The Journals of Ayn Rand Read online

  He is a man that would have been a Napoleon—had he been born with less conscience and idealism. He has an iron devotion to his ideals, the devotion of a medieval martyr. Capable of anything, any cruelty, if convinced that his aim needs it. Cruelty for the cause is, to him, a victory over himself; it gives him the feeling of doing his duty against his sentiment.

  Yet a profound egoism lies under that devotion to his work, for it is his work and his aim that he is serving. His ideals have not been inspired by sympathy and compassion for the suffering of the masses. It is his suffering and his pride that made him take arms against society. This is subconscious, for it’s not his personal interests that he has in mind, it’s the victory of his idea—and his idea is the uprising of fighters, individuals, strong men of the people crushed under a senseless, ignoble system.

  The taste, manners, and tact of an aristocrat—but not conventional manners, just the poise and dignity of a man with inborn good judgment. Instinctive, unconscious understanding of beauty and art; an untrained, but wise esthetic feeling, [which is] dormant, never given much attention or opportu nity. Delicate and sensitive to other people’s feelings—no violent hatred or prejudices against anyone. No religion.

  No conceit. One of the few people who is absolutely untouched by flattery, admiration, or any form of other people’s opinion. Not because of a proud disdain, but because of a natural indifference to it. Subconsciously, he knows his superiority and does not need any one’s endorsement. Consciously, he is interested only in doing what he thinks is right; [he wants to be] satisfied in his own eyes. A self-discipline learned long ago.

  A man who knows how to take serious things seriously. But with hidden beauty, sympathy, even tenderness, and an intelligent sense of humor.

  Sexual matters never interested him. Didn’t have the time. Accustomed to hard work and making the most of his time, all concentrated in one line and aim. Never had an affair. Not because of a moral effort, asceticism, or self-imposed renunciation, but because of a lack of interest and a slight disgust for sex as he saw it around him. Yet a very strong sense of sensuality, unawakened.

  Kira is the first woman who ever attracted his attention. His instinctive sense of values and beauty sees in her what very few men see. Therefore, his passion—unexpected, fierce, primitive, letting loose an energy long restrained—overwhelms him with its intensity. He has sense enough not to attempt any struggle, nor to consider it as interfering with his aim and duty. He just surrenders completely to what is for him a newly discovered beauty in life, the life for which he has a profound instinct. It is characteristic that Kira is an aristocrat, a woman of the upper classes, and that, knowing her hatred of his Party, he never resents it.

  Leo Kovalensky

  [This section was crossed out. While much of the following obviously applies to the Leo in the novel, the character described here is more flawed.]

  Dominant trait: a man who should be more than he is. A brilliant, but not profound, mind, and a very poor emotional nature. A mind witty, quick, sharp and clear, but not deepened by any great feeling. Very good-looking—more than that: beautiful. A face with the proud, haughty, aloof expression of a god, a face promising a superior, profound, fascinating man; and the man not keeping the promise. The greatest lack in him is the lack of any strong desire or ambition; therefore, also, the lack of will. Never had any profound love or hatred, never very happy or despondent, no real interest or enthusiasm for anything. No emotional extremes.

  He is brilliantly witty. A light, distinguished sense of humor; too much of it leads to his not taking anything very seriously. A love for paradoxes, for witty ridiculing of any high, serious, revered, or established ideas. Elegant, distinguished, aristocratic—mostly in manner and attitude, not in clothes or [conventional] psychology. His aristocratic [style] is personal, not the class-bound [charade] of formal manners and high ancestry. Sophisticated, bored, slightly cynical. No moral feeling. Would not do anything low or ugly, but more from an esthetic than from an ethical feeling. Has a love for beauty, but mostly beauty of form, beauty of the surface, not deeper.

  Likes everything new, exotic, extreme, effective, modernistic, eccentric, original, smart. Affects a modem European or American attitude. Has an aristocratic dislike for work and effort. Nothing can rouse him to any serious effort or struggle. Anything hard is distasteful to him. Lack of perseverance; takes everything easy, nonchalantly. No great ambition of any kind—not definite or positive enough for that.

  He is very popular. Always the soul of the party, but not as a “good fellow,” rather as a perfectly charming, fascinating man of the world. Always knows how to say and do the right thing at the right time, and is at ease with everyone, everywhere.

  His convictions: none. Not even positive about that. Constant only in his indifferent sophistication and skepticism toward everything. Alert and takes great mental interest—in everything new and startling. But no emotional interest.

  Religion: hasn’t any. Yet is not a decided atheist. Never made up his mind definitely one way or the other. Can be both, according to the mood or effect of the moment.

  His political convictions are not definite. While not being in sympathy with the government, he is not as indignantly opposed to it as most people in his circle. While ridiculing and resenting the conditions of life around him, he is not theoretically opposed to communism; he is not [opposed] to anything modem—part of his sophisticated tolerance.

  Temperamentally, he does not like to display any emotions. Although he is not of a very intense nature, yet he does get depressed, occasionally, and cannot always hide it. Also, he does show happiness occasionally, but more seldom. Very brave, disdainful of danger—sometimes; and sometimes loses his nerve.

