The End of a Beautiful Era. Essays and Correspondence with Friends

“Being a philosopher by education and a writer by vocation”... – this is how the author describes himself in one of the essays in this collection. To these words, we should add – ...“and a mystic by calling.” The essays of A.B. Rovner (1940–2019) testify to a unique experience that combines academic reflection, mystical intuition, and the virtuosity of literary style. Behind his texts, there is always something more than just literature or the erudition of a cultural scientist. This greater thing, often mentioned in this book, G.I. Gurdjieff would call “work.” Such depth in poetic rhetoric, in a seemingly prosaic genre, is not the product of one aesthetic imagination. The essays of A.B. Rovner, therefore, are directed not to the reader but to his greater self, to his “work,” about which the reader may not even be aware, and if he is aware, he immediately stops being merely a reader. The included correspondence allows us to see this “work” in action, in the turns of a living dialogue.