Anastasia Shulyndina
Ph. D., philosophy
Of the Russian Culture’s world outlook
peculiarities
The Russian culture that
has given the world world famous writers: Alexander Pushkin, Michael Lermontov,
Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, Nikolay Gogol, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Anton Chehov, Michael
Saltykov-Shedrin; composers: Michael Glinka, Nikolai Rymsky-Korsakov, Modest
Musorgsky, Peter Tchaikovsky, Sergey Rachmaninov; painters: Ilia Repin, Michael
Vrubel - is seen by us as unique, and a representative of another culture takes
it sometimes like very mysterious and not clear. For the understanding of the
roots of the Russian culture it is necessary to understand its mythology and
world outlook system.
Certainly, it is
impossible to describe the whole richness of the culture tradition in a small
article, it is difficult to adequately show all the elements of its system with
their relations, that is why my task will be to show only some typical
structural elements, connected with the main scope of its topics and images and
to select the main peculiarities.
The Russian culture by
its quality is related to the synthetic types of the culture, because it
consists of a number of mythological cores, forming the homogenous world
outlook system;
Ancient-Vedic mythological core
Byzantine-Christian
mythological core.
Under the influence of
these culture traditions, which exist in the complex interaction with each
other, in the process of the historical development in the Russian empire,
there appeared the original cultural tradition that tragically suffered from
the social-political accidents of 1914-1917-1922, 1934-37 and 1941-45, in the course of which
millions of the culture representatives died.
The politics of the new
Soviet power, based on the alien to the traditional culture
nihilistic-atheistic ideology, during the years of its rule distorted the face
of the traditional culture to its almost total transformation into some
different syncretistic culture (Soviet culture), that takes in partially
surface forms of the Russian culture at best - the culture, that at present is
put down to about total oblivion or substituted by colorful decorations-teraphims.
“The mystic mind set” to percept the going out
the limits of everyday world reality one can consider to be the foundation of
the religious world outlook in the Russian culture in pre-revolutionary period.
The perception of real disharmony, the imperfection of the earthy world,
the impassioned desire to transform
this world to make it perfect and harmonious and the clear feeling of tragic impossibility of such
transformation, that is connected with the separation of the man from the
Absolute Element of the world and from God with the loss of the connection with
Him are powerfully expressed in the Russian culture. It is not by chance that
the creative works and the outlook of the Russian painters, writers and
composers are regarded by many Russian thinkers as the very impression of the
religious-tragic world perception. For instance, the Russian philosopher of the
first half of the XX’th century Sergij Bulgakov wrote, that “the Russian
tragedy is mostly of the religious kind”[1]
.
Such aspect of the
research of the Russian culture promotes the cognizing of the specific
wholeness of the home culture, allows to “spill light” on the peculiarities of it (including its special
“tragic mind-set”), which can not be interpreted from the position of any other
world perception.
Both the inner life of
the man and the whole history of the humanity, according to the world outlook
of the majority of the Russian philosophers of XIX-and the first half of XX
century, are tragic and “disconnected”, and the main source of
tragic roots in the fact that in the
earthy life the man, though sensing his connection with the God can not
“reunite” with him, because as a result of “first sin” he lost his original wholeness, and all his
aspirations to find it on the earth are unachievable. Thus, tragic world
perception in fact is the inalienable peculiarity of the perception of any
mature man, that is why, according to Bulgakov, ”the earthy music” itself, for
the majority of the people inevitably consists of “the blend” of light and
darkness, the Major and the Minor, where one or the other predominates. In
addition to this thought of Bulgakov, one can note that, for example, such
original phenomenon of the Russian culture, as the Russian folk slow-tempo
song, its kind of “parallel-variable key” (with the often changes of the tonic
and the key) reflects this “changeability” of human existence very well. This
special composition of Russian folk song is different from the leading in west
European music of the XVIII’th century precise key’s determination of the Major
and the Minor.
In understanding and
researches of the sources and the manifestations of the tragic in the Russian culture the use of the ideas of the
Russian philosopher of XX’th century Aleksey Losev turns out to be the most
productive. These ideas were expounded in his work The Composition of the Artistic World Perception. The tragic
is regarded by the philosopher as world perception, in which hidden bases of
the “composition” of the existence find a reflection. In the tragic, according to Losev, three grounds of the existence are
present. The first two grounds are: world life and human personality. The first
ground of the tragic – is world
reality, which consists of “visible”
and “hidden” strata, at that the last
one seems to be “formless” and having his own, inaccessible for the human
understanding, organization: this stratum harbors in itself some threat for the
human existence (it can, for example, at any moment break the quiet course of a
human life). The second ground – is a personality, that is closely connected
with the world life, and at the same time it is itself (and realizes itself) as something different from it,
space-and-time, possessing in it «principium
individuationis». The personality tragically feels bifurcation of the
existence, i.e. the presence of two strata in it. The third ground, invisibly
existing in the tragic world perception – is a ground of transformed and
resurrected life, because “if there is the horror of the existence, then by
this fact the world of general happiness and the transformation of the
suffering world” is being waited with vague presentiment”[2].
