality united. More distinct propaganda on the official’s part. Cut out unnecessary “cruelty” of Kira. Kira’s attitude toward sex and love.

  Chapter IV

  More of Kira—of her idea of life and of her reaction. A little about the University. More propaganda. Kira—the Viking—the “Song of the Broken Glass” against Soviet reality.

  Correct reference to Admiral Kovalensky.

  Shorter and sharper—Victor’s visit. His conversation—also in the cab—more pointed and typical—the “artist,” the “advanced, cultured, hard-working young man,” the terrific egotism felt under it.

  Synopsize scene in Summer Garden.

  Conversation with Leo—more of Leo’s bitterness, masterful arrogance and unhappiness.

  Chapter V

  Not enough of Kira’s reaction to Leo.

  Cut out the “no” sequences—except house meeting. [The “no” sequences have been published in The Early Ayn Rand.] More of propaganda and living conditions. More of Kira’s reaction, her impatience, her thoughts of Leo. The University—a possible beginning; Syerov and talk of “Red Culture.” New meeting with Comrade Sonia. Rewrite scene at home.

  This chapter should be the opportunity for “everyday” flashes; propaganda also—the Dunaevs.

  Chapter VI

  Better beginning. Better description of streets. “Re-touch” meeting with Leo. Out—scene at Dunaevs; move it—modified—to Chapter V. Scene of Dunaev and Kira at market: a little more—and sharper. (Better—about Professor Lesbov—also about his crying over Beauty.) “Re-touch” conversation with Andrei—watch out for naturalness and Andrei’s character, his strength. Emphasize: Leo’s weariness, Andrei’s enthusiasm.

  Chapter VII

  A little more of Kira’s reaction in scene with soap. Revise theater scene. And the sleigh. More of Andrei’s reaction—stern. Meeting with Sonia and Pavel—?

  Chapter VIII

  “Re-touch” scene in Communist cell.

  Chapter IX

  More conversation with Andrei. Show their friendship, their basic understanding, the things on which they differ and in which they’re alike. “Re-touch” ride through streets and walk through snow.

  Chapter X

  Last—Leo’s warming.

  Chapter XI

  Kira-Andrei conversation. More about relationship of Kira-Leo, and their love.

  Chapter XII

  Reconstruct party. More of Victor—“soul of the party.” Better description of Vava’s father. More fear.

  Chapter XIII

  Cut out “Vorovsky.” [Vorovsky, mentioned in her history notes, was a Soviet envoy in Switzerland who was killed in 1923.] Check on flashes of Leo’s employment-seeking; give them something besides dialogue—a few touches.

  Chapter XIV

  Better beginning. A little better about the movie. A few more detailed touches to the quick episodes.

  [In general:] Better dialogue with Andrei. A more real, personal friendship—not too theoretical. And the theories—clearer.

  General misunderstanding and disapproval of Kira—home and Institute.

  [The remaining notes are on particular scenes, beginning with the first meeting of Kira and Leo.]

  Leo: Insulting and perfectly indifferent about it.

  Their understanding—which leads to questions about her experience, then to her final confession.

  Kira: Stunned by him, reverent, yet hiding it under a matter-of-fact calm. More reverence than love. A girl full of life, full of vague hopes of which he is the realization.

  Leo: Mystery as to his identity and position. Bitterness—a general, philosophic kind of bitterness, with just a hint of bitterness against the Soviets under it. A cynical worldliness and weariness. Cruelty—and completely indifferent to it. Superior conceit—indifference to women’s compliments, a “spoiled by women” attitude.

  At first—he is amused, he plays with her. Then—he is interested, impressed—more than he wants to admit—by her straightforward, brave, calm outlook on things.

  [The following is for the description of Petrograd in Chapter I, Part 2. In a 1961 interview, AR commented on this description: “It is the one passage that shows (Victor) Hugo’s influence. The style is not mine—it is not the method natural to me. ”]

  The whole: give a picture and feeling of Petrograd as a city—not any city, but Petrograd.

  Its creation: by a will of man where no city should have been—not born, made.

  Nevsky. Kamenostrovsky. The islands. Neva. Palace and fortress. Side streets. Canals. Little parks. Factories. Unrelieved drabness and plainness.

  (The feeling of the city without crossing its doors, without entering its houses.)

