To My Son Alexander: "..we eliminate the old lie."

Upon completion and publication of his collection of articles and essays in “From the Other Shore.”, Alexander Herzen wrote a letter dedicating the book to his fifteen year old son. Herzen began the letter as follows, “My friend Sasha, I dedicate this book to you, because I have never written, and probably shall never write, anything better……”Today’s post is an excerpt from Herzen’s letter to his son Sasha.

“To My Son Alexander”

“I have no fear whatever of putting into your young hands this, at times insolent, protest of an independent individual against an obsolete, slavish and spurious set of ideas, against absurd idols, which belong to another age and which linger on meaninglessly among us, a nuisance to some, a terror to others.

I do not wish to deceive you; you must know the truth as I know it; may you enter this truth not through agonizing error and crushing disappointment, but simply as an inheritance.

In your life there will be other questions, other conflicts….there will be no lack of toil and suffering. You are only fifteen, and already have experienced some terrible shocks. Do not look for solutions in this book—-there are none; in general modern man has no solutions. What is solved is finished, and the coming upheaval is only beginning.

We do not build, we destroy; we do not proclaim a new revelation, we eliminate the old lie. Modern man, that melancholy Pontifex Maximus, only builds a bridge—it will be for the unknown man of the future to pass over it. You may be there to see him….But do not, I beg, remain on this shore…Better to perish with the revolution than to seek refuge in the almshouse of reaction.”

(Note: In the excerpt Herzen referenced the name Pontifex Maximus. Pontifex Maximus held the most important position in the ancient Roman religion.)

                                                      Apparel For The Enlightened Reader