FREEMASONRY IN THE LIFE AND WORK OF APOLLON GRIGORIEV

Abstract

The article touches upon a set of questions about the role of Freemasonry in the writer’s life and how Masonic teaching was expressed in his texts. Grigoriev considered himself a hereditary mason and, according to his confession, “believed in some mysterious connection” of his soul with the soul of his late grand-father, the mason Ivan Grigoriev. A friend of Grigoriev’s youth and his comrade at Moscow University, the poet Afanasy Fet recalled that Grigoriev had repeatedly told him “about his admission to the Masonic lodge”. Freemasonry and Hermeticism also inspired (directly or indirectly) the literary pseudonym of the poet: “A. Trismegistov”. Grigoriev’s Masonic Hymns (1845) are considered in the context of the hymns of the Russian Masons of the late 18th — fi rst quarter of the 19th centuries. Th e “Masonic plot” of the play Two Egoisms (1845) and the Masonic subtext of the novels One of Many (1846) and Th e Other of Many (1847) are also analyzed. In his later works, Ap. Grigoriev acted as a bold innovator, portraying Masonic heroes at a time when Freemasonry was offi cially banned in Russia, and depicted them not retrospectively, but as his contemporaries, i.e. people of the forties.