  Petrograd is complete, it does not grow. It is definite.

  Its facets are extreme: man-made, deliberate, perfect for what they are. No nature—man.

  No folklore or history like that of Moscow or Paris. No legends.

  It is not the city of the people, but of the aristocracy and the intellect.

  [The following two sentences were crossed out:] Its symbol would not be a church or a fortress, but a palace and a night club. It is the city of a high hat and a narrow liqueur glass.

  It is “he,” not “she” like Moscow.

  What the revolution did. (Monuments.)

  Spring.

  [For the climactic scene between Kira and Andrei in Chapter XIII, Part 2.]

  She is proud of what she has done.

  Nothing he can do to Leo will compare to what she has done to him.

  His love was only money for Leo. She laughed at his love.... Highest woman? Only a prostitute—and he is the one who bought her. She thought of Leo [while she was] in his arms. Every kiss she gave him was given for Leo.

  She is not ashamed—she is what they have made her. They who have forbidden life to the living.

  In him and to him—she has paid.

  Has he learned what his own life is? Will the State be a consolation?

  Does he know what they are doing? “Airtight.”

  I could stand all but my highest reverence . . .

  [For Kira’s death scene.]

  Earth—snow, going up and down, snow lighting the sky, a haze ahead—and she isn’t sure whether it’s close at her face or miles away. Frightened when she sees a tree—crouches like an animal. Bands of snow rising in the wind as if reaching the low sky in the distance.

  Sky—black and gray and patches of blue that could not exist in daytime. Strips of stars that make her uncomfortable. Patches of light from nowhere.

  Silence—shadows of sounds. Afraid to stop to listen beyond the sounds of her feet. Long journey—as if there had never been anything else in the world beyond that snow.

  Weariness. Pain in her knees as if climbing a stairway. Her cheeks frozen. Pain in her finger-joints, in her back, in her shoulder blades. Legs moving as if not her own. Suddenly she feels well, too well. Sudden break of pain. Can
not stop at any price. Bending—to be less to carry.

  Thoughts; She has to get out. Has she any questions to be answered? To be answered there. It won’t get her. She can’t give up. Looking at stars—head thrown back, arms outstretched—isn’t there a place for her in the world? Checking on money in jacket often. Thinks dimly of “Cafe Diggy-Daggy” —repeating it senselessly, nickel plated letters insolent in their simplicity in dull white glass. Doesn’t know what awaits her. Knows only that she has to get out. An instinct chasing her, like that of an animal. Nothing behind her—only that ahead. “You’re a good soldier.”

  Growing insane determination: to go on, to get out.

  Worries over bills. “Good soldier.”

  Finds herself in the snow suddenly. “I must have fainted again.”

  Rolls down side of the hill. Gets up slowly—seems like hours.

  Crawls up the side of the hill, on her hands and knees. Rises again.

  Pink froth at her lips. Throws away the scarf. Throws away the jacket.

  Staggering in the snow, her hair in the wind, bloodstains spreading on her gown.

  Calling Leo—the Leo that would have been there, where she is going.

  What life had been. The Viking. Murmuring the “Song of Broken Glass.”

  That which had been promised cannot be denied to her.

  Dawn—Beauty in nature, which is more than the beauty of nature, but the beauty of an idea.

  A last ecstasy of life. “Life that is a reason unto itself.” That which was possible.

  February 2, 1936

  [An excerpt from an autobiographical note that AR sent to her publisher.]

  I have been asked why I wrote this novel. I think the answer is obvious. I have seen Soviet life as few writers outside Russia have seen it. And while the world at large is deluged to the saturation point with minute accounts of Soviet Russia, including all the latest statistics up to every single tractor produced by the “great experiment,” very little has been said about actual life under communism, about living beings, not slogans and theories. Theories against practice—that’s something too often overlooked in every important question today. With due apologies to good manners, I don’t give a damn about theories. I do give a good deal about human beings. No, not all of them. Only those worthy of the name.

  Also, if one takes even the swiftest look at the world today, one cannot help but see the greatest, most urgent conflict of our times: the individual against the collective. That problem interests me above all others in my writing. No country on earth offers such a startling and revealing view of that conflict as Soviet Russia. Hence—We the Living. The plot of my novel is entirely fictitious. The background and circumstances which make the plot possible—are entirely true.

