Silver Age Research Articles

L.N. Tolstoy and V.S. Solovyov as the Inspirers of the New Generation of Russian Liberals at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries

Abstract. On the basis of the publications, correspondence and memoirs of Russian liberals at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries, the author of the article examines the problem of the ideological infl uence of Leo Tolstoy and Vladimir Solovyov on the younger generation of politicians who played a decisive role in the transformation and overthrow of the “old order”. He comes to the conclusion that the idea of the possibility of creating a new world, so characteristic of the Silver Age, was also fully manifested in the political sphere. At that, the Russian forerunners of this perception were precisely L.N. Tolstoy and V.S. Solovyov. The young liberal politicians of the turn of the century countered the offi cial ideology with the ideas of panmoralism and individual rights, borrowed in the works of these two thinkers. Tolstoy’s teaching inspired primarily with the call to overthrow offi cial idols. V.S. Solovyov was interesting for them due to his idea of equal value and interconnection of an individual and society. Though Solovyov was not an ideologue of social liberalism, the infl uence of Solovyov’s thought on the liberation movement turned out to be very serious.

The Concept of Beauty in the Russian Art of the Silver Age in the Context of V. Solovyov’s the Philosophy

The purpose of this article is to reveal the infl uence of V. Solovyov’s philosophy on the formation of the concept of beauty in Russian literature and painting of the Silver Age. The object of this study is the prose of B.K. Zaitsev and, I.S. Shmelev, as well as the paintings by V.E. Borisov-Musatov and M. Vrubel. It is established that the philosopher’s assertion that the concept of beauty was fundamental in the harmonious Divine world order had special impact on the consciousness of his contemporaries; the author reveals the meaning and signifi cance of the phenomenon of Eternal Femininity in the views of V. Solovyov and, following him, in those of the artists of the word and brush. In the philosopher's worldview the author highlights the importance of the closest interdependence of the aesthetic and ethical principles of being, organically refl ected in Russian art, which combined Beauty and Goodness since ancient times.

«Каббала как особый тип религиозного сознания». Доклад Бориса Столпнера в Религиозно-философском обществе памяти Вл. Соловьёва

The ideological foundations of Judaism and Jewish thought rarely became the subjects of special discussion among the philosophers of the Russian Silver Age. Archival documents, which are published for the first time in this article, refer to such a rare case when the greatest Russian thinkers of that time – P.A. Florensky, S.N. Bulgakov, V.I. Ivanov and others – publicly discussed the essence of Jewish mysticism at a special meeting of the philosophical society. Boris Stolpner's report "Kabbalah as a Special Type of Religious Consciousness", read in April 1914, caused a lively discussion, the content of which we can get acquainted with due to the accidentally preserved notes of Sergei Durylin. The publication of these materials will significantly expand our understanding of the interest in Jewish thought among Russian philosophers of the early twentieth century.

Лосев Алексей Фёдорович

Alexei Losev (10[22].09.1893, Novocherkassk – 24.05.1988, Moscow), Russian philosopher, philologist and writer, is the creator of a unique religious-philosophical system, which combines the reinterpreted tradition of ancient and medieval thought (Plato and Neoplatonism, Christian apophatic theology of Dionysius the Areopagite, Gregory Palamas, Nicholas of Cusa), the methodology of New European philosophy (German classical idealism, neo-Kantianism, phenomenology of E.Husserl) and the problems of New European philosophy (German classical ideal-ism, neo-Kantianism, phenomenology of E.Husserl) and the problems of Russian religious philosophy of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, from V.S. Solovyov (the idea of universalism) to P.A. Florensky. In the constructive design of Losev’s system the central place is occupied by dialectics, in the multidimensional construction of which each category and all of them together are worked out in the light of each other. Losev’s personalistic ontology is the basis of his philosophy of language (naming as an interpretative - communicative self-discovery of personality), philosophy of myth as a distinctive form of personal worldview (myth as directly experienced and created reality, symboli-cally expressed), and aesthetics (artistic form is “personality as symbol and symbol aspersonality”). Losev was the founder of the philosophy of music in Russia. His multi-volume history of ancient aesthetics represents the history of the entire ancient culture revealed in its symbolic-expressive aspects. The works of Losev, are presentative of the last generation of the Silver Age of Russian culture, became a kind of completion of Ortho-dox religious philosophy in Russia in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Софиология Вл. Соловьева как главный фактор «духовного рождения» о. Сергия Булгакова

