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Sophia, the wisdom of God conceptions of the divine feminine in Russian culture, 1880--1917
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Sophia, the wisdom of God conceptions of the divine feminine in Russian culture, 1880--1917
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SOPHIA, THE WISDOM OF GOD CONCEPTIONS OF THE DIVINE FEMININE IN RUSSIAN CULTURE, 1880- 1917 by David Matthew Borgmeyer A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (SLAVIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES) May 2004 Copyright 2004 David Matthew Borgmeyer R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. UMI Number: 3140442 Copyright 2004 by Borgmeyer, David Matthew All rights reserved. INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI UMI Microform 3140442 Copyright 2004 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 11 Dedication ad majorem dei gloriam R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. Ill Acknowledgments As with any dissertation, there are many people whose contributions civility requires and gratitude demands be publicly acknowledged, for without them this would be a much poorer work, if it had ever been at all. I am indeed grateful to the Graduate School of the University of Southern California and Summer Slavic Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for providing support towards the completion of this dissertation, and to the Institute of Modem Russian Culture for the use of its resources. More than institutions, there are also many individuals to thank. I want to thank my adviser, John E. Bowlt, whose profound understanding of the period and patient guidance has shaped this project in the most fundamental ways, and also the rest of my committee: Alik Zholkovsky, who is an inspiring critic and mentor, and Kirill Postoutenko, with whom lively exchanges on my text have dramatically improved it, and Eunice Howe, for bringing a fresh perspective and helpful advice. A great many other people have generously offered their time, advice, and assistance, and they have my lasting gratitude. Some of these are: Nicoletta Misler, Sarah Pratt, Judith Komblatt, Robert Bird, Marcus Levitt, Jenifer Presto, Thomas Seifrid, Tatiana Akishina, Jay Alexander, Adam McLean, Mairi Hamilton, Alina Orlov, Fred White, Mark Konecny, Derek Jeffreys, Sarah Warren, Michele Torre, Lawrence Morris, and William Oulvey, S.J. I must also thank several other people: Sarah Burke and Bruce Holl, who first taught me to read Russian literature and to love Russian art; Susan Kechekian, R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. IV who has helped in a hundred small but indispensable ways; Helen Sullivan, Angela Cannon, and the staff of the Slavic Library at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, without whose resources and assistance this dissertation simply would not have been finished. The librarians at the University of Southern California and the University of Wisconsin - Green Bay, were also very helpful. Despite the help of all of these and many other people, however, this dissertation remains imperfect; the errors and inadequacies that remain despite their reproofs are all very much my own. Lastly, very special thanks must go to my parents, Elmer and Dorothy Borgmeyer, who have never ceased to provide unstinting support and unwavering encouragement for this and many other of my undertakings. The debt of gratitude I owe to my wife, Jennifer, as a scholar, friend, and spouse simply cannot be repaid. I also have to thank my children, James and Kate, who, though they may have delayed this project’s completion, have been a constant reminder that a dissertation is, after all, just a dissertation, and that they (and we) are infinitely more valuable than it could ever be. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. Table o f Contents Dedication ii Acknowledgements iii List of Figures vi Abstract viii Chapter One. Introduction 1 Chapter Two. Geneaology One: Sophia from Palestine to Peter I 33 The Canon of Wisdom Literature 34 The Origins of Personified Wisdom 42 Gnosticism 54 Early Christianity 60 Sophian Iconography and Architecture 68 Sophian Rulers in Russian History 86 Chapter Three. Geneaology Two: The European Path of Sophia 92 Mary, Sedes Sapientia 95 Hermeticism, Kabala, and Alchemy 106 From Word to Nature 121 Boehme, Swedenborg, and Northern European Sapiential 127 Speculation Freemasonry in Russia 143 Romanticism and the 19* Century Occult Revival 150 Chapter Four. Crisis in Femininity 170 Crisis One 171 Crisis Two 184 Chapter Five. Despair: Soloviev, Blok, Kuznetsov 201 Soloviev 212 Blok 226 Kuznetsov 254 Chapter Six. Hope: Bulgakov and Roerich 271 Roerich 274 Bulgakov 292 Chapter Seven. Conclusion: She Speaks 305 Conclusion 324 Bibliography 330 R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. List o f Figures Fig 2.1 Bakhman, Sofiia Premudrost ’ Bozhii (Sqfiia Krestnaia/Crucifixion 80 Type), lithograph, 1876 Fig. 2.2 Bakhman, Sofiia Premudrost ’ Bozhii (Novgorod/Fiery Angel 81 Type), lithograph, 1876 Fig. 2.3 Bakhman, Sofiia Premudrost ’ Bozhii (Sofiia KievskaiafKisw 84 Type), lithograph, 1876 Figure 3.1 Virgin of Montserrat, wood, Byzantine (?), 12th century 98 Figure 3.2 Virgin of Chartres, wood, French, 12th century 99 Figure 3.3 Adolphe-William Bouguereau, Madonna and Child, oil on 100 canvas, 1888 Figure 3.4 Virgin Mary as Wisdom, tympanum of Boston College Bapst 100 Library, limestone, 1920s Figure 3.5 Albrecht Durer, Apocalyptic Woman, engraving, 1498 102 Figure 3.6 Quito School (Ecuador), Immaculate Conception, oil on 103 canvas, 17* century Figure 3.7 Carlo Crivelli, Immaculate Conception, oil on canvas, 1492 105 Figure 3.8 Illustration to Raymond Lull, De Nova Logica, woodcut, 116 16* century Figure 3.9 Illustration to Tobias Schutz, Harmonia macrocosmi..., 118 engraving, 1654 Figure 3.10 Paullus van der Doort, Illustration to Heinrich Khunrath’s 120 Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae, engraving, 1595 Figure 3.11 Albrecht Durer, Philosophia, illustration to Conrad Celtis’ 122 Amores, woodcut, 1502 Figure 4.1 Photograph of Valerii Briusov, 1900s 181 Figure 4.2 Lev Bakst, Portrait o f Zinaida Gippius, pencil on paper, 1906 197 R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. Vll Figvire 5.1 Photograph of Sophia Petrovna Khitrovo, 1870s 214 Figure 5.2 Photograph of Vladimir Soloviev, 1890s 220 Figure 5.3 Left to right: Sofiia (Kiev Type), Sofiia (Novgorod Type), 242 Bogomater ’ Kupina Neopalimaia/Yirgin of the Burning Bush Figure 5.4 Nikolai Roerich, Italian Hill-town, illustration to Blok’s 247 Ital’ ianskie stikhi, 1910 Figure 5.5 Pavel Kuznetsov, 5/we FoMwtow, 1905 258 Figure 5.6 Pavel Kuznetsov, 1905 259 Figure 5.7 Pavel Kuznetsov, Birth, 1906 260 Figure 5.8 Pavel Kuznetsov, Self Portrait, 1906 261 Figure 5.9 Pavel Kuznetsov, Holiday, 1907 264 Figure 5.10 Pavel Kuznetsov, Visions o f a New Mother, 1907 265 Figure 5.11 Kazimir Malevich, Woman in Childbirth, 1908 268 Figure 5.12 Uzbek Woman, \92Q 269 Figure 6.1 Nikolai Roerich, Sophia, the Wisdom o f God, 1934 272 Figure 6.2 Nikolai Roerich, Z/w/ev«a, 1906 277 Figure 6.3 Nikolai Roerich, Intercession o f the Virgin, Parkhomovka, 1906 279 Figure 6.4 Nikolai Roerich, Tsaritsa Nebesnaia, Talashkino, 1911-1914 281 Figure 6.5 Nikolai Roerich, Tsaritsa Nebesnaia, study, 1906-1911(?) 282 Figure 6.6 Nikolai Roerich, Madonna Oriflamma,\932 285 Figure 6.7 Nikolai Roerich, Mater Mira, 1924 285 Figure 6.8 Mikhail Nesterov, P/zztopp/zer^', 1917 293 Figure 7.1 Paul Cezaime, The Eternal Feminine, 1877 317 R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. V lll Abstract This dissertation takes an interdisciplinary approach to the idea of Sophia, the divine feminine and incarnation of Wisdom, and a central aspect of “Silver Age” Russian culture. Existing scholarship affirms the importance of the idea of Sophia, but there have been no attempts to offer an interdisciplinary analysis of the phenomenon or to understand why Sophia had such wide appeal. This dissertation fills this gap by examining Sophia and related ideas in Russian literature and a range of other disciplines. The first chapters deal with the history of the idea of Sophia as the personification of the feminine aspect of the divine in the ancient world, charting the emergence and evolution of the idea of Sophia through theology, iconography, and architecture. The path of Sophia through Western European culture is also covered, exploring Sophia in alchemy and other occult doctrines, Christian and Jewish mysticism, Freemasonry, and Romantic philosophy and literature, all with the purpose of determining the various aspects of Sophia that impressed themselves on the minds of Russian cultural elites. I also describe the instability of conceptions of femininity and relationships of power, authority, and gender in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Russian culture, highlighting the opportimities and obstacles in applying Anglo-American feminist criticism to Russian culture. The second part of the dissertation focuses on the role of Sophia in the creative lives and works of various representative and important figures, R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. IX elaborating a typology of creative postures resulting from intensive creative encounters with the idea of Sophia; the two broad creative postures are designated “sophian despair” and “sophian hope.” Through examining the creative lives and works of such figures as Vladimir Soloviev, Aleksandr Blok, and Pavel Kuznetsov, I trace the sources of sophian despair through philosophy, art, and poetic language to a tragic interaction of ideas of femininity with ideas of the theurgic power of art, nascent modernism, and Symbolist life-creation. On the other hand, in looking at Sergei Bulgakov and Nikolai Roerich, I describe a position of sophian hope related to similar ideas of gender and creativity, life-creation, mysticism, and authority. I finish the project by exploring women’s creative positions with respect to Sophia, an area of research until now almost totally neglected. The goal of this dissertation is the development of a broader understanding of Symbolist and Silver Age culture and the position of Sophia within it. In doing so, it offers an argument for the central position of the idea of Sophia in Symbolist and Silver Age culture; Sophia and sophian ideas become not merely a common motif, but a central, motivating concept, the proper understanding of which is crucial to the proper evaluation and assessment of Russian culture in this period. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. Chapter One Introduction The beginning of wisdom is: get wisdom. Proverbs 4:7a “Sophia” is the Greek word for wisdom, so when a journal appeared in Moscow in 1914 bearing the name Sofiia, it was a title which was heavy with meanings, both ancient and contemporary.* The impetus for Sofia's genesis was the Alexander III Imperial Archaeological Society's 1913 exhibition of icons and other religious art in the Delovoi Dvor in Moscow commemorating the 300th anniversary of the Romanov Dynasty. In the extremely popular exhibition, the icons had been removed from their oklady, or metallic coverings, and, more importantly, cleaned. Layer upon layer of darkened oilfa, or lacquer, as well as the soot of countless candles had accumulated on these masterpieces of old Russian art, exhibited as art objects rather than antiquities or eult objeets. The original colors and forms of icons were displayed in large numbers to a wide public for the first time, and as the artist Natalia Goncharova noted, the exhibition "was of lasting ' I am aware of only two scholarly publications dealing with Sofiia: V. I. Sakharov, “Zhurnal sobriatcl’stva i okhrany pamiatnikov ‘Sofiia,’” Pamiatniki Otechestva 1 (1983): 152-55; and V. Bcliashcv, “Sofiia, po stranitsakh starykh zhumalov,” Nashe Nasledstvo 4 (1988): 110-13. The former, typically Soviet piece condemns Sofiia for “retrospektivizm,” though this is likely aesopan criticism, and the latter, though less pejorative, only reprints selections without providing much interpretive framework or analysis. I am indebted to Nicoletta Misler for both citations. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. , 2 consequence in its influence" not only on artist and professionals, but on the public as well.^ In economic terms, there was a wider market for publications dealing with the topic of old Russian art in the wake of the 1913 exhibtion. Pavel Muratov, the editor of Sofiia, and K.F. Nekrasov, the publisher, both of whom had been interested in the history and artistic value of Russian icons prior to 1913, seized the opporutnity. Sofiia itself ran only six monthly issues, from January to June of 1914, and was then suspended in large part because of the war, but also because its reviews were mixed and circulation was apparently lagging. Sergei Makovskii, editor of Apollon and Russkaia Ikona wrote to Ostroukhov, a major collector of icons, “It’s not really a journal yet, but more just a collection of random articles, even if they are interesting.”^ Sakharov, writing almost seven decades later, echoes this opinion, asserting that the contents “were not synthesized into a single intellectual fabric ... there was no real sofiinost’ in Sofiia.''^ It was serious publication, with color plates as well as black-and-white photographic reproductions thoroughly illustrating the text. Sofiia was clearly aimed at intellectual readers of a higher level of education, sophistication, and means. Sofiia’ ’s overt objective was clearly related to the study of old Russian art. ^ Natalia Goncharova, qtd. in Camilla Gray, The Russian Experiment in Art: 1863-1922, rev. and enlarged by Marian Burleigh-Motley (London: Thames and Hudson, 1986), 169. ^ Qtd. in Sakharov, “Sofiia,” 154. Russkaia Ikona was a bimonthly album published in Petersburg which was oriented towards the same audience as Sofiia, and thus competed with it. Sofiia gave Russkaia Ikona a negative review, as Apollon did Sofiia. ^ Sakharov, “Sofiia,” 154. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 3 as claimed in the journal's statement of purpose: "Osobuiu vazhnost’ Sofii vidit’ v probuzhdenii novago interesa k prekrasnomu russkomu iskusstvu. Ozbakomlenie cbitatelei s etim iskusstvom Sofiia scbitaet svoei glavnoi zadacbei.”^ But this doesn’t explain why such a journal on icons would be called Sofiia. Icons on the theme, Sofiia - Premudrost’ Bozhii, were actually relatively rare; there didn’t even exist a canonical form of Sophia icons, and the theme had even been suppressed at the Stoglav couneil. Sophia, as Wisdom, could be variously perceived as process, goal, or person, so the title Sofiia also forms something of a eontrast with the titles of various other periodicals of the time, many of which implied a direction or aspiration, such as Put’ , Novyi Put’ , or Zolotoe Runo, or used Hellenic personae as names, such as Apollon, Logos, or Izida. Sofiia was concerned not only with Russia's historical artistic roots, but also with its current status in world culture and the “mission” of Russian art and literature. A section was devoted in every issue to reviewing contemporary literature, art, and culture, and feature articles on contemporary materials were included. Thus, Sofia's program was the exploration of Russian culture, primarily through its ancient forms of religious art and its sources, but also its current status. Although the catalyst for the journal may have been the Imperial Arehaeological Society's 1913 exhibition and the show may have helped create an audience for this publication, it does not wholly explain its existence and only begins to aeeount for the eontent of the journal or its ambiguous title. Aside from ^ Pavel Muratov, Sofiia 1, no. 1 (1914); 134. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 4 the themes that have been noted so far, there is another aspect of the journal that is rather puzzling: Sqfiia's concern with Italy and the Italian Renaissance. The Italian Renaissance, in fact, is second only to Russia itself in number of articles. Articles on Giorgione, Ferrari, Cavallini, and Pontormo - almost one article per issue on an Italian Renaissance artist appeared, but the Italian Renaissance was not considered a substantial influence on medieval Russian art. Sqfiia's editor, Pavel Muratov, himself an expert on Russian icons and Italian and Byzantine art, asserted this fact in his review of the important 1913 exhibition in the antiquities journal Starye gody, claiming, “Odnovremmenoe s zhivopisiu ital’ianskago kvattrochento ona [t. e., russkaia ikonopis’] razvivalas’ po sovershenno inym zhivopisnym zakonam i traditsiiam.”^ The confluence of the Italian Renaissance with ancient and modem Russian art in the pages of Sqfiia may at first seem contradictory, since the journal claims to deal with ancient Russian art, its sources, and contemporary Russian art, none of which include the Italian Renaissance. But what occurred in Italy at the end of the Middle Ages had profound resonance in the consciousnesses of Sofia's creators, and in fact provides the key to understanding the jounal’s title. Sofia was published by a circle which desired the epoch to become the beginning of a new Russian Renaissance. They were not naive enough to believe that the Italian Renaissance would simply be replayed in Russia. What was to happen was something powerfully analogous, but fundamentally different, even superior. The ^ Muratov, "Vystavka drevne-russkago iskusstva v Moskve" Starye gody (April 1913): 35-36. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 5 Italians of Rome, Venice, and Florence, had rediscovered the heritage of their ancient culture and, by understanding and building upon that heritage, had created a cultural flowering unmatched in the history of modem Europe, and had arguably laid the basis for the subsequent development of European culture. The pages of Sofiia were intended to contribute to a parallel movement in which Russia would rediscover the heritage of her ancient culture and, by understanding and building upon that heritage, would become the Florence of the twentieth century, or even become the cultural as well as spiritual ‘third Rome.’ The launching of a cultural Golden Age seems like a rather overly ambitious social project for what is at face value a bookish joumal of medieval icons, but not in the context of pre-revolutionary Russia. Sofiia can be read as a practical attempt to implement Vekhi's program of trying to rescue Russia, to start a New Renaissance, as Jeffrey Brooks put it, “by thinking.”’ Sofia’s goal was to start thinking about the art of old Russia, prinicpally the Russian Orthodox Christian icon, in much the same way that Italians of the trecento had begun thinking about ancient Greco-Roman art. Sofiia shared its concept of culture with the famous 1909 miscellany Vekhi, which “insisted on the priority of moral values and on the freedom of the human person as such. Without an inner conversion, so to speak, changes in political, social, and economic structures, whether sudden and ^ Jeffrey Brooks, '‘Vekhi and the Vekhi Dispute,” Survey 86 (1973): 30. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 6 sweeping or more gradual, would be unable to realize the higher type of society desired by the spokesmen of the intelligenstia.”^ Those involved in Sofiia and Vekhi viewed culture as essentially spiritual and like many in the creative intelligentsia believed in the possibility of cultural change through intellectual and spiritual pursuits, in lieu of social activism and revolutionary agitation.^ For Sofiia, the icons which were its primary object were an effective point of departure. According to Orthodox theology, which Muratov thoroughly vmderstood, an icon is a representation of a spiritual truth, of a material person or scene transformed into the spiritual. They serve as bridges, as links between heaven and earth. They participate in the material world as material objects, but by virtue of the image, they participate in the divine.The ability of this art to effect society was an axiom of Sofia's ideology. The title of Sofiia becomes more clear as the projected patroness of a spiritual age contrasted with the goddess of the material beauty of the Italian Renaissance, Venus. A sense of impending change was part of the ethos of the era - the question was not if there would be a new epoch, but only what form it would take. Witness Boris Gasparov’s observation, “For all their quarrels, the various movements and Frederick C. Copleston, S.J. Russian Religious Philosophy: Selected Aspects (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press), 20. ® Two o f Vekhi's seven contributors, Nikolai Berdiaev and Mikhail Gershenzon, also contributed to Sofiia. For a more thorough explanation of the theology of icons, see among many other works Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky, The Meaning o f Icons, trans. G. E. H. Palmer and E. Kadloubovsky (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1999). For a semiotic reading of their sign-systems, see Boris Uspensky, The Semiotics o f the Russian Icon, ed. Stephen Rudy (Lisse: Peter de Kidder Press, 1976). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 7 cultural tendencies of the early twentieth century ... all shared an essential interpretation of their age. They viewed all preceding cultural history as a part of a continuum ... [T]his new age, however, was seen by its contemporaries not as the next step in a[n] historical progression, but as a radical reevaluation and transformation. ” ^ ^ The joumal Sofiia gathers many of the various strands that cormect Sophia, understood as the feminine, personal Wisdom of God, to Russian culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Within Sofiia'’s pages can be found connections between the ancient and the modem, the religious and the secular, the spiritual and the material, the ideal and the practical, apocalypse and renaissance, history and etemity. Sofiia, however, was far from the only invocation of Sophia in this period; though obscure in our time, Sophia was ubiquitous in Sofia’s time. Sophia or sophian variations appear across Russian art, literature, philosophy, theology, and journalism - even in Russijm film. Scholarship makes regular mention of Sophia, and various monographs, articles, and other scholarship mention her in passing or deal with individuals’ conceptions of her. Sofiia, then, brings us to the obvious question about Sophia: if there isn’t really any question that the notion of Sophia is an important part of Russian high Boris Gasparov, “Introduction,” in Cultural Mythologies o f Russian Modernism: From the Golden Age to the Silver Age, ed. Boris Gasparov, Robert P. Hughes, and Irina Papemo (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992), 1. The works that mention Sophia in passing are too voliuninous to mention. An excellent introduction to the various aspects of Sophia with extensive references is Kristi A. Groberg, “The Feminine Occult Sophia in the Russian Religious Renaissance: A Bibliographical Essay,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 26, nos. 1-3 (1992): 197-240. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 8 culture in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth, why a dissertation on this topic? The answer: though often mentioned, Sophia is virtually unstudied from a general perspective. While many scholars agree that the notion and personage of Sophia is important, to date, there are not any studies that attempt to provide a synthetic assessement of the meaning and function of the sophian divine feminine in the context of the late Imperial Russian period. Previous invesigations of Sophia that have not confined themselves to one figure have generally stayed within the limits of a single discipline, such as literature or philosophy. This study is the first attempt at developing an understanding of the role Sophia played in the the theory and practice of early Russian modernism from an interdisciplinary perspective and to guage the underlying importance of the idea of Sophia to the cultural movements known in different disciplines as the Silver Age, Religious Renaissance, and Avant-Garde.'"