There's no one I can write to except you: I've lost almost all my friends. There is another person whose opinions I value, but he's far away, and I'm not sure we'd understand each other today. In any case, even if I had many correspondents to choose from, I'd still write only to you.

This is a love letter, yet it'll seem rational to you. Indeed, I believe that love is a rational phenomenon. Take, for example, the famous love letters of the Hussar colonel from the city of the dead; at first sight, they appear to be didactic and not lyrical at all, and one even wonders why they were addressed to a woman. However, this is what a love letter must be like. Love demands everything at once, and one must therefore speak about everything. The colonel writes to his beloved about history, religion and his native country. The totality of one's ideas about these subjects is the most complete declaration of love. This is the probable reason why the Florentine moved not in a linear fashion but in circles (and, to be precise, in the broadest circles possible, which at times took him out of his way but nevertheless gave him a better view of things).

Another reason is geographic in nature. I've lived a lot in the West and forgot the wastelands of my native country and its cotton sky, which resembles the gowns that patients wear in hospitals. Every time I looked at it from afar, I had the impression of seeing a mirage. As soon as I returned home, it was the West that became illusory. I never succeeded in making these two spaces intersect. I understood that my body and mind ? what I call myself ? must become a place where these two spaces meet. Neither one of them would be illusory, but each would complement the other, as it was originally intended. It turned out that my subjective unity depended on geography ? on a map, to be precise. The more nebulous the West looked and the more vague Russia appeared, the less real I became myself. It was only the map ? the huge, ugly spot that depicts Russia and that is the final proof of the existence of Russians ? that confirmed that everything is real and that life is absurd on purpose. The vision of Sophia or the Fair Maiden, love letters from the city of the dead and other fantastic works of my fellow countrymen are the fruit of a phantom existence: two mirages combined to make a third, which was called the Russian idea, Russian cosmism or Russian love. My whole life, I've lived for mirages. I don't want to any more. This letter has no other purpose than to resemble a map (in its degree of clarity). It has no other purpose than to serve as a declaration of love: this presupposes, however, that I find a name for myself. In order to introduce himself, one must describe his surroundings; in order to give a name to his surroundings, one must see them. I'm looking for clarity.

When one looks at a map of the world, one observes the principle of dynamic equilibrium in action; the latter's preserved among countries and peoples despite all shifts of boundaries. There exists a harmonic plan, regardless of whom it may belong to ? the World Spirit or geological processes. One sees from the map that time and history have made it so that, like ripples around a stone cast into water, concentric circles radiate around a strong cultural field of force, gradually becoming weaker and dispersing into nothingness. The nations of Europe, whose historic roles have been well defined and whose populations and areas are roughly the same, are surrounded by a belt of territories occupied by nations whose populations are smaller and whose historic roles are less important. They are surrounded by yet another belt, which encloses the European space. Here the boundaries are even more compact and the peoples even smaller. The latter have left practically no mark on history: their contribution to what we call the European idea (be it Atlantic or Mediterranean, depending on what aspect of Europe is being considered) is not great, yet they are fully-fledged representatives of Europe, for they live, so to speak, off the energy of the inner circles. It matters little here which Europe they represent: the Empire of Charlemagne, Caesar or Friedrich. This construction doesn't prevent political transformations, new States or changes in boundaries, be it the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Burgundy (in times past), or a united Europe (in times to come). Irrespective of which political map one considers, the main principle remains the same. It may be called the law of the conservation of the cultural nucleus, which is surrounded by inner and outer belts (it's just as apparent on maps of the Far East and Asia). This structure makes it possible to preserve the centripetal forces of a cultural organism at a time of change, to assign cultural valences to nations according to their distance from the cultural centre and to keep them in dynamic equilibrium. The existence of such a structure can be seen on any map. Its form resembles a Roman camp or a medieval castle, and, no matter how far sorties are made, the general plan remains the same.

Russia does not fit into this structure. She is located beyond the outer ring of Europe, outside the belt of small states and minor tribes, yet she is so uncommonly large that she outweighs in mass the very nucleus of the European structure. It is impossible to imagine these two bodies ? Russia and Europe ? as plastically or constructively making up a whole. Russia herself created a defensive cultural belt made up of Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Mordvinians, northern peoples and Caucasian tribes. Along with an outer belt of Serbs, Bulgarians, Slovaks, etc. In a certain sense, the Chukchi are just as much full-fledged representatives of the cultural body of Russia as Romanians are of Europe, and the Chechens incarnate Moscow to the same extent as Poles incarnate Paris.