The analysis of the influence of V. Solovyov’s sophiology on the spiritual path of S.N. Bulgakov and his formation as a philosopher and theologian is proposed. The experience of the “revelation of Sophia”, developed by the thinker into a philosophical and theological concept under the direct influence of the philosophy of V. Solovyov, is considered as the main factor of the spiritual evolution of Fr. Sergius. Using the method of existential analysis, the key events of S.N. Bulgakov’s spiritual path are revealed, which became the basis of his conceptual constructions. As a result of the analysis, it was found that based on their own experience of cognition of Sophia as a special dimension of created being, connecting it with the Creator, S.N. Bulgakov demonstrates the continuity of the development of Russian philosophy from V. Solovyov to the thinkers of the Silver Age. This allows us to speak about the key role of the revelation of Sophia of the Wisdom of God as one of the main elements of the Russian philosophical tradition of the XIX–XX centuries. It is shown that, according to this philosophical interpretation, sophiology conveys an important spiritual experience of human perception of the essence of the created world, not damaged by Original sin. It is noted that this aspect of spiritual experience has not been previously investigated within the framework of academic theology, which led S.N. Bulgakov to conflict with traditional academic theology, allowed S.N. Bulgakov to overcome the materialistic understanding of history. Based on the analysis of a number of modern approaches, the sophiology of Fr. Sergius is interpreted as a valuable theologumen for the modern Christian consciousness, which is the response of the Russian Orthodox mind to the dehumanization of the world, to the secular picture of the world that has developed within the framework of Modern science. An example of the “spiritual birth” of fr. Sergiy Bulgakov is considered as a vivid example of the influence of Vladimir Solovyov’s legacy, his spiritual experience and philosophical doctrine on the subsequent history of Russian philosophy.

Sensational comics: erotic comics, women, and popular subjectivity in neoliberal Mexico

ABSTRACT Adding to the extant literature literature, we propose to approach Mexican comics as literary objects within which sociopolitical, economic and cultural processes of Mexican society are expressed. Instead of focusing on Golden and Silver Age Historietas or contemporary artistic and/or politically aware creations, we address the popular eighties’ erotic Sensacionales. Drawing on literary theory and interviews with cartoonists cartoonists, we argue that these comics enable us to understand how changes in gender, class and racial/ethnic relationships in Neoliberal Mexico are symbolically elaborated around female’s body and desire, displacing them into arousing narratives about sexually insatiable women.

Translating Russian Literature into Italian: A Case Study between Language and Culture

Abstract: The present article focuses on some reflectionsabout the process of translation into Italian of the well-known Russian fairy tale by Aleksey Nikolaevich Tolstoy(1882-1945) Zolotoy klyuchik, ili Priklyucheniya Buratino(The Little Golden Key, or the Adventures of Burattino, 1935). Basing from the methodological point of view on some recent acquisitions of international TranslationTheory, we will examine the main “difficulties” or “challenges” for the translator present in the source text, such as anisomorphisms, linguistic connotations, neologisms, cultural realia and phraseologisms. We willalso consider the employment of different stylistic registersin the tale, often connected to the characters’ “expressiveaura” and to thick intertextual allusions to Russian Silver Age. Our lexical and stylistic choices in the translated text will be analyzed with regard to the dominants of the original work and to the specific characteristics of Russian(and Soviet) children literature of the time. Some solutionsproposed in the two published Italian versions of the 1980swill be also taken into account, questioning the opportunityand the main orientations of a new translation in relation to the kind of “implied readers” expected.

