Those who have lived and contemplated in our time know that our epoch is a time of darkness and sorrow – of rising darkness and sorrow that has taken hold of humanity. Darkness has never disappeared in the world; it is as if it were part of its very composition, already by virtue of the mere fact that the world, contrary to naive or blind pantheists, does not coincide with the Godhead. The Godhead is pure Light and whole Light, while the world consists of darkness and light; therefore it is called to struggle for light and for enlightenment. That is why darkness has always been and always will be in the world as long as the world exists. But just as there are sunny days and gloomy days; or just as there is day and night in the rotation of the earth, so there are gloomy epochs and night times in history. And now our generation has the share to live in the night time, when “the abyss is exposed”, with its “fears and darknesses”, and when the barriers between us and it fall away (Tyutchev). In our days, the abyss of the human soul has indeed opened up as it could never have done before; the darkness that had been thickening in it has left its bosom, where faith, love, conscience, shame and legal awareness had kept it until now, and has flooded the life of the soul to extinguish all light in it: the glow of faith, the flame of love, the flare of conscience, and the spark of shame. And the life of our generation passed – some in fear of this darkness and in submission to it, and others in the struggle against this darkness and in the affirmation of faith in God and faithfulness to the spirit. But the power of this spiritual darkness has doubled in our time because it has realised its nature, spoken openly, unfolded its goals, concentrated its will and began the struggle for unlimited power over the personal soul and over the entire volume of the human world. If we give ourselves an account of this, it becomes clear why the greatest artists of our time and our people were the first to speak of this darkness and to tell of the sorrow that has taken hold of people in our time. This time is not yet over. The darkness has not yet fulfilled its destiny and has not yet retreated back into the abyss from which it rose; and perhaps it will have to put forward new temptations and celebrate new visible “successes”...