Svetlana Krivtsova read for us the book «The Problem of Spinoza» by Irvin Yalom.
Irvin Yalom has always written smart books that make you think along with him. Back in the 1980s, in addition to his scientific and pedagogical talents, he discovered the talent of a writer and brilliantly used the opportunity in the format of a novel to comprehend the problems with which people came to psychotherapists. When in 1997 the publishing house “Klass” published a small book “Treatment for Love” in Russian, we, together with its author, not only sympathized with the heroes, but also thought about the paradoxes of human emotionality, about what “good help to another person” means. . He then wrote the magnificent When Nietzsche Wept and Schopenhauer as Medicine (Eksmo, 2006, 2012), in which he reflected on ethics in psychotherapy and the fear of death. Approaching his 80th birthday, Yalom is writing Looking into the Sun (Eksmo), a book whose theme is again the fear of death. He writes the way a person who has overcome his own fear and spiritually prepared to leave could write. It seems that Yalom has already understood everything, the most important topics are thoroughly thought out by him. But here’s a new book. What remains unresolved?
The focus of his attention this time is the fate of Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza, a modest spice seller from the Jewish community of Amsterdam in the XNUMXth century, who from childhood showed extraordinary mental abilities. The story of a man who could not stop thinking, and the price he paid for it, is one of the two lines of the novel. And the second line is the XNUMXth century, the life story of Alfred Rosenberg, one of the ideologists of the Nazi policy of extermination of the Jews. Two biographies on the pages of the novel are intertwined like a DNA double helix, connected by many bridges.
Both characters are smart people. But how differently they use their minds! The novel captivates, plunging us into the thick spicy atmosphere of Yalom’s thoughts. There are two main themes that concern him. One is the problem of unwillingness and inability to think, a great misfortune of our time. Young people don’t want to talk. And this is dangerous, because it is much easier to trust the authorities, who interpret smoothly and confidently for us. Yalom shows how a superficial attitude to life inevitably leads to tragedies — both social and personal.
The second theme is relationship with God. Yalom, who often said that he did not believe in God, now talks about faith. His faith in God, in order, reason and the harmony of incomprehensibility that surpasses us, brilliantly described by Spinoza. Perhaps Spinoza’s Problem is the best book he ever wrote. In our time, when independent critical thinking and sincere search for God are not welcome, the elegant novel of a wise old man who knows the nature of man turns out to be real dissident literature, dangerous because it is talented.