  3

  FIRST PHILOSOPHIC JOURNAL

  AR was twenty-nine when she wrote the following notes in a philosophic journal.

  These are the vague beginnings of an amateur philosopher. To be checked with what I learn when I master philosophy—then see how much of it has already been said, and whether I have anything new to say, or anything old to say better than it has already been said.

  April 9, 1934

  The human race has only two unlimited capacities: for suffering and for lying.

  I want to fight religion as the root of all human lying and the only excuse for suffering.

  I believe—and I want to gather all the facts to illustrate this—that the worst curse on mankind is the ability to consider ideals as something quite abstract and detached from one’s everyday life. The ability to live and think quite differently, thus eliminating thinking from your actual life. This applied not to deliberate and conscious hypocrites, but to those more dangerous and hopeless ones who, alone with themselves and to themselves, tolerate a complete break between their convictions and their lives, and still believe that they have convictions. To them, either their ideals or their lives are worthless—and usually both.

  I hold religion mainly responsible for this. I want to prove that religion breaks a character before it’s formed, in childhood, by teaching a child lies before he knows what a lie is, by breaking him of the habit of thinking before he has begun to think, by making him a hypocrite before he knows any other possible attitude toward life. If a child is taught ideals that he knows are contrary to his own deepest instincts, [ideals] such as unselfishness, meekness, and self-sacrifice, if he is told he is a miserable sinner for not living up to ideals he can never reach and doesn’t want to reach, then his natural reaction is to consider all ideals as out of his reach forever, as something theoretical and quite apart from his own actual life. Thus the beginning of self-hypocrisy, the killing of all desire for a living ideal.

  Religion is also the first enemy of the ability to think. That ability is not used by men to one tenth of its possibility, yet before they learn to think they are discouraged by being ordered to take things on faith. Faith is the worst curse of mankind; it is the exact antithesis and enemy of thought. I want to learn why men do not use logical reasoning to govern their lives and [solve] their problems. Is it impossible to them or has it been taught to them as impossible?

  I believe this last. And the teacher is the church. Thought and reason are the only weapons of mankind, the only possible bond of understanding among men. Anyone who demands that anything be taken on faith—or relies on any super-mental, super-logical instinct—denies all reason.

  Why are men so afraid of pure, logical reasoning? Why do they have a profound, ferocious hatred of it?

  Are instincts and emotions necessarily beyond the control of plain thinking? Or were they trained to be? Why is a complete harmony between mind and emotions impossible? Isn’t it merely a matter of strict mental honesty? And who stands at the very bottom of denying such honesty? Isn’t it the church?

  I want to be known as the greatest champion of reason and the greatest enemy of religion.

  May 9, 1934

  In regard to free will: Why is it used as an argument against freedom of the will that it is motivated by a circumstance of the outside world? Is there any such thing as will without the content to which it is applied? Isn’t will a pure abstraction, not an object? Isn’t it a verb rather than a noun, and as such meaningless without that upon which it acts? The will does not have to be without reason, or motivation, in order to be free. One’s act may be motivated by an outside reason, but the choice of that reason is our free will. An example of the determinists: if a man drinks a glass of water, he does it because he is thirsty, therefore his will isn’t free, it’s motivated by his physical condition. But he drinks the glass of water because he needs it and decides that he wants to drink it. If his sweetheart’s life had depended on his not drinking that water, he probably would not have touched it, no matter what his thirst. Or if it were a question of his life or hers, he would have to select and make the decision. In other words, he drinks because he’s thirsty, but it is not the thirst that determines his action, the thirst only motivates it. A motivation is not a reason. (Has that anything to do with the question of free will?)

  Doesn’t the “free will” question come under the general question of human reason—and its freedom? If an action is logical—does that mean it is not free? Or is logic considered a restriction? If so—upon what? Is there anything conceivable beyond logic? Does a free action necessarily mean an unreasonable one? And if mind (or reason) depends on the outside world for its contents—is it reason any the less?

  Has anyone properly described logic and human reason?

  All philosophy is a set of thoughts. Thoughts are [governed] by certain implacable rules. If we deny these rules—which are an integral part of thoughts—we deny the thoughts. If we deny the thoughts—we deny the philosophy. So why bother at all? (In answer to all those who build transcendental, super-reasonable, super-logical philosophic systems.)