Night of January 16th

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If I were to classify Night of January 16th in conventional literary terms, I would say that it represents, not Romantic Realism, but Romantic Symbolism. For those acquainted with Objectivist aesthetics, I can name a more precise classification: Night of January 16th is not a philosophical, but a sense-of-life play.

A sense of life is a preconceptual equivalent of metaphysics, an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man's relationship to existence. I emphasize this last because it is a man's attitude toward life that constitutes the core and motor of his subconscious philosophy. Every work of fiction (and wider: every work of art) is the product and expression of its author's sense of life. But it may express that sense of life translated into conceptual, i.e., philosophical, terms, or it may express only an abstract emotional sum. Night of January 16th is a pure, untranslated abstraction.

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