^ I know of no studies that attempt to examine the relationship between the art, literature, and thought of this period through the device of the sophian divine feminine, or to explore the extent of the influence of sophian ideas in the general formation and practice of Symbolist aesthetics. This period was what in contemproary academic patois would be called interdisciplinary. Painters contemplated parallel careers as poets, musicians and Among the few such works are Samuel Cioran, Vladimir Soloviev and the Knighthood o f the Divine Sophia (Waterloo, Ontario; Wilfird Laurier University Press, 1977) and Mikhail Sergeev, “The Religious-Philosophical Concept o f Sophia: Its Genealogy and Evolution in Russian Thought of the 19* and 20* Centuries” (Ph.D. diss., Temple University, 1999). Omry Ronen’s objections notwithstanding, the term “Silver Age” will be used refer to the literary culture and cultinal life in general in Russia in the decades before the revolution. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 9 easel painters collaborated with choreographers and directors, theologians wrote literary criticism, philosophers wrote art history, and virtually everyone was interested in theosophy, theology, or spirituality of some kind. Since so many figures were involved in more than one genre of creative enterprise or collaboration, it is no surprise that Sophia appears not only in poetry and prose, but in all manner of creative work. Such intellectual cross-fertilization justifies an approach that is intellectually broad and promises potential rewards for braving the risks of crossing diciplinary boundaries. Focusing only on literature, philosophy, or art leaves unrecognized, or at least unfilled, gaps in the picture of Sophia, and impedes a thorough assessment of her importance. A caveat or two are required before the traditional introduction’s brief exposition of the movement of the argument from chapter to chapter: Since true eomprehensivity is impossible, 1 have had to choose a limited number of figures from the Silver Age for more focused discussion. In attempting to generate a view of Sophia that spans the period and crosses dsiciplinary boundaries, I will rely on a selection of important and more or less representative figures and their lives and works. There are points of contact between them, but as a group they share little in common other than an interest in the sophian and being memebrs of the creative intelligentsia between 1880 and 1917. Vladimir Soloviev was a poet, philosopher, and religious mystic; Aleksandr Blok was a poet, bohemian, and critic; Pavel Kuznetsov, a painter, art teacher, and midwife; Nikolai Roerich was an There are also certain gaps here. Sophias and sophian themes in film, dance, and drama are not well represented, and I am not aware of any studies of “sophian music.” R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 1 0 administrator, archaeologist, artist, poet, and religious thinker; and Sergei Bulgakov was an economist, politician, theologian, and priest. A whole host of other figures might have been ineluded, and will be corollatives to the main arguments built around these five, ineluding Andrei Bely, Sergei Soloviev, Fr. Pavel Florensky, Viktor Borisov-Musatov, Lev Bakst, Pavel Muratov and the Sofiia circle, Viacheslav Ivanov and Lidiia Zinovieva-Annibal, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Dmitrii Merezhkovskii and Zinaida Gippius, Valery Briusov, Elena Blavatskaia, Arma Mintslova, Anna Shmidt, and Poliksena Soloveiva. These and others and their ideas will be ineorporated as appropriate. Sustained, literal referenees to “Sophia” are eoncentrated in of a small group of philosophers. Even Soloviev, the first and perhaps most important “sophiologisf ’ does not name her as “Sophia” in his poetry. It is true, however, that many members of the Russian creative intelligentsia employed sophian ideals or created sophian characters, or even tried to live sophian lives without expressly adopting the name of Sophia. Historieally, a similar situation pertains. The “Divine Feminine” or “Eternal Feminine” as persons or priniciples have sapiential roots. As a result, the scope of research has been expanded to include not only references to Sophia specifically, but also to ideas of the divine or idealized feminine more broadly construed, the absence of the appellation of Sophia notwithstanding. Another point that needs to be made at the very start: a critical discussion of an idealized feminine Sophia without reference to issues of gender, power, divinity, and authority is all but impossible. At the same time, I find many R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 11 feminist models based on Western European historical, litreary, and cultural experiences (including those sometimes used derivatively by slavists) inadequate for fully understanding the multifacted types of imagery I will be examining in the Russian context. Consequently, I will try to offer an altemative theoretical construct that takes into account the insights of feminist scholarship while remaining critically disposed towards the application of those insights into structures of gender only partially similar to those milieux that they were created to critique. The historical siutation also gives rise to another point that explains why two of seven chapters in this dissertation have very little to do with Russia and Russian culture. It is altogether impossible to understand what the Russian Sjmibolists and others in the same era did with the idea of Sophia and why they did it without understanding where she came from and what others had done, because Sophia was certainly not their invention. The history of Sophia, however, is long and complicated, and not always clearly elucidated by the current state of Sophia scholarship. There has been a relatively small amount of interest in the idea of Sophia in the past several decades, though it is undoubtedly growing. The majority of the interest in Sophia is not so much as a figure in the Russian fin-de-siecle as it is a synchronic symbol of feminine divinity. Sophia, as an ancient and highly abstracted symbol of the feminine divine, has attracted the attention of authors working in the Jungian tradition, others in gender studies and religious studies, some in occultism and esoteria, or a combination of the above. One common R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 1 2 tendency of some of this work is to conflate all female deities and goddesses into one polyvalent, multifaceted female Great Goddess, seeing everything from Isadora Duncan to Jesus’ mother Mary to the Venus of Willendorf as variations on the same theme, often unifying them under the rubric of Sophia. This must be met with circumspection. The problem is not the unorthodoxy (this is an altogether different problem, and outside the seope and beyond the sphere of this study), but that this approach is willing to sacrifice exploring interesting differences between various conceptions of divine femininity for the sake of a synthesizing feminism, deep psychology, or the creation of a pagan goddess cult. Another common approach is to “de-patriarchalize” and “feminize” Christianity under the sign of Sophia, either by using Sophia to recognize or add a feminine dimension to the Judeo-Christian God, or to reconfigure traditional Christian theology to better conform metaphysically to modern notions of gender equality. Whether or not this is good theology is thankfully not at issue here. In either case, ideology is put ahead of scholarship. On the other hand, according to twentieth century orthodox Orthodox theologians, such as Georges Florovsky and Jean Meyendorff, there is not a great deal of importance accorded to Sophia as a feminine principle in the patristic tradition, especially the Cappadocian fathers - St. Basil the Great et al. - and later Byzantine tradition, in which the Wisdom of God is viewed in almost exclusively Christoloigcal terms based on the Scriptural equation of Christ and God’s Wisdom by St. Paul. In this view, the feminization (or re-feminization) of Sophia is a more R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 13 or less Russian/east Slavic deviation or alteration of the “original” Christian understanding of Wisdom. In the politics of Orthodox theology, though, the patristic-oriented position of the Meyendorff-Florovsky type is itself a response to “gnosticizing” Sophiology. In other words, it is a retreat from the original and speculative thought that is at least in part the topic of this study. This Christ- Wisdom perspective neglects the prominence of both the roots of Christian Wisdom theology (the feminine Hebrew Hokhmah figure) and Gnostic movements related to Christianity in the patristic period in which Sophia and the feminine were central figures. The second chapter, Geneaology One, will trace the idea of Sophia from its ancient origins. The Hebrew scriptures contain references to Hokhmah, a personal, feminine wisdom figure whose relationship to both the Jewish monotheistic God and to various wisdom goddesses of the ancient Near East will be discussed. From this point of origin the Judeo-Hellenic interaction and the use of the idea of wisdom in the first generations of Christianity will be examined. The association of Jesus Christ with Wisdom informed several speculative systems, includuing Gnosticism and Arianism, disputes with which lead to the Christologieal and Sophiologieal definitions of the Nieene era in orthodox Christianity. The Byzantine Sophia eomes not only from the Hebrew Hokhmah found in ancient biblical sources and deteroeanonical biblical works (only excluded later from Jewish and Protestant eanons), but also the wisdom of the Hellenie philosophieal tradition interpolated using the prism of early Christianity. After the end of the iconoelast controversy in R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 14 887 and the Christianization of Rus’ in 988, the biblical-literary, iconic, and architectural aspects of the Eastern Christian Wisdom tradition were transmitted to the eastern Slavs, and the reception and new development of asspciations of Wisdom with the sacred feminine can be traced. Once on Russian soil, the feminine Sophia becomes more evident, though it is complicated by the identification of Sophia with the Virgin Mary, sometimes confusion of Sophia as Divine Wisdom with Sophia the Roman martyr (whose martyred daughters, Faith, Hope, and Love, were an allegorist’s dream come true), and the persistent Christologieal element in Russian Sophiology. In spite of the importance of the various churches dedicated to St. Sophia in Kiev, Novgorod, Moscow, Riazan, Tobolsk, and elsewhere, no consistent iconography of Wisdom ever developed, either in Russia or elsewhere. There are certain iconographical “marks” affiliated with Wisdom, such as an eight-pointed halo of superimposed red and blue/green rhombuses, the number seven (especially seven pillars, from the Book of Proverbs), and others less common. The various types of icons include as their central figures alternatively a fiery (red) angel — the Novgorod type; a crucifix — the Kiev type; and Mary/the Woman of the Apocalypse - a modified Kiev type; or a visual narrative of the verse from Proverbs “Wisdom hath built herself a house ...”. These marks and types will be described and discussed. There are also extant at least two church services dedicated to Divine Wisdom, though these had to be rediscovered in the 19* and 20* centuries. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 15 Sophia continued to receive some attention in elite culture as Russia oriented itself more towards Europe. An official cult of Sophia grew during the reign of Sophia Alekseevna as regent, and Catherine the Great, whose birth name was Sophie, had Charles Cameron build a rather large church dedicated to St. Sophia near Tsarskoe Selo, apparently an invocation of her aspirations to conquer Istanbul/Constantinople. In the former case, Peter’s accession curtailed the development of the Sophia cult, and in the latter, it appears to be a rather peripheral gesture. At any rate, as the europeanization of the Russian state and intelligentsia progressed through the 18* and 19* centuries, consciousness of the Byzantine- Orthodox heritage of Sophia in elite and secular culture dwindles to almost nothing. This is not to say that there are no traces of Sophia in Russian elite culture, but they come from different, Western, mostly occult sources. If the Sophia-Goddess trend in contemporary Sophia studies has attempted to pull Sophia out of history, or at least project her femininity into such a distant pre-Christian, pre-historical past that the remotness of indeterminate age lends authority to its anti-Christian, anti-patriarchal agenda, then on the other hand Orthodox scholarship of the previous century has tried to anchor Sophia firmly in a Christocentric history that sublimates her feminine aspects into a masculine Christ- Logos. In this work there is only time to survey the road, but the path of Sophia from Hebraic culture to Slavic culture is neither the systematic, patriarchal repression of a imiversal Mother/Wisdom Goddess and the usurpation of her powers for a male Father or Logos/Christ, only to have her indomitably reassert R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 16 and reclaim her authority to various degrees throughout history, nor an initially distorted Slavic reception of the “discovery” of Christ as Wisdom by the early patristic Church that became the basis for another distortion of Wisdom in the revival of twentieth century sophiology. The point will be to familiarize the reader with the rudimentary background of ideas and relationhips that underlie the movement of Sophia through time to the historical moment when this study begins in earnest. It will not attempt to “reconstruct” the state of knowledge at the time in Russia or to present materials as they were or were likely to have been understood in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. The state of the scholarship in the many fields that pertain has been revolutionized by changes in methodology, technology, and even new discoveries, such as the Nag Hammadi library of gnostic documents. Ignoring a century of scholarly work and methodological innovation for the sake of pursuing the difficult and inevitably flawed task of “re-creating” the state of knowledge around 1900 in Russia seems ill-advised. Indeed, at least some of the differences were not as sharp as one might expect; for example, Soloviev’s thought reflects an intuitive understanding of some of the close connections between gnosticism and early orthodox Christianity revealed decades after his death by the Nag Hammadi documents. At any rate, chapters two and three offer a survey of modem scholarship’s acheivements in analyzing the passage of the idea of Sophia through the centuries; observations on what was known, available, or popular in Russia may R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 17 be adduced from time to time, but these are supplemental and secondary rather than primary. The third chapter, Geneaology Two, will deal with the Western European context and transmission of the idea of Sophia to Russia. The distinction made in chapters two and three between an eastern and western path of Sophia is somewhat artificial. While there certainly were differences, there were also substantial points of contact between them, esepcially after the sevententh century. In Western Christianity, even less interest was accorded to personified feminine wisdom, and much of the early Christian and biblical heritage accrued to Christ and more importantly his mother, Mary. Within Roman Catholic Christianity, several Marian doctrines and iconographic types manifest various sapiential characteristics. The sedes sapientia (Throne of Wisdom) in the middle ages and the Immaculate Conception in the Renaissance were among the most prominent, and the latter in particular exerted a notable effect on the icongoraphy of Sophia in Orthodoxy. Aside from the Marian element in Western Christianity, the Wisdom tradition was carried on through various occult and esoteric intellectual and social movements such as Hermeticism, alchemy. Freemasonry, Pietist mysticism, Romanticism, Naturphilosophie, and the nineteenth century occult revival. The most important sophiologists of the immediate pre-revolutionary period, Pavel Florensky and Sergei Bulgakov, seeking continuity of a sophian heritage, acknowledged a dearth of references in Byzantine and medieval Russian R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 18 sources, but instead argued for an intuitive understanding of Sophia that can be inferred if the texts and icons were read properly. Thus part of the task undertaken by Soloviev’s suceessors was the validation and rediscovery of a sophian heritage, but much of it took place in the presence of sophian motifs from western sources. Manifestly, Soloviev and the sophians who followed him drew not only on the eastern religious heritage but also on the western occult heritage. They read european esoteria of all kinds; among the most important and popular were Jakob Boehme, who developed a theosophical system in the context of Pietist Lutheranism centered on the idea of Sophia, and Emmanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish engineer who reoriented and adapted much of the esoteric heritage and recast it in a form more palatable to the emerging modern mind. The Romantics, to whom many early Russian modernists turned, actually reincorporated much material from the history of European religious esotericism back into the mainstream of European culture, but in a secularized form. The divine feminine plays an important role in many of the Romantics’ work and thought. Hegel and von Baader drew on Boehme, and Goethe’s Ewig Weibliche, or eternal feminine, is the iconic image of sophian motifs in Faust and the agent of Faust’s salvation. The same priniciple was of particular interest to Novalis, whose blue flower in Heinrich von Ofterdingen has been offered as a possible inspiration for the title of the Rusain Symbolist Blue Rose Group. Novalis himself was engaged in his twenties to be married to a fifteen-year-old girl he desperately idealized and loved named coincidentally but significantly Sophie. She died before R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 19 they were married, and critics have seen his development of a new religion based on the worship of an ideal woman to be rooted in this loss. Whether or not this is so, the literary legend of his devotion to the divine feminine remains an important personal and literary precendent for succeeding generations of sophians. There are other European avenues of influence as well as appearances of Sophia in “European” Russian culture. The rapid rise and spread of Freemasonry became an important conduit for the transmittal of ancient and european esoteric and occult ideas among secularizing elites. The Freemasons collected and spread virtually the whole of Westem European esoteria, of which sophian ideology was not an inconsequential part. In the later 19* century, the vogue of spiritualism and the occult revival in France, led by Eliphas Levi, Papus, Phillipe, and others, and in the Anglo-American world led by Mme. Blavatsky and the Theosophical movement provide popular avenues for reception of the Divine Feminine, all of which were very popular and widespread in Russia. The fourth chapter. Crisis, is actually about two ‘crises’, the first historical and the second contemporary. In the first part of the chapter I will establish the context of a crisis in the understanding of femininity in the sphere of Russian elite culture. This crisis was related to the social and cultural changes related to urbanization, industrialization, increased public opportunities for women, as well as anxieties related to revolution, political instability, prostitution, sexual disease, and other social problems. As a part of Russian culture, the various conceptions of femininity on the part of the creative intelligentsia were both responive to this crisis R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 20 and consitutive of it. In lieu of a systemic, analytical narrative of the idea of femininity in this period a more impressionistic series of examples will be gathered that together to demonstrate not only the variety of perspectives and the depth of the divisions, but also the connection to many related issues as well. Examples will include a parlor album questionnaire answered by Nikolai Roerich, a small exhibtion of portraiture held by the journal Apollon, a sketch of Zinaida Gippius by Bakst, a photo of Valery Briusov, and the ill-fated 1914 journal edited by Pavel Muratov. Aspects of these examples are symptomatic of a much broader ambiguity about what was admirable in women, or, in other words, what the ideal woman was. In drawing on sources in gender studies, cultural, social, and intellectual history, art history, and literature, 1 will examine the representation of women in the spheres of high culture, art, literature, and philosophy, but also connect them to the dislocations in the cultural construction of public/private, virtue/vice, male/female exacerbated by a matrix of complicated and interrelated social problems and anxieties. Rather than arguing that these changes in social structures “caused” certain literary and intellectual responses, the literary and intellectual products of Symbolism, the Russian Religious Renaissance, and the nascent artistic Avant-garde will be seen as both responses to cultural ambiguity about unstable notions of femininity and simultaneously important contributory elements of the destablization. