11) They say that music strengthens the impression of words--in arias, songs. It isn’t true. Music gets ahead of impressions made by words, by heaven knows how far. An aria of Bach; what words can rival it at the time when it is being rendered? It is a different thing--the words by themselves. To whatever music you would place the Sermon on the Mount, the music would remain far behind, once you penetrated the words. “Crucifix” by Faure,[162] the music is pitiable compared to the words. They are two entirely different and incompatible feelings. In song they go along together only because the words give tone. (Not exact. About this in another place.) 12) So vividly have I recalled Vasili Perfileev[163] and others, whom I saw in Moscow, and so clear did it become that, although they are dead, they still are. 13) The Scylla and Charybdis of artists; either understandable, but shallow, vulgar; or pseudo-lofty, original and incomprehensible. 14) The poetry of the people always reflected and not only reflected, predicted, prepared, popular movements; the Crusades, the Reformation. What could the poetry of our parasitical circle predict and prepare?--Love, debauchery; debauchery, love. 15) Popular poetry, music, art in general is exhausted, because all the talented have been won over by bribes to be buffoons to the rich and the titled; chamber music, opera, odes and[164] ... 16) In all art, there exists the struggle between the Christian and the pagan. The Christian begins to conquer and the new wave of the 15th Century overflows, the Renaissance, and only now at the end of the 19th, the Christian rises again, and paganism in the shape of decadence having reached the highest degree of nonsense, is being destroyed. 17) Besides the fact that the most gifted of the people were won over by bribes into the camp of the parasites, the cause of the destruction of popular poetry and music were: at first the serfdom of the people and later the most important one--printing. 18) Chertkov said that around us there are four walls of the unknown; in front, the wall of the future, in back the wall of the past, to the right the wall of ignorance, of that which is taking place there where we are not, and the fourth wall, he says, is the ignorance of that which is going on in the soul of another. In my mind this is not so. The first three walls are as he says. One should not look through them. The less we look beyond them the better. But as to the fourth wall of the ignorance of that which is going on in the souls of other people, this wall we ought to break down with all our strength, striving for a fusion with the souls of other people. And the less we will look beyond those three other walls, the closer we will get to others in this respect.