It is this world (that in the Christianity is associated with the coming “at
the end of times” “God’s Kingdom”) the tragic bifurcation of the existence
turns out to be overcome.
These in-depth
existential foundations of the tragic,
stated by Losev, manifest themselves outwardly as raging in the real life
irreconcilable conflicts, which develop in the space-and-time existence (and
that forms concrete tragic situations).
The most important
peculiarity of the Russian culture, thanks to which the above-mentioned
foundations are clearly felt, is its especial sensitivity to the perception of
the tragic “bifurcation”, “disconnection” of the existence (i.e. to the
presence in the world both hidden
from the eyes ”chaotic” source, directing human life by its own - unknown to
the man - laws and capable at any moment to invade the real - usual to our consciousness -
world, and to the existence of the
different, highest, “absolute” layer of the existence). Compared with such deep
inner experiences tragic conflicts in the “real”, “human” world do not seem to
us so essential and important, and move to the back ground.
Such special
“sensitivity” (that can otherwise be called “mystical sensitivity”) was greatly
influences by: on the one hand – veda
culture, based on the closest and the most profound interaction with different
natural powers of the world; and on the other hand – Byzantine Christianity
with its priority of “irrational”, “whole-intuitive”, i.e. mystic understanding
of God (manifested in the practices of “inner silence” [isichasm], based on mystic, “heart” understanding of God and on contact with the divine
non-created energies). These two influences affected the Russian.
The sensation of the presence
in the world of some inhuman element, inconceivable, mystic, surpassing by its
scales everyday world perception and therefore quite often frightening, is very
characteristic for the Russian culture. For example, one of the characters of a
Russian writer of the XIXth century Ivan Turgenev speaks about it, when she
confessed that she fears life: “And indeed,
she was afraid of it, she was afraid of those secret forces, on which the life is
built and which seldom but suddenly break through. Grief to someone about whom
they are raging!”[3].
The presence of this “invisible”
plan is felt in all the Russian culture – for example, in the Russian
literature of the XIX’th century, in which in spite of apparent “realism” (i.e.
exactness and realism of description of social, everyday, psychological
reality) the presence of something hidden, out-of-limit is obvious. Everyday
life of many a character of the Russian literature is often broken (and even is
directed and is determined) by the invasion of some immaterial phenomena – from
mysterious play of chance and seemingly unthinkable coincidences to obviously fantastic
phenomena.
The characters of the Russian
culture in their majority exist in “uncommon”, transitional like condition
(transition from life to death, half awakening, affectation, intoxication,
delirium, ecstasy, nervous breakdown or “soul crisis”). In the works of the Russian culture the image
of dream and “the theme of madness” as condition, that brings one out of everyday
world perception and world sensitivity is often present.
Such non-real conditions
of the soul (in modern psychology it is accepted to call them “changed
conditions of consciousness”) in some sense lead to the perception of “another
world” (“other worlds”). One of the characters of the famous Russian writer
Dostoevsky reasons about it in such a way: “Ghosts – are, so to say, shreds and fragments of other worlds, their beginning. It
is not necessary for a healthy one to see them, because a healthy man is the
most mundane man, and therefore, he must live only his local life for the sake
of wholesomeness and order. But if you are ill a little, if the normal mundane
order in your body is broken, the possibility of another world begins to
manifest at once, and the more serious the disease is the more contacts with
another world there are, therefore when man
dies, he will pass to another world”[4].
One may suggest that this is exactly what Bulgakov meant, when he spoke about
some “sickly disintegration” or “sickly growth” of Russian soul that makes it
possible to see “mystic profundities of reality”[5].
A desire to escape from everyday
life, to penetrate into “the mysteries of the world” quite often forces the Russian
man to resort to games of chance, giving the possibility to go out from the
usual world to the “kingdom of chance”. The famous Russian “drinking boat” can
be also understood as latent desire of cognition of some “out-of-limit”,
“unusual” element. Such topics often find
reflection in the Russian culture.