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 21 The second part of Crisis is about contemporary feminist criticism. In part because most feminist theory was developed in the Anglo-European context, the transfer of some methods and conclusions to the Russian situation in the same period makes apparent some inconsistencies between Westem theory and Russian cultural reality. This condition suggests an approach might be more appropriate that relies less on existing theoretical claims and that attempts to act as a corrective to the more ideological claims of radical and gender feminisms that do not coincide with conceptions of gender and authority in the sophian sphere. In particular, I will discuss three distinctions important to the discussion of the sophian divine feminine that, without corrective theoretical postulations, are otherwise subject to conflation; the conflation of good and evil/virtue and vice; conflation of real, live women and ideal, fictional women; and conflation of the positions of critic and text/subject. The dominant approaches of Anglo-American feminist critics who have dealt with the issues of the representation of idealized or demonized women in Russian and pan-European art, literature, and culture can be divided into two categories. In the first, images of virtue or vice in women are both often seen as misogynistic, controlling women by praising them when they are submissive and tractable, damning and demonizing them when they are not. The other response is more sophistieated but not more satisfying: it focuses on representations of supernatural femininity and argues that this cultural device, though apparently misogynistic, is actually testimony to an unknowable, uncontrollable power that women possess - a power that terrifies men. On this account, this literary and R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 22 artistic imagery can be re-evaluated to be a demonstration of women’s power despite the “original” intention and/or reception. The difficulty with both these feminist models is the underlying assumption that the labels of “good/holy” and “had/evil” are defined almost exclusively in terms of the liberation or oppression of women. Either art is patriarchal, sexualized, misogynist and thus “bad,” or it only appears misogynist and therefore “bad,” but the supernatural power accorded women, whether good or evil, testifies to women’s real power and thus it is “good.” The argument that I want to make focuses on what is connoted as good and evil in the literature and art itself. There is a functional difference between images of transcendental feminine virtue/good and those of transcendental feminine vice/evil, notwithstanding perceptions of encoded misogyny in both from a modem perspective. In spite of the pretensions of many Silver Age figures to transcend morality, there is no doubt that “good” and “evil” are relevant and important categories, widely used and manipulated in the art and literature of the era, even by those who did not belive in their legitimacy. A critique which does not address these categories in their context is inadequate on this count. Another vital distinction is between real women and ideal women. When this distinction is lost or subverted, the literary and artistic results are often quite interesting. At the same time, the process that generates the art or literature also often produces dismption, broken relationships, or tragedies in the lives of the creators and the real women onto whom the creative impulse was projected. The R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 23 Silver Age is an especially interesting ground to test such boundaries, since not only was there intense interest in the transcendental ideal, but also because the distinctions between life and art were consciously blurred, and the ability of art to alter the real and help to incarnate an ideal was an article of faith for many. The idea of Sophia and her incarnation as a living woman will help illustrate the tension between a conception of beauty that is linked to ethically and metaphysically positive charactersitics, and a critical perspective for which it is a coercive and empty quality. Many of the difficulties encountered by sophians appear to be in large part a fimction of the confusion between creation of self and the creation of the other, in particular when the other is an real, living woman. Another related issue is that of the critic’s position with respect to the text. The notion of Sophia for the figures I will be examining was not a fictional one; she is a real, personal, spiritual being for many of them. The position of these men is not one of authority, but of subjugation. The relationships of power and creativity that allow the manipulation of allegorical figures, mythological characters, or women of defined and controlled social classes common in 19^'’ century European painting, for example, do not translate to the Sophian relationship. The stereotypical categories of gender characteristics and the accompanying hierarchies of gender and power that form the basis for critiques of Western European value systems in this period are upset by the nature and reality of Sophia, and the assignation of roles between author, text, subject, and critic commonly evoked in critiques of Westem patriachal systems will be rethought. If R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 24 the feminist-inclined critic’s voice, seeking solidarity with the oppressed or eontrolled women inside and outside the text doesn’t recognize the shift in authority between author and subject, it risks misunderstanding the position and meaning of Sophia in Russian Silver Age culture. In short, the second part of chapter four will argue, without ignoring the challenges and insights of feminist scholarship, that images of idealized feminine virtue are not a priori “bad” or misogynist and representations of transcendental feminine evil are not “good” or liberating just because the women are powerful. Furthermore, the eomplicted relationship of the real and the ideal and the unique constitution and position of Sophia as both a real spiritual being outside texts forces a reconsideration of the ways that feminine imagery in texts are discussed. This chapter will aim at outlining an approach that is conscious of the issues of power and gender without reducing the question to one of gender politics, reframing the issue of the representation of idealized women to account for the complicated and multivalent representations found in this era. Having traced the sources of the idea of Sophia, established a destabilized cultural construction of femininity, and positioned the dissertation with respect to contemporary feminist theory, the first part of he dissertation will be complete. Mapping the complex intellectual terrain of the era, distinguishing between two main types of responses to Sophia and the crisis of femininity, and incorporating the many related cultural issues is the task of the seocnd part. The notion of Sophia will be demonstrated as a key element in uncovering the sources and underlying R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 25 meanings of Symbolist aesthetics with an emphasis on zhiznetvorchestvo and theurgy, but also considering apocalypticism, religious and philsophical idealism, and more general modernist themes such as urbanization, dislocation, and anxiety, in the hopes of finding new insights into the Silver Age as a whole and Sophia herself as a cental concept. Chapter five is titled “Despair,” also the name for the category of response it will describe. I plan to deal with the responses to Sophia of three major figures in this chapter: Vladimir Soloviev, Aleksandr Blok, and the artist Pavel Kuznetsov, the leader of the Blue Rose. The aim of dealing with each figure is not a comprehensive treatment of his oeuvre, but of using selected works with the purpose of supporting a more general typology of responses to Sophia. All of the figures in this chapter are at first enamored of Sophia or some sophian divine feminine and inspired by her, produce paeans of art, literature, or philosophy, and then are disillusioned or disappointed and subsequently produce works that are conspicuously neglectful, pejorative, or demonizing of their previous idol, a creative posture designated here as sophian despair. I hope to illustrate that this process is not inevitable, as some scholars have implied, but a result of a combination of cultural dynamics of theurgic art, zhiznetvorchestvo, and the ultimately tragic conflation of the real and the ideal. N o work of this scope on Sophia in this period could be complete without a discussion of Soloviev, though his pattern of Sophian despair is somewhat different from the others’. For Soloviev there were not only visions of Sophia, there were R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 2 6 also unsuccessful romances with different Sophias — Sophia Khitrovo in the 1880s and Sophia Martynova in the early 1890s - and his encounter with Anna Schmidt, a provincial schoolteacher who claimed she was Sophia; his failure to incarnate Sophia through spiritualized romantic love and his refusal of Shmidt could also be construed as a failure and rejection of his own Sophiology. More importantly, he had a growing conviction that the Kingdom of Heaven would not come peacefully through the Sophian means he had envisioned early in his career, but with a violent apocalypse under a masculine Logos - Christ. These premonitions were given fictional form in Tri razgovory, which will be examined to explore the real nature of Soloviev’s sophian despair. Aleksandr Blok was a follower of Soloviev and under the influence of Soloviev’s writings came to believe his wife, Liubov’ Mendeleeva Blok, to be an incarnation of the divine feminine. It is well-known that she was the inspiration for Blok’s Stikhi oprekrasnoi dame. Blok was manifestly frustrated in his attempts to “make” the quotidian cycle of life with Liubov’ and Liubov’ herself into something transcendent and poetic. The resulting despair is a dominant element in his works, and it creates a sharp contrast between his elegant poems of sophian enchantment about his prekrasnaia dama and later works from the Ital ’ ianskie stikhi, in which various aspects of the interaction of life, art, creativity and the ambiguities of femininity and the anxieties of modernity are combined in a masterful poetic manifestation of sophian despair. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 27 Kuznetsov, in comparison with Soloviev and Blok, has received little attention in both Russia and the West. The period on which I plan to focus is the rise and fall of the Blue Rose, about 1903-1909, during which period, under the spell of Symbolism and the aura of Sophia, Kuznetsov became convinced the incarnation of divine truth was in pregnant and birthing women, and he took a job in a maternity hospital to be in close proximity to such women. Little detail is known about this interesting period of artistic research. His works themselves, however, reflect much about how Kuznetsov transformed peasant women having children into iconic imges of cosmic harmony. Kuznetsov lacks one specific woman, but rather his failed quest to find Truth in the specific type of real women in their reproductive cycle resulted in a shift of his images from ephemeral harmonies of subtle chromatic tones, seeking to convey a transcendental, almost Edenic ideal to necromantic and disturbing images of the same typological figures - - lurid, deformed fetuses and their nightmarish, ghastly mothers. There is not a direct causal link between failed biographical romance or other experiences such as Kuznetsov’s and creative disillusionment with an artistic Divine Feminine. Sophian despair is a creative posture, not a biographical broken heart. It is not simply the presence or absence of actual women, but the attempt to blend art and someone else’s life, to impose one’s art as power, as a life-creating force on another person who fails to incarnate the impossible ideal - impossible not only because it is ideal, but because it is the artist’s desire, not the woman’s. In different ways all of these figures try to use theurgic art to inscribe upon actual R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 2 8 women the incarnation of their ideals in a kind of modified version of the idea of life-creation. It can be seen as a kind of inverse Pygmalion myth: the adoring artist metaphorically tries not to vivify, but to petrify, a living woman. Despair, however, does not seem to be the only outcome of encounters with Sophia. There is another typoloigcal response to Sophia which does not lead to despair, but rather to a sustained interest in the power of the divine feminine - this will be the topic of the sixth chapter, Hope. For Sergei Bulgakov and Nikolai Roerich, among others, the initial enchantment with the Divine Feminine did not lead to disillusionment, but rather became a lifelong interest, never reaching the stage of disillusionment common to the figures in the previous chapter. The structure of the idea of sophian despair relies on the elements of zhiznetvorchestvo, theurgy, and the position of the individual in modemity; these issues are also important in the consideration of sustained sophian “hope.” Roerich’s interest in early Slavic and medieval Russian culture gave him specialized knowledge of sophian iconography, and Sophia became an element in a syncretist philosophy that triumphed the value of human culture in art, science, and religion. Roerich’s Sophia, the Wisdom o f God from the 1930s is the only painting I have found by any pre-revolutionary artist the subject and title of which is Sophia. Roerich’s Sophia’s artistic and philosophical-spiritual predecessors are to be found in various pre-revolutionary commissioned madormas, and especially the Tsaritsa Nebesa at Princess Tenisheva’s Talashkino Church of the Holy Spirit. For Roerich, whose interests ranged from art pedagogy to archaeological fieldwork, the power of R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 29 art was not directly theurgically creative. His theosophical interests and study of Asian art and culture made him eloser to Blavatsky and Kandinsky than Soloviev. Roerieh subordinates art to the values of his syncretist humanistic-cultural system, and although Sophia becomes the unifying metaphor for his system, and creativity becomes for Roerich one of the highest aspirations of humanity, an indelible part of the spiritual progress of humanity, art does not have the same creative, constiutive power that it does in the creative doctrines of Blok or Kuznetsov. For Bulgakov, Sophia became the central element in his philosophy, economics, and theology, in part under the influence of Pavel Florensky. Although Bulgakov’s major sophiological works were written in emigration, his abandonment of Marxism, conversion to Orthodoxy, and confirmed interest in Sophiology was complete before the revolution, and this proeess is perhaps as interesting as the later exposition of his fully developed thought. While Bulgakov believed in the theurgic power of art like Blok, both of them taking the concept from Soloviev, Bulgakov makes a distinction between pure theurgy and what he calls sophiurgy. Bulgakov is deeply sympathetic to the Symbolists’ ideas about the profundity of creative action and the need for an aestheties that is conneeted to metaphysics. However, his religious beliefs motivate him to put the individual in imitation of and subordination to the Christian God, imposing prescriptive limitations on creativity. Buglakov and Roerich, though both of these figures who were fully immersed in elite culture of the early twentieth century, never sought to make any R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 30 actual woman an incarnation of their vision of the Divine Feminine, and never fell into sophian despair, in contrast to Soloviev, Blok, and Kuznetsov. Compared to the sophian hopes fashioned by Bulgakov and Roerieh, Blok and Kuznetsov’s theurgy is more independent, giving them greater creative power, and though some of Kuznetsov’s art and espeeially Blok’s poetry is magnificent, one might argue that the final outcomes demonstrate that they had diffieulty coping with the power they elaimed. To this point in the dissertation Sophia will only have been looked at as a part of what men think, write, or paint. The seventh chapter. She Speaks, will deal with an important dimension of Sophia, albeit in somewhat truncated form; the responses and interactions of women with the sophian divine feminine. In eontrast to the two categories of response generally had by men, women’s experience are rather broader, and they will be briefly discussed in three different eategories. The full articulation of women’s experiences with Sophia is the subject for another work at least as long as this one: women’s experiences of the “crisis” of femininity, and their invocation, manipulation, or even victimization of and by sophian ideas were important elements in the discourse of the divine feminine before the revolutions of 1917. This ehapter will map out directions for further examination of how women responded to the crisis they were helping to create, how they dealt with the idealized figures of their gender made most often by men, and how they ereated their own sophian ideal women in their own work. At the same time this is not just an add-on. Women’s aetivities as writers and artists was itself a part of the R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 31 construction of femininity, and there were those at the time who argued that women had no place as creators themselves, only as muses or mute idols. This disertation could not be considered complete without offering some account of the three types of sophian women. The first type are women who themselves claim to be incarnate Wisdom or have some extra measure of spiritual wisdom, including Anna Schmidt, Elena Blavatskaia, and Anna Mintslova (Minstlova was a Blavatskaia imitator who drew Ivanov and Bely into a mystical relationship, then, when it broke up, disappeared and was never heard from again). The second type are women whom men seek to make into Wisdom, foremost among whom is Liubov’ Mendeleeva Blok, but also Soloviev’s “Sophias”: Sophia Khitrovo and Sophia Martynova. These women are often silent in the work of their male “creators,” so when they do speak it is of particular interest. Liubov’ Blok’s memoir is an especially interesting document, critically engaging the notion of herself as the prekrasnaia dama and the poet’s wife in a variety of ways. The third type is women who as creators themselves generated Sophian material. There are many women writers in Silver Age literature who wrote on the themes of wisdom and femininity, but among figures for inclusion are Zinaida Gippius, whose self-fashioning and gender games are (in)famous and contain provocative links to sophian ideas; Lidiia Zinovieva-Annibal, who could be considered both a creator of Sophia material and a (posthumously) “created” Sophia by her husband, Viacheslav Ivanov. The most attention will be focused on R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 32 the little-known Poliksena Solovieva, Vladimir Soloviev’s sister and one of a dozen siblings, who wrote imder the pseudonym of Allegro and engaged her brother’s ideas and thought in a supportive but critical way through her poetry and prose. Overall, this dissertation will undertake to explain Sophia’s compliated path to Russia and the context in which Sophia beame so popular. It will also explore the different ways that men and women repsonded to and created the multifacted devotion to the feminine person of the Wisdom of God in the first years of the last century. The insights and perspectives gained will be gathered in the last part of chapter seven., which will attempt to synthseize the materials examined in the preceding chapters and draw some conclusions about the meaning of Sophia in the historical and cultural context of the Silver Age and the function of her images and themes in the literature, art, philosophy, theology, and other cultural fields of the last decades of the Romanov Empire. The divine feminine is an integral part of Silver Age cultural activities, and viewing the era through the prism of Sophia offers insights into other important themes such as the relationships between real and ideal, the writer and the text, religion or spirituality and creativity, important ideas about creativity, aesthetics, and ethics, such as theurgy, zhiznetvorchestvo, the meaning of good and evil, the impact of urbanization and modernism, the definition and importance of art, and the changing roles of women and men in modern Russian and European society. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 33 Chapter Two Genealogy One: Sophia from Palestine to Peter I To whom has wisdom’s root been revealed? Sirach T.5a The focus of this dissertation is the reception, transformation, and manipulation of the idea of the eternal feminine in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Russia. Part of Sophia’s appeal, among other factors to be discussed subsequently, was her ancient heritage as a figure of philosophical, artistic, theological, and mystical importance. Consequently, a proper understanding of these later conceptions is predicated on an understanding of the ’ earlier history. This chapter will attempt to provide a partial genealogy of Sophia first from her Judeo-Christian origins in Hebrew Wisdom literature, through the early Christian era, including Gnostic and other heterodox systems of thought, and the Council of Nicea. The second part of the chapter will address Sophia in the conversion and Christianization of Russian culture, and the part played by the Orthodox Christian Sophia through the Muscovite period and into the Petrine and post-Petrine eras. Attention will be paid to architectural, iconographic, and dynastic manifestations of the Sophia cult, and an attempt will be made to distinguish the relationships between Sophia and the cult of Mary. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 34 The Canon of Wisdom Literature Sophia [ao(j)ia] is a Greek word, translated into English as “wisdom.” The notion of Sophia,^ in terms of the cultural canon of Russia, has its origins in ancient Israelite culture. In the centuries before the birth of Christ, Sophia, or Hokhmah in Hebrew, appears as a personified female in several Israelite works, mostly belonging to the genre of wisdom literature. Wisdom literature consists of the canonical books of Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, also known by its Hebrew name Qoheleth, and the deuterocanonical books of Jesus, Son of Sirach, usually called Ben Sirach, Sirach, or its Latin name Ecclesiasticus, and the Wisdom of Solomon. Proverbs, Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Job belong to the canons of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism; Sirach and Wisdom of Solomon are parts of the Orthodox and Catholic canons, but were excluded from the Jewish canon and later excised from the Protestant canon as well. These books belong to a corpus of wisdom and poetry that form a middle part of the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament, between the history books and the prophetic books. It is marked by a variety of literary forms, primarily exhortatory instructions and teachings in one-line, two-line, or longer * Unless otherwise made clear by context, “Sophia” will refer in general to the personified or hypostasized feminine figure of divine wisdom. I will use “Wisdom” or “wisdom” to refer to the concept of wisdom as a quality, not a person. “Hokhmah” will mean strictly the personified, feminine ancient Israelite or, later, Kabbalistic figure, while “hokhmah” will refer to the ancient Israelite concept of wisdom as a quality. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 35 aphorisms or proverbs, often interspersed with lyrics or hymns. Other forms used in Israelite wisdom literature include disputation, persuasive speech, more rarely autobiographical narrative, allegory, and onomastica.^ Forms often associated with wisdom literature not found in the Hebrew wisdom corpus include riddles and fables. This description of the genre and canon of wisdom literature is only the first step. Obviously, wisdom literature contains what is ostensibly “wisdom” to its author and audience in their original and historical context. Whatever the specific literary form, the canonization of these texts lends them importance and authority, but it does not explain their meanings, so it is important to understand what is meant by “wisdom.” The different connotations of the word “wisdom” and the etymologies of the word(s) that are rendered in English as “wisdom” (and Russian as mudrost ’ or premudrost ’ ) must be taken into account, and caution must be taken not to casually assign third millennia AD semantics to first millennia BC lexemes.^ The context and meaning of wisdom for our purposes is particularly important ^ For a discussion of wisdom poetry and genres, see Gerhard von Rad, Wisdom in Israel (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1972), 24-50. ^ The Russian mudrost’ is attested to early Slavic; the root occurs mutatis mutandis in virtually all Slavic and Baltic languages, and is also attested in Germanic languages up to at least Gothic (Preobrazhenskii, s.v. “mudrost”’). The original Indo-European root word is also related to Russian m nit’ ‘to think’ and to Latin mens ‘mind;’ it has always had the same semantic meaning of knowledge or wisdom. The Latin sapientia ‘wisdom,’ with a root meaning ‘knowledge’ also has a meaning o f ‘sense’ or ‘savor,’ which introduces an empirical semantic element {Oxford English Dictionary, 2"‘ ‘ ed., s.v. “sapient”). The modem English “wisdom’ is from Germanic words meaning ‘way,’ ‘fashion,’ ‘manner,’ and are related to the modem English “wit,” which comes from the same Indo-European root as Old Slavic videti ‘to see’ and vedeti ‘to know’ and Sanskrit veda ‘knowledge.’ Since Greek is its own branch of Indo-European language, sophia ‘wisdom’ is unrelated etymologically to the other words with similar meaning in Baltic, Slavic, Germanic, or Romance languages. Semitic hokhmah ‘wisdom’, being non-Indo-European, is also, o f course, unrelated philologically. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 36 when “wisdom” refers specifically to God’s wisdom, and more so when that Wisdom is hypostasized or personified as a feminine figure. This occurs especially in Proverbs, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), and Wisdom of Solomon. Before discussing the biblical literature, the modern history of scholarship on wisdom literature itself merits a brief review. Wisdom literature was subject in the 19* century to the same critical re-assessment as the rest of biblical literature, but was not an important subject of study, to the extent that one editor claims it was “Virtually ignored as an entity until the beginning of this [20*] century.”" ^ The ‘first wave’ of contemporary scholarship on Wisdom occurred between 1924 and 1936, with the discovery of the Egyptian “Instruction of Amen-em-opet,” which contained parallel passages with and apparently predated the Book of Proverbs, demonstrating the influence of Egyptian wisdom literature on the Israelite genre.^ A sort of ‘second wave,’ attributable to various trends in theology scholarship began in the 1960’s, but did not seem to last much more than a decade or so.^ The ‘third wave,’ essentially a feminist wave, began soon after the second wave ended, but is clearly distinguishable from it, though it builds on previous achievements. Feminist theologians, seeking to reassess the Judeo-Christian tradition and explore James L. Crenshaw, “Prolegomenon,” in Studies in Old Testament Wisdom, ed. James L. Crenshaw (New York; KTAV publishing, 1976), 1. ^ While this is the generally accepted direction of influence, there is some opinion that Proverbs influenced Amen-em-opet. See Georg Fohrer, “oo(|)ia” in Theological Dictionary o f the New Testament, Gerhard Friedrich, ed., trans. and ed. Geoffrey Bromiley, vol. VII (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1971), 480, n. 126. ® See Crenshaw, “Prolegomenon” and R. B. Y. Scott “The Study of the Wisdom Literature,” Interpretation 24 (1970): 20-45. