The Russian Symbolist Viacheslav Ivanov on Aesthetic Experience as Religious

Victor Bychkov

doi:10.3390/rel12020068

Abstract

Viacheslav Ivanov (1866, Moscow–1949, Rome) is one of the most prominent Russian symbolist poets and a leading theorist of symbolism at the beginning of the twentieth century. The article demonstrates that Ivanov understood art (and, more broadly, aesthetic experience) as one of the most effective forms of contact between the human being and the spiritual world, as well as with its first cause. Ivanov distinguishes between three “aesthetic principles” of the universe, which all together constitute “the beautiful”—the sublime, beauty, and the chaotic—and links them to the three stages of being of the artist in the process of creative activity. The artist first passes through the chthonian, subconscious stage of demonic chaos. Next, artists undergo the process of ascent into the ideal, spiritual sphere, where they gain experience, which cannot be expressed in words. After that, the process of the descent of the artist towards the earth takes place, where artists attempt to express in the form of artistic symbols the experience that they have acquired. Ivanov sees the artistic symbol as a materially given structure, which nevertheless cannot be described in words. This structure not only expresses a spiritual essence, but also really and energetically manifests it. Hence, Ivanov sees the creator of high, symbolic art (“realist symbolism”) as an artist-theurge (theurgy is the art of the future, of the future mystery on the basis of a synthesis of the arts that receives divine assistance), who contributes to the augmentation of being. For the recipient, the artistic symbol is anagogical (from the Greek ἀναγογή, “leading up”). It leads one up from the real world to a more real one (a realibus ad realiora). According to Ivanov, both the symbol and its content, myth, are of divine origin; they are “embodiments of the divine truth.” Therefore, high art is one of the principal ways of one’s ascent to spiritual reality by means of sensory reality.

Highlights

Viacheslav Ivanov (1866, Moscow–1949, Rome) is one of the most prominent Russian symbolist poets and a leading theorist of symbolism at the beginning of the twentieth century
Philosophy as aesthetic emotion, in its variation called “the sublime.”3 What is often missing in either efforts to provide an alternative spirituality through the aesthetic or quasi-aesthetic emotion of wonder or in academic studies of these efforts is that the topic is not new, and there were heated discussions of similar ideas among Russian philosophers and artists at the turn of the twentieth century
This study, intends to fill the gap in the literature on the post-secular appropriation of aesthetic experience as quasi-religious by introducing the reader to the religious aesthetics of Viacheslav Ivanov, which is little known to the audience that consumes literature on the post-secular and which sketches the way the human being can partake in the highest levels of spirituality by means of the arts and aesthetic experience

Summary

Introduction

Viacheslav Ivanov (1866, Moscow–1949, Rome) is one of the most prominent Russian symbolist poets and a leading theorist of symbolism at the beginning of the twentieth century. Throughout various historical epochs and stages of their own creative activity, artists pass all levels of cosmo-anthropic being, which is described, according to Ivanov, by the three principal aesthetic categories: beginning with a Dionysian purification in chaotic, ecstatic depths, which is characteristic of ancient mysteries, which is followed by an ascent to divine heights, and ending with a descent to their dear earth in the process of creating works of art.

Results

Conclusion