The mysteries, waiting
for the man beyond the threshold of life, prompt specific interest among the
representatives of the Russian culture. In the aspiration for such cognition,
as Russian art-critic Boris Asafiev noted, “there are no limits for the Russian
thinker”[6].
The interest to this subject is clearly sensed (though it manifests itself
differently) in the creative works of writers: Alexander Pushkin, Nikolay Gogol,
Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky; composers: Peter Tchaikovsky, Modest Musorgsky.
In the creative works of Dostoyevsky one can encounter mystic clearly revelation that the transition to death means only the transition to other
forms of existence and what’s more – life after death must not necessarily be
more harmonious and thoughtful than earthly life. This idea is expressed, for example,
by one of the characters of the Dostoyevsky’s novel “Crime and punishment”: “All the time the eternity seems to us as the
idea that is impossible for understanding, as something enormous, enormous! But
why necessarily enormous? And if, all of sudden, in stead of all that, imagine
yourself, there will be one room, like a rustic bathing-house, smoke-stained
and spiders are in all the corners, and this is all the eternity. Something
like that seems to me, you know”[7].
Alongside with it, as
Russian philosopher Leo Shestov noted, some characters of literature works, as well
as their creators, having touched the mystic and unintelligible mystery of
life, try to come back, to the real “material-physical” life and to “close
their eyes” to the existence of the frighteningly “another world!”. Thus, the
character of the Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace” Konstantin Levin, trying to
keep away from eternal and most frightful problems of life, does his best to
return to the world of rank-and-life people, to the world of everyday life and
for the sake of it he consciously assumes and enthusiastically performs the
role of a successful man and a happy husband.
The feeling of the
presence of “something beyond” may breaks through both to the true religious
revelation and to the contact with the anti-divine, demonic powers. It is not by
chance that the theme of demonism, the sensation of it frightening might, far
surpassing the human powers is so popular in Russian culture. In the creative
works of the Russian writer Nikolay Gogol it dizzily manifested itself very
clearly in the portrayal of unmanageable for a man powers, appearing very
clearly in the images of the demon, evil, sorcerers, witches, generated, in the
writer’s opinion, by some mysterious natural power. The struggle of the
character with demonic, evil powers is depicted, for instance, in the Gogol’s story
“Vii”.
In Russian culture sharp
tragic conflicts, at the basis of which there is the fighting of spiritual and non-spiritual in the man come to the foreground. This struggle is
digested and embodies itself with an extraordinary sharpness and intensity. It should
be noted that by spiritual one should
realize something divine, absolute, going out from the boundaries of nature
social human existence. Non-spiritual means something connected with the
limit of human life, with natural and social roots of human existence. The
problem of self-estrangement of the man from his truly essence in favour of “social
realization”, that leads to the spiritual death of the man, is very vital for
the Russian literature.
The problems of life and
death in the Russian philosophy and culture are closely connected with the contraposition
of spiritual and non-spiritual, at that the victory of non-spiritual in the man
actually is equated with death and the victory of spiritual – with life. It is
reflected even in the titles of the works which have symbolic meaning: Dead Souls by Gogol, The Living Corpse by Tolstoy (and – in contrary
to it – the Tolstoy’s novel Revival).
That is why in the Russian literature of the XIX’th century non-spiritual existence,
connected only with the execution of the roles of the society, carrying out of
rules or satisfying of animal instincts becomes the symbol of death, and besides,
the spiritual death of the man is actually identical to his physical death. You
can recall, for example, expressive statements of Tolstoy: “Going around the world, eating and drinking Serpuhovsky’s
dead body was put in the ground much later”[8],
“In a city a man can live for 100 years
and can not realize, that he had died and was rotted away long ago”[9].
The character of the Chehov’s story “A Dull story” with horror noticed in
himself “the indifference, this paralysis
of the soul, premature death”[10].
“Living corps” figure in many works of the Russian culture. This “spiritual death” especially often
overtakes the man in old age, about what Gogol wrote: “Terrible, scary the
coming in the future old age is, and it gives nothing back and in return!. The grave is
more merciful than it, there will be written on the grave: “Here the man is buried”,
but nothing can be read in the cold senseless features of inhuman old age!”[11].