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 37 specifically feminist spirituality, seized upon the figure of Sophia as a means of access to the feminine divine principle, using an image that was common to but generally neglected as part of the Judeo-Christian tradition^ Feminist Wisdom scholarship has tended to focus on the early Christian period, and unlike the form- critical and textological work of earlier, predominantly male scholars, has also focused on the feminine aspect of Wisdom and the socio-eultural milieu of the personification of Wisdom. Returning to the scriptural context, both divinity and personification are not part of the original meaning of the Hebrew stem hokhmah. The meaning of hokhmah originally had a connotation of practicality about it. One who was wise was one who had specific, practical knowledge of life and nature and verifiable, applicable skills in particular spheres of activity, such as agriculture, crafts and trades, politics. It refers to “prudent, considered, experienced and competent action to subjugate the world and to master the various problems of life and life itself.”^ To be sure, there is also a behavioral, ethical element to wisdom, but wisdom was as much a human attribute as divine.^ While the term hokhmah took on connotations dissimilar to other near eastern words for wisdom, wisdom literature was a common genre throughout the ancient near east. Unlike the rest of the Hebrew canon, wisdom literature is not ’ Included in this group would be scholars like Elizabeth Johnson, Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza, Mary Radford Reuther, and others. * Fohrer, “ao(j)ia”, 476. ® This is in distinction from the Greek understanding, which viewed ao(j)ia as a possession of the gods; see Fohrer, “ao(|)ta”, 468. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 38 inherently concerned with the covenantal relationship between Yahweh and Israel. Scholars surmise that only when a wisdom school became a part of Israelite culture imder the kingship of Solomon in the 8* century BC did wisdom literature become “native” to Israelite culture, but the notion of a wisdom school is suppositional and the true sociological context of Hebrew wisdom literature is ambiguous. Whatever its social origins, only later in the history of Hebrew Scriptures does wisdom accrue to God as an attribute and gift to be bestowed on humans. Obviously, only after wisdom is divine can it be a hypostasized as God’s or personified as a divine being. It is thus noteworthy that this concept of a personified, feminine, divine Wisdom does not appear to be part of the oral and early written tradition that generated Hebrew Wisdom literature. There has been much scholarly debate over the influence of Greek, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and other near eastern cults and thought systems on the emergence of the divine, personified, feminine Wisdom found in the Hebrew wisdom literature; these will be dealt with somewhat below. First, however, a brief review of the Hebrew wisdom literature and a summary of the features with which /fo^/ima/i/Sophia is credited in the different texts will fill in some of the necessary preliminaries to a discussion of her in the context of other near eastern female and wisdom deities. Fohrer, “ao(l)ia”, 489. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 39 Proverbs: The book of Proverbs was composed in the century or later, or in the 4* or 5* century, including older material. It contains collected wisdom attributed to Solomon, whose court is considered an important conduit for the transmission and integration of wisdom literature into Hebrew culture. The wisdom in Proverbs is primarily in the form of exhortative aphorisms, including several sections attributed to other wise men (and one wise woman at least - the mother of Lemuel, though he is the scribe). Wisdom is explicitly the theme of many of the opening chapters (1-4, 8-9), imd the implicit theme of the whole book. Chapters 8 and 9 are famous; they are central to the discussion of personified, feminine Wisdom, describing Wisdom as a woman crying out at the gates, preaching, giving gifts, building a pillared house and setting a feast for her disciples. She is also described as present at and participating in creation. Proverbs 8 and 9 were also key passages in the dispute over Arianism in Christianity, which will be discussed below. The Wisdom of Solomon: Wisdom of Solomon is ostensibly an additional compilation of Solomon’s wisdom, dating to the first century BC, written by an unknown Hellenized Jew in Greek in Alexandria, Egypt, probably after that city’s conquest by Rome in 30 BC. The author, writing in first person, assumes the persona of Solomon and after elaborating on the gift of immortality and the dichotomy of the wicked and the righteous wise, discusses his quest for and the " See David Winston, The Anchor Bible: The Wisdom o f Solomon, A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co., 1979). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 40 nature of Wisdom, often in sexualized imagery of courtship and marriage. This is followed by a series of discourses on divine Wisdom’s action in Exodus, though the subject shifts from personified Wisdom to God in chapters 10 to 12 and is thereafter the latter. Ecclesiasticus/Sirach; Written in Palestine around 180 BC, Sirach makes visible the clear shift in Israelite thought from a semantics of wisdom as a practical, human faculty to an abstract idea, possessed and dispensed by God. There remains plenty of practical advice, along with various discourses on a personified Wisdom. Sirach makes particular use of the sexual imagery of virtuous marriage to Wisdom as in chapters 1, 6, 9, 14 and 15, which are contrasted with discourses on adultery and sexual immorality. He also makes the powerful equation of Wisdom with Law and Word in chapter 24, and concludes with an autobiographical lyric on Wisdom in the final chapter 51. Baruch: The Book of Baruch is an interesting exception in the list of books that refer to Wisdom. Baruch does not belong to the genre of Wisdom literature, but is instead a deuterocanonical prophetic book that pre-dates the compositions or compilations represented by canonical or deuterocanonical wisdom literature. Written in the Babylonian exile. Chapter 3 and following of Baruch contains a song to Wisdom that also contains many of the common motifs of Wisdom. It identifies Wisdom as a person and attribute of God, equates Wisdom with the Law, and R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 41 accuses Israel of having abandoned her and her fountains, the result being the punishment of the Babylonian exile. Job: Job is another book that deviates from the exhortative Wisdom literature, using instead the form of a dispute. Certainly it does contain exhortative passages, but only in the context of a debate between the afflicted Job and his friends. Job offers a discourse on finding wisdom in chapter 28, comparing the quest for it to mining, and its value with all manner of treasures; of course, its value is superior to all precious materials and even miners cannot find wisdom. There is thus an ironic parallel between Wisdom as an abstract idea that is known only to God, and the earlier meaning of wisdom as a practical skill, such as mining, or as practical knowledge that yields worldly success, riches, etc., of which Job is deprived. Wisdom, though, is not personified, but Job states clearly that wisdom is both an attribute of God and that true wisdom is fear of the Lord. The term is used in passing by other conversants. Ecclesiastes: Ecclesiastes, or Qoheleth (both meaning “Teacher”), was probably written sometime between the reign of Solomon, around 950 B.C., and 450 B.C. It is an idiosyncratic and cynical book, concerned with, among other things, the relationship between wisdom and foolishness in the face of the transience of life. The date o f the composition of Job is unknown. Suggestions have ranged from the patriarchal period, about 2000 B.C., to Moses as the author, about 1500 B.C., to the Solomonic period, about 950 B.C., to as late as the 2"“ * century B.C. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 42 Wisdom is treated as a quality or an attribute, akin to knowledge, and only marginally a gift of God. Wisdom is not personified in Ecclesiastes. Psalms: Wisdom appears periodically as a quality, and some of the psalms parallel the hymnic passages in wisdom literature, offering comparative material. These psalms (1, 19, 33, 39, 49, 104, 127) are referred to in scholarship as Wisdom Psalms, but Wisdom is not personified in the Book of Psalms. The Origins of Personified Wisdom With respect to the personification of Wisdom as a feminine figure, the question of the possibility and extent of influence from other near-Eastem religious systems that had wisdom-divinities of one kind or another has produced a list of suggested deities in the scholarship that is rather daunting;the most likely candidate for influence is probably the Egyptian figure of Isis, whose cult was popular fi"om the fourth century BC through the fourth century AD, and who is affiliated with wisdom. The relationship is far from clear, and there is disagreement even on the connection. The nature and influence of other religions on the emergence of personified, feminine Wisdom in Judaism is at the core of The Hellenic Aphrodite and Athena come to mind, but Fohrer denies the possibility of Hellenic influence. Freidlander and others disagree (See Ringgem). Schroer concludes that Egyptian Maat, a female personification of the principle of right behavior, is the direct model for Hokhmah. Ringgem mentions Ea and Nabu of Babylonia, Thoth in Egypt, but also from the Iranian Amesha Spentas Bousset-Gressman suggests Armaiti, Schenke indicates Vohu Manah, and Rankin claims Asha as a source for Hokhmah; a wider net is cast by Humbert, who includes Marduk, Isis, Hermes, and the inferior gods Uznu and Hasisu (part o f Babylonian Ea’s suite), Imhotep and the hypostases Nig-zi-da, Tasmetu, the personifications Mummu, Amatu (word), and Saltu. See Ringgem, 128 ff. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 43 debate on this matter. It is beyond the scope of this study to recapitulate and assess the whole scholarly debate on Hokhmah’s origins as a literary and sacred ‘person’. Yet if there is one feature of Wisdom that can be credited with starting the ‘third wave’ of Wisdom scholarship, it is Sophia’s personified femininity.'"^ There are a variety of approaches that have been taken in the last decades to the figure of Sophia. Much of the discussion of Wisdom by Biblical scholars (of the “first” and “second” waves) does not focus on the notion of the femininity of the figure of Wisdom, preferring to analyze textual sources or literary devices. Some summary however, is appropriate; to that end, 1 will briefly sketch several main groups of hypotheses about personified feminine wisdom in the Biblical tradition. One set of theses on Sophia’s origins is built on evidence that, in some strains of ancient Yahwehism, Yahweh may originally have had a consort or paredros, and Wisdom may be the “remnant” of this consort goddess, though “little to nothing [is known] about the qualities and functions ascribed to this goddess.”'^ In this case Sophia’s origins would be independent of Isis or others and absent further discoveries, beyond literary-archeological knowledge.'^ The fact that. Proverbs excepted, the appearance of personified Wisdom is a feature of later texts One could be tempted to form a parallel to “anthropomorphize” with a feminine connotation such as “gynocomorphize” to describe this process. Ringgem, 147. This is basically the argument of Bemhard Lang, Wisdom and the Book of Proverbs: A Hebrew Goddess Redefined (New York: Pilgrim, 1986). Some o f the evidence comes from Jewish texts found at Elephantine, see Albert Leopold Vincent, La religion des Judeo-arameens d ’ Elephantine (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1937), 622 ff. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 44 as well as the philological evidence would argue against the Semitic consort hypothesis for the origins of Hokhmah as she appears in the bible. Most scholars disagree with this position, with some instead arguing that the fully independent Sophia is a personification of the hypostasis of God’s attribute of wisdom, rather than an assimilation of an early Semitic consort-figure. Riggern, for example, argues that the tensions and vacillations in the biblical texts among treatments of Wisdom as it moves, albeit fitfully, from a mere quality to a divine hypostasis and finally to a fully personified figure indicate that personified Wisdom is a further stage of development, growing out of the hypostatization of God’s Wisdom, rather than a revival of o.paredros deity.The hypostatization of a divine quality is not unique either within Judaism or in the larger sphere of ancient near eastern religions,'* though no other hypostases gain such independent personality in Judaism as does Wisdom. The hypostasis-to-personification hypothesis gives more credence to the originality of Israelite religious beliefs, and though there is further disagreement about the extent of outside influence, it allows for emphasis on the uniqueness of Hokhmah with respect to various goddess cults. 17 Ringgem, 149. Hypostasized features include Glory, Messenger, Name, Spirit. See Anders Hultgard, “God and Image o f Woman in Early Jewish Religion” in Kari Elisabeth Borreson, ed.. The Image o f God: Gender Models in Judaeo-Christian Tradition (Minneapolis; Fortress Press, 1995), 31. One altemative, sometimes employed especially by feminist scholars, is to neglect distinctive features of Hokhmah in order to position Sophia as a derivative of a cult more attractive to some contemporary scholarly sensibilities because it has a less patriarchal orientation. This seems to me a backwards way to conduct research. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 45 This is not to say that the hypostasis-to-personification hypothesis denies the influence of goddess cults, but allows Yahwehism to maintain its integrity in the process. Ringgem points out that some of the features of Wisdom in the most famous and oft-cited Wisdom text. Proverbs 1-9, can be traced to Astarte/Isis/Ishtar cults, but in a negative way. The sexual cults of these pagan goddesses are associated with the “strange woman” and personified Folly (Proverbs 5, 7) who serve as a foil for Wisdom.^® The figure of Wisdom is drawn on by the author to demonstrate the dissimilarity between the nature of these pagan goddesses and their perverse sexual cults and the virtue and trath of Wisdom in Yahwehism. “Proverbs 1-9 is formed as a conscious contrast to a cult [of Astarte/Isis/Ishtar], hostile towards Yahweh.”^ * On this view, it seems. Wisdom may not have come to be understood as a hypostasis of Yahweh without Isis/Astarte’s influence, becoming fully personified in response to her, but not through assimilation or borrowing. One other group of approaches to the question of the origins of Hokhmah that place the study of feminine divinities at their center have taken the depth psychology studies of the work of C. G. Jung as their point of departure. Scholars working in Jung’s wake have sought to delineate a universal subconscious feminine archetype, common to all people in all times and places, allowing them to analyze The contrast in Proverbs between this foreign, strange, seductress who is juxtapositioned with Wisdom invites comparison in the Russian context with Aleksandr Blok’s contrasting images of the prekrasnaia dama and neznakomka. If his interest in Sophia prompted him to read the biblical texts about her (an altogether plausible scenario), Blok could hardly have missed it. In any case, the contrast between virtuous, saintly woman and debauched, vicious woman is not unique to either Proverbs or Blok. Ringgem, 134. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 46 Sophia in terms of a panoply of other feminine figures and deities throughout human history. The unifying of otherwise disparate and unconnected ‘types’ and making such links explicable as unconscious knowledge of subconscious spiritual ‘archetypes’ are powerful tools for the comparative study of cultural phenomena. Erich Neumann, in his classic The Great Mother: An Analysis o f the Archetype, positions HokhmahlSiO^hia. as a rubric of the highest types of the Great Goddess archetype, examples of “a pure feminine spirit.”^ ^ Sophia, and other feminine spiritual figures, are examples of the abstracted spiritual transformation of the Etemal Feminine at the highest stage of manifestation: “[Sophia] is not, like the Great Mother of the lower phase ... She is rather a goddess of the Whole, who governs the transformation from the elementary to the spiritual level; who desires 22 It is not, o f course, accidental that depth psychology is particularly concemed with occult or esoteric phenomena. One o f the features of many occult systems is syncretism, or the attempt to blend disparate spiritual phenomena imder the aegis o f a unifiying, hidden system of esoteric knowledge. Jungian depth psychology attempts a similar task, but using modern science-based methodology rather than systems o f pre-modem origin that depend on allegories, correspondences, typology, revelation, mediation, transmutation, etc. For a brief account of the features o f esoteric spiritualites see Antoine Faivre, “Introduction I,” in Modern Esoteric Spirituality, ed. Antoine Faivre and Jacob Needleman (New York: Crossroad, 1992), xi-xxii. Neumann’s commentary on the archetypal feminine wisdom demonstrates the syncretist tendency couched in the language of Freudian psychology, of which it is an outgrowth: [T]he unconscious not only endangers the ego through the superior power of instincts and drives but also helps and redeems i t ... [I]n the generating and nourishing, protective and transformative, feminine power of the unconscious, a wisdom is at work that is infinitely superior to the wisdom of man’s waking consciousness, and that, as a soince of vision and symbol, of ritual and law, poetry and vision, intervenes, summoned or unsummoned, to save man and give direction to his life ... This archetypal psychical world which is encompassed in the multiple forms o f the Great Goddess is the underlying power that even today determines the psychic history of modem man and o f modem woman (Neumarm, 300, 336). Erich Neumann, The Great Mother: An Analysis o f the Archteype, trans. Ralph Manheim (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972), 325. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 47 whole men knowing life in all its breadth, from the elementary phase to the phase of spiritual transformation.”^'' Not only does Neumann relate Hokhmah to later Sophias, Isis, Demeter, Ceres, and Mary, but also the Hindu Shakti and Buddhist Tara. “The stages of the self-revelation of the Feminine Self... present us with a world that may be said to be both historical and eternal. The ascending realms of symbols in which the feminine, with its elementary and transformative character becomes visible ... [culminate in] nurturing S ophia.F or our purposes this approach creates the problem of confusion about the conscious or historical relationship of the Hebrew Hokhmah, substituting generalizations based on perceived archetypal, subconscious relationships rather than plausible documentation of transmission of ideas from one culture to another. One might fairly object that Neumann’s goal is not an historical account of feminine iterations of the divine, but an account of, in his own words, “manifestations of the Archetypal Feminine in all times and all cultures.”^ * " At the same time, Mary Radford Reuther and other feminist scholars after her have objected to the way in which Neumann and others using the depth psychology method rely on assumptions about both the essential differences between women and men and the particular qualities assigned to women as reinscribing patriarchal Ibid., 336. 26 Ibid. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 48 and oppressive power structures.^^ However this may be, some scholars such as Joan Chamberlain Engelsman have tried to adapt these methods for use in analyzing Sophia in the context of the divine feminine, integrating a historical approach by tracing Sophia’s fate as an archetype through her rise in late Judaism and repression in Hellenized Judaism and early Christianity.^* A fourth group of hypotheses is that personified Wisdom in Hebrew sacred scripture is simply a direct borrowing from neighboring goddess cults. For example, Silvia Schroer is not reluctant to assert Egyptian influence: that “[Israelite] sages sketched the figure of personified Hokhma with different accents from the model of Maat is obvious.”^^ The Egyptian goddess Maat, a personification of a unified political, natural, and cosmic principle of righteousness, order and justice, does indeed bear similarities to Hokhma, as do many other figures. Portions of the book of Proverbs have been correlated to the Egyptian wisdom text called the Instruction of Amen-em-opet. The genre of Wisdom literature supports the borrowing theory insofar as it differs from the rest of Hebrew scriptures, the law and the prophets, in its international character; “Wisdom has no Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983). Joan Chamberlain Engelsman, The Feminine Dimension o f the Divine (Wilmette, Illinois: Chiron Publications, 1987). Silvia Schroer, Wisdom has Built Her House: Studies on the Figure o f Sophia in the Bible (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2000), 4. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 49 relation to the history between God and Israel” with which the rest of the Old Testament is concemed.^'^ The impulse, often motivated by feminist concems, to position ifo^/zma/z/Sophia as a Hebraicized goddess is often linked to a project of using feminine divinities to study the relationships of power and authority between men and women in ancient cultures, an altogether worthwhile and interesting area of research. But the matter of Hokhmah’s origins is not so simple and should not be made so. The tensions between the worldview implied by an originally foreign wisdom literature and feminine wisdom figure and the worldview of Yahwehistic monotheism were resolved by a complex process within the context of Yahwehism. In short, while it is not difficult to document correspondences between Hokhmah and other wisdom literatures and wisdom figures, this does not demonstrate simple assimilation, explain the process of the emergence of Hokhmah in Yahwehism, or sufficiently recognize the singular features of Hokhmah. One very useful approach for understanding the relationship of Hokhmah to other near eastern wisdom goddesses and literatures is proposed by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza. She proposes the application of “reflective mythology” in distinction against a “genuine myth.” Reflective mythology, actually more theology than mythology, “is not a living myth but is rather a form of theology appropriating mythical language, material, and patterns ... [and using them] for its Walther Zimmerli, “The Place and Limit of the Wisdom in the Framework o f the Old Testament Theology,” in Studies in Old Testament Wisdom, ed. James L. Crenshaw (New York: KTAV Publishing, 1976), 315. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 50 own theological concerns.”^ * The application of the idea of reflective mythology to Sophia allows Schussler Fiorenza to conclude: “The relationship between the original living myth and the wisdom mythology in Judaism is therefore not of ‘background’ or ‘influence’ as it is usually seen but that of theological reflection which uses the language and features of myth in the mode of ‘reflective mythology. Whatever Sophia’s true source, in the centuries preceding the birth of Jesus, Wisdom was increasingly given a feminine persona in Jewish literature, and her importance waxed. This process did not take place in a vacuum; it was in contact with a host of other religious and cultural systems. Yet Hebrew personal Wisdom emerges as unique. Israelite religion was monotheistic, unlike many ancient oriental religious systems and Hellenic syncretist mystery cults, so Wisdom could not acquire wholly independent status as a goddess separate from and equal to Yahweh without radically altering Israelite monotheism. “[T]he continuing faith in the wisdom of Yahweh was affirmed by characterizing wisdom as belonging elosely to Yahweh and as being present in this world.”