GEOPOETICS OF THE ART NOUVEAU ERA: SOUTHERN ITALY THROUGH THE EYES OF RUSSIAN AUTHORS OF THE LATE 19TH - EARLY 20TH CENTURY

The article dwells on the semantically integral system of Southern Italy Russian reception in the heyday of Belle époque. Its connection with the European context dating back to Goethe and purely national features are shown. Based on Berdyaev’s relevant texts, the imagological constants of the Silver Age ‘Russian Italy’ are reconstructed. Three different models of it are demonstrated, opposing the aesthetic line of Italy reflection in the mirrors of the arts, embodied by P.P. Muratov (Images of Italy, 1912): in the works of D.S. Merezhkovsky, M.A. Osorgin and I.A. Bunin. It is proved that they are united by an unexpected in the depiction of the bright Italian South antirhetoric, expressive asceticism, opposition to decorative redundancy and polemic in relation to the romantic apology of the ‘Mediterranean Arcadia’. In the case of Merezhkovsky, this even laid the foundation for a special potential type of alternative poetics, which could but never managed to reach the center of the writer’s artistic system.

«ДОНСКОЙ ЧЕХОВ»? К ПРОБЛЕМЕ ЛИТЕРАТУРНОЙ АТРИБУЦИИ ТВОРЧЕСТВА Р. П. КУМОВА

The article discusses the evolution of R. P. Kumov, one of the largest Don writers of the Silver Age, perceived by modern critics as the "Don Chekhov". This was facilitated by the lyrical beginning of his style, subtle psychologism in the depiction of characters, for the most part people of the clergy – from a novice to a bishop. At the beginning of his career, he openly focuses on the plots of Chekhov's famous works, uses the techniques of his poetics, creating a kind of literary palimpsest. But already in the first half of the 1910s, new themes, characters, motives appeared in his prose and especially in dramaturgy, the desire to depict acute conflicts of our time, large and controversial characters. After 1917, he became a witness and artistic chronicler of the Don Vendee, a fratricidal civil war on the Don. Cossack folklore, motifs and images of folk eschatology play a significant role in his Don texts. All this indicates the need to revise the established ideas about the literary attribution of the writer and his place in Russian literature of the 20th century. The lyrical "mood" as the dominant beginning of his poetics, landscape painting are in many ways related to the aesthetics of Russian impressionism (B. Zaitsev, I. Shmelev, S.N. Sergeev-Tsensky). It is no coincidence that the writer especially singled out S.N. Sergeev-Tsensky. However, this aspect of Kumov's poetics requires special study. Kumov's artistic method cannot be reduced to a single formula. A systematic approach is required to the problem of the evolution of his work, in which romance and realism, spiritual and religious, and psychological, Don and all-Russian, "native and universal" turned out to be inseparable. The definition of the "Don Chekhov" reflects only one of the features of his artistic manner, which is very important, but not accurate enough for literary attribution of the writer's work.

The Ideological and Spiritual Paradigm of Z. N. Gippius' Social Activity in the Context of the Silver Age

The Ideological and Spiritual Paradigm of Z. N. Gippius' Social Activity in the Context of the Silver Age

Литературные портреты М. А. Врубеля и М. А. Булгакова в творчестве К. Г. Паустовского

The study aims to identify the specifics of the individual style of the Russian Soviet writer K. G. Paustovsky demonstrated by him in the process of recreating literary portraits of his contemporaries, the geniuses of the Silver Age – the Russian painter, modernist artist M. А. Vrubel and the outstanding playwright, mystic of the last century M. А. Bulgakov. The scientific novelty of the paper is accounted for by the authors’ attempt to identify the psychological techniques and language markers used by the writer to recreate the literary portraits of his heroes, contemporaries – the “messenger of other worlds” M. A. Vrubel and the talented master of the printed word M. A. Bulgakov, to analyse the origins of their talent and to assess the artistic heritage of the geniuses from the writer’s point of view by examining K. G. Paustovsky’s fiction documentary works. As a result of the study, it has been proved that in order to recreate the literary portraits of M. A. Vrubel and M. A. Bulgakov, K. G. Paustovsky employs the artistic visual-expressive power of describing the details of their appearance, way of talking, features of their creative work. For these purposes, the writer uses colour vocabulary, which helps him communicate his own fleeting impressions of interacting with the geniuses, shed light on certain psychological features of his literary characters, recreate their personalities, convey a complex range of feelings, experiences and anxiety from situations or events important for them, try to provide insight into the nature of their talent.