  He had a profound affection for his parents and sister, who died.

  In regard to sexual matters, he is not highly virtuous; yet he is not oversexed. Has had affairs. Not vulgar or promiscuous about it, however. He is not too interested in sex, and the occasional interest he has is more physical than emotional. Is tremendously attractive to women. Women spoiled him. He is conceited and self-assured with them. Flirts with every woman he meets—rather, just has a flirting manner, highly flattering to women. Of course, he never means it. It is a habit and light diversion for him.

  Conceited, but not concerned about it. Not susceptible to flattery—used to it. Has few real friends and none very close—he is not interested. But a vast number of acquaintances. Cruel, in that he is perfectly indifferent to other people’s feelings.

  He is capable of high emotions and beautiful actions, but seldom roused to them. Has the mind to understand high beauty—and could have been more than he is. Has everything to be a great man. Ambition is all he lacks. Conditions around him subconsciously killed all ambition in him, all real appetite for life. In other circumstances, he would have developed into an outstanding and fascinating man. He is too much the aristocrat and not enough the male to stand up under any conditions and fight his way through. Besides, he did not even have anything to fight for; life around him did not offer any stimulant to his ambitions at the time they could have been formed. He is not the type that would bring his own desires and ideas to life; he has to get them from life—and it did not give him any. While he does not oppose the conditions of life around him very much, they break him internally, without his even knowing it, break him by killing his interest in life.

  Kira saw in him “what he could have been.” Her romance with him is also her desperate fight to “keep them from getting him.” As to Leo, his love for her was the best thing in his life. It was all of his higher sentiments and better self. The “man that could have been” understood Kira, saw the superior woman in her, and loved her more than he had ever loved anyone. He did not love her better [because] he was not capable of a better love. And as his better self slowly dies in him, so does his love for the only real woman in his life. It never dies completely. Something indefinable, nameless, unconscious, remains. He is not happy when he goes [south] to his new life, leaving Kira behind. In his indifferent hopelessness a dull, secret pain always remains, as the scar of a feeling which he could never entirely forget—and which he had not been big enough to keep. [End of deleted section.]

  Antonina Pavlovna

  Dominant trait: the condensed low female of all times. Selfish like a dumb, brutal monster. Vain. Conceited. Eager for everything that flatters her ego. But mainly: a loose creature out to satisfy herself. Cheaply fashionable, “feminine,” “modern,” with some pretenses at being “cultured” and “intellectual.” “Misunderstood.” From a middle-class family, but always aspires to more “aristocracy” and “culture” than is her right.

  She is oversexed and promiscuous. Vulgar in her sex affairs. She has many of them—some for profit, some for animal desire. The kept mistress of white officers and Bolshevik commissars. Proud of her position and influence. She is always trying to show her power and make that influence felt. Nothing is too small or too filthy for her.

  Her “love” for Leo: the vain female desire to “win” him. Also: the animal desire of an oversexed creature for the gorgeous male that he is.

  Rita

  A plain debauchee. She has no feelings or thoughts left. Nothing but loose, uncontrolled, sordid sexuality. She is from a good family, and was given a good education. Divorced from a red commander. Only the thinnest outside cover of some culture left. A menacing specter, a symbol of what lies in the future for the youth of the coming generation.

  More obvious, open and younger than Antonina Pavlovna. Not many “intellectual” pretenses.

  Lydia

  An average girl, nearing her thirties. Not too attractive nor intelligent. She has wasted her best years, becoming bitter and poisoned.

>   (Representative of the older half of the younger generation.)

  Vava

  A common, sheep-like nature. She is rather attractive, and from a wealthy family. Spoiled. Conceited. Marries, has a child soon, and does her best to live in the favor of the government. Becomes a typical, [lifeless] “soviet citizen.”

  (The alternative—Rita or Vava.)

  The Picture

  A terrific machinery crushing the whole country and smothering every bit of life, action, and air.

  A picture of the state, and those who are the state, strangling the individual. A picture of the masses showing who and what those masses are, their ideas, and their rise against the unusual and higher man.

  How is it done? By conditions of living unbearable to the higher individual. And the theme of the book—what these conditions are and how they work.

  The higher and stronger is broken, but not conquered; she falls on the battlefield, still the same individual, untouched: Kira. The one with less resistance is broken and conquered; he disintegrates under an unbearable strain: Leo. And the best of those who believed in the ideal is broken by the realization of what the ideal really means: Andrei.

  How It Is Done

  1. Economic conditions

  Terrific poverty. A general misery. People driven to the point where [obtaining] the most common necessities presents a big problem. The horrible, deadening dullness of the hopeless drudgery, when all higher instincts and aspirations slowly die out, stifled by the dumb, animal struggle for a pitiful existence. And the mental atmosphere furnished by the government: a glorifying of the drudgery. A growing habit of considering all luxury—everything unnecessary and charming—to be absolutely and hopelessly out of reach.