^ ^ While some feminist Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, “Wisdom Mythology and Christological Hymns of the New Testament,” in Aspects o f Wisdom in Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. Robert L. Wilken (Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame University Press, 1975), 29. Schussler-Fiorenza, “Wisdom Mythology,” 30. ” Ibid. Some have challenged the extent of monotheism in Israelitic religion: Silvia Schroer argues that in the post-exilic period before the restoration Sophia enjoyed popularity as a hearth deity in the absence o f a patriarchal and priestly temple cult. See Silvia Schroer, Wisdom Has Built Her House: Studies on the Figure o f Sophia in the Bible, trans. Linda M. Maloney and William McDonough (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 2000), esp. chapter three, “Divine Wisdom and Post- exilic Monotheism, 15-51). Engelsman maintains that Sophia was a cultic threat to Yahweh (Engelsman, Feminine Dimension o f the Divine, 75ff), and the occultist Stepan Hoeller, in an act of stupendous mind-reading across thousands of years, asserts without evidence, “the common Jewish R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 51 theologians have argued that Yahwehism as it existed reinforeed patriarehal social structures, and the limited extent of Hokhmah's power and independence did little to ameliorate the “kyriarchal” androeentrism of “malestream” ancient Judaism,^"^ nonetheless, the personification of Yahweh’s features offered Yahwehism a means of exploring specific aspects and functions of the divine, of incorporating transcultural wisdom literature into Hebrew culture, and of making manifest some measure of divine femininity without saerifieing the central belief in and allegiance to only one God. These disagreements ought not to completely efface the features of Hokhmah common to ancient near eastern wisdom, features also held in common with their much later Russian confreres in the adulation of personified wisdom. At the same time, what Israelitic Wisdom has in common with Egyptian and other wisdom doctrines is in its function. The Wisdom figure serves as an identifiable and therefore relatively knowable feature of an otherwise utterly transcendent divine. Just as Platonic ideas were accessible only through their specific iterations, or Egyptian Maat, so the features of Yahweh-God, such as Wisdom, serve as ways of knowing God. Wisdom is a means of observing and knowing the method of divine activity in the world, in nature, in human interactions. While divine Wisdom is unquestionably in canonical Jewish writings a part of Yahweh - whether hypostasized or personified, wisdom is a mediating quality.^^ people felt frequently deprived because their leaders gave them a lonely male god without a consort” (Stephan Hoeller, Jung and the Lost Gospels [Wheaton, 1 1 1 .: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1989], 65). Schussler-Fiorenza J es'M S ', Miriam’ s Child, Sophia’ s Prophet: Critical Issues in Feminist (New York: Continuum Press, 1995), 154. ^SonRad, 291. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 52 The principle of Sophia as a concept of mediation between Yahweh and the people of Israel also bears a similarity to the Hellenic idea of the Logos or Word, also a mediating element between the human world and the divine, which fust entered philosophic discourse in Greece through Heraclitus around 500 BC and later was used by the Stoics and influenced Plato. Philo Judaeus, also called Philo of Alexandria, a Hellenized Jew who lived in Egypt around the turn of the era, sought to reconcile the Hebrew and Hellenic traditions. Philo has been much criticized for misogyny by many feminist scholars. His explicit relegation of the feminine to a subordinate role to the masculine has done little to endear him to the sensibilities of much modem scholarship. Philo used both the Greek idea of Logos and the Jewish idea of Sophia in constmcting his philosophical system, blending and even equating the two ideas. Engelsman, following Wolfson, tries to illustrate how Philo within this context moved towards the elimination of Sophia from his texts and the replacement of the feminine Sophia of Jewish tradition to the masculine Logos, at one point even asserting that Sophia must traly be male rather than the traditional feminine.^^ In Philo, Engelsman argues, “Logos is in the process of usurping the role and function of the older and established Sophia, and that any synonymous usage of the two terms is meant to reinforce the right of Logos to replace Sophia.”^ ^ Harry Austryn Wolfson, Philo: Foundations o f Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, 4* printing, rev., Structure and Growth o f Philosophic Systems from Plato to Spinoza, no. 2 (Cambridge: Harvard Univeristy Press, 1962). Engelsman, 98. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 53 Whether Philo’s use of these two terms as virtual synonyms is intentionally misogynist, or even anti-sophian, he is important not only for the role he played in bridging the gap between the worlds of Hellenic and Jewish thought. The dependence of the identification of Jesus Christ with the Word/Logos, as in the prologue hymn in the Gospel of St. John^^ on Philo has been debated and generally is not accepted.^* Nonetheless, the influence of Philo in his equation of Sophia and Logos would help the later Church Fathers to validate the scriptural equations of Christ with both Sophia and Logos, and assimilate the semantically and grammatically feminine Sophia, along with the similarly masculine Logos into the biologically male Jesus.^^ Engelsman wishes to lay much of the blame for the decline of Sophia at Philo’s feet, but the story is indeed rather more complex. In terms of tracing Sophia’s movement through history towards Russia, we must turn our attention first to two religious movements, one in which Sophia is at the very center of cosmology and theology, and another in which Sophia is much more marginal, but whose historical importance is undeniable: Gnosticism and Christianity. “In the beginning was the Word, and Word was with God, and the Word was God ...” (John 1:1 [NAB]) Raymond E. Brown, S.S., The Gospel Acording to John, I-XII: Introduction, Translation, and Notes, The Anchor Bible, (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1966), Ivii-lviii. Schussler Fiorenza and others object to the conflation o f semantic and biological gender. See Jesus, M iriam’ s Child, Sophia’ s Prophet. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 54 Gnosticism Gnosticism draws its name from the Greek word for knowledge, gnosis (yvoaia).'*'’ It refers to a variety of similar philosophical-religious systems of pre- Christian and Christian orientation. There never emerged any eonsolidated Gnostie doctrine, and even within schools there are variations in details of mythology and philosophy. Gnosticism took elements of a wide variety of philosophical, mythical, and theological thought from all over the Hellenic world and integrated elements of them into systems based on the principle of “gnosis” or knowledge, leading one author to declare Gnosticism “the epitome of Hellenistic syncretism.”" * ' Though the precise origins of Gnosticism are unclear, with much scholarly debate on its exact relationship to Christianity, Gnostic or pre-Gnostic systems certainly pre-date Christianity. Kurt Rudolph summarizes what is known thus: “[T]he gnostic movement was originally a non-Christian phenomenon which was gradually enriched with Christian concepts until it made its appearance as an independent Christian Gnosis.”" * ^ Since Christianity itself grew out of Judaism, it is not surprising that Gnosticism, which in many versions is closely linked with Christian By Gnosticism, I mean the group o f related religious-philosophical systems that originated in the ancient Near East and eastern Mediterranean basin and which require an esoterie knowledge for salvation, but only those systems which are Hellenic, Jewish, or Christian in orientation. I include Valentinian, Basilidean, Simonian, Sethian, Ophite, Barbeliote, and other systems, but not Manicheanism, Mandeanism, Bogomilism, and Catharism. These latter might be considered “gnostic” but not “Gnostic” in the sense I am using it. Ronald H. Nash, Christianity and the Hellenistic World. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1984,214. Nash categorically denies the influence o f Gnosticism (and just about everything else) on Christianity. Kurt Rudolph, Gnosis: The Nature and History o f Gnosticism, trans. and ed. Robert McLachlan Wilson (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985), 276. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 55 theology, also belies Jewish roots. Indeed, Rudolph avers that “The majority of gnostic systems came into existence on the fringes of Judaism.”'* ^ The points of contact between Jewish scriptures and Gnostic texts are manifold and clear, not only the sapiental elem ents,"^"^ but many others: “Many of the [Gnostic] writings ... can be understood as interpretations or paraphrases of Old Testament texts, and otherwise, too, the use of biblical material is striking in spite of the polemic against the traditional interpretation.”" ^ ^ Gnostic texts tend to focus on anthropology, cosmology, and soteriology, since these provide an explanation for the nature of the world and the need for gnosis, which is at the center of all Gnostic doctrines. There are three major sources of information about Gnostic thought: first, patristic writings against Christian Gnostic heresies by the likes of St. Irenaus, St. Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Origen; seeond, ancient Gnostic texts either preserved or re discovered at various points in time, sueh as the Pistis Sophia-, and third, the Nag Hammadi library, a priceless cache of ancient Gnostic texts discovered in Egypt in 1947.46 4 ^ Rudolph, Gnosis, 211. 4 4 For a catalog and discussion o f common elements between the Jewish Sophia/Hokhmah and the Gnostic Sophia, see George W. Macrae, S.J., “The Jewish Background of the Gnostic Sophia MyXh,” Novum Testamentum 12 (1970); 86-101. 4 ^ Rudolph, Gnosis, 211. 4 * ^ The Nag Hammadi library should not be confused with the nearly simultaneous discovery o f the Qumran documents in Palestine belonging to the Essene sect of Judaism, which are also called the Dead Sea Scrolls. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 56 Although there are many variants, the central element of Gnosticism is gnosis, or knowledge. Rather than relying for salvation on grace, earned by Jesus Christ through the sacrifice of his crucifixion as in Christianity, Gnostic belief articulates a salvation that relies on secret knowledge, and it is the possession and internalization of hidden knowledge that secures salvation. In Christian Gnosis, the figure of Jesus is also central, but it is his teachings, gnostically interpreted, of course, not the sacrificial crucifixion and subsequent resurrection, that is emphasized. The elements of faith and works common to the orthodox Christian tradition are of much less importance to Gnosticism. Another important element in Gnostic systems is their anti-cosmism, expressed in creation myths in which Sophia is a central figure. Common to Gnostic cosmologies is the belief that there are higher and lower worlds that are fundamentally separated fi-om each other. The real God has his dwelling in the higher and separate realm of pneuma or spirit, called the Pleroma. Because of the separation of the lower and higher worlds, this God is unknowable to humanity. The Pleroma is also inhabited by spiritual beings called aeons — the number (about 30) depends on the version of the myth, each with its own numerology — begotten in hierarchical sequence, and each having another aeon as its consort. Gnosticism does not believe the created world/cosmos or its creator are good. The lower world of hyle or matter, the one in which humans exist, is not the creation of the higher God, but the result of a cosmic fall. In most Gnostic doctrines the figure who is the cause of the fall is feminine, and is often identified R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 57 as Sophia, the lowest and youngest aeon. In some versions of the Gnostic creation myth her sin is the attempt to fully know the One God, and in others it is the attempt to generate another being without the consent and assistance of her divine consort, the aeon Christ. In either case, she is expelled from the Pleroma and into the void of chaos. In Valentinian Gnosticism, Sophia then dwells in a parallel paradise to the Pleroma, the Ogdoad (the eighth heaven), where she is consoled by Christ, but then is again seized by fear and four passions. The figure of Jesus (distinct from Christ) enters the myth either as in the Valentinian m5 dh the Joint Fruit of all the aeons still in the Pleroma, and sometimes also called the Logos, or as the virginally conceived offspring of Sophia who then ascends to the Pleroma, leaving Sophia alone. In either case, Sophia’s solitude, either in the Ogdoad or the formless chaos produce four passions which are transformed, either by their own or Jesus’ agency, into four elements which form the material universe, called by the Valentinians the Hebdomad, or seven heavens, so called because they correspond to the spheres of the seven planets, and are separated from the higher realms (in the Ophite cosmogony by Leviathan, the image of the serpent-monster biting his own tail). Sophia’s suffering also generated beings, usually identified as evil, the foremost of whom in Valentinian Gnosticism is the lion-faced Jaldabaoth, also called the Demiurge. It is Jaldabaoth/Demiurge who is responsible for the creation of the material world, in which he separates the psychic and the hylic (soul and matter) and gives them form, and he rules these realms with the help of other evil beings called archons. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 58 imposing order. In Gnostic exegesis this evil creator is identified with the Jewish Yahweh, who only thinks he is God and in reality imposes rules and ignorance on humanity. All is not lost though, for even in her fallen state, Sophia takes pity on the created world and watches over it (from the Ogdoad, in the Valentinian myth) though her foul offspring Jaldabaoth and the archons have control over it, even though they are ignorant of the higher ideas and existences (including Sophia) in whose image he fashioned the world. The cosmos is thus divided into three parts which have their corresponding parts in humans; hyle, or matter, the material psyche, or mind/soul, which corresponds to the realm of the Demiurge, and the spiritual, or pneuma, which is Sophian, a spark of the fullness of the Pleroma. In the redemption phase of the myth, in the Pleroma Jesus, Sophia’s offspring, vmites with Christ, her aeon consort, and Jesus-Christ descends from the Pleroma to rescue Sophia. Jesus-Christ ascends with Sophia, but Sophia, unwilling to abandon to chaos and evil the inhabitants of the world, divides herself and remains both in the world and returns to the Pleroma. The lower Sophia is sometimes identified as Sophia Achamoth, or the World Soul. She becomes the means of salvation, the mediatrix between the evil material world governed by an ignorant and vindictive Demiurge and his archons and the perfect spiritual realm of the true God, the power who conveys the pneuma! i n t o the psycheisonl and /zy/e/material body of humanity. Gnosis is knowledge of the transcendent world (through Sophia), and salvation is the actualization of the latent pneuma through R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 59 this knowledge upon death and ascent to the realm of Sophia, a perfect image of the Pleroma."*^ From this it is clear that Sophia occupies an absolutely central position in the Gnostic myths in which she appears. She is both the cause of the cosmic fall, which precedes creation, and the pirmacle of divine perfection for humans. She is the only link with unknowable perfection, the means of salvation and the spark of Gnosis. Underlying Jewish and Christian elements are readily detectable, but given a new exegetical perspective. Even with Sophia, the Gnostic worldview is fundamentally pessimistic: the created, visible world is the either the evil result of ignorance at best or a malevolent creator at worst; suffering, ignorance, and coercion are its hallmarks. This is in contrast to the mainstream elements of Greek philosophical thought, the Jewish tradition, and emergent orthodox Christianity."^* I have necessarily elided elements of secondary importance, such as the names o f all the aeons, etc., and glossed over many variations. This recapitulation of the Sophia myth combines several sources: the Coptic text Pistis Sophia, available in English in George Homer, trans., Francis Legge, intro., Pistis Sophia (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1924); G[illes] Quispel, “The Original Doctrine o f Valentine,” Vigiliae Christianae 1 (1947): 43-73, a reconstruction of Valentine’s creation/Sophia myth in Greek with a parallel English text; G.C. Stead, “The Valentinian Myth of Sophia,” Journal o f Theological Studies (New Series) 20, no. 1 (April, 1969): 75-104, a very good scholarly analysis of variants o f the Valentinian myth; Rudolph, Gnosis, 67-83, which provides brief summaries from various specific textual sources; Samuel Cioran, Vladimir Solov 'ev and the Knighthood o f the Divine Sophia (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier Press, 1977), 17-20, based on Hippolytus’ Valentinian version; Stephan Hoeller, Jung and the Lost Gospels (Wheaton, 1 1 1 .: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1989) 105-111, which offers a detailed, but self-described “latitudinous” and modemized composite. While Rudolph can find the elements of proto-Gnostic pessimism in the skeptical fringes of the Jewish Wisdom tradition (as in Ecclesiasticus/Qoheleth), calling it a “critical self-dissolution on the fringes o f Judaism” (Rudolph, 282), Legge goes further, labeling all of post-exilic Judaism “gloomy and misanthropic” (Francis Legge, Forerunners and Rivals o f Christianity: From 330 B.C. to 330 A.D. [1915; reprint. New Hyde Park, New York: University Books, 1964], 149). Macrae, on the other hand, finds the pessimism of Gnosticism “[A] revolt within Judaism” since “The Jewish attitude was one o f confidence in Wisdom ... [the] anticosmism ... is a foreign element that intrudes upon a form of Jewish thought” (Macrae, 97-98). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyrighf owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 60 It is not really the primacy of Sophia, but the anticosmism, antitrinitarianism, heterodox Christology and soteriology, and other elements that made Christianized Gnosis heretical and dangerous in the eyes of the rapidly growing Christian Church. Speaking of Christianity, it is to Christianity that we now turn. Early Christianity The canonical texts of early Christianity make very few explicit references to Wisdom, but research has correlated elements of Wisdom literature and Sophia in elements of the New Testament canon and in its reconstructed sources. Historically, little attention had been given by Biblical scholars to the relationship between the Old Testament Wisdom literature on the one hand and the teachings of Jesus as presented in the Gospels on the other. One of the real accomplishments of feminist theological scholarship on Sophia has been the exploration of sapiential themes within various New Testament texts; a brief review of the canonical references will provide the basis for our discussion. Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke): The distribution of common material among the Synoptic Gospels have lead scholars to conclude that Mark’s Gospel was composed before Matthew and Luke. The common non-Marcan material in Matthew and Luke leads most scholars to a hypothetical common source in the form of a collection of Jesus’ sayings, called by the Greek logoi', this Sayings source is usually referred to as the Q source (from the German quelle. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 61 “source”). Robinson, among others, has observed that the logoi form of the Q tradition source has much in common with the forms of Jewish wisdom texts."^^ The reconstructed content of Q reinforces the implications of the sapiential character of it generic heritage; scholarly analysis of the Q tradition indicates at least two distinct phases of understanding in the early Christian communities of Sophia’s relationship to the historical figure of Jesus.Since Mark does not appear to rely on Q, the materials for a Sophian Christology are found essentially only in Matthew and Luke. The first phase is the recognition of Jesus together with John the Baptist as sophoi, or wise men. They are seen as prophets or emissaries of Wisdom, as her children, so to speak. The parallel between the two in this Q passage from Matthew them is clear: “For John came neither eating nor drinking and they said, ‘He is possessed by a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking and they said, ‘Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is vindicated by her works.”^ ^ See James M. Robinson and Helmut Koester, Trajectories through Early Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971), esp. chapter two “’Logoi Sophon’: On the Gattung o f Q”; William A Beardslee, “The Wisdom Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels,” Journal o f the American Academy o f Religion 35 (1967), 231-240; and Rudolf Bultmann, The History o f the Synoptic Tradition, trans. John Marsh (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), esp. part B 1, “Logia (Jesus as the Teacher of Wisdom),” 69-107. See Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza, Jesus, Miriam’ s Child, Sophia’ s Prophet (New York: Continuum, 1994) and “Auf den Spuren der Weisheit,” in A uf den Spuren der Weisheit: Sophia, Wegweiserin fur ein neues Gottesbild, ed. Verena Wodtke (Freiburg: Herder, 1991), and Elizabeth A. Johnson, “Jesus, The Wisdom o f God: A Biblical Basis for Non-Androcentric Christology.” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 61 (1985), 261-94. Matt. 11:18-19 (NAB), cf. Luke 7:33-35; Other ancient sources read “children” in place of “deeds.” On this passage see M. Jack Suggs, Wisdom, Christology and Law in M atthew’ s Gospel R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 62 In a second phase, other passages in Matthew and Luke reveal that Jesus was not just a sophos, or wise man, but was himself Sophia. Jesus speaks passages that echo wisdom literature in which Sophia speaks similarly, such as “All things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.”^ ^ This is said in the context of two other Q sayings about hiding things from the wise and revealing them to babes, and the claim that “my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”^ ^ Matthew’s tactic in these passages is “significant... Jesus is not simply cast in the role of one of Sophia’s spokesmen, even the culminating one, but rather is described with predications that are reserved for Sophia herself.”^ " ^ Paul: Some of the stages discernable in the Gospels are also evident in Pauline texts, especially the equation of Jesus with Sophia. In the epistles of Paul some of the most explicit passages in terms of establishing the relationship between Sophiology of the Wisdom literature and New Testament Christology are found. In (Cambridge: Harvard University Press: 1970), especially chapter 2, “Jesus Christ, the Wisdom of God,” 31-61. 52 53 54 Matt. 11: 27 (NAB), cf. Luke 10:22, Matt. 11: 30 (NAB). James M. Robinson, “Jesus as Sophos and Sophia: Wisdom Tradition and the Gospels,” in Aspects o f Wisdom in Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. Robert L. Wilken (Notre Dame, Indiana: University o f Notre Dame Press, 1975), 9. Among the other passages that have sapiential elements are Matt. 12:32; the baptism o f Christ (Matt. 3:13-17, Luke 3:21-22, Mark 1:9-11, John 1: 29-34), see Schroer, Wisdom has Built Her House, chapter 8 “The Spirit, Wisdom, and the Dove”; Matt. 23:34-38, Matt. 12:38-42, Luke 11:29-32, etc. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 63 perhaps the most key passage for the fate of Sophia in Christianity, in the first Letter to the Corinthians, Paul writes that “Christ [is] the power of God and the wisdom of God.”^ ^ The passage is in the context of a discourse that juxtaposes the power and wisdom of God to that of the world that occupies chapters one and two.