I'm not an advocate of the theory of the "heartland." I don't believe that the Eurasian plain promises blessings that are lacking in oceanic civilisations. I'm only saying that every strong cultural space on this planet creates around itself defensive belts, which accounts for the shape of maps. Russia belongs neither to the European nor to the Asian space but creates its own. No one is privileged from this point of view.

This is a question neither of history nor of culture, nor even of geography. It is a question of geometry: how can something be part of a whole, if, when taken alone, it's many times bigger than this whole?

Once my father told me that over the years the human face becomes a map of a person's life and soul. You can read a face as if it were a map: just as lines and spots represent rivers and seas, the wrinkles and folds on a face speak of thoughts and passions. The clearer the thoughts and the more violent the passions, the more chiselled the traits. Certain faces resemble land covered by trenches: looking at them, you can imagine what battles were waged there. Others resemble a map of a desert: nothing takes place on them. Yet others are like a map of the outskirts of a town: the traits on them are accidental, and it's difficult to remember them.

I find the comparison between faces and maps convincing, for maps help to find one's way, and, if we were to liken life to a journey, we have to use a map with distinct contours so as not to get lost. However, such contours are rare. Look around yourself, and you'll see nothing but blank faces. It's difficult to make out the countenance of a person who spends his time running errands or who is always out to grasp the opportunity as it arises. You don't have time to acquire a countenance when you're always on the run. This is how Greenland is represented on maps: coloured-in on the edges and empty inside.

I like unhurried people with clear-cut faces, yet one rarely sees a calm and serene face today. There are faces that are fair like a Tuscan landscape or lucid like a bay of the Mediterranean Sea. Yet I've rarely seen people with clear-cut and serene faces, like a snow-covered wasteland. I know of no better example than my mother's face. When I was little, her broad Russian face didn't seem particularly expressive to me. Yet, as the years passed, I began to value such faces. They've no expressive features or striking profundity, as one sometimes sees in other faces. Strangely enough, faces with sharp and striking features have ceased to attract me, for they have too much pathos. A map doesn't need pathos: a map is indifferent and, for this reason, sublime. Over the years, my mother's face hardened: broad cheekbones, a short nose and a dry mouth. She began to resemble a stone image, and something ancient ? most likely, Mongol ? became conspicuous in her face.

When I see my mother's and father's faces side by side, it's as if I was looking at two different maps representing the West and the East. These maps are drawn differently. A map of the West is like engraved on copper: every line is sure and precise. A map of the East is like a woodcut: the steppe has no details. One looks at a map of the East with interest, for something's always taking place there. One looks differently at a map of a wasteland: it's not you who looks at it, but it's the wasteland which scrutinises you. You must prove useful to it.

You don't have to understand a wasteland or figure it out. You just have to look at it with the same melancholy passion as the wasteland looks at you. The earlier you understand that you're one with it, the better. For the day will come when you'll merge with it.

Take a look at our city, whose wastelands stretch as far as the eye can see. It's not a city at all; it doesn't look like a city. What is called a city in other countries is the merging of many wills, the competition of ambitions. Buildings in such a city strive to outdo each other in height, to push each other aside, to take up a neighbour's space: garret sits on top of garret and chimney climbs over chimney. Millions of individuals and destinies are united in a single enterprise ? to become immortal. Our city is different. It is the merging of millions of weak wills; everyone tries to hide himself as deeply and as surely as possible. Winter is eternal here. People go about wrapped up in heavy fur coats and huge hats and submerged in clothing. Faces conceal their traits beneath layers of fat. Here people spend their time in the company of friends in order to hide from the Party. This city is arranged in circles, and each circle is hidden more deeply and surely within the city. The city map is like the cross-section of a tree. Usually one can tell how old a tree is by counting its rings; here, it's of no importance. The city is without memory, not because it wants to forget about crimes and all sorts of filth, but because it acquires freedom and peace of mind only through oblivion. Millions of passions and lives are united in a single enterprise: to hold your breath and wait things over. Crooked streets, squatting houses, shrivelled-up courtyards ? one must be an aficionado of hide-and-seek in order to like this place. Lovers of the city like its orange-coloured windows in the evenings. Afraid of going out on the street, life hides behind them. The city reciprocates their love only once a year during the overwhelmingly poignant spring, which no other city in the world knows, for no other city hides its will to life so deeply. This was once a great city and the capital of an awe-inspiring country; people were afraid of it, and its name was used to frighten children. Today, it's an outlying area, a wasteland, a sandbank.