  Unemployment. The frightful lack of work. The humiliations, pull, and struggle one must endure to get employment. The unions. The idiotically cruel refusal of even the right to make a living for people with an aristocratic past. The new merchants and the senseless persecution that follows them. The successful new rich and the grotesque irony of their gains, influence, and position in the “red” society—the class of men uglier even than the ideology of the ruling class that allows them to exist. All the pathetic, tragic, and ridiculous efforts to make a living. Divorces to keep a job. The “cutting off” of employees. The eternal fear and uncertainty. Queer new professions and occupations.

  Physical discomforts. Hunger. Cold. No living space. Terrible transportation. Disease. Lice. Dirt.

  2. Mental conditions

  Everything centered around one idea—one propaganda—and that idea fed to the people until they mentally suffocate. Everything that does not belong to this propaganda, all the natural instincts and ideas, everything that makes up the individual life and the beauty of life—is thrown out and trampled. An unbearable propaganda of an unbearable idea that makes the atmosphere choking, airtight, until people get to a state of mental scurvy. The idea itself and the method of propaganda are the very essence of commonplace ideology—intended for and created by the “middle class of the spirit.” (When showing the ideas, always show those who create them and make them possible.) The great “average humanity”; show its spirit and what it does to the ones above the average.

  Propaganda:

  In Education (schools and universities): students’ meetings, the political life, the arrests and exiles, the spies, the “cleaning” of the students, the exile of the old professors, teaching only propaganda, and in high school—the coming youth and its mental mutilation.

  In Art: theaters, books, paintings, movies: censorship and the propaganda idea—the “proletarian art.”

  3. Moral conditions

  An existence where men turn into cornered animals. The perpetual fear, struggle, poverty, depression, and hopelessness. A general degradation—men turning smaller than they usually appear, life turning into a shabby, petty, cheap routine.

  And the youth of the country starting out on their lives.

  The youth of the [former] classes faces a hopeless struggle: a long, tiresome, joyless path. Alternatively, they may sink down into real debauchery, all morals let loose by the strain of the unusual times.

  The new youth [is characterized by a] loose morality and a superficial, “patriotic” arrogance.

  The older generation faces a hopeless old age.

  And the real human being—Kira—caught in the swamp and voicing the theme of the story: “But there is a life, a life that I saw, that I was waiting for—and I have a right to it. Who is taking it away from me and why are they doing it?”

  [The material in the composition notebook ends here. The remaining notes were made on unbound pages and collected in a folder.]

  Collectivism: its spirit, influence, ramifications.

  Desperate living conditions: the people’s attitude toward them, and the government’s attitude—glorification.

  The new red culture: its hypocrisy, show-offishness, fear, boot-licking, nonsense (museums, schools, etc.).

  Propaganda: ever-present, at every step and moment. (Artificial enthusiasm.)

  Inefficiency: the stupid bureaucracy, red tape, bad quality in everything (Soviet matches, Soviet soap, etc.).

  To Show

  Economical

  Food: How it’s impossible to get: the cards, rations, speculators, standing in line, cooperatives. The monotonous, unhealthy diet: millet, dried fish, linseed oil. Everyday necessities considered as luxuries: butter, eggs, milk, white bread. Excesses of hunger: fallen horse, acorns, coffee grounds.

  Clothes: The impossibility of getting new materials. Every new article of clothing an event (particularly shoes). Endless altering of old clothes. Pathetic “styles”: patent-leather, celluloid jewelry, “batik” handkerchiefs. Worship of imported “foreign” clothes and silk stockings. Pathetic awe at the sight of “dressed” foreigners. Smuggling of stockings and cosmetics. The “Soviet” cosmetics (poisonous lipstick). No formal evening clothes. “Soviet” materials—everybody alike. The terrible inefficiency of everything “Soviet.”

  Houses: Crowded to the limit. Encounters with enforced tenants. Frozen water pipes. Lack of wood. Six degrees [Celsius] in the house. “Bourgeoisie” stoves. Linseed oil lamps. Primuses. The house “parliament” and the Uprav dom. Dirt. Lice.

  Employment: The pathetic horror of “cuts” of employees. The vile, low, humiliating playing up to the “red” authorities. The time wasted on stupid, hypocritical “social activities.” The “enforced patriotism.” Constant propaganda in connection with any work. Persecution of private traders and the unemployed. Impossibility of finding work. Odd forms of earning a living: street peddlers and their pathetic merchandise.

  Political and Cultural

  The All-Pervading Propaganda: Its ridiculous, far-fetched connections. Its intentionally vulgar, “popular” style and artificial bravado. Glorifying of the drudgery and the “everyday.” Its main methods: employment—enforced meetings, “social activities,” demonstrations, enforced deductions of pay for “patriotic” enterprises; and schools—enforced study of unscientific “social sciences,” a “red” angle on all activities.

  Talk, talk, and talk. Endless, enforced talk without the right to say anything.

  The ever-present threat of the G.P.U.: secret arrests, executions, exiles.