^^ In other places, Paul adopts a strategy similar to Matthew (and Luke), placing Christ in contexts identified with Sophia in Jewish Wisdom literature, which would have been recognized hy the Hellenized Jews in his audience.^^ John: John is the most abstract of the four canonical Gospels, and also the latest. The use of Sophia theology is also present in John, but “The Gospel of John accomplishes the transformation from Sophiology to Christology in a different way from Paul or Matthew. John transfers the powers and attributes of Sophia to the Logos and then identifies Christ as incarnate Logos.”^ * Of course, the history and meaning of the Johannine use of Logos is more complex, but there are sapiential elements in John’s Logos. The famous prologue hymn to the Logos might be the 55 56 1 Cor. 1:24 (NAB). Some scholars find evidence in this passage of a polemic between Paul and some elements in the Corinthian community advocating a non-Christological, gnostic Sophia theology. See for example Fohrer, “ao<t)ia”, 519; also Richard A. Horsley, “Spiritual Marriage with Sophia” Vigiliae Christianae 33 (1979): 46-51. The “mythic” or speculative element in the identification of Jesus with Sophia is amplified in Christian Gnosticism, which also uses Q in its documents. The sapiential theme de-emphasizes Jesus’ importance as a real human person and the soteriological significance of the cross, which is crucial to Pauline and orthodox Christian theology. Robinson speculates that Q’s sapiential focus could explain why Q lacks a passion and crucifixion narrative. See Robinson, “Jesus as Sophos and Sophia,” 13-14. Engelsman, 114. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 64 most well known, but other elements in John point to a correlation between Logos and Hokhmah. Raymond Brown, in his classic commentary on John, maintains, “John reflects even more clearly than the Synoptic Gospels the great currents of Old Testament thought,” including Wisdom literature, which “is important for an understanding of John ... [T]he most decisive influence on the form and style of the discourses of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel comes from the speeches of divine Wisdom in the books like Proverbs, Sirach, and Wisdom of Solomon.”^ ^ Revelation: To this point, the focus of the discussion has been on the relationship between Christ and Sophia. In Revelation, perhaps the most difficult New Testament text, scholars have not pointed out Sophio-Christological themes. There is mention of wisdom as a divine quality and in several places as a human quality, in the sense of esoteric knowledge, or the ability to interpret otherwise obscure signs (such as the text of Revelation itself). Sophiology, especially towards the end of the Old Testament era, was increasingly associated with apocalyptic themes, but no personified Wisdom or Sophia-Christ appears in Revelation. In should, though. Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John, Ix, Ixi, contra Bultmann, The Gospel o f John, A Commentary, (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971), who believes Gnostic elements underlie much of Johannine theology. Engelsman also finds the “caring, nurturing” Jesus portrayed in John to be “evocative o f the great virgin goddesses Demeter and Isis” who are cited as types for Hokhmah/Sophia (Engelsman, 117). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 65 be noted also that later Christian exegesis assigned sapiential characteristics to the figure of Mary identified as the Woman Clothed with the Sun.^® Though traces of earlier understandings can be found, the dominant mechanism of identifying Jesus Christ as Sophia incarnate is found virtually wherever Sophian or sapiential themes appear in the New Testament. The results are both the extensive effacement of feminine personified Wisdom in the development of Christianity and the attribution to Jesus Christ-Logos of the powers and functions of Jesus Christ-Sophia. Nonetheless, one of the first ways that Jesus is identified as God is as Sophia, and this fact plays an important part in the development of apostolic and post-apostolic Christology. In the immediate post-apostolic era Sophia speculation waned in the orthodox systems; “There [were] no further development of primitive Sophia Christology in the first half of the 2 " * ^ cent[ury].”® * Indeed, Christianity was not the only context in which feminine personified Wisdom was in decline; Philo’s attempt to reconcile Sophia and Logos is a similar development in non-Christian Hellenic Judaism. It is “only in the second half of the 2"^ and in the 3 * ^ ^ * cent[ury] does this play a part in the working out of the early Chr[istian] doctrine of the Trinity.”^^ It is in this latter period that Sophia Christology became a highly controversial part of Mary as the apocalyptic woman in Revelation becomes iconographically identified with Wisdom in both the Western and the Russian context; see below and chapter three. Foherer, “cro(|)ia”, 525. ® Ibid. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 66 the Christological controversies that gave rise to Arianism, declared heretical by the Councils of Nicea (325) and Constantinople (381). Nonetheless, the Sophian element in Christology remained in the pre-Nicene Church Fathers, especially in the greatest Alexandrian Fathers, St. Clement (150? - 215?) and his student Origen (185? - 254?). While Origen’s identification of Christ with Sophia in part leads to subordinationist elements in his Christology, he, along with other Alexandrians, opposed the Gnostic mythologizing tendency towards Sophia and Christ.^^ The heretical Arian conception alleged that Christ was subordinate, perhaps a hypostasis of the Godhead but created by him and not part of God from all eternity. Among the key passages used by the Arians were Proverbs 8 and other selections from Wisdom literature and Pauline borrowings from Wisdom that applied the title and functions of Wisdom to Christ. Once Paul equated Christ with Wisdom, then what Scripture said about Wisdom must apply to Christ as well through a simple syllogism. The Proverbs text that posits the relationship of Sophia to God was a crucial passage. In Proverbs, Wisdom claims, “The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts long ago/ Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth ... When he established the heavens I was there ... and I was beside him as a master worker, and I was daily his delight.”^ ^ ® R. M. Grant avers that this is a result of their use of the deuterocanonical Wisdom of Solomon as a heuristic tool to approach Old Testament Wisdom literature. See R. M. Grant, “The Book of Wisdom at Alexandria: Reflection of the History o f the Canon and Theology,” Studia Patristica vol. VII, pt. I. (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1966), 462-472. 64 Proverbs 8: 22-23, 27, 30 (NRSV). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 67 The Arians claimed this supported their position that Christ as Wisdom was not co-extensive with God the Father, but rather had been created subsequent to the beginning of God’s existence. The implication in Proverbs that Wisdom was created by God, albeit before the creation of the world, apparently contradicted the developing Trinitarian and Christological positions that Jesus’ full divinity meant he was God as God the Son, co-terminal and co-substantial (opoouaioa) with the one God. Ironically, the early New Testament Sophia Christologies that helped form and support the understanding of Jesus as God were now being used to demonstrate that he was not. Engelsman notes that this assimilation of Sophia’s funetions and attributes “now contaminated Christology by casting Jesus in the same relationship with God the Father that she [Wisdom] had been confined to by the scrupulous monotheism of the Jews.”^ ^ Ultimately, although the orthodox Church, lead by St. Athanasius, struggled with the Arian issue for several decades, the objections to Christ’s full divinity were put to rest. The Councils’ formulations of Christ’s nature does not mention Wisdom.^^ Engelsman summarizes the resolution thus: “Christ is called Wisdom because he is God. What is rejected is that Christ is (or is not) God because he is Sophia. ... Because Christ is God and God is Wisdom, Christ can ... be called Wisdom without fearing any contamination from Sophiology.”^ ^ Engelsman, 147. ^ “Deum de Deo, Lumen de Lumine, Deum verum, de Deo vero," (“God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God”) Engelsman, 147-148. R eproduced wifh perm ission of fhe copyrighf owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 68 Engelsman’s posture that Arianism was “Sophia’s revenge” is somewhat far-fetched,^^ but it is true that Nicea fixed the interpretation of Christ as Wisdom Incarnate, but not dependent on his being Wisdom for his being God. The figure of feminine personified Sophia represented in Proverbs and other Wisdom books was accorded less importance. The title of Wisdom is ascribed almost exclusively to Jesus Christ-Logos, especially in the Byzantine tradition, and the essential sapiential functions still pertain to Christ: creator, mediator, and savior.®^ From the Nicene period. Orthodox Byzantine Christian Wisdom speculation is essentially Christological. Sophian Iconography and Architecture Whatever the theological difficulties posed by Wisdom literature and the figure of personified, feminine Wisdom in relationship to Christ, the ecelesial architecture of the Eastern Roman Empire certainly continued to focus attention on Ibid., 147. Jesus, the risen Christ as Son and Incarnate Word o f God (Logos) conclusively assumes the roles of creator, mediator, and savior, previously regarded as Sophia’s. Sophia was with God at the creation (see Proverbs quoted above), and Sophia is also identified in Jewish Scriptures with the Law, i.e., the Torah as a revelation of God’s Wisdom. The Law had been understood as both the means for mediating the relationship between God and Israel, and the formula for righteousness and thus the mechanism o f salvation. Jesus as the creative Word appropriates the function of creator, and as Word in the sense of revelation appropriates of the mediating function of Sophia-Law. By his salvific action (crucifixion and resurrection) Jesus the Sophia-Christ supplants the law’s soteriological function as well. ™ It is somewhat reductionist to condense the Byzantine theological tradition so. There is not time or space here, however, for a thorough investigation of Byzantine theology, architecture, and iconography as primary means for the transmission o f ideas about Sophia to Russian culture; they will be mentioned below only as necessary background to the Russian reception and development of Sophian themes and Sophiological motifs, which is the main purpose at hand. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 69 Divine Wisdom. The emperor Constantine made Christianity the Imperial religion in 313, and built a new titular church for his new capital, Constantinople, dedicated to Christ Logos, the Holy Wisdom of God, by 360.^* When Justinian rebuilt Constantine’s edifice he preserved the name and dedication to Christ as Holy Wisdom, the Word of God, in 537, with the famous dome completed in 563. His (apocryphal?) proclamation as he first entered the rebuilt Haiga Sophia, “Oh Solomon, 1 have outdone you!” makes his temple the heir to Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem, and him the heir to Solomon, who was the worshipper of Wisdom as the attributed author of Old Testament Wisdom literature, as well as Old Testament king and archetypal ruler.^^ Not only in form but also in name, Constantine and Justinian’s precedents were echoed throughout the empire. Typically the name of Holy Wisdom was given to large cathedral or metropolitan churches, as a symbol, Georgii Florovsky points out, that was as much about national, political, or ecelesial prestige and independence as about a theological motivation.^^ According to John Meyendorff, “Wisdom - Sophia: Contrasting Approaches to a Complex Theme,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41 (1987): 391-401, 360 AD is the earliest dated mention of the church’s name. Constantine died in 337; there seems little reason to have changed the church’s name, and there is no other attested earlier name. This point is made by Meyendorff, “Wisdom - Sophia,” 392; he also reports his source: Ps. Codinus, ed. I. Bekker, (Bonn, 1843), 143. See a list o f Sophia churches in G. V. Florovsky, “O pochitanii Sofii, Premudrosti Bozhiei, v Vizantii I na Rusi,” in Trudy V-ogo S ”ezda Russkikh Akademicheskikh Organizatsii za Granitsei, part 1 (Sofia: Russkie Akademicheskie Organizatsii, 1930), 486-487. Florovsky’s work also must be taken in context. He is writing in the wake of the sophiological speculation that forms much of the subject o f this dissertation, and Florovskii was not especially well-disposed towards innovative sophiologies, preferring a conservative theological position that emphsizes the proper identification of Christ with Sophia. These predispoitions color his approach and analysis. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 70 After Vladimir converted to Christianity in 988, he and his successors began to build monumental churches. Vladimir’s first large stone church, the Desiatinnaia or Tithe, no longer stands. The exact dates of construction are unclear, but whether Vladimir or his son, laroslav (the Wise), began the project, the Cathedral of St. Sophia dates to the first half of the 11* century, and marks the beginning of the Sophia tradition in Russian culture.’" ^ Another church dedicated to St. Sophia was begun in Novgorod in 1045, and other Russian cities followed, including Polotsk, also in the 11* century, and later in Tobolsk and Vologda in the 16* century, as well as Moscow, among others.^^ While there are a number of churches from early medieval Rus’ that testify to the importance and consciousness of Sophia, iconography of Wisdom is rather more rare. In the early medieval period there was neither a tradition of titular feast days for churches nor a “church icon,” so the proliferation of churches dedicated to Sophia does not correspond to iconographic representations. The earliest known icons of Sophia in Russia are datable to the 14* century. For this brief discussion. Wisdom icons will be classified into three categories: icons where Wisdom or For more on St. Sofiia, see N. I. Kresal’nyi, Sofiiskii zapovednik v Kieve: Arkhitekturno- istoricheskii oc/zerA: (Kiev: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo literaturypo stroitel’stvo i arkhitekture USSR, 1960). Florovskii, “O pochitanii Sofii,” 489. For more on early Russian architecture, see Bezsonov, S. V. et. al. Istoriia Russkoi Architektury (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo literatury po stroitel’stvo i arkhitekture, 1956), with a photograph of Vologda St. Sophia on 145. In English, William Craft Brumfield, Gold in Azure: One Thousand Years o f Russian Architecture (Boston: D. R. Godine, 1983) and A History o f Russian Architecture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 71 wisdom-motifs appear as a part of a larger scene or composition, narrative icons of personified Wisdom, and icons which represent the idea of Divine Wisdom itself^^ This is not an exhaustive examination of Wisdom iconography, but it will describe the main ways visual images of Wisdom were available in the Russian Orthodox tradition^^ There are also two human St. Sophias in the Orthodox canon; one, relatively well-known, was a Roman martyress under Hadrian, whose martyress daughters, SS. Faith, Hope, and Love, were an allegorist’s dream come true. Sometimes the Ss. Sophia were confused with each other, especially since no feast or iconography was ever fixed for Divine Wisdom. The other is quite obscure; a Princess and mm from Suzdal’ named Sofiia from the end o f the fifteenth century who was revered as a saint and listed in an early eighteenth century manuscript extant in at least two copies in Buslaev’s and Uvarov’s nineteenth century collections titled “Kniga glagolemaia o Rossiiskikh svaitykh, gde v koem grade, ill oblasti, ill v monastyre, ill v pustyni pozhive i chudesa sotvori, vsiakago china sviatykh,” cited in Fedor Buslaev, “Ideal’nye zhenskie kharaktery drevnei rusi,” in Drevne-russkaia narodnaia literatura i iskusstvo, vol. 2 of Istoricheskie ocherki russkoi narodnoi slovesnosti i iskusstva (St. Petersburg: Obshchestvennaia pol’za, 1861), 244. The manuscript was apparently subsequently published by Graf Mikhail V. Tolstoi in M. V. Tolstoi, ed. Kniga glagolemaia opisanie o rossiiskikh sviatykh: gde i v kotorom grade, Hi oblasti, Hi monastyre, Hi pustyni pozhive i chudesa sotvori vsiakogo china sviatykh. (Moscow: Universitetskaia tipografiia, 1888; reprinted, Izdatel’stvo Spaso-preobrazhenskogo Balaamskogo Monastyria, 1995). 77 There was a small but for our purposes important literature on Sophian iconography in nineteenth and early twentieth century sources; for the modem scholar these are supplemented by works written in the Soviet Union and Russia as well as the West since the revolution. Pre-revolutionary sources include: (Protoierei) Petr Solov’ev, Opisanie Novgorodskago Sofiiskago Sohora (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi Akademii Nauk, 1858); G. D. Filimonov, “Ocherki russkoi khristianskoi ikonografii: 1. Sofiia Premudrost’ Bozhiia,” Vestnik obshchestva drevene-russkago iskusstvapri moskovskom publichnom muzee 1-12 (1874-1876): 1-20; Filimonov, “Dopolnenie k state o Sofii Premudrosti Bozhiei,” Vestnik obshchestva drevene-russkago iskusstva pri moskovskom publichnom muzee 1-12 (1874-1876): 36; P. L—^ v . [P. G. Lebedinstev], “Sofiia - Premudrost’ Bozhiia v ikonografii severa i iuga rossii,” Kievskaia starina: Ezhemesiachnyi istoricheskii zhurnal 10 (Dec. 1884): 555-567; A. I. Nikolskii, “Sofiia Premudrost’ Bozhiia,” Vestnik arkheologii i istorii 17 (1906): 69-102; Pavel Alexandrovich Florenskii, Stolp i utverzhdenie istiny: opytpravoslavnoi feoditsei v dviienadtsatipis'makh (Moscow: Tovarishchestvo tipografii A. I. Mamontova, 1914) available in English as The Pillar and Ground o f Truth, trans. and annot. Boris Jakim (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997; a brief description can also be found in Fedor Buslaev, “Dlia istorii msskoi zhivopisi XVI veka,” in Drevne-russkaia narodnaia literatura i iskusstvo, vol. 2 of Istoricheskie ocherki russkoi narodnoi slovesnosti i iskusstva (St. Petersburg: Obshchestvennaia pol’za, 1861), 294-299. The seminal work from the period on Marian iconography is N. P. Kondakov, Ikonografiia Bogomateri, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi Akademii Nauk, 1914); A. I. Nikolskii. “Ikona Sv. Sofii, Premudrost’ Bozhiei,” Rodnaia starina 5-6 (1928): 17 and “Skazanie, chto esf Sofiia Premudrost’ Boziiiia?,” Rodnaia starina 5-6 (1928): 18 essentially recapitulate Nikolskii’s 1906 article. Modem sources other than those mentioned in notes above include: A. M. Ammann, S.J., “Darstellung imd Deutung der Sophia im Vorpetrinischen Russland,” Orientalia Christiana Periodica (German edition) 4 , nos. 1-2 (1938): R eproduced wifh perm ission of fhe copyrighf owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 72 One of the most distinguishing features of wisdom iconography is a distinctive image consisting of two overlapping slightly concave rhombuses, usually of two different colors, often red and green. The result is an eight-pointed figure that is used as halo or nimbus, or even as the whole background in some icons. This device is not discussed much by iconologists; though “it is said to symbolize ‘eternity,’” Donald Fiene has argued convincingly that “simultaneously it could denote Wisdom.”^ * Indeed, Fiene attests, “Extensive surveys indicate this sign is used only in connection with the three persons of the Trinity, the Virgin Mary, and Wisdom itself.”^ ^ For example, this eight-pointed halo appears in Creation imagery, since Proverbs 8 identifies Wisdom as the agent of creation. The pre-Incamation Christ- Logos with the Wisdom nimbus is found in an illustration in an illuminated Bible, formerly in the collection of Count Uvarov, above the caption, “God made Eve 120-156; reprint, 1966; T. A. Sidorova, “Volotovskaia freska ‘premudrost’ sozda sebe dom’ i ee otnoshenie k novgorodskoi eresi strigol’nikov v XIV v.,” in Drevnerusskaia literatura i russkaia kul’ turaXVIII-XXvv., Trudy otdela drevnerusskoi literatury XXVI (Leningrad; Nauka, 1971), 212- 231; M. V. Alpatov, Freski tserkvi Uspeniia na volotovom pole (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1977); a recent exhibition catalog with numerous Sophia icons is Giuseppina Azzaro and Pierluca Azzaro, eds., Sophia: la sapienza di Dio (Milan: Electa, 1999). Donald M. Fiene, “What is the Appearance of Divine Sophia?,” Slavic Review 48 (Fall 1989): 473. Fiene, 473. Fiene’s “extensive surveys” are not without counterexample. In a series of illustrations from miniatures o f personifications o f Earth and Sea, Fedor Buslaev reproduces a pair from a 1705 manuscript in his collection in the middle o f the 19th century where the woman figure of Earth has a Wisdom nimbus. Buslaev, one o f the pioneers of the scholarly study o f Russian iconography, does not point out the nimbus on the allegorical figure o f Earth, nor does he describe the context, though the general discussion is of Last Judgement icons. See Fedor Buslaev, “Izobrazhenie strashnago suda po russkim podlirmikam” in Drevne-russkaia narodnaia literatura i iskusstvo, vol. 2 o f Istoricheskie ocherki russkoi narodnoi slovesnosti i iskusstva (St. Petersburg: Obshchestvennaia pol’za, 1861), facing page 138. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 73 from the rib of Adam.”* ° The Creator is here a beardless male identified by Buslaev as Christ, but the eight-pointed nimbus makes the connection with Wisdom quite plain. The connection with the Old Testament texts about the presence of Wisdom and her actions in creation are most probably the motivation behind the choice of Christ-Logos, the Wisdom of God, as the Divine agent in this composition. An unusual modification of the Wisdom nimbus is in the Marian icon of Our Lady of the Burning Bush. The Burning Bush was taken as a type for the Virgin by medieval exegetes.** In the center of the composition is an image of the Virgin with the Christ child, surrounded by an eight-pointed wisdom nimbus that occupies the rest of the icon. The Virgin in the center holds the Christ child, so theologically it is the Christ that is the depiction of Wisdom, but as in the Kiev type of Sophia icon (see below), the “visual dynamic of the icon equates the Virgin with Sophia.”* ^ Indeed, one of the most notable features of Russian Sophia iconography and perhaps the most important development in the Russian evolution of the Reproduced as a line drawing in Fedor Buslaev, “Drevne-russkaia boroda,” in ibid., facing page 218. As in the example in the note above, Buslaev seems unaware of the connotations of the halo; he identifies the image of Christ “v simvolicheskom predstavlenii ego, kak Tvortsa, uderzhivalsa drevne-khristianskii iunosheshkii tip” (218). Another page from the same bible, the casting of Satan and the demons into hell, reproduced facing page 228 in Buslaev, ibid., also has God represented the same way, though the scriptural basis for this is less obvious to me. Fiene, 456 ff., mentions an “angel, wearing the halo of Wisdom” in “Veruiu (Symbol of Faith) icons depicting the creation, temptation, and fall of Adam and Eve” and explores the scriptural matrix that underpin this representation. This may initially seem like an odd connection. The reasoning, however, is thus: like the bush, which was filled with the presence of God but not altered or consumed, so Mary was understood to have been filled with grace and to have borne Christ within her, without her nature being altered. Fiene, 473. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 74 understanding of Sophia is the emergent ambiguity in the identification of Sophia with Christ and the tendency to feminize Wisdom. Even in Byzantium, though, a masculine Jesus-Sophia was relatively rare. “Despite the narrowly dogmatic position of the Orthodox church as to the biblical source of divine Wisdom, few icons identifying Wisdom with Jesus Christ alone have been recovered.”* ^ However, feminine personifications of Wisdom are not in greater evidence. In the Byzantine context, “In iconography before the twelfth century there are [only] a few rather peripheral examples of symbolic female personifications of ‘Wisdom,’ particularly in manuscript illuminations.”^ '^ In Russian reception of Byzantine Wisdom theology, Sophia became associated with Marian imagery, even from the very beginning of the Russian Christian experience.