“The diaries and letters of Alexei Ukhtomsky, which compiled the book, are a confession, which, in terms of insight and accuracy in observing events and introspection, in breadth and depth of thought, the gift of foresight, and attitude towards people, is worthy to take a place next to the “Confessions” of Blessed Augustine, Jean- Jacques Rousseau, Leo Tolstoy, with Time and Being by Martin Heidegger.
“Each in his own way knows about himself the “secret of life,” and this secret permeates the whole life of a given person,” writes Ukhtomsky. His own face and secret of life were determined by the work of faith and the work of love. The love and faith of Ukhtomsky could not be shaken by any hardships of life: the terrible events of the war and revolution, the execution of his brother-bishop. He himself was imprisoned twice, the last time he miraculously escaped extrajudicial execution.
A monk in the world and a true man of science, Ukhtomsky, in contrast to his fellow scientists, who defined life as “a way of existence of protein bodies”, suffered his own definition: “Life is a swing on the edge of a sword, and only by constant striving forward, by the dynamics and inertia of movement we can keep we are in this temporal equilibrium.” Ukhtomsky’s book is “a cubic piece of a smoking conscience” (B. Pasternak), it tangibly presents his dramatic fluctuations and the complexities of life’s choice: between serving God and science, between monasticism and love for a woman and friendship with her. Some of the texts are letters to women (apparently beautiful and worthy of the author).
In them, he writes about his understanding of happiness, fate, about how precious and at the same time fragile each person is, how carefully one has to treat each other, how terrible the responsibility in the face of another: it is the more, the more you love. It is useful at least to read, if not to learn — for both women and men.
Ukhtomsky’s maxim was a utopian demand from the existence of Beauty and Meaning. He looked for them in people, in prayer, in church singing, icon painting, in the service of science, in art. And he shared what was found and what was not found in diaries, letters, and marginal notes. After reading the book and looking again into the face of Ukhtomsky, you understand that the harmony of the external and internal is really possible, that the personality is real as the ideal and limit of self-construction.