Mikhail Nemtsev's collection of short essays, "Clarity and Joy," returns us to the very beginning of philosophy, where Socrates once began: there's nothing yet, no answers to questions, no questions themselves, but there's a concern about the foundations of life that you don't yet know what to call, so you probe them with whatever means are at hand. Nemtsev literally shows how philosophy is born. And how close it is to poetry: both in purpose and in methods.
Nemtsev's collection of poems, "Victory," published simultaneously, enters poetry in much the same way—as if it doesn't exist yet. A minimum of words, separated by pauses, can deliver an emotional impact or an intellectual challenge precisely because these words are stripped of all unnecessary elements, presenting themselves in their absolute nakedness. The contrast between Nemtsev's essays and his poetry is simultaneously a contrast between types of utterance and between eras: most of the essays were written before 2022, the poems in this book after.
Moderator – Dmitry Kuzmin