Oriental motifs and images in the works of K.D. Balmont: a cultural aspect.

The article examines oriental motifs and images in the work of the poet of the Silver Age K.D. Balmont. The cultural significance of K.D. Balmont's work is undoubtedly for the ideas of the Silver Age. The purpose of the study is to analyze the work of K.D. Balmont and identify oriental images and motifs such as: the Enlightened Buddha, the desert, the Sphinx, the Koran, Allah, the Merciful. The object and material of the study were the poetic texts of K. Balmont: "Boro-Budur" from the collection "Burning Buildings", "Sphinx" from the collection "Silence", "Merciful" from the collection "Pearl Rug". The scientific novelty of our research lies in the consideration of motives and images as an important component of the figurative picture of the world and the poetic worldview of K.D. Balmont. The culturological aspect of oriental themes in the poet's work has been identified and substantiated. Such oriental ideas and motifs were formed, new images in his work as: the enlightened Buddha, Nirvana, pyramids, desert, Sphinx, motifs of the Koran, Allah, the Merciful, etc. In 1909-1912, K.D. Balmont traveled around the world. Egypt, Indonesia, and India completely conquered the poet. Balmont studied a huge number of scientific works on religion, philosophy and mythology of the East. K.D. Balmont wrote many letters, poems, travelogues, essays on the culture of the East. The poet's translation activity occupies a special niche in his work. He translated Ashwagosh's "The Life of the Buddha" from Sanskrit, Kalidasa's drama "Sakuntala", "Malyavika and Agnimitra" and "Urvashi Obtained by Courage", and he translated "The Koran" from Arabic. Folklore and mythology of India, China, Japan, and Iran are collected in the collection "Calls of Antiquity".

THE IMAGE OF SHAKESPEARE AND SHAKESPEAREAN THEATRE IN SIGIZMUND KRZHIZHANOVSKY’S WORKS

The authors analyze the corpus of Shakespearean and theater studies by a Russian writer and thinker Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky (1887–1950), who wrote about Shakespeare since the 1920s. The purpose of the work was to review and streamline the principles of analysis of the image of Shakespeare and Shakespeare’s theater, Shakespeare’s dramaturgy in Krzhizhanovsky’s heritage, taking into account the newly discovered archival documents. The authors explore the works of Krzhizhanovsky as a kind of metatext, representing a look at Shakespeare from the standpoint of a figure of the Silver Age. Krzhizhanovsky, who did not follow the path of academic literary criticism or art criticism, in his essayistic studies evaluates the path of Shakespeare’s creativity and theater as a salvation from the temptation of metaphysical philosophy; he analyzes the nature of Shakespeare’s theater based on the concepts of time, ways of perception, gives a number of brilliant genre definitions for tragedy and comedy, explores the structure of Shakespeare’s play; he does all this in the context of his own time. At the same time, the authors detect certain dynamics: Krzhizhanovsky reasons about Shakespeare with global philosophical generalizations, where Shakespeare is a synonym for theater and theatricality; in the finale, in the 1940s, he goes deeper and focuses on private moments of creativity, such as Shakespeare’s “songs,” images of children in his plays, and so on.

I. Annensky’s poem «Bow and strings» in the framework of an intermedial analysis

In the article it examines the features of the poetics of one of the unusual authors of the Silver Age, I. Annensky. The aim of the research is to analyze the aesthetic issue of the interaction of music and words within the framework of intermediality and traditions formed in Russian literature. Extensive material of Russian literature of the XIX century is involved. The analysis and comparison of the intermediate image of the string from the poem by I. Annensky «Bow and Strings» with a similar element in the works of F.I. Tyutchev, A.A. Fet, L.N. Tolstoy, I.S. Turgenev, A.P. Chekhov, V.V. Mayakovsky is carried out. The study is based on methods of intermediate analysis. The specificity of the «string» image is revealed and the difference in its semantics in I. Annensky's poem in relation to its predecessors is emphasized. The influence of the poet on subsequent generations of writers is shown. A musical instrument is endowed in the poetics of the author with greater sensitivity and sincerity, which gives them special power and significance. The image is contrasted with the world of people and becomes a sign of true exalted being. And Annensky continues the established intermedial tradition of presenting the image of the «string» within the framework of combining music and words, but complicates it, complements it with complex aesthetic and ethical content. In previous studies, these points were not reflected, which shows the novelty of this work. Associative and intertextual connections can be defined as the basis of intermedial interactions in the works of I. Annensky. The author relies on the same elements of time and space as his predecessors, but significantly transforms them already within the framework of his artistic concept of being.

