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Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
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Born: January 20, 1905, Saint Petersburg Died: March 6, 1982, New York, USA
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Biography
Ayn Rand (eng.
Ayn Rand; nee.
Alice Zinovievna Rosenbaum (transcription: ajnæænd, February 2, 1905 March 6, 1982) was an American writer and philosopher.
She was born in St. Petersburg.
She studied philosophy and literature at the Petrograd State University.
She grew up in an atmosphere of artistic splendor and the Orthodox heritage of her idol Catherine the Great.
She was the first child in the family of the Jewish merchant Fronz, whom she adored, and his annoying wife Anna, whom she hated.
Betrothed to Alice Rosenbaum, Ayn Rand was the first of three daughters.
She was a lovely child who learned to read and write at the age of four, at a time when Trotsky, Lenin and Stalin were engaged in revolutionizing her native country Although her views were diametrically opposed to the philosophy of the system in which she grew up, Ayn Rand became a typical product of this system.
She grew up a closed child, for whom books were a refuge.
She fell in love with French novels before she was ten years old, and Victor Hugo became her favorite writer.
She decided to become a writer when she was nine, and said in a classic Promethean style: "I will write about who people should be, not about who they are."
Rand's favorite novel was Les Miserables, and one of her first favorite characters was Cyrus, the fearless heroine of French adventure novels.
Rand admits that it was at this early age that she began to think in eternal global categories and principles became an important part of her thinking.
She says: "Thinking about the ideas, I began to ask myself the question why?".
And again: "I donot remember the origin of my stories, they came to me as a whole."
Describing herself as a child, Rand recalls that she worshipped heroes.
And continues: "I was incredibly outraged even at the hint that a woman's place is at home or that young ladies should remain young ladies."
She says: "I have always been for intellectual equality, but I was not interested in women as such."
The First World War was a tragedy for the nine year old Rand.
St. Petersburg was under siege, and most of her family members were killed.
When she was twelve, the Russian Revolution took place, and her father lost everything.
He became an ordinary worker, fighting for a piece of bread on the table and for saving his family from the hated Reds.
This left an indelible imprint on Rand's mind.
When she was a teenager, she first heard the Communist doctrine: "You have to live for the country," was one of the most disgusting concepts she had ever heard.
Since then, she has devoted her life to proving the falsity of this concept.
Rand claims that when she was thirteen, Victor Hugo influenced her more than anyone else, he was at an unattainable height above everyone else.
His writings gave rise to her belief in the power of the printed word as an effective means for great achievements.
Rand says: "Victor Hugo is the greatest writer in world literature... a person should not be exchanged for lesser values either in books or in life."
This was the impetus for Rand's spiritual impulse to write epic scale novels about heroic achievements.
At the age of seventeen, she openly declared to a shocked philosophy professor: "My philosophical views are not yet part of the history of philosophy.
But they will enter it."
He gave her the highest rating for her self confidence and perseverance.
Her college educated cousin read Nietzsche, which Rand had never heard of before.
He gave her one of his books, accompanied by the prophetic remark: "Here is someone you should read, because he will be the source of all your ideas."
Rand entered Leningrad University at the age of sixteen and graduated in 1924, when she turned nineteen, with a degree in history.
Then she worked for a while as a museum guide, before going to Chicago for a two week trip.
She said goodbye to her family, deciding never to return.
Rand remembers: "At that time, America seemed to me the freest country in the world, a country of individuals."
Rand landed in New York, speaking absolutely no English, armed only with a typewriter and a few personal items that her mother had bought by selling the family jewels.
The most inventive Russian immigrant chose the name Ayn and showed her creative abilities by adopting the brand name of her typewriter "Remington Rand"as a surname.
After a few months spent in Chicago, Rand went to Hollywood with the idea of a career as an actress or a screenwriter for the cinema.
She met the gorgeous young actor Frank 0'Connor, whom she married in 1929.
Part of the romantic adventure with 0'Connor was caused by the fact that her visa was catastrophically expiring.