*^ The main apsidal mosaic of St. Sophia’s in Kiev is an enormous image of the Virgin Mary. This is imdoubtedly an echo of the apsidal mosaic of St. Sophia in Constantinople, now extant mostly as a restoration (?) of a ninth century original.*^ Ibid., 451. Two points: First, the emphasis here is Jesus Christ; Sophia as Logos-Christ is evident in Creation and Veruiu cycles. Second, while Fiene is talking about Byzantium, Russian icons that explicitly equate Jesus Christ with Sophia are also rare. 84 John Meyendorff, “Wisdom— Sophia,” 393. On the changing reception of Mary in post-iconoclasm Byzantine iconography, see loli Kalavrezou “Images o f the Mother: When the Virgin Mary became Meter Theou^ Dumbarton Oaks Papers 44 (1994): 165-172. John Beckwith, The Art o f Constantinople: An Introduction to Byzantine Art, 330-1453 (London: Phaidon, 1968), 63 (reproduced on 148). Others simply date it to the ninth century; I lack the conoisseurship to make a judgement. Assuming the restoration retained the composition of the original, it makes little difference here; style is not at issue. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 75 The Kievan image differs markedly in important ways, however, from its Constantinople prototype. In Constantinople the Virgin is seated on a backless throne, her feet on a broad pedestal, with the child Jesus Emmanuel in her lap. In Kiev the Christ child is altogether absent, and the Virgin is standing in an orant (hands upheld, palms outward, usually a posture of prayer) position.*^ In Constantinople, the reading of the Virgin as the throne of Wisdom, or sedes sapientia as it was known in the West, metaphorically also signifying the Church as a literal building and as a spiritual body or community, is clear enough. In Kiev, on the other hand, the Virgin is alone and the dominating image in the Cathedral of St. Sophia; it is easy to assume that the Virgin herself is intended to be St. Sophia - in other words, that Mary, not Jesus Christ-Logos, is Wisdom incmnate. To be fair, the inscription on the face of the arch that defines the vault of the apse helps to clarify the iconographic program. It is in Greek and taken from Psalm 46: “God is in the midst of it [the city]; it shall not be moved.”* * The indeterminate pronoun, clear in the context of the full psalm, out of its context in the church could refer to the image, verbally implying a Virgin Panagia, in which a medallion of Christ appears on a similarly posed Virgin, a composition also associated with Wisdom iconography. It helps explain the odd name tradition gives This iconographic type is thus known as the Virgin Orant, but also as the Virgin of Blachemae, having originated in the Church of Blachemae in Constantinople. The closely related icon of the Virgin Panagia is almost identical, the difference being that the Panagia has an image o f Christ Emmanuel in a medallion on her chest; the Balchemitissa, as the image was known, was used as a Byzantine imperial iconographic and numistmatic image. See Kondakov, Ikonografiia Bogomateri, vol. 1, esp. chapter three, “Blakhernskii khram Bogomateri...”, 55-124. Psalm 46:5 (NRSV) R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 76 the apsidal wall: “nerashimaia stena” or “unbreakable wall.” The psalmic text ean also imply the whole ebureb, and in original context, the city of Kiev itself and the whole Christianized dominion of Rus’ Twentieth century Orthodox theologians and historians have sought out the sources for the confusion and inaccuracy of any direct identification of Mary with Sophia. Georges Florovsky and John Meyendorff after him, two of the most eminent Orthodox theologians of the twentieth century, generally trace it to deficiencies in theological decorum, the pernicious influence of the west, and a decline in Russian knowledge of the Greek tradition.^® Most specifically, Florovsky traces it to Gennadii, archbishop of Novgorod from 1484, who moved the titular feast of the Cathedral of St. Sophia in Novgorod to the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin (Uspenie), August 15.^' Many other St. Sophia churches also adopted Marian feasts and used Novgorodian Sophia iconogrpahy, which is only attested from the fifteenth (or sixteenth) century onwards. The fifteenth century is too late, though, to begin noticing feminine wisdom imagery. To a viewer familiar with Proverbs and unversed in Greek, the image of a personified feminine wisdom would be less obscure than it is to many Christians For an extensive discussion of the meaning of the inscription see S. S. Averintsev, “K uiasneniiu smysla nadpisi nad konidioi tsentral’noi apsidy Sofii Kievslcoi,” in Drevne-russkoe iskusstvo: Kudozhestvennaia kul’ tura domongol’ skoi Rusi (IVIoscow: Nauka, 1972), 25-50. The designation “nerushimaia stena” is discussed in Kondakov, Ikonografiia Bogomateri, vol. 1, 72 and linked to the image o f Blachemae, the patroness of the walls of Constantinople. The influx o f Greek knowledge after the fall of Constantinople ought to reinforce Greek tradition and knowledge, and this is precisely the same period in which Sophia iconography begins to both become more popular and more Marian. While westem influence may have been increasing, the other parts of the argument don’t seem to work. Florovsky, “O pochitanii Sofii,” 488, and Meyendorff, “Wisdom - Sophia,” 400. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 77 today. Even given knowledge of the inscription in Kiev St. Sophia, if the association of Wisdom with the figure of Mary starts anywhere in Russia, it is not in 15* century Novgorod, but in the 11* century in Kiev. Indeed, it is the Sophia icons from southern Russia, classified by scholars the Kiev type, that most explicitly associated Mary with Sophia. The prejudices of Orthodoxy have attributed the emergence of explicit Sophia-Marian iconography to Western influences, but the first Sophian image, the great mosaic in St. Sophia came not from Germany, but from Constantinople. Given the typological parallels so often drawn between the Old Testament and the New by Christian exegetes, the typological identification of Lady Wisdom-Sophia with the Virgin Mary is easy to make, the writings of the Fathers and Pauline texts (and objections of modern theologians) notwithstanding. There are, however, more than just Marian icons of Sophia in the Russian tradition. One other important type that has already been mentioned is the narrative type. One consequence of the Paleologan Renaissance in Byzantium in the twelfth century was a “new popularity of symbolic subjects, particularly illustrating Old Testament themes, [which] led to the frequent appearance of wall paintings representing Wisdom as [in] Proverbs 9:1-5.”^ ^ However, it bears mentioning that all the extant wall paintings (from the 13* and 14* centuries) are actually Serbian 92 Meyendorff, “Wisdom - Sophia,” 393. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 78 or M aced o n ian .In fact, “No Byzantine source is known for icons illustrating Prov. 9: 1-5,” despite the centrality of this text in Byzantine Eucharistic theology.^"^ The text of Proverbs 9: 1-5 is worth quoting, so important is it to Sophia iconography: “Wisdom has built her house, she has set up her seven columns. She has dressed her meat, mixed her wine, yes, she has spread her table. She has sent out her maidens, she calls from the heights out over the city: ‘Let whoever is simple turn in here; to him who lacks understanding, 1 say. Come, eat of my food and drink of the wine 1 have mixed! One of the most important collections of Sophia images in Russia, including a fresco of the scene narrated by Proverbs 9, was foimd in the frescoes in the Church of the Assumption at Volotovo, near Novgorod, dated to around 1380. The church also featured rare compositions of the four evangelists being attended and inspired by Wisdom as Muse with the eight-pointed nimbus.®^ The narrative type in Russia was limited to the Novgorod region, and makes its first known appearance around 1360. No one, to my knowledge, has connected the extensive Sophia imagery of the frescoes to the For a list and illustrations, see Jean Meyendorff, “L’Iconographie de la Sagesse Divine dans la Tradition Byzantine,” Cahiers Archeologiques 10 (1959): 259-277. Fiene, 454, note 18, citing Sidorova and Meyedorff “LTconographie,” 261, which actually says no such thing. However, Meyendorff does point out the importance o f this text in both his articles “W isdom -Sophia” and“LTconogrpahie.” Prov. 9: 1-5 (NAB). Other similar icons of the narrative Proverbs type exist, but the Volotovo church and its frescoes were destroyed in WWII; the frescoes are preserved in two sources: drawings by students o f Pavel Kuznetsov, who took his classes to study the frescoes in the 1920’s and a comprehensive series of pre-revolutionary photographs by L. N. Matsulevich, a student of the important Russian art historian D. V. Ainalov. See Fiene, 455, and especially M. V. Alpatov, Freski tserkvi Uspeniia na Volotovom pole, with reproductions of both Matsulevich’s photos and many of Kuznetsov’s students’ work. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 79 dedication of the Church to the Assumption, though Archbishop Gennadii would soon thereafter in nearby Novgorod designate the titular feast of St. Sophia as the Assumption. Aside from the narrative icons and wisdom-motif icons, there are also a number of icons which are intended to represent, one way or another, the abstract idea of Sophia, the Wisdom of God. Although there is a good deal of variation and some blending, scholars have divided them into three categories. One is called the Crucifixion type; another is called the Fiery Angel or Novgorod type, and the third is the Kiev type. None of these are compositions brought from Byzantium; all of them developed in Russia. The most Christological of the three is the Crucifixion type, also called the northern, laroslavl, or Kholomogory type. In Russian it is usually referred to as Sofiia Krestnaia. The idea is that “the Old Testament house built by Wisdom is the temple of the Christian or Orthodox church.”^^ In the icon, a crucifix stands on an ambo on a four-step dais, under a canopy, representing the church supported by seven pillars; the central pillar is also the crucifix. Mary, John the Baptist, and apostles flank Christ, as in a Deists composition. Above the “church” is a seven-rayed symbol of the Holy Spirit, each ray labeled with a spiritual gift.^* Above this is representation of Christ enthroned, with the sides of the icon filled with attendant saints. Fiene, 469. Feine calls these the “Seven gifts of the Holy Spirit” and references Isaiah 11:2. This passage in Isaiah is usally read as a typological reference to Christ (which makes sense in this context, and reinforce the christological reading), and actually lists only six gifts: “The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and fear o f the Lord.” (NRSV) [As Fiene also points out, the Russian bible inserts R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 80 f I r - ' " ; . i ^ ‘S '- X ..’■ :} a ^ y . s \.X -* ' 1 " y j - i K c : j ^ - ^ / 'X ■ '■ ^ ^ ^ "^n: -'«.! ? ;: .':. < | i 'X. /■> v ( \ , \ \ ;' / V x' , , X' 5 - I - 1 A 1 • ' ' 'I ^ X -•'^i^-^•‘ N * W 'x > 'x ;v 7 > \% '' '': ; \ '( iV^l I ^ h V " / ' ’■ ' X v \ ‘ - % v . ' I ' ' ' ' - y L X .1 S , ■ . f C ^ ! . V < '* x f t f i > > * ■ & ' I I /ffM 1 3 r : , • ■ > ‘ ii - ’ , * - > ‘ I * ^ r — 1 ^ I , I, * \iA < '\h , i ■ f j S M * ^ l ■ ■ ■ ' * * “ ^ 1 i I - < \ ! ? I K Fig 2.1 Bakhman, Sofiia Premudrost' Bozhii {Sofiia Krestnaia!Cmcifndon Type), lithograph, 1876 blagochestie, and the repetition of the fear of the lord in the next verse is eliminated.] The qualities usually called the gifts of the Holy Spirit are given in the Letter of St. Paul to the Galatians 5:22 “The fruit o f the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” There are nine, not seven. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 81 X / /.X \~ - V » /i \ « . ! , s : ^ V V i ^ \ C \ \v i I I / • ■ ■ v/m -j# y' k u X . i i ’ 57 si^'Mky /aj- '■ ' ‘ - — ' Wi] 7 s iiiX /if e - X V ¥'57' f y f ^ - M Q X /r-U >f f /! f , / I / / r r , f' “ ' S j '*«* / ) /V " < / % x / /.. \ / / r-< -. -^4^' u,?.-T '"X ( 1 I ' '* 'r V 2 = ' ^ 11 n ' \ \ < K ~ i , , 7,' V' <•‘7 4 4 , ' ■ ! • ^ ^ - ; ; '~ - N \-'"/' \ H V f/y " / \ % k ' ' X . A .'• ¥ ¥ " '. 5 ^ '.t-f V t't—r-'v/ 'i'''\'V \! ,i .- .- .7 ^ “ 'X . i f S l M V 7 4 '. ' ' X '/ I'l^f i' 'R 5 .- .A L ^ ' ■ ' ''■ ■ ''y X ',1%\ » '5 '___'' '' ' '» "'i’ ’ f// /((/ :/ V - - ,- .: t " - - ....... ' "'''■ •■ 7 S. a ' " w i X -■^4 M i / ! ! X r - ' ^ - x : x ^ A \ \ ? ^ 4 y X ’ f ’. y .-■'■;V /i'- - ''' ' 1 ■ w i t Will' ' 5 | i i | i 1 i I f I \ i r '\ : : W ' ,X ; X y - _.//■' v'‘ 7>-r' \ / _ \ " ■ A y X " ^ , ( ■ ' ■ ' 7 W X - J /P W 1i T f'T ¥ ■ ii i/lUi/t \( iiiiri A ih \ m 0 y A W W '" W o t \ h'i I ■ X oi W w b W l C B .C O fM iPEBHE-EOBrOPQICKAfi XVI3. w w 1 ' i' ^ M //;A ' '5 ' V , \ y \ ! / ,X '' lliO ' / ' - w X X > |1 \ i W / Fig. 2.2 Bakhman, Sofiia Premudrost’ Bozhii (Novgorod/Fiery Angel Type), lithograph, 1876 R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 82 The Fiery Angel, Angel-of-the-Lord, or Novgorod type is the most common composition of Wisdom so identified. This peculiar composition features an angel with red face, hands, and wings seated on a throne supported by seven pillars in the midst of a dark-centered gloriole, dressed in a red and gold chiton, and bearing a crown and caduceus.^^ The angel is usually flanked by Mary holding Christ and St. John the Baptist, again in a Deisis composition. There is also an image of Christ above the fiery angel, and above him is a blue band or ribbon with angels and a composition called the “Preparation of the Throne” - an emblem of the Trinity that nonetheless emphasizes Christ. Some have taken the ribbon to be a rainbow, though Fiene confirms it as a scroll. The central image is the fiery angel, though whether the angel represents Christ, the Mother of God, or an independent vision of Wisdom is a matter of debate by iconologists and sophiologists.‘° * Although the Christological elements are strong, the image’s ambiguity in composition and context is itself indicative of the feminine and Marian elements in the Russian reception of Sophia. A caduceus is the rod or wand carried by messengers in antiquity. Twined with snakes, it is an attribute of Mercury/Hermes. This pagan variation is never depicted in Sophia iconography. The angel’s possession o f a herald’s rod makes sense if one considers that ‘angel’ [avyePioa] is Greek for ‘messenger.’ An apocalyptic motif from Isaiah 34:4. But if it was seen as a rainbow, what it “really” is becomes less important. Florovskii and Meyendorff insist it is Christ, the former attributing interpretation of the Fiery Angel as Virginal and thus Marian to corrupting and pernicious Westem and German influence (such as Nicholas o f Cusa). Lebedinstev and Fedotov think it could be the Theotokos. Amman and Meyedorff think that until the 16* century, Christ as Wisdom is uncontested, so the Fiery Angel type is Christological. Fiene also thinks this is a Christ icon. 1 think both saying there isn’t a Marian intepretation of Wisdom until the 16* century and ignoring the icon’s feast as the Assumption is willful blindness, but I also think the Fiery Angel type is more Christological than Marian, though its later interpretations become more Marian. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 83 The most feminine and Marian type of all the Sophia icons is the Kiev type, found in southern Russian and Ukraine, proceeding from the most famous of the Russian Sophia churches in Kiev. St. Sophia in Kiev was actually abandoned from the mid-15* century, until it was restored and rededicated in the 1640’s. The new church icon was in the style of the then-current Russian baroque, evidencing stylistic and iconographic elements new in the Russian tradition. The seven pillars remain, now Corinthian columns, supporting a broken pediment. However, in the place of the crucifix or fiery angel there is now a bareheaded woman-angel on clouds; she has large wings, a crown of twelve stars, and the moon at her feet, all explicitly evoking the woman clothed with the sun of the book of Revelation, almost universally identified with Mary. The image of the Christ child in her breast confirms the identity with the Mother of God. She also holds a caduceus and a cross, and is flanked by very small images of Mary and St. John the Baptist, a nod to the Christ at the center of the composition. Below her are seven male saints, to her sides are seven martyresses, including St. Sophia and her daughters, and above her are seven archangels around God the Father, and two medallions with the text of Proverbs 9:1-5. Just as the eleventh century apsidal mosaic invites speeulation on the Marian identification of Wisdom, so does this Kievan type. Though theologically Christ Emmanuel may be Wisdom, “Contemporary observers however, would surely have seen the obvious: Wisdom and the Mother of God are One.”* ® ^ ■ Fiene, 471. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 84 fc \ : f ' if 1 A il 7 ' 1 1 • ' - , ,v.*.v"v 3 5 1 ,'* “* If • ^ m s '*'’ • '■ ■ ■ '■ ■ * f * f | . .‘J ''f;7 im ff A 1 ‘ ^ ijuU r-.f ” ::,p ‘u iii ! ’ .,'ft. iW W u m • . v?.,:. ....... X ^ > ' •"<11 7 - J # l i ' K 4 ' ^ \ • - s’ f l ' W i " ~ % ‘ € ' % > * ' > ' '^S‘- \ %# # ^ 1 1 \ 1 % ) ;7 , v 'Av/^ . < , , • Jf.. ,^ 'Y \ ’ a l - ’ : > s a f | S ^ l i f v o t s s - # ’i # w ‘ Afr 4 ' / 1 1 ' ^ ^ ' " nW - 5 I V";«!P'-^«’j < > r ■ J< | •! 'V^I ■ V f . X ' V - ' \ ' ^ ^ • ■ ' #>r w H^t ^ 'Wi ' i y A ' ' ■ > ■ I •. , . ^ s — - ' ^ ■ • - ’ 7 '' i ! I . ■ ■ 4 X - J I fe¥ .)l l « k /!%«»7S%>X'o#i77“ ~i®^v;3r-k m *u/,s( M aIM 'Sii £<!W/M!l ^ Q I I /7» M C f 7l M 7 : '■ p f M ',.§^-^4 L " ■ ‘,1 ' 'aftev 1 •/ ., y l l % . '4 » i 1747. ^ ' 7 < ^ r 4 iX '^ T ' M ti -■ " i--> < ( .7 \‘ ^ « '% ■ ; " V ^ < f ' £ ■ < ■ ^ .. ^ • ■ ' ■ -?====.-.rqi '7 ti.S •A , ,i ■'•x'\rv. Fig. 2.3 Bakhman, Sofiia Premudrost’ Bozhii (Sofiiia Kievskaia/Kie\ Type), lithograph, 1876 The cathedral icon of St. Sophia has perpetuated this Marian motif to the present, even if the apocalyptic Sophia-Mary tvas replaced by a more conventional R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 85 image of the Mother of God in the first third of the IS* century. The current Kiev Sophia icon retains the pillars, now marked with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, who hovers above, and symbols from Revelation. Also preserved is the image of the Mother of God orant with the Christ in her breast, though without wings. Seven steps labeled with Marian virtues lead up to her, and seven prophets attend her. God the Father and angels are at the very top, and the text from Proverbs 9:1 is written on the canopy. The Trinitarian and thus Christological elements are more drawn out in the newer version, but the largest and central figure is still the feminine one, Mary, the Mother of God, and at least the seat of Wisdom, if not Wisdom herself. Whatever the reality of the causes of the association of Wisdom with Mary, the feminine aspect of Sophia was revived in Russia, if it in fact ever truly disappeared in Byzantium, official theological positions (modern and ancient) notwithstanding. However, the association with Mary did not create a consistent iconographical connection between Sophia and Mary; in fact, there was no stable iconography of Sophia at all. Several types developed, and the different ways of expressing the idea of God’s wisdom in the vocabulary of Orthodox iconography is of interest, especially insofar as the feminine Sophia tends to emerge more strongly, and though in post-Petrine Russia the cultural consciousness of Sophia as This could have been done perhaps as a part of a Petrine campaign to supress Sophia imagery associated with his elder half-sister, the regent Sophia; see below. The image above is an 18* century variant of the Kiev type, not the actual Kiev St. Sophia icon; there are some minor differences, but it preserves the main features of this type. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 86 a part of Byzantine and Christian heritage would diminish, it lay ready for discovery and revival at the end of the Imperial era. Sophian Rulers in Russian History There were other important Sophian events that lend import to the name Sophia in Russian culture. After the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, the imperial family fled into exile. The heir to the Byzantine throne was the niece of the last emperor, named Zoe Paleologus. She was a ward of the Pope and was living as a Catholic in Rome. She left Rome and went to Russia in 1472 to marry Ivan III, the Orthodox Grand Prince of Moscow. To the chagrin of the Roman pontiff, she did not convert Muscovy to Catholicism, but instead herself became Orthodox. In doing so, she changed her name, and she was married and lived as Sophia. In her person, ideologically speaking, was the incarnate transfer of the heritage of the Roman Byzantine Empire and through her the mantle of succession to the preeminent Christian throne passed to the Russian state. Sophia cannot be seen as an accidental name. Wisdom was the gift of God to Solomon that legitimated his rule, as Sophia Paleologue helped legitimate the claim to rulership of the Russian monarchy. As Wisdom was the patroness of the main Byzantine temple in which the Emperor was crowned, so Wisdom became the patroness who dwelt in Moscow and who assured there would be an heir to be crowned. The dynastic struggle of 1498 resulted from Ivan Ill’s eldest son, Ivan, dying before Ivan III, yet having produced an heir, Dmitri. Dmitri was crovmed in R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 87 1498, but four years later Dmitri and his mother were arrested and the title passed to Vasilii III, Ivan Ill’s son by Sophia Paleologus. Some historians see Sophia’s marriage as crucial to the acceptance and implementation of the Third Rome ideology, which was articulated by Filofei in 1510, though recent scholars have downplayed her role, arguing that Ivan Ill’s policies were not determined by his marriage to Sophia, whom by the end of his life he distrusted.N onetheless, the symbolic value of a marriage to the Paleologue dynasty, and the semiotic significance of her name being Sophia cannot be denied. Sophia Paleologus was not the only royal Sophia in Russian history. Sophia Alekseevna Romanova (1657-1704) was the regent for Peter and Ivan his half- brother from 1682 to 1689. Her birthday was September 17, the feast of the Roman martyress Sophia, but the symbolic possibilities of the imagery of Divine Wisdom, especially with regard to a young woman with political ambitions in an unremittingly patriarchal system, were much richer. Wisdom is not the monarch itself, but it is the essential quality that guides the state, as Solomon’s biblical request for wisdom from God attests. Wisdom-Sophia is the principle on which good government operates. The religious and political iconography and emblemography of the era also positions Sophia Alekseevna allegorically as an Compare, for example, S. M. Soloviev’s 19* century classic Istoriia Rossii s drevneishikh vremen, 29 vols. (1865-1869; reprint, 15 vols., Moscow: Sotsial’no-ekonomicheskoi literatury, 1959-1966), which devoted a whole chapter to Sophia in vol. 5, and David MacKenzie and Michael W. Curran, A History o f Russia, the Soviet Union, and Beyond (Belmont, Claifomia: Wadsworth Publishing, 1993). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 88 ideal of the essential qualities of rulership, and the protector of the young Russian tsars. Not surprisingly, there was an increase in the production of icons of Sophia by the Kremlin workshops under the regency, and Sophia, among other projects, endowed a chapel dedicated to St. Sophia in the church of Smolenskii Bogomater’ Cathedral in the important Novodevichii Monastery, a very traditional means of patronage and political statements.*”^ An excellent example of the typically baroque blending of religious and secular is the allegorical representation of the tsars and the regent. I. Shchirsky’s allegorical portrait of Tsars Ivan and Peter, the frontispiece to Archbishop Lazar Baranovich’s Grace and Truth, a pro-Sophia work, uses the baroque iconogpraphy of Sophia. The Tsars are represented by a double-headed eagle under the Sophian seven-pillared canopy, while above them is Christ, above whom is the Apocalyptic Woman-Sophia. “The implication was clear: the Holy Wisdom influences and protects the two under-aged tsars, just as their sister Sophia (the de facto ruler) was deemed to do in real life.’’