Specific attitude of the
Russian people to the beauty as some lofty
spiritual value generates with it also specific poignant, even tragic sensation
of “needlessness”, strangeness of
this beauty for real-practical world with its prevailing aspirations for the
achieving of “benefit” in its earthy, material understanding. This kind of
sensation is expressed by Chehov in his sad-melancholy story The Beauties: “And the more often she
flashed with her beauty before my eyes, the more powerful my sadness became … Did
I envy her beauty or I regretted that this girl was not mine and would never de
mine or I felt dimly that her rare beauty
is accidental, not necessary and, as everything on the earth, is not long-lived,
or, maybe, my sadness was that special feeling, which is inspired in a human
being by the contemplation of real beauty, God knows!”[12].
Specific importance in the
Russian culture is paid to the searches of some mystically perceived “eternal
femininity”, manifesting on the Earth “the divine countenance” of beauty. However,
earthy life turns out to be disastrous for this “ideal femininity” – that is
why not accidentally the most beautiful and perfect female characters in the Russian
culture are doomed to ruin in the cruel realities of this world. They
practically never achieve their happiness and even from the beginning do not
believe in it (such are the majority of female characters in the novels of: Chechov,
Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, the operas of: Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, etc.). Many
researchers draw attention to the fact, that in music, that reflects female images
in the operas of Tchaikovsky, the intonations, testifying the original and deep
sense of doom of his female characters, are present. Such sacrifice and sense
of doom, in many art-critic’s opinion, shows itself also in the themes of his
symphonic works, inwardly connected with women images. In the works of another
genius Russian composer – Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
– women images in the operas often show themselves as some unearthly (even
fairy-tale) beings, that fascinate by their beauty and perfection but perish in
the earthy conditions.
In the Russian culture
the dissatisfaction of the man, striving for the absolute purpose of life by
execution of usual (relative) life tasks finds reflection. For example, the
characters of Tolstoy, living the ideas of usual life, i.e. steadily striving for
some concrete life purpose, inevitably find themselves in the kind of “spiritual deadlock”. It appears, that “earthy”
purposes and values, and activity, directed at achieving of them not only can give
the happiness to the man, but can not even contribute the inner satisfaction
and soul calmness. For instance, the War
and Peace Tolstoy’s character Konstantin Levin (who is considered to be a
kind of “double” of the writer), began to feel “frightening mystery of life”,
its “double bottom” and made a decision to “live as everybody” and to fill his
life with household and family chores. In spite of this, before marriage with
the woman he (as it seems to him) really loves, he almost puts his neck into the
noose” . Other characters of Tolstoy feel suddenly some sudden and outwardly
unreasonable “spiritual agitation”, that
leads to the rejection of their own egotism, to the expression of
self-sacrifice, to the sudden rethinking of standard social maxims, to the escaping
the mundane life for the life of hermit.
The man, with
insufficient spiritual maturity drawing towards Absolute, does not have the
possibility to adequately feel the value
of the relative and the passing (i.e. to see in the relative and the passing the features of the
absolute and the eternal). It
leads to the nihilistic rejection of many realities and values of culture and
life. Many characters strive for the settlement of “eternal problems”, however,
these problems often imperceptibly turn into and are replaced by abstract
arguments, and it leads to the tragic failures in real life. Not by chance many
characters of Turgenev perceive their lives as having been lived in vein, as a
flown dream, in which among lofty dreams
and aspirations the man misses the reality of his own life. About such
infusion, that is found reflection in Russian culture, one of the Chehov’s characters
speaks: “… thoughts about the aimlessness
of life, about the insignificance and transience of visible world, Solomon’s
“vanity of vanities“, formed and still form the highest and the final stage in
the field of human thinking. No sooner had the thinker reached that stage when
dead is the engine. There is no way
further. By this the activity of normal brain finishes, what is natural and
normal. Our unhappiness is in the fact that
we begin to think from this very finish. By what the normal people finish,
by this we begin. From the first abzug - the moment the brain starts
independent work – we climb up the highest, final stage and we do not want to
know the stages, that are lower”, that is why “if we have found a method to climb up the highest stage without the
help of lower ones, then the whole ladder, i.e. the whole life with its
colours, sounds and thoughts lose any sense for us”[13].
It should be noted also,
that sincere and passionate aspiration to the fully submission of your own life
to the serving of Absolute in the lack of adequate spiritual maturity sometimes entails
some “aggression” to the realities of life. This feature found its reflection,
for instance, in the character of Ivan Karamasov (see the novel of Dostoevsky The Karamasov Brothers). This character,
“clearly having imagined to himself the ideal state of the man, his absolute state…”
already “can not find a little excuse for the world,
where everything is imperfect and relative”[14].