Their wedding satisfied the immigration officials, who issued her American citizenship in 1931.
The marriage would last fifty years, and Frank would become her friend, attorney, editor, but she would never take his last name.
She always wanted to become a famous writer and decided to leave her own name as a statement of her future, even if this famous name in the future turned out to be the name of a company that produces typewriters.
Rand began writing and finished her first play, Attic Legends, in 1933.
The following year, it was staged on Broadway, where it did not last long.
What prompted Rand to take up writing her first novel, "We are the Living", published by Macmillan in 1936.
This was her first work condemning the totalitarian state and those who would sacrifice themselves in the name of this state.
Then Rand plunged into her first great novel, "The Source," which she wrote for four years.
There were times when this work obsessed woman spent thirty hours at a typewriter without a single break for food or sleep.
Howard Roark, the main character of "The Source", became a means for expressing the philosophical doctrine of Rand.
Roarke was her first hero, representing the perfect man.
The novel was based on the struggle of good and evil.
Roarke represented good, and the bureaucratic system represented evil.
Rand's husband told reporters after "The Source" became a sensational hit: "She is absolutely sincere... she never wondered if fame would come to her.
The only question was how long it would take."
Success came quickly.
To everyone's delight, The Source was published in 1943.
In the reviews of many serious critics, the work was evaluated as an outstanding work.
In a review of books for May 1943, the New York Times called her a writer of great power with a subtle simple mind and the ability to write brilliantly, magnificently and sharply.
During 1945, the book made the national bestseller list twenty six times, and Rand was commissioned to write a script for Harry Cooper.
She got on her way.
In 1925, she received a visa to study in the United States.
In Russia, despite several translations of her novels ("The Source", "Atlas Shrugged"), she still remains a little known author.
In the West, her name is widely known as the creator of the philosophy of objectivism, based on the principles of reason, individualism, reasonable egoism and being the intellectual justification of capitalist values in contrast to the popular socialism at that time.
In her political beliefs, Rand defended unlimited (laissez faire) capitalism and minarchism, and considered the only legitimate function of the state to protect human rights (including property rights).
Rand began writing The Anthem, which was eventually published in 1938, while still a teenager, in St. Petersburg, in Russia, knowing that she would never be able to finish and publish in Bolshevik Russia a novel "proclaiming egoism".
Work on the novel was postponed until 1926, when she came to the United States.
Her first classes upon arrival were as a statistician and screenwriter, then she worked as a waitress during the Depression, and often as a secretary.
She worked as a writer for hire in order to pay the bills at a time when she was understating the writing of two of the greatest novels, which were based on her objectivist philosophy.
Rand wrote, "We the living" (1936), "Anthem" (1938), the fountainhead (1943), "Atlas shrugged" (1957), "For the new intellectual" (1961), "the Virtue of selfishness" (1964), "Philosophy: who is she needed?" (1982).
These seven books have sold thirty million copies in the last forty years.
Literary critic Lorin Purette wrote after the publication of the "Source" : "Good novels of ideas are very rare at any time.
This is the only novel of ideas written by an American woman that I can remember."
Rand's two main works are now considered classics, although at first the publishing industry experts refused to print them.
"The Source" and "Atlas Shrugged" were "too intellectual" and "not for the general public," as the publishers said, twelve of whom returned the manuscript of the "Source".
They argued that the book was too controversial, with an incredible storyline.
In the end, Bobbs Merrill published the novel despite the fact that he did not see any opportunity to sell it ever.
Over the next ten years, The Source sold four million copies and became a classic cult book.
Based on this book, a film was made in 1949 in Hollywood with Harry Cooper in the title role - he played Howard Roark, the "ideal man", who became an artistic character defending individualism and selfishness.
Rand was convinced that the world lives according to the laws of the tribe, which would inevitably turn a person into a mediocre animal driven by altruism and hedonism.
This first significant work was directed against the spreading communism as a deadly enemy of the creative and innovative personality.
