Born in Ukraine to a Polish family in 1887, Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky studied law and classical philology at Kiev University. After spending some time exploring Europe post-graduation, he took on a job that allowed him time to focus on his own writing. In 1922, Krzhizhanovsky moved to Moscow where he taught lectures on theater and music and became recognized in the literary community. There, he wrote philosophical stories with phantasmagoric elements which didn’t reach publication at the time for reasons not known, either due to economic or political problems (Soviet state censors). After Krizhanovsky died in 1950, his lifelong partner, Anna Bovshek brought his manuscripts to the State Archives in Moscow where they stayed until Vadim Perelmuter discovered the stash among the archives in 1976. Perelmuter compiled and published them decades later in 1989 after perestroika made its full impact.
The Thirteenth Category of Reason is one of Krzhizhanovksy’s stories compiled within the Memories of the Future collection. All of the short stories use dark humor and fantastical elements to fictionally represent the collective energy present in the Soviet Union during the 1920s. This story in particular was influenced by Emmanual Kant’s twelve categories of reason which represent the most basic ways we conceptualize the world. Krzhizhanovsky references the thirteenth category as being out of bounds of all human reason.
Kant's twelve categories:
Quantity: Unity, Plurality, Totality
Quality: Reality, Negation, Limitation
Relation: Inherence and Subsistence (substance and accident), Causality and Dependence (cause and effect), Community (reciprocity)
Modality: Possibility, Existence, Necessity