Rozanov understood that the new mode of living-as-creating (literatura) had to be a discourse of the self in which the trivia of private, everyday existence would no longer be compelled to repeat a pattern external to it in order to acquire meaning, since the act of living such moments would actualize their essence. He failed to appreciate, however, that this self would have to be a transcendent entity at one with others, and so remained trapped in the game of alienations and appropriations played out between a private individual and an other who, not with standing the sleights of hand, remain at odds. It was through a quite unwanted turn in the course of history that Rozanov was able momentarily to evade the trap and approach his ideal.

My last chapter will contend that, by turning a quirk of fate into a creative principle, Aleksei Remizov advanced Rozanov's mission to completion (though not to victory). I will argue that, in Remizov's neglected chronicle of the revolutionary years, the upheavals brought upon the lives of ordinary Russians are exploited to attain the penultimate stage in the transformation of Russia's anti-aesthetic.