According to Roark, " we are approaching the world in which we cannot afford to live."
In the book, Roarke achieves the position of the triumphant as an iconoclastic symbol of the ideal man, who in one way or another is a role model for each of the thirteen heroines of our book.
Rand wrote the first line "Atlas Shrugged" in 1946, it was the apocalyptic phrase " Who is John Galt?", and then spent twelve years trying to answer this question in a philosophical dialogue.
It took two years to write John Galt's famous speech on the radio, the length of this speech is five hundred thousand words True to her inimitable style, Rand did not allow Random House to cut out even one word from the dialogue.
She asked: "Would you shorten the Bible?"
In fact, the hero of the book was "human consciousness", which was highlighted through the main character John Galt, who was actually a transformed "second self" of Rand.
"Atlas Shrugged" is aimed at the moral defense of capitalism and following the requirements of"reason".
Rand preached: "Every person is free to rise as high as his desires and abilities allow him; but only his own idea of the limits of his development determines these limits."
"Atlas Shrugged" is not so much a novel as an epic myth that explains the philosophical mistakes of collectivist societies.
John Galt expresses the spirit of entrepreneurship of all mankind, which is most clearly expressed in his famous phrase: "I will never live for another person and I will never ask another person to live for me."
The last thing Gault did was draw the sign of the almighty dollar in the sand and remarked: "We are returning to peace."
Rand despised altruism and hedonism and supported Nietzsche's concept with the aphorism "The strong are called to conquer, and the weak are called to die".
She gave John Galt all the features of a perfect superman.
He was irritated by "irreconcilable rationality", "unlucky self esteem" and "inexorable realism".
Speaking about capitalism, Gault says: "There is no anonymous achievement.
There is no collective creation.
Every step on the way to a great discovery bears the name of its creator...
There were no collective achievements.
There never was.
It will never be.
It can never be.
There is no collective brain."
Atlas Shrugged became a classic philosophical novel in the same sense as Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment became a classic psychological novel.
Since 1957, it has already sold more than five million copies and still sells more than 100 thousand copies every year.
After completing her monumental work "Atlas Shrugged", Rand spent the rest of her career defending and preaching the religion of objectivism.
The Ayn Rand Letter was created for many years, promoting the achievements of objectivism, and the Objectivist Bulletin is still being printed.
Now texts from Rand's books are used in many training courses in metaphysics and epistemology.
Rand had a huge impact on society and capitalism and probably did more to destroy the Berlin Wall than all the politicians and bureaucrats of the world combined.
The Nathaniel Branden Institute in New York became the center of objectivist philosophy.
In the 60s and 70s, Rand visited many universities, including Harvard, Yale and Columbia, as a lecturer, promoting objectivist philosophy.
Ayn Rand had an independent spirit, an obsession with work, the gift of macro vision.
She was considered dogmatic in her beliefs and even arrogant in her relationships with other people.
She was withdrawn and unnecessarily irritable.
Rand became a hit on three Johnny Garson shows during 1967 and ' 68 and received the biggest mail in the history of NBC's late night shows.
Mike Wallace was reluctant to interview Rand because of her reputation as a heavy personality.
Rand refused to appear on television talk shows unless she was guaranteed that only she would be interviewed, that there would be no editing and that she would not be attacked using quotes from her opponents Wallace said that she charmed his entire team with her hypnotic personality.
When he sent his people for a preliminary interview, "they all fell in love with her."
Rand has never avoided anything.
She was a true fighter, constantly criticized the liberals, saying: "Intellectuals are parasites from subsidized classrooms."
She described her favorite contemporary writer, Mike Spilane, as follows: "This is a true moralist.
His characters are always either black or white, no gray.
I'm not interested in gray ones."
She felt the same in humanity: "Just as a person's condition is exclusively the result of his own efforts, so his soul is exclusively the product of his efforts."
Rand was quite reserved and very serious about many issues.
Living alone after the death of her husband in the late 70s, she still continued to be a person obsessed with work, loved classical music and defended her philosophy with messianic fervor.
