Disenchanted Wanderer: The Apocalyptic Vision of Konstantin Leontiev by Glenn Cronin

Abstract

Reviewed by: Disenchanted Wanderer: The Apocalyptic Vision of Konstantin Leontiev by Glenn Cronin Alexandra Medzibrodszky (bio) Glenn Cronin, Disenchanted Wanderer: The Apocalyptic Vision of Konstantin Leontiev (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021). 261 pp., ills. Bibliography. Index. ISBN: 978-1-5017-6018-1. This is a new English-language intellectual biography of Konstantin Leontiev (1831–1891), a thinker and writer whose place in Russian intellectual history remains ambiguous and controversial. Previous attempts to pinpoint his ideas on a larger intellectual map have produced a variety of expressive labels. Nikolai Berdyaev called him a "Russian Nietzsche," Sergei Trubetskoy–a "disappointed Slavophile," Andrzej Walicki–an "integral reactionary," and his disciple Father Iosif Fudel simply referred to him as a "lonely thinker." Cronin correctly notes that the intense interest in Leontiev's thought in postcommunist Russia has not been matched with the same level of attention in the West. This is even more surprising because Vladimir Putin "championed Leontiev as a prophet of the true Russian culture" and "Russia under Putin still gives the West much to puzzle over" (Pp. 7–9). While Leontiev alone will not be enough to understand Russia under [End Page 303] Putin, the book is indeed a timely reevaluation of Leontiev and it is the first comprehensive study of his life and ideas in English since Stephen Lukashevich's psychoanalytical book published back in 1967.1 Leontiev was hardly an "ivory tower" thinker, as underscored by the three milestone events in his life that proved fateful for his intellectual development. In 1849, he started to study medicine at Moscow University. After graduating early, he joined the army as a doctor during the Crimean War. His medical training must have made him particularly predisposed to social organicism in his studies of civilizations. Another important turning point in Leontiev's life came in 1864 when he joined the Asiatic Department of the Russian foreign ministry. He spent the next ten years in various posts across the Ottoman Empire, including Istanbul and Thessaloniki, and was fascinated and impressed by the Ottoman world. This period in his life not only provided him with rich source material for various opinion pieces and literary works but also helped him crystallize his biological-aesthetic guiding principle–"unity in variety"–which strongly influenced his conceptualization of historical process. The third decisive moment came in 1871 when Leontiev fell seriously ill with cholera. In desperation, he prayed to the Virgin Mary for a cure and promised to visit the monastery on Mount Athos, a sacred site of Eastern Orthodoxy, if he recovered. In Leontiev's account, his condition immediately started to improve and he miraculously survived the illness. The existential dread and spiritual crisis had a pronounced impact on his worldview. In his last years he settled near the Optina Pustyn monastery, a spiritual center of Russian Orthodoxy. He died in 1891 in another important monastery, the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, a couple of months after taking monastic vows. The book offers a well-written, easy-to-follow introduction to Leontiev for specialists in Russian history and nonspecialists alike: it is organized chronologically, following the main events in his life while also reconstructing the main intellectual contexts, influences, and conflicts of his time. Writing an intellectual biography is challenging as it requires a delicate intertwining of the protagonist's intellectual development with his personal life and with the larger political, cultural, and historical contexts. Cronin aptly identifies the major turns and defining influences in Leontiev's intellectual biography and discusses his life and ideas. [End Page 304] The book's thirteen chapters are grouped into three parts. The first part focuses on Leontiev's early years as a doctor and diplomat until the time of his near-death experience in 1871. Discussing Leontiev's literary works and criticism penned at that time, Cronin convincingly demonstrates that Leontiev's rejection of the primacy of the moral over the aesthetic made him an instant outsider in the Russian cultural milieu. This position went against the dominant ethically and utilitarian currents of literary criticism propagated by Nikolay Chernyshevsky and Nikolay Dobrolyubov. Literary analysis in the book follows George Ivask's pronouncement that in all Leontiev's "novels we find...