A man with such world outlook is in for the danger of being transformed into the kind of “fanatic of his ideals”, willing to “remake this imperfect world”. Many
characters of Dostoevsky: not only Ivan Karamasov, but the Great Inquisitor
too, desiring to create the ideal world, in which the man inevitably must come
(he can not but come) to his “ideal state” for the people, demonstrate examples
of such “life approach”. A kind of “fanatic of ideal” one can consider to be Leo
Tolstoy, who “all his life preached only self-improvement and non-violence, but
was deeply upset that his preaching did not exert influence on his environment
and that the people, surrounding him, continued to live as before”[15],
and then he began to destroy and condemn people, surrounding him. This feature
was typical of many real Russian intelligentsia-revolutionists
as well.
In the absence of
inspiring the man ideals and disillusionment with the high aspirations, the Russians
usually demonstrate passivity and submissiveness to the facts of reality,
changing their lives into the fruitless and passive “vegetation”. At that the Russians often begin to “go downhill”. The
result of such lack of will more often leads to the complete loss of interest
in life and to the physical death as the result of the spiritual death, which was
called by the art-critic Asafiev “wasting away”. Passive people more often join
the number of “redundant”, “unnecessary” people and “living corpses” of the Russian
culture.
It should be noted also
that too powerful a feeling of the tragedy of existence can cause (especially
in the souls most susceptible to it) some kind of “weariness of life”, because “the evil during the long years of life
imperceptibly leaves venomous deposits, poisoning the living forces of the soul”[16].
Such sensation inevitably accompanies the existence of the man, who has
understood “tragic split” of
existence, but who has no real religious belief, who does not feel “divine
basis” of life and does not believe in the future victory of “The kingdom
of Goodness”. Such “intoxication” philosopher Bulgakov found, for example, in the world
famous 6’th symphony of Tchaikovsky. This observation is in tune with the
worlds of Asafiev, who held, that in the music of Tchaikovsky there is some “wasting
away” of life and sickly “submission to the call of death”, the cause of which
he considered to be that very “intoxication by life”, or weariness, about which
Bulgakov wrote. A kind of “drawing to death” one can find also in the music of
Musorgsky (vocal cycle Songs and Dances
of Death) and in the creative works of Saltikov-Shedrin (the novel Monrepo Refuge), in some “Buddhist-like life-denying” moods of the Turgenev’s stories.
One more peculiarity of
religiousness, that has found a reflection in the Russian culture, is connected
with the fact, that sometimes in the religious life even a deeply
believing and by all his essence directed to the Absolute man happens a temporary
loss of his connection with God. In this case the man feels his “metaphysical loneliness” in the world of
nature and dead end, breaking his heart misery, caused by the sensation of this
loneliness. One of Turgenev’s characters describes such feelings in the following
way: “… It seemed to me suddenly, that I have understood the life of Nature,
understood its undoubted and obvious, though for many people yet mysterious
sense. A quiet and slow animation, “unhurriedness” and restraint of feelings
and powers, the balance of health in every separate being – this is the very basis
of it, its invariable law, this is what it stands on and leans on. Everything
that goes out from this level, no matter upwards or downwards – is thrown by it
out, as useless”[17]. Alongside with it, the
attempt to consciously return to the world of nature, which is characteristic of
many representatives of the Russian culture, turns out to be the realization of
tragic impossibility to do it.
The state of “loss of God”, a loss of connection with
Him is clearly felt in the creative works of Tolstoy. This state generates “a secret
pain and torment of religious powerlessness”[18].
Such sensation, accompanying all the life of the Russian writer (excluding rare
real “breakthroughs to the light”) Russian philosopher Bulgakov regarded to be
a special state of consciousness, that every person, even an ardent believer
must pass through on the earth. In the staggering by its depth of tragedy Sophiology of Death he writes about the
excruciating sensation that God-Son, Jesus felt before the crucifixion, when, having
materialized into the earthly body, he temporarily lost his deep loving
connection with Father-God and Sacred Spirit. Bulgakov also noticed, that every
person at this or that moment of his life passes through such state of “separation
from God”, a state of “substantial
loneliness”. It happens usually at the moments of crisis, critical and
especially sharply – at the moment of nigh death. Such “substantial loneliness”
was felt before death by many characters of the Russian literature (see Tolstoy
The Death of Ivan Iliich, Chehov’s The Dull Story).
Such “separation” of the
man from God, accompanying the loss of love as the element, uniting the man
with God (and, as a result, uniting with other people) inevitably leads to the
sensation of some “lifelessness”, and
the reality appears in some “deathly light”.