Her favorite motto was "Check your premises and follow your conclusions", which reflected her careful logical approach to life and philosophy.
Rand's lawyer characterizes her personality in his statement: "Communicating with Ayn Rand was like attending a scientific symposium on mental functioning...
The light of her clarity and splendor was so strong that I donot think anything will ever be able to extinguish it.
The "source" is AinRand herself" (B. Brandvn, 1962).
Rand loved Aristotle and accepted his aphorism: "Literature has a greater philosophical value than history, because history represents things as they are, while literature represents them as they could be and should be."
All her life, Rand was an anti feminist, for whom a man was a higher being, but she considered Danie Taggert from the novel "Atlas Shrugged" the ideal woman.
Rand felt that love is not self sacrifice, but the deepest affirmation of your own needs and values.
The person you love is necessary for your own happiness, and this is the greatest compliment, the most that you can give him.
Rand, when she was fourteen, decided that she was an atheist, and wrote the following lines in her diary: "First of all, there is no reason to believe in God, because there is no evidence for this belief.
Secondly, the concept of God is offensive and humiliating for a person.
It implies that the limit of possibilities is inaccessible to man, that he is an inferior being, capable only of worshipping an ideal that he will never achieve."
Her philosophy is what characterizes her.
In her own words, she herself is "this concept of a man as a heroic being, whose moral goal of life is his own happiness, fruitful achievement is the result of his noblest activity, and reason is his only deity."
In the twenties, Ayn Rand married Frank 0'Connor, a struggling actor, "because he was beautiful."
He was the embodiment of the heroic image from her subconscious, which she admired so much.
She decided to live among the heroes, and 0'Connor was a living and breathing Hollywood hero.
He was six years older than her, and one of the additional advantages in their marriage was that he gave her first a permanent visa, and then American citizenship in 1931.
Later, she would say that their wedding took place at gunpoint, which was held by Uncle Sam 0'Connor became her editor and companion for life, despite even a thirteen year affair with Nathaniel Branden.
Rand became Branden's mentor after he was captured by the "Source" as a young Canadian student at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Branden idolized Rand, and they got closer and closer.
The relationship between the mentor and the student developed into emotional and physical in 1954.
According to Nathaniel's wife, Barbara Branden, Rand, a completely rational woman, appealed to her and her husband for a prudent resolution of this emotional crisis.
Rand convinced them to accept this love affair in philosophical terms as an intellectually acceptable sexual relationship, beneficial for all parties.
Branden was twenty five years younger than Ayn and idolized her.
He became a devoted follower of her works and philosophy.
Rand considered their romance a sexual refuge for two kindred spirits, but you can look at it more deeply, as a metaphorical scene from the novel "Atlas Shrugged" that she is completing" Ayn was Dany Taggert, and Nathaniel was John Galt, and their fantasy was realized in real life in the heart of capitalism, in Manhattan.
In her description, Barbara Branden says of Rand: "Ayn has never lived or loved in reality.
It was a theater or a fantasy in her own fictional world.
That was her connection with Branden, too."
Branden became Rand's lover, her confidant, and heir to the throne of objectivism.
He devoted his life to spreading this religion.
He founded the expanded Nathaniel Branden Institute, designed to study objectivism
He began publishing the Objectivism Newsletter to distribute philosophical works around the world.
He published the Ayn Rand Bulletin in support of capitalism.
Branden was the most responsible person in spreading the philosophy of objectivism, which eventually became the credo of the Freedom Party.
In 1958, Branden fell in love with a younger woman and attempted a prudent break with Ayn.
She was already sixty three years old, and he was thirty eight, but Rand saw in his refusal to continue the relationship a denial of the truth.
Subconsciously, she still understood the true state of things.
Age took its toll.
Rand was destroyed.
She never spoke to Branden again.
Rand's career came first in her life.
She never intended to have children.
There was absolutely no time for this.
She devoted the years that she could have spent on having children to the realization of the dream of her whole life - writing "The Source".