The Name-glorifying projects of Alexei Losev and Pavel Florensky: A question of their historical interrelation

AbstractThis article deals with the question of the interrelation between two papers, both called, in short, “Onomatodoxy”, dedicated to the doctrine of Name-glorification (Imiaslavie, Onomatodoxy), both of which were created in line with the Neo-Patristic movement in the Russian philosophy of the Silver Age. One of these papers is by Alexei Losev and the other by Pavel Florensky. In my opinion, there are sufficient grounds to state that Losev’s “Onomatodoxy” was written either after Florensky created his own “Onomatodoxy”, i.e., after November 1922, or, at the earliest, after Florensky started to give clandestine lectures about Onomatodoxy in Moscow (where Losev lived), i.e., not earlier than spring 1921. Therefore, Losev’s article “Onomatodoxy” could have been intended for the religious-philosophical collection of articles planned for publishing by Yaschenko in 1922 in Berlin.

Philosophical and Religious Works of L.N. Tolstoy as a Starting Point in the Culture of the Silver Age

This paper examines the philosophical and religious creativity of the Great Russian writer and thinker Leo Tolstoy as a founder of national culture of the Silver Age. The author of this article argues that Tolstoy's works, both artistic and figurative, as well as his journalistic works, were imbued with religious content, which constituted the generic specificity of the culture of the Silver Age. For Tolstoy culture is based on spiritual and moral principles, which are inseparable from the Christian and religious foundation, which was the subject of this study. The aim of the paper was to identify and analyze such fundamental categories of Tolstoy's philosophy as Christian love and social nonviolence. Love according to Tolstoy is an emblematic fragment of the religious worldview, and non-resistance to evil by violence acts as a social and moral component, which is the only way to break the vicious circle of social and individual evil in human society. To prove his philosophical generalizations, Tolstoy makes extensive use of historical-cultural methodology and, as a rational thinker, uses the Cartesian paradigm of the priority of rationality and evidence. Tolstoy's unconditional faith is deeply rationalistic in character, as well illustrated by his commitment to moral utilitarianism or moral pragmatism. The problems and content of the article are relevant in light of the challenges that have become deeply pressing today in the upbringing of the younger generations. The conclusions of the work are significant not only in historical and philosophical terms, but they contribute to the substantiation of the idea of the importance of religious consciousness for contemporary Russian society.

Lyrical miniatures by Grigory Petnikov: historical and cultural context

Grigory Nikolaevich Petnikov (1894-1971) was a Russian and Ukrainian poet, translator, publisher. He actively published as a poet during the futuristic period (1913-1922), when he joined the literary avant-garde, was the Second Chairman of the Globe and one of the founders of the Kharkov publishing house "Liren". Since the mid-20s, Grigory Petnikov has been mainly engaged in translations and is still better known as a translator of myths of Ancient Greece, fairy tales of the brothers Grimm, Ukrainian and Belarusian folk tales, poems by Taras Shevchenko, prose by Ivan Franko, Marko Vovchok, German poetry. The second period of Grigory Petnikov's poetic creativity began with the time of the thaw and lasted until the last years of the poet's life. In 1958, Petnikov moved to the Crimea, wrote a lot and actively published as a poet. The article attempts to analyze the late poems-miniatures of Grigory Petnikov from his last lifetime collection "Lyrics", published in 1969. Special attention is paid to the genre and style features of Petnikov's lyrical miniatures, the cultural and historical context of the poems; an attempt is made to determine whether the poems from the collection "Lyrics" belong to the poetic trends and trends in the lyrics of the Silver Age.