Thus, in spite of the
powerful religious impulses and “impregnation” of the Russian culture with “mystic
intuitions”, not always in the Russian culture the feeling of the presence of
“another world” leads to the real religious revelations, and “immersion into
the hopeless gloom” does not necessarily precedes “breakthroughs to the light”.
The aspiration to take contradictions to the unthinkable and “uncultivated” by
culture and by human mind limits, to research the most “outer unfortunate” side
of the reality with the purpose of understanding the meaning of the main and the
innermost mysteries of the existence (the mysteries, which can not be solved
and reached by any “human” concepts, connected with “the shackles” of the mind
and the culture, because for the understanding of something “absolute” it is
necessary to reject everything usual and standard-social”) is characteristic
for the Russian culture. And like the bogatyr
from the Russian fairy-tails the characters of many works of the Russian
culture take the hardest and outwardly unfortunate direction, having a vague presentiment,
that not on the way of the usual, standard-social values, but only on the way, where the mortal difficulties are waiting, it is possible to find the Truth. It is
not by chance that the actions of many characters of the Russian fairy-tales, in
the opinion of a usual modern average European, may seem “illogical”, because
the subject of their aspirations most often is not something concrete-social - wealth,
social status - but, on the contrary, something apparently “unsocial” and “irrational” – something, called in the Russian fairy-tails “it is something I have no idea about”. If a character of a Russian fairy-tale is looking
for happiness – it is the happiness, that is situated somewhere “in far away kingdom”,
if he is looking for a wife – he is looking not for a usual woman, but for mysterious,
far away beauty-tsarine. In short, the character of the Russian fairy-tails
looks for something which he does not see in everyday reality. And this seeking
impregnates all of the Russian culture (in fact, it is the very search of what
is called “God’s Kingdom”). This inexplicable
for a European aspiration to sink to the very “bottom of the abyss” and to research it also may be a
kind of seamy side of the aspiration to get to the Absolute, because the
extreme degree of sinking into the darkness is the kind of “preceding phase“ of
a breakthrough both to the new discoveries and realizations and to the
religious revelations. By the way, in the Orthodoxy this very “perennial darkness”
precedes “the conscious birth” of the Christ in the human heart.
However, “having come up
to the very edge of the abyss” and “looking in it”, the Russian culture often kind
of stops (“freezes”) at this point, this point is kind of “border of
transition” to the light. The Russian culture has no power to “make a breakthrough”
and even to “touch” the light. Turgenev
describes this state in the following way: “Why were we destined to get a view
of the desired shore only from time to time and never stand on it with our
steady foot, and never touch it –
And never cry sweetly like
the first Judaist
On the border of the
Promised Land?”[19].
Thus, in the Russian
culture never-ending, sometimes excruciating searches for “God’s kingdom” and “God’s
truth” are felt. However, “in the religious life there is no stagnation, as
there are no inalienable achievements and dead points, here everything is always
moving, upwards or downwards, forwards or backwards”[20].
The striving to reach the Absolute, the searches for “the religious truth” often
are accompanied by kind of “ebbs”, a fear of “demonic”, unintelligible for the
man powers, pessimistic feeling of the wrongs of earthy existence. The Russian
soul (and all the Russian culture with it) often sort of “balances” on “the thin
border” of light and darkness, demonstrating kind of nihilistic concepts towards
the real and “relative” reality, but not always obtaining (or obtaining only
partially) some “inrootness” in the “lofty elements”. This state is in danger
of “ebbs” and immersion into the total darkness”. Tragedy of such a state is evident.
This state was described
by Asafiev very well. Asafiev, thinking about the peace “Catacombs” from
Musorgsky’s piano cycle The Pictures From
the Exhibition wrote: ”Is not it a symbol of the soul state, in which all
the life of the composer went on, who did not find the exit to the light and, I
think, even had not been sure that the light exists?”[21].
However, to the creative works of the composer (as well as to many creative
works of the Russian culture, in which such states are reflected) in this case
the worlds of Bulgakov, said by him about the Russian writer Chechov are better
applied: “They say, that in the see
depths the plants, which never have seen the sun, live, and, however, like everything living, they live off the sun only, without it they could not have been
born and existed even for one day, though
how easily and how seemingly convincingly казалось бы убедительно they could reject the existence of the sun”[22].
The writer “only gives the possibility to feel the sun, and only seldom rarely
modestly and kind of by chance - usually in the third person - Chehov speaks about it straight – only as an
exception, a golden ray timidly flashes and immediately fades away on the
bottom of the ravine”[23].
