Portraits of a Critic

I trust these critics, who bring with them the atmosphere of art, its wonderful hypnosis. In recent years, they have become more and more numerous. There is no smell of office mold or annoying lecturer's edification from them. They displace from the consciousness of my generation the idea of ​​criticism as a prototype of Chekhov's man in a case, which had become entrenched in our country from the boring syllogisms of high school textbooks and christami from a dozen years ago... They do not talk to readers from a podium. Academic dignity is alien to them. With their infectious enthusiasm, with their strange, unceasing fervor, they resemble the artists from poor attic studios, where, amidst the scattered motley of paints, canvases, and cheap furniture, endless passionate arguments about art take place, wine is drunk and new poems are recited, dancing is madly done, and rebellious avant-garde manifestos are read under the attic vaults...