The Concrete Metaphysics of the “Divine Comedy”: P. Florensky’s “Imaginaries in Geometry” and the Danteana of the Silver Age

Abstract

In 1921, on the 600th anniversary of Dante Alighieri, the Silver Age philosopher and priest Pavel Florensky finished writing his book “Imaginaries in Geometry”, in which he demonstrated how the medieval picture of cosmos unfolded in “Divine Comedy” was confirmed in the light of modern science. The book was published in 1922 and has since been commented from various points of view. This article raises a question that has hardly been touched upon in the Florenskian scholarship: i.e. in what aspects does Florensky’s view of Dante fit into the “Danteana” (“Dante’s text”) of the Silver Age? In this respect, other approaches to Dante’s work in the context in which Florensky’s position was developed are considered, with a special focus on the views of Russian religious thinkers. One of the main hypotheses of this article is that such a way of posing this question is useful to explain the phenomenon of “Russian Dante”, whose originality is mentioned in a number of relevant studies. This article also reveals the way in which the perception of Dante by Russian thought is connected with the assessment of the historical and cultural position that his work occupies. In this regard, particular attention is paid to the re-evaluation of the consolidated vision of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance undertaken by Russian thought. In conclusion, the reason for the increased interest in the phenomenon of Dante within the Silver Age religious and philosophical thought is the recognition of proximity to their own ideological attitudes of the symbolic worldview as is presented in the “Divine Comedy”. In Pavel Florensky’s thought this type of worldview receives not only a philosophical, but also a scientific justification, and is defined by the concept of “concrete metaphysics”.