And as in the music of Musorgsky one can encounter the moments of “true enlightening”
(in his famous introduction to the tragic opera Chovanshina, called The Dawn
on the Moscow River, in some light,
dreamy images of his songs), so in the creative works of Chehov his own,
special belief, achieved through suffering and often tormenting, is felt. That
is why “it was not that victorious faith which sees in the very young shoots the
coming future blooming and solemnly greets it, this belief is melancholy,
longing and restless belief, but, however, on its own, it is strong and unbreakable”[24].
Only such belief can give the man the power to struggle against the evil,
knowing that it is unrootable on the Earth, and the victory of Goodness can
only be relative. Is not it this very belief which underlines the mostly
pessimistic story of Turgenev: “I am
still thinking, and I hope that I will never stop thinking that in the God’s world everything that is honest, kind, truthful is
applicable, and sooner or later can be fulfilled, and it not only will be fulfilled
but it is being fulfilled already, under the condition that everyone sticks
tightly to his/her place, and does not loose tolerance, does not wish the
impossible and does everything to the limits of his/her power”[25].
Thus, the Russian
culture of XIX-XXth centuries demonstrates to us the specific scope of images
and religious-mystical experiences, that gives it inimitable originality.
However, all these peculiarities as such are not unique, because to this or
that extent and in this or that form they manifest themselves also in the West
European and in the Eastern culture. However, in my opinion, in the West
European culture of the period of XIX – the first half of XX’th century such scope
of images demonstrates itself a little less distinctly because of the separation
of the spheres of “mystical experience” and “real life”, in connection with the
bias of the culture to the side of “realism” реалистичность, ”rationalism” and unreligious
humanism. The Russian philosopher of the XIX’th century Vasilij Rozanov,
describing the general contemporary to him spiritual situation of the West
European world, wrote about it. He noted that in the West “centuries of too big
clarity in the concepts and attitudes, the habit and already the need to
revolve consciousness exclusively in the sphere of provable and well-defined altered
every ability of mystical feelings and perception so, that, when even the
safety depends on it, they do not wake up”[26]
.
However,
it should be pointed out, that in the XXth century the state of things changed essentially. The tradition
of the Russian culture was interrupted by the revolution of 1917, the Russian
culture was replaced by another type of culture – the so called Soviet culture, based on the atheism. The
culture of the West Europe , on the contrary,
made a lot of “breakthroughs” to “the sphere of mystical”, at that these “breakthroughs”
took not only the intellectually-thought-over form, but the finally expressed creative
form. The striking example of this is the blooming of the literature genre
“fantasy”, stimulus to which was the research of the ancient cultures (Dg.
Tolkien, Karl Stiven Lewis and others). The authors of these creative works
make an attempt to resurrect the craftsmanship of mythological (or mythology-epical)
thinking. Besides, the authors of the Gournal
of Middle-Earth and Narnia “were motivated
not only by the obsessed wish to tell the story, as by the confidence that the
legends and myths to a great extend are woven from the truth and, undoubtedly
represent its separate aspects, which can be understood in this form only”[27].
In a letter to his son Tolkien confesses to the fact that “the book kind of writes
itself, and often strays very far from the tentative drafts, as if the truth
itself forces its way through to this world through the author, at that the
place of action is not some far-away galaxy or another world, but our world,
only moved back in the old past”[28].
The research of the mystic
revelations in the creative works of such thinkers as Swedish mystic-philosopher
of the XVIII century I. Swedenborg, in the teaching of the Indians-tolteks (Castaneda), Indian brachmanists (Santia Sai Baba, etc.) exerts
clear-cut influence on the West European culture and finds the creative
expression in it. Broadening of the horizons in the process of the revelation
of the space-and-time, multi-dimensional world, taking place in the mystic
revelations since the days of yore, in the XX’th century finds confirmations thanks
to the discoveries of physics of XX’th century (Einstein, Tesla, Heisenberg and
others). Much from this religious revelations and science cognitions finds
reflection in the culture. Cinema offers significant possibilities for it.
However, in spite of these breakthroughs in the West European culture, the
social consciousness and world outlook of the majority of the people both in
the West Europe and in Russia
The main idea, which was
worked out in the Russian philosophy by
Vladimir Solovyov, Ivan Ilyin, Semen Frank, brothers Evgeniy and Nikolai
Trubetskoy, Pavel Florensky, Sergij Bulgakov, Aleksey Losev and other adepts of
the Russian Classical Systematic Philosophy, are based on the affirmation of
Synthesis of Philosophy, Theology and Science in the Universal Sphere of Knowledge,
which is by the Greek term Θεω-Σοφια was descriptively
defined. This spheres of knowledge for all their superficial difference, still
more perceptible because of the historically developed separation of their
methods of experience and types of mentality, nevertheless for the way to the
new level of knowledge must be concentrated on the cognition of Absolute
Elements of the World – Truly-Existing in its objective manifestation.