A mad Russian poet, who declared himself to be the Chairman of the Earth, considered Russia to be the bottom of a dried-up northern sea and Russians, accordingly, a nation of seafarers. For him, such an image of the country appeared romantic and triumphant, like the pictures of Bilibin or Vasnetsov. I've a completely different image of Russia. I often imagine a long shore, from which water has receded for ever, and the objects left by the sea are lying in the sand as far as the eye can see. The receding sea is a foreign, beautiful life, which was not native to this land. When the sea drew away, strange objects were left lying in the sand: harmoniums, easels, framed photographs. Partially covered by sand, they lie there surrounded by refuse. Among them lie people, who were forgotten by the waters and who are arching their backs, grimacing, gasping for air and staring with goggled eyes. Looking at this map, at this ugly spot that is Russia, other countries pass by, like ocean waters flowing round an island. I've met learned people who asserted that Russia can be considered an island for this reason (for the reason that Russia does not fit into normal land). I do not agree. I believe that the presence of a sandbank does not necessarily mean that water is somewhere close by. It seems to me that there's no water anywhere and that the sandbank goes on for ever ? that the whole world is a sandbank and that the miscellaneous collections of items found in the sand are the different cultures. I've heard the story that Edgar Degas used to collect pieces of dry paint from palettes, just like others collect seashells. He put them into boxes, and he obtained dry paint fragments from Delacroix's palette and took pleasure in looking at them. These motley, useless and majestic scrapings of dry paint are perhaps the best illustration of my thought. What I've said is only an assumption and is based on a platonic construction, taken on faith.

However, a lot of evidence goes against my assumption and suggests that the global ocean of civilisation really exists and that its waters have swept over Russia today and submerged it, like Atlantis. At best, only a patch of land remains above water, somewhere in a desolate spot far away from the world. The din and hubbub of the world does not reach it. As to us, we are left at the tidemark, at the edge of someone else's existence, and the tide brings to our wasteland the remains of an alien civilisation: worn-out uniforms from someone else's campaigns, scraps of someone else's conversations and leavings of someone else's feasts.

I'll say it differently now.

Suppose Russia is a sort of depths ? not the depths of an ancient sea but depths in the sacral sense, i.e., the opposite of an elevated place. The comparison of this flat space with a basin, something like Hell, is supported by its cold (at times, very cold) climate. I should like to recall here Swedenborg's assertion that Heaven and Hell have a terrestrial origin. One can add that both Heaven and Hell are phenomena that are clearly designated geographically. I believe that, just as in the case of the concentric cultural belts, there's nothing bad about the fact that this place is most likely Hell. To begin with, I don't know what advantages Heaven offers. I put nothing dramatic into this word, just as I mean nothing dramatic with the assertion that America is most likely Heaven. I'm only thinking about geography in religious categories. I'm only assuming that a map of the world makes cosmogony manifest, that cosmogony is a reflection on and of this map.

I imagine that the centre of the Earth, located at the bottom of a cold basin, is the last, lowest circle of a cold well. The ascension of the Tatras, Pyrenees and Alps, of Tibet and the Himalayas brings us up into the purgatory of Europe and Asia. Yet, although it's possible to climb down the amphitheatre ? many a mortal has performed this journey ? the return is every time a feat. A Siberian labour camp inspires fear by the fact alone that one can't escape from it. Apart from the technical difficulties involved, every inmate knows that he's got nowhere to go: the surroundings are exactly the same. We go round in circles on the lowest tier of the amphitheatre ? or, what is more likely, in the arena. The cherished dream of every inhabitant of the cold plains is to get out into the auditorium. It is completely unrealisable, however. Is not the view from below ? from the arena into the auditorium ? the reason for our reverse perspective?