Dialogic Aesthetics in Boris Zaitsev’s Russian-Italian Text

This article examines the interconnection of the images of Russia and Italy in B. K. Zaitsev’s artistic consciousness revealing their ideal-forming meaning and studying the literary and aesthetic concept of the writer. It is argued that the themes of Russia, Italy, and Florence dominate in the writer’s work, making up the internal semantic unity of his multi-genre texts. The “Florentine text” is interpreted as a local textual subsystem of the “Italian text”, which is a dialogical element of the Russian-Italian text (super-text) created by the writer throughout his artistic life. According to Zaitsev, the city of Dante formed his aesthetic experience, his spiritual, and intellectual identity. Building a dialogue between Russian literature and Dante’s work, Zaitsev follows the philosophical and aesthetic programme of Russian Europeanism characteristic of the Silver Age culture. In the article, the author develops the thesis about the relationship between the image of Russia and that of Florence in the artistic consciousness of Boris Zaitsev. It is demonstrated that the study of Zaitsev’s “Florentine text” provides an idea of the semantic conditionality between the leading Russian and Italian themes in the writer’s work that define his aesthetic concept as dialogical. To achieve this goal, the paper analyses Zaitsev’s artistic and documentary evidence about Florence and the features of his aesthetic reception of the culture of Russia and Italy. The article focuses on the method of literary mnemonics developed by the writer. With its help, Zaitsev creates an authorial version of the myth of Florence in the context of Russian and European literature. The reconstruction of the historical and ideological context of Zaitsev’s work proposed in the article makes it possible to understand the artistic and philosophical nature of his works addressed to Russia and Italy more accurately. As a result of the study, the author determines the structure of the dialogical interactions of imaginative and semantic elements of Zaitsev’s Russian-Italian narrative. Russian and Italian themes that form the dialogical integrity of the Russian-Italian text in the writer’s work are a key aspect of our understanding of B. K. Zaitsev’s artistic concept from the point of view of literary theory and aesthetics.

Valery Bryusov and Urban Folklore: a game with genre tradition

The subject of the study is a literary game with the genre tradition of urban romance and factory (working) songs in the poetry of the poet of the Silver Age Valery Bryusov. The object of the study is Bryusov's genre palette and his creative searches in relation to the extensive development of genres of domestic and foreign literature, as well as folklore. The authors consider in detail such aspects of the topic as Bryusov's genre strategies, his playing with genre constants and the deliberate distortion of the genre "grid" of the working song with the involvement of features of another, related genre of violent urban romance. Special attention is paid to the catamnesis of Bryusov's texts: their further embodiment in music as songs, both purposeful and spontaneous. The main conclusions of the study are observations on the stylization of folklore in the literature of the Silver Age and reflections on the genre nature of the works of one of the most significant collections of poems by Bryusov, “Urbi et orbi” (1903). A special contribution of the authors to the study of the topic is their consistent tracing in Bryusov's "songs" of the presence of references to specific realities included in the apperceptive base of the reader and the author himself. The novelty of the research lies in the appeal to the genre of urban romance and factory song in Bryusov's work and in the expansion of the evidence base of observations on the genre diversity of the work of this poet and prose writer.

The Facets of Intercultural Dialogue: Russian Symbolists in Translation Counterpoint with French Modernists

The subject of the study is the translation strategies of Russian symbolist poets formulated in a creative intercultural dialogue with foreign symbolist poets. The object of the research is the strategy of paraphrastic free translation, common in the Russian translation heritage of the early twentieth century. The author examines in detail such aspects of the topic as the dynamic interaction of the original text with the translation text, as well as various translation decisions taken by the authors of the Silver Age, due to the use of which they radically changed the goal setting and implication of the translated text. Special attention is paid to the comparison of the original and translated text and the moments of discrepancy between the translation and the original. The main conclusions of the study are the formulated characteristics of the early Symbolist translation, until the moment of active participation in the process of Valery Bryusov, and then - the publishing house "World Literature". A special contribution of the author to the study of the topic is the study of the purpose of the original and translated text and the identification of counterpoints in this regard of the intercultural dialogue between the author of the translation and the author of the original. The novelty of the research lies in the formulation of dialog strategies of Russian poets-translators - representatives of symbolism, their practice of dynamic interaction with equal, in their opinion, representatives of foreign language culture, and the creation of a creative translation based on the original text.