Studying of the material
universe, that is accomplished by positivist science by the methods of
externally-empirical knowledge, elaborating of formally logical laws in
philosophy, can not produce the integrated picture of the Truth – and that is
so because both externally-empirical and formally logical methods greatly
depend on shallow-ness of human beings whereas the cognition of Absolute
Elements requires crossing the limit of it and can be perceived by the man, who
has mystic mentality - by inner-empirical method.
Such world perception also
determined a special theourgic attitude
to the creative work – an artist was recognized as “inspired by God” theourg-creator, who has a mission to go
out of the limits of Arts and to begin to create the life of the people by laws
of the Truly-Existing, to understand the ontological essence of the Beauty.
The uniqueness of the
Russian culture, in my opinion, is of the fact that some transitional state is
fixed in it. The mystic intuition was characteristic of the Russian culture
representatives, but it could not always lead to the genuine discoveries and revelations in the
understanding of the Truth, because the Russian culture lacked deep knowledge
of the Universe, spiritual experience, “spiritual discipline”. This lack was –
to a great extend - a result of rejecting of “in-depth mystical roots of Veda culture and considerable distortion
of Christianity. It is thanks to these reasons that the Russian culture that
envisions a lot of genuine things
intuitively, may not always be able
to “break through” to the light. This tragic state – is the fate of any culture, that
disconnects from the knowledge of the ancient cultures, and so is the fate of
any person, who, feeling the tragic imperfection of the earthy existence, does
not have enough powers and knowledge anyway, powers and knowledge to return to
the Creator and to obtain his true place in the Eternity.
[3] Turgenev I.
[4] Quoted from: Bulgakov S. Sochinenia (Works). Sochinenia v 2 tomah. Tom 2.
Moskwa:Nauka, 1993. P. 532.
[7] Dostoyevsky F. Prestuplenie i nakazanie (Crime
and punishment) / Sobranie sochinenii v 30 tomah. Tom 6. Leningrad
[8] Tolstoy L. Povesty (Stories)
/Sobranie sochinenij v 12 tomah. Tom. 11. Moskwa: Pravda, 1984. P. 41.
[10] Chehov A. Rasskazi (Stories). Sobranie
sochinenij v 12 tomah. Tom 6. Moskwa: Goslitizdat, 1955. P.323.
[11] Gogol N. Mertvie dushi (Dead souls).
/ Sobranie sochinenij v 7 tomah. Tom 5. Moskwa: Hudogestvennaia literature,
1967. P.150.
[12] Chehov A. Rasskazi (Stories). Sobranie
sochinenij v 12 tomah. Tom 8. Moskwa: Goslitizdat, 1955. P.175-176.
[13] Chehov A. Rasskazi (Stories). Sobranie
sochinenij v 12 tomah. Tom 6. Moskwa: Goslitizdat, 1955. P.139.
[14] Evlampiev I.
[15] Brodski.A. Anatomia nravstvennogo idealizma (Anatomy of moral idealism) / Veche. Almanach Russkoy filosofii I
kulturi. Sankt-Peterburg: Izdatelstvo Sankt-Peterburgskogo universiteta. Vipusk
7, 1995. P.106.
[17] Turgenev I.
[19] Turgenev I.
[25] Turgenev I.
[26] Rozanov V. Misli o literature (Thoughts
about the literature). Moskwa: Sovremennik, 1989. P.144.
[27] Caldecott
Stratford Tainoie plamia. Duhovnie vzgliadi
Tolkiena (A SECRET FIRE. The Spiritual
vision behind
Tolkien). Perevod s angl. Moskwa; BBI sw. ap. Andreia. 2008. P. 21.
Tolkien). Perevod s angl. Moskwa; BBI sw. ap. Andreia. 2008. P. 21.
International times/ An Intercontinental Journal of Interdisciplinary
Art. January-June 2009 Volume 2 - Issue 4. Jan.-Jun., 2009 / Published by Mr.
Vashishtha Kumar Sharma, 778, Choti Chaupar, Jaipur and Printed at Popular
Printers, Jaipur. P.22-31.
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