The cold fire has cast a glimmer on the noses of drunkards, the cheeks of beauties, proletarian banners and red brick barracks. We have all been marked by this red stigma. Moscow's brick circles leading to that crimson island which is the Kremlin and a pool of port wine on the table are of the same nature. And if you think that you're not marked with this stigma, take out your red passport.

You and I carry this earmark, too. And, like all those who have been branded, we find it burdensome to belong to a herd, yet there's nothing we can do about it.

Even the shepherd (the leader of the hellish herd may also be called by other names) finds his cattle burdensome. A lot of people live in Russia, and no one knows what to do with them. They've been baptised, and they've been prepared for socialism, but nothing's worked: they're the same as ever. A radical method that hasn't been tried yet would be to inscribe them all as Europeans ? and let them sort it out on their own. That's yet another great idea of those in power: declare Russians to be Europeans and let Europe be responsible for them. Yes, it's high time to teach Russian peasants the ABCs of democracy and the instinct of private ownership.

True, it's a bit difficult to inculcate the instinct of private ownership when the land's unfertile, yet it's unfertile on two-thirds of the Russian territory. Ownership of what? Loam? Tundra? Permafrost? Marshland? If people consented to being settled in these unfertile regions, one shouldn't expect that, now when the Mongol and Bolshevik yoke is over, they'll shake themselves up and begin to hoe land. They aren't about to do so. For the good reason that nothing will ever grow anyway ? people have tried it many a time already. A second reason is that people have adapted to living in such conditions, and that's the most important thing. There's no need to change. Russian rulers like being Europeans. To this end, they're even willing to draft a law or two. The only thing that hinders this wonderful undertaking is the people: what can one do with them? These scoundrels wish to remain uncouth, and so there's nothing left but to have Moscow or St. Petersburg (or the Kremlin alone) join civilisation all by themselves. The accursed contradiction of Russian history is that one has always wanted to rule an Asiatic people ? l'europ?enne. This state of affairs has given rise to the so-called "inner Europeans": the intelligentsia, the army, and civil servants, i.e., the government's retinue. Another consequence is that the government itself, as an instrument of coercion, must become Asiatic in its incarnated form. Only in this way will the Asiatic nation be able to grasp it. Such a complex structure accounts for the centripetal momentum of Russian life: the European retinue detests the Asiatic face of power, the European government despises the Asiatic people and its Asiatic leader, and the people fears the Asiatic aspect of power and hates the European aspect. Russian society is divided not into classes but into cultures ? into quasi-Europeans and quasi-Asians. Oppressing and killing each other, they spin the merry-go-round of Russian history.

I've not said enough, however. In reality, things are a lot worse. We are confronted with the simple problem: can we consider Russians to be people? Or are they not-quite-people, a half-finished product? Must it be said that this concerns us, too? More than anyone else, we ? you and I ? are people with twisted destinies and unsuccessful lives. Indeed, those who look at us from the side ask whether we're people at all. There are plenty of good reasons for asking such a question, yet one usually hesitates to do so: you can't say something like that about an entire nation, after all. Truth always smacks of racism. Yet we know what things are like. Russians are good for nothing. They either steal or drink. They're incapable of doing anything else, and, if you meet a sober Russian, you can be sure that he's a thief, and if you meet an honest one, he's undoubtedly a drunkard. And it's all the more sad that Russians can neither steal nor drink properly. In a split second, they're either in jail or on the run or dead and buried. A Russian's life is short and meaningless: he drinks as much as he can and goes to his grave. After all, Russians are nothing but bastards and mongrels: neither Mongols nor Germans, just bandy-legged crossbreeds.

You see them glancing about with dull eyes and moving their lips, as if they were thinking: in reality, they're looking for something to steal. Yet they steal only things which are easy to take. If stealing is difficult, they prefer not getting involved: it's better to drink something vile and fall over on the spot. Russians don't know what beauty, civilisation and the good are all about: they grab the first shiny object they see and, ignorant of what they've got in their hands, they drag it home to their dark and musty holes.