Soon after, in 1946, she wrote the line " Who is John Galt?", at that time she was forty one years old, and she never gave up on the desire to complete her plan.
Frank 0'Connor always supported her and followed her along her life path, accepting all her conditions.
For the sake of realizing the dream of her childhood, Ayn Rand sacrificed everything: her family in Russia, her husband, her maternal nature.
She said that she paid a small price, because there is no doubt that she realized the dream of her childhood by creating superman type heroes who will remain classics in the world of literature and philosophy for centuries.
Ayn Rand was ridiculed and hated by most liberals and intellectuals.
She deeply believed that the world is divided into " black and white and there is no gray color.
Good fights evil, and there is no justification for actions that we consider evil."
The word "compromise" was not in her vocabulary.
Philosophers loved or hated her, but most of them never accepted her, as well as literary circles, but her books were much more popular than the books of those who insulted her.
Of course, no one spoke about Rand with indifference.
This perfect embodiment of the spirit of free enterprise "challenged the traditions of two and a half thousand years" and constantly caused the displeasure of most religions, political systems and economic dogmas.
Rand was dogmatic in her belief in the freedom of a person to take risks and was at the forefront of those who chose to take risks in order to change the existing state of things.
This characterizes the creative geniuses of free enterprise and innovators.
Ayn Rand is a good example of a guru of philosophy and the temperament necessary to compete in this world.
Rand died on March 6, 1982 in her beloved city of New York.
The New York Times wrote: "Ayn Rand's body was lying next to a symbol that she took as her own - a six foot image of the American dollar sign."
Rand's spirit of enlightened selfishness would have been fully realized if she had lived at least another eight years and seen the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Communist Party in Russia.
Ayn Rand is destined to remain in history as the philosophical tribune of the capitalist system.
Its significance for capitalism is similar to that of Karl Marx for communism.
Her "Atlas Shrugged" will find its place next to Marx's "Communist Manifesto" in universities and other abodes of knowledge whenever political and economic systems are discussed.
Ayn Rand was a perfect "creative genius", she admired her heroine Catherine the Great.
She said of her childhood: "I thought I was an exact copy of Catherine."
And when she turned fifty five, she said: "You know, I am still waiting for the day" when I will achieve everything that Ekaterina has achieved.
I believe that history will place Ayn Rand next to Ekaterina as one of the truly great Russian women who dared to challenge the world and who had the courage to come and change it.
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Bibliography
Novels * We are Alive We are the Living (1936)
* Source The Fountainhead (1943)
* Atlas Shrugged (1957) Novels and Short Stories * Anthem Anthem (1938)
* The Husband I Bought (a collection of short stories)
* Think twice (author's collection) Journalism * The Art of fiction.
The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers (1958)
The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)
* The apology of Capitalism Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966) / Capitalism.
An unfamiliar ideal
* The Romantic Manifesto (1969)
* Return of the primitive.
The New Left: The Anti Industrial Revolution (1971)
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (1979)
* Answers.
About ethics, art, politics and economics
Film adaptations
The novel "The Source" was filmed in 1949, the main role was played by Gary Cooper.
The novel "We are alive" was filmed in 1942 and in 1986, and the film adaptation of the novel "Atlas Shrugged" in 2011.
The second part of the novel was filmed in 2012.
Two novels of the writer and several plays were filmed, and Ayn Rand was also the screenwriter of the films "Love Letters "and"You are Alone".
A total of 10 film adaptations based on the works and scripts of Ayn Rand took place, not counting the planned film adaptation of Atlanta.
Interesting facts
The script of the computer game BioShock was created based on the critical attitude of the game creators to the philosophy of Ayn Rand.
According to the scenario of the game, the founder of the city, Andrew Ryan (an anagram of the name of the writer Ayn Rand — And[rew] Ryan) embodies the ideas of the free market without external interference, which leads to the destruction of the city.
Last updated: May 10, 2015, 01: 37, DorianGray
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