Russians are ill-formed creatures, with long flabby bodies and awkwardly attached extremities, without necks, with small watery eyes, a fat behind and short legs, with slovenly manners, an unseemly biography and bad relatives. Nevertheless, these creatures consider themselves to be human. Just like human beings, they suffer from the heat and cold, experience thirst, bleed when they're cut, and cry when they lose their children. They don't deserve pity, of course, yet, just like humans, they suffer and cling to life when people try to kill them. For some reason, they wish their posterity well, although they are unable to say what exactly they mean by this. They wailed from grief when they or their like were sent to labour camps and buried alive, they resisted when their unsightly dwellings were burnt, and they tried to defend themselves when they were killed. It should be said that they were killed for a good reason, for there was nothing else one could do with these bastards, except perhaps to make them work in the fields. These creatures don't value their lives (what is there to value anyway?) and are able to make sacrifices: once in a while, they do something that we'd call sublime were we speaking of another species. They are foolishly and whole-heartedly devoted to one another, they can serve meekly and wait eternally but are no more attractive for all that.

What can one undertake so long as this good-for-nothing populace is not eradicated, re-educated and rounded up in reservations specially designed for them? An idea has begun to dawn in enlightened minds: these creatures should be civilised and made a part of history, as Hegel and Chaadaev would say. Nevertheless, one should take the life-expectancy of the object into account when drafting projects: a mongrel's life is transient ? you've hardly finished civilising it when it's already dead. All large-scale transformations ran up against with this vexatious circumstance. Peter the Great's and Lenin's projects were excellent; only the people of which they called on were bad. The main obstacle of history is man. You say that he should be pitied? His life should be called tragic?

Tragedy is a figment of the imagination. The so-called common people, who are not endowed with the capacity to think, are incapable of calling their troubles a tragedy. Fools, they die without ever knowing that they could've suffered with pathos. Then why does the intellectual not apply his aptitude for transforming misfortune into tragedy to the misfortunes of others? After all, nothing really bad happens to him: his house doesn't burn to the ground, his children don't starve to death. In other words, does tragedy necessarily occur within the subject or is it objective? Or, to put it differently, can the world spirit itself, from which all misfortunes are equidistant, be taken to be the subject of the tragic consciousness? If so, tragedy is an ontological concept, it's present everywhere, and the intellectual exists only for the purposes of expressing it. The world needs him like a hired mourner; practically speaking, he's not good for anything else. It'd be a mistake to think that he himself is the subject of tragedy.

The fact that intellectuals never fully understand each other is not a tragedy but a comedy. For there's nothing really to understand. Their thoughts, convictions and experience are more or less the same; it's only their ambitions that differ. The opposition of the poet and the masses is also comic, for their conflict is imaginary. Poets are tragic only when they share the destiny of the masses (after having despised them all their lives).

Tragedy is something different. It refers to real (and not imaginary) solitude; the subjects of tragedy are those who are abandoned without aid or helpless in the face of poverty, the lonely without hope, the sick and aged without care and cripples who have not been perceived as such. Although they have not been identified as heroes of tragedy, they're precisely the ones who embody it. Not those who are lonely amid the crowd, but the lonely crowd is the real subject of tragedy.

However, there's no one it can tell it to, and, in any case, the crowd doesn't know how to speak.

After all, we are dumb from birth and, like deaf-mutes, converse among ourselves in a language that the world doesn't understand. This language may well be beautiful, yet it doesn't touch in the least those whom we want to understand us. Like a child speaking to a grown-up, we babble to the rest of the world, which tenderly pats us on the head, yet understands nothing. This incoherent murmur, this unintelligible speech sounds like mysterious music to the world; the complaints emanating from here, from the periphery, seem mysterious and beautiful to it.

Why am I writing about this? I only want to define our existence. It's not a tragedy, no. It's only life on the periphery, in a strange abode. Wasn't it clear from the start that it's a house of the dead ? a necropolis ? and that its destiny would likewise be dismal? What can we do now if we don't have (and never have had) any other home besides this one? I'm also asking: why does our love depend on an absurd place and unwanted relatives? And what does it have to do with the fact that I don't want to see any other map except your face or any other country except your body?

Why couldn't we love simply and live a simple and serene life together? Why did our feelings have to depend on geography and the social structure? Could've things been different? Can't we still set them right?