* ”” Zelensky argues that Sophia Alekseeva intentionally exploited the liminality of her position as female and regent, wielding the power of the unquestionable traditionally masculine autocrat. As her ambition to rule with or instead of her younger male siblings grew, the virgin regent began to have herself portrayed with the attributes of royal authority, the scepter and orb, though without the royal crown. Eventually Lindsey Hughes, Sophia, Regent o f Russia 1657-1704 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 146. Hughes, 140. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 89 though, of course, Peter displaced her, and actively suppressed the imagery she had propagated, even while taking advantage of the alterations she had made in Russian political ideology. “[There is] a clear cormection between Princess Sofiia’s reliance on liminal imagery and Peter I’s political and cultural iconoclasm. ... Her active promotion of an image of governmental power justified through rationality and order, rather than patriarchal right and tradition, altered the semiotie eontent of Russian political discourse. All of Peter I’s reforms and official actions ... were justified in terms of politieal diseourse through reeourse to the paradigm of government by divine wisdom. In numerous engravings and portraits, the image of the Holy Spirit, enclosed in a Sophian eight-pointed star-shaped nimbus, is portrayed as Peter Ts souree of inspiration.”* ^ ^ Of eourse, this is not to say Peter would have done anything differently if his elder half-sister hadn’t conducted her campaign for power as she did. At any rate, he suppressed the eult of Sophia and Sophia iconography as he suppressed the supporters of his sister, sueh as the Streltsy, etc. Catherine the Great, though not faced without preeedent in her rule of Russia as a woman, shared with Sofiia Alekseevna at least two things: one was her name. She who ruled Russia as Catherine II was bom in Anhalt-Zerbst (Prussia) as Sophie Auguste Fredericke. While not much mention of her birth name is usually made, it does reinforce her sometimes rather tenuous connections with Sophia. Elizabeth Kristofovich Zelensky, ‘“ Sophia the Wisdom o f God’: the Function of Religious Imagery during the Regency of Sofiia Alekseevna of Muscovy,” in Women and Sovreignty, ed. Lousie Olga Fradenburg (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992), 205. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 90 Another thing she had in common with Sophia Alekseevna was that she was not the legitimate ruler. All the more reason for her to legitimate her rule through what Zelensky calls “liminal” means, using “enlightenment,” a variant on Sophia Alekseevna’s wisdom program, to bolster her claims and legitimate her rule. Also like Sophia Alekseevna, Catherine used Sophian elements in her program of imperial patronage. Catherine the great commissioned her favorite architect, Charles Cameron, to build a church dedicated to St. Sophia in the newly founded town of Sophia, about 25 kilometers south of Tsarskoe Selo, where many of the workers who built the palace lived. Although there is some question about the attribution of the church to Cameron, there is no doubt about the Church’s existence, and the church and the town’s name, and their cormection with the empress bear some mention. The church’s general plan, with one main and four subsidiary domes, has been cited as a possible influence on Ismailovskii and Preobrazhenskii cathedrals in St. Petersburg.'®* St. Sophia was the first church of this type in Russia outside of Moscow and laroslavl. The town was named at the height of the Russo-Turkish War, in 1780, when Catherine’s ambitions to re establish a Byzantine empire (perhaps with her Greek-speaking, Imperially-named grandson Constantine on the throne), were at least a possibility. Long the object of obscurity, the minor importance of the town and the church (nonetheless a large Anthony Cutler, “Recovering St. Sophia: Cameron, Catherine II, and the Idea o f Constantinople in Late Eighteenth-Century Russia,” in Henry A. Millon and Susan Scott Munshower, eds. An Archtiectural Progress in the Renaissance and Baroque: Sojourns In and Out o f Italy, 2 vols., Papers in Art History from the Pennsylvania State University, 7, pt. 2, (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Department of Art History, 1992), 888-909. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 91 and imposing structure) make this a peripheral gesture rather than a strong indication of Byzantine pretensions, though perhaps this is hindsight; St. Petersburg had started from less. At any rate, due in part to the efforts of female Russian rulers moving the basis for rulership away from patriachal primogeniture to a prinicple of ideas legiitmating rule. Enlightenment, as much as right, became the hallmark of the Russian Imperial throne in the 18* century. Enlightenment, though, was ideologically rooted in westem European thought rather than Russian cultural tradition. Nonetheless, Sophia remained a part of Russian culture, though the sources of Sophia shifted from the Byzantine East to the European West. Indeed, the more circuitous path of Sophia through Europe to Russia is the topic of the next chapter. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 92 Chapter Three Genealogy Two: The European Path o f Sophia ... sv. Premudrost’ nami rukovodsvuet I. P. Elagin' The previous chapter traced the origins of sophian thought from its Judaic origins through early Christianity. After a detour to treat the sophian theology and cosmogony of Christian Gnosticisms, the Byzantine and Russian reception of the Judeo-Christian heritage of Sophia was discussed in terms of architecture and iconography. Gnosticism excepted, these “orthodox” sources are manifestly not the only means by which Sophia and sophian themes and motifs found their way into the cultural consciousness of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Russian cultural elites. In fact, one might argue that the influence of these ^ Qtd. in P. P. Pekarskii, Dopolneniia k istorii masonstva v Rossii XVIll stoletiia (St. Petersburg, 1869), 112, qtd. in M. P. Odesskii, “Ob ‘otkrovennom’ i ‘prikovennom’: Sofiia v komediiakh V. I. Lukina,” Literaturnoe Obozrenie 3/4 (1994): 83. The similarities of Elagin’s proclamation to Goethe’s famous line, “Das Ewig-Weibliche Zieht uns hinan,” are noteworthy. Elagin (1725-1793) could have known only a long fragment of Goethe’s Faust published in 1790, but the full text of Part One was only published in 1808, and Part Two, with the above line, after Goethe’s death in 1832, decades after Elagin’s death. Goethe will be discussed in greater detail below. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 93 “eastern” and Christian materials form more of a background matrix rather than the primary material for the revival of Sophianism? This chapter will explore the theme of Wisdom in the Western European context, with the goal of explaining and emphasizing material relevant to the Russian reception of Sophia. The experience with the evolution of Wisdom and “her” iconography in the world of Christiana orientalia showed that the idea of personified feminine wisdom first contracted in the environment of developing Logos-Christology, anti-Arianism, and the decline of Christian Gnosticism, then broadened beyond the original bounds to include a more general concept of divine femininity, one that integrated elements of the cult of Mary within the cult of Wisdom. In Westem Europe, on the other hand, the contraction of interest in Sophia (or Sapientia, in Latin) continued. As others have noted,^ wisdom iconography, and indeed, a tradition of personified feminine Wisdom is almost entirely absent in Western European Christian culture. This does not mean, however, that there is no Sophia or sophian tradition in Westem Europe. As in the East, so in the West the Virgin Mary became a means of expressing feminine wisdom in a person. More so than in Byzantium and its satellites, esoteric and occult thought systems on the margins of Westem culture preserved sophian themes. The secularization of elite, intellectual culture and the decline of the ^ While Westem material may be the primary material for the Sophian revival, as will be argued below, I do not wish to claim that it is the impetus, which I believe comes from a rather different source; that, however, is the topic of chapter four (see below). ^ See among others, Fiene, “What is the Appearance of the Divine Sophia?” R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 94 influence of church authority and traditional Christianity on mainstream thought in early modem and modem Europe necessitates the extension of the idea of Sophia in this chapter to a broader notion of divine femininity. Only in this way will be able to notice the origins and content of threads of culture that converge to help produce the interest in Sophia and divine femininity that is the object of the present study. One purpose of this chapter will be to give the lie to the claim of one critic of occult thought systems that “Once codified they [occult sciences] retained their essential assumptions and methodology through the Middle Ages, into the Renaissance, and beyond - indeed, one of the most remarkable features of the occult tradition is its static nature, its resistance to change.”" ^ Change in esoteric and occult thought takes place alongside all the major trends in Westem European culture in the early modem period, and some scholars have argued for the recognition of these discourses’ influence on more mainstream elements of culture. Many of the cultural discourses in which Sophia occurs become marginalized in modem Westem European culture, denigrated as outdated and superstitious, dismissed as irrational or magical, or derided as conspiratorial and occult. Among these are Hermeticism and alchemy, religious mysticism - both Christian and Jewish, speculative freemasonry and its related movements. One somewhat * Brian Vickers, “On the Function o f Analogy in the Occult,” in Hermeticism and the Renaissance: Intellectual History and the Occult in Early Modern Europe, ed. Ingrid Merkel and Allen G. Debus (Washington: Folger Books, 1988), 265. Vickers’ goal is to distance contemporary science from its occult origins, the veracity of the former being assured by its independence from a “preformed interpretive model” based on the dubious conclusion that experimental scientific methodology is a “neutral,” non-interpretive model “derived from reality.” R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 95 “acceptable” manifestation of sophian themes that will be discussed below was speculative natural philosophy as it developed in the Romantic period, especially in what is now Germany. Mary, Sedes Sapientia By far the most common feminine wisdom motifs in Westem Europe is in representations of Mary. In her various iconographic and historical representations Mary has been associated with almost all the usual “archetypes” for women; mother, queen, virgin, daughter, goddess;^ as an exception, except in satiric or derogatory representations, her repertoire excludes the whore and demoness.^ Some of these iconographic elements and types have underlying wisdom motifs, just as some Marian imagery in the Byzantine and Russian traditions do. Some of this is of course a result of common theological and artistic heritage; others are virtually unique to Westem Christendom. Because of the development of an overt ^ Indeed this is how many books on Mary are organized. The bibliography on Mary is quite large. I have mainly used these texts, each with different approaches: Marina Warner, Alone o f All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult o f the Virgin Mary (New York; Vintage Books, 1976); Andrew Greeley, The Mary Myth: On the Femininity o f God (New York: Seabury Press, 1977); and Jaroslav Pelikan, Mary through the Centuries: Her Place in the History o f Culture (New Haven: Yale Unviersity Press, 1996); Hilda Graef, Mary: A History o f Doctrine and Devotion, 2 vols. (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1965); a new contribution is Klaus Schreiner, Maria: Leben, Legenden, Symbole (Munich: Beck, 2003). Warner’s work is typical of early 70s feminism, attacking the ideas both of motherhood and moral virtue as inherently oppressive; she finds Marian imagery and theology as inscribing an impossible and misogynist ideal. Greeley offers a more sympathetic counterbalance to Warner, but his sociological book wants to use Mary to access the feminine in God and is sometimes odd, as when he, a Catholic priest, writes a poem dedicated to Mary about ogling women gardening in bikinis. Pelikan evades gender politics as best he can, producing a more even but less challenging text. He tends to downplay Catholic-Protestant distinctions. ® Mary Magdalene, not Mary the mother o f Jesus, is associated with the prostitute, albeit reformed (based on the woman who anoints Jesus’ feet in Luke 7 and other apocryphal associations). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 96 Sophia iconography in the East, less attention was paid to general Marian iconography in the previous ehapter, but since Sophia iconography is rather more rare in the West, the Marian elements are more important bearers of sapiential motifs, so they will be aecorded more attention. Perhaps the most overt association of Mary with Wisdom is in the sedes sapientia, Latin for “seat/throne of wisdom.”^ The sedes sapientia usually refers to a formal, hieratic representation of Mary with Christ in her lap, often with his hand raised in benediction. The larger eategory of this eomposition, Mary holding Christ, though not usually explicitly titled sedes sapientia, is one of the most common images in Christian ieonography, with literally thousand of variations and examples.* The identifieation of Mary as the seat of Wisdom combines both typological commentary on the Old Testament King Solomon and his Throne, and New Testament Wisdom Christology. Christ, one of the Sons of David like Solomon, is not just wise, but Wisdom itself, as claimed in Paul’s first Letter to the Corinthians discussed above in Chapter Two.^ The association of Mary with this role dates to patristic sources, including among others St. Athanasius (269-373) and St. John of Damascus (675-749). In the West, the idea and representation proliferated in ^ Sedes sapientia is sometimes translated as ‘source o f wisdom,” but this does not seem quite correct, even if, as we saw in Russia, it indicates the strength of the association o f Mary with Wisdom. * This composition is also not imique to Christianity. For example, Isis, part o f the Egyptian and later occult wisdom tradition, was sometimes shown holding or nursing her son Osiris. ® Ilene Forsyth, The Throne o f Wisdom: Wood Sculptures o f the Madonna in Romanesque France (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972), 24. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 97 sermons, images, and sculptures, especially during the Romanesque period.**^ Although as in the Russian tradition. Wisdom is technically Christ, much attention was focused on Mary in the Romanesque era, including complex similes to the Church/Ecclesia and the throne of Solomon described in the Old Testament’s First Book of Kings.** Ilene Forsyth’s study of only wooden sculptures only in France only from 1100 to 1200 cites over 130 surviving examples. This particular appellation of Mary is also used as the patroness for institutions of learning, such as the College of Santa Sapienza in Rome and the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, whose seal shows an icon statue of Mary as sedes sapientia executed by N. De Bruyne in 1442.*^ To illustrate the form, we will take two famous medieval examples of the Virgin as sedes sapientia in Montserrat, Spain and Chartres, France. The Virgin of Montserrat is a 12th century Byzantine (?) sculpture. An example of a “Black Madoima,” her face and hands are dark. According to legend, the original statue was brought to Spain by St. Peter, who received it from St. Luke, who made the image from life. For an overview of the iconography and sermonolgy, see Forsyth, chap. 1. " See Forsyth, 24-25 and 1 Kings 10: 18-20. The throne is described as being made of ivory and gold, which provide two essential colors of Marian (and some Sophian) iconography, white and gold, which also conventionally represent purity and royalty. It bears noting that in this and other sedes sapientia images, instead of a book or orb, Mary is holding what looks like a caduceus, just like the Fiery Angel in the Novgorod Sophia icon. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 98 Figure 3.1 Virgin o f Montserrat, wood, Byzantine (?), 12* century The exquisite Virgin of Chartres is wood and also dates to the 12* century. The enduring power of these images through time can be illustrated by a famous votary of each: St. Ignatius Loyola left his sword and dagger at her feet after spending a night in prayer before the Virgin of Montserrat in 1522 and thereafter foimded the Jesuits. The Virgin of Chartres is the image American Henry Adams had in mind in his famous 1900 essay, “The Dynamo and the Virgin.” R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 99 Figure 3.2 Virgin of Chartres, wood, French, 12* century Though later Gothic and Renaissance madonnas show a shift in iconographic emphasis to a more human relationship between Mother and Child, and the rigorous and formal sedes sapientia pose becomes interpenetrated with a tone of motherhood rather than of majesty, the appellation remained. Although artistic styles and emphases changed, the pose remained popular, as evidenced by Bouguereau’s 1888 Madonna and Child, with citations of the Virgin of Chartres’ closed eyes and impenetrable mien and the four spherical fmials on the throne. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 100 Figure 3.3 Adolphe-William Bouguereau, Madonna and Child, oil on canvas, 1888. Once the title ‘Throne of Wisdom’ is firmly established, then the Incarnate Wisdom in the person of Christ can be removed and the underlying sapiential content can still be implied. So Mary appears childless as Wisdom, the patroness of learning, in the 20* century tympanum of the entrance to the gothic-revival library on the campus of Boston College in the United States. ' m m m .M' Figure 3.4 Virgin Mary as Wisdom, tympanum of Boston College Bapst Library, limestone, 1920s R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 101 The Throne of Wisdom is not the only Marian image associated with sapiential motifs. While the sedes sapientia received a more elaborate development in the West, it was certainly shared with the East. On the other hand, “One issue in the historical development of the doctrine of Mary ... in great measure confined to the Latin West [was] the [IJmmaculate [CJonception.”* ^ Since iconography and theology are closely linked, the Marian wisdom iconography associated with the Immaculate Conception is almost exclusively Westem European. The iconography of the Immaculate Conception compiles imagery from a variety of scriptural texts and doctrinal ideas taken as references to Mary’s purity and role in soteriology.^'^ The two most important are the Genesis account of a woman whose offspring would cmsh the serpent’s head and Revelation’s woman clothed with the sim, also called the apocalyptic woman. As the Immaculate Conception, Mary is pictured without Christ, usually standing on the moon with a crown of stars, and cmshing a serpent beneath her feet. “Since patristic times the figures of the Church and Wisdom and the Virgin were all encompassed ... as the pre-eminent type of the Pelikan, Mary Through the Centuries, 189. The finer points of the doctrines of nature, sin, and grace that inform the understanding o f the Immaculate Conception are beyond the scope and the needs of this study, but it bears pointing out that the Immaculate Conception refers to M ary’s conception without Original Sin, not the virginal conception of Christ, which is celebrated as the Annunciation (on March 25, exactly nine months prior to Christmas). Though Mary’s conception has been celebrated in the East and West from the patristic era, the understanding o f it as Immaculate, or without Original Sin, was a matter o f great theological debate, with the Dominican Order and St. Thomas Aquinas as well as St. Bernard of Clairvaux (not a Dominican) opposing it, and the Franciscan order and later the Jesuits in favor. The objections were primarily overcome by Duns Scotus’ position that Mary’s sinlessness put her in greater need of Christ’s saving grace, rather than less, the objection raised by Aquinas. For details see Pelikan, Mary, 189-200. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was pronounced a dogma of the Roman Catholic Church by Pope Pius IX in 1854. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 102 bride of God.”* ^ The Virgin as Immaculate Conception was all of these interpolated each with the others. One important clue to the sapiential content of the Immaculate Conception is its presence in the Western-influenced baroque icon of Sophia for St. Sophia in Kiev that was briefly discussed above in chapter two. Florovsky and Feine after him identify the central figure of Wisdom as a variant of the Immaculate Conception image that draws especially on the Apocalyptic Woman motifs.*^ Figure 3.5 Albrecht Durer, Apocalyptic Woman, fiom the Apocalypse series, engraving, 1498 Warner, Alone o f All Her Sex, 247. Florovsky, “O pochitanii Sofii, Premudrost’ Bozhii,” 498-99; see also Fiene, “What is the Appearance of Divine Sophia?” 464, fig. 18 and 469-471. Florovsky’s and Fiene’s contention that Westem influence is a debasement of Russian icon painting has more to do with nationalist- religious chauvinism than scholarship. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 103 In the Book of Revelation, the woman, who is juxtaposed with a serpent, is described as clothed with the sun, having the moon beneath her feet, and wearing a crown of twelve stars. In verse fourteen of chapter twelve, she is given eagles’ wings to flee the serpent. One famous European depiction is in Albrecht Durer’s engraving from the Apocalypse series, dated to 1498. Another, contemporary to the Kiev icon and also from the margins of European culture, is a product of the Quito school in Ecuador, which integrates all the Apocalyptic Woman imagery into a representation of the Immaculate Conception. A caution must be given, though: the Virgin with the moon, stars, and serpent are common, but representations of the Immaculate Conception with wings is actually rather rare. Figure 3.6 Quito School (Ecuador), Immaculate Conception, oil on canvas, 17* century In the Kiev icon. The Woman does not have a crown of twelve stars, but Florovsky notes a Tobolsk Sophia icon does feature such a crown (Florovsky, 498). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 104 The association of the Immaculate Conception with Wisdom, though, is not entirely dependent on the Apocalyptic Woman iconography. Florovsky also points out that the first reading on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 8) was Proverbs 8:22-30, the same wisdom text that played such a crucial role in the Christological controversies of Arianism and the Nicene councils, but in this context clearly oriented towards Mary as a composite of Wisdom, Church, and Mother of God. The passage remains in the commons of the Roman Church for the Virgin Mary.^^ The Feast was added to the official Roman calendar only in 1476, though Mary’s conception already had been celebrated for centuries. The affiliation between the Immaculate Conception and Old Testament personified Wisdom is illustrated by one of the earliest dated paintings of the Immaculate Conception, now in London’s National Gallery, by Carlo Crivelli, dated 1492, and lacking most of the conventional iconography.'^ It does, however, feature a scroll home by two angels on which is written “VT. INMENTE. DEI. ABINITIO. CONCEPTA. FVI. ITA. ET. FACTA. SYM.” (“As from the beginning I was conceived in the mind of God, so have 1 in like manner been conceived in the This and other sapiential passages had been part of the scriptural corpus associated with Mary at least since the early Middle Ages. Such iconography was lacking because it had yet to develop. Early iconography o f the Virgin’s conception used such motifs as the meeting o f Mary’s parents, Joachim and Anna; see Forsyth. In Crivelli’s painitng, there is no apocalyptic woman imagery, though Mary is being crowned, but this seems to have more in common with the Coronation of the Virgin composition than the Apocalyptic Woman. The painting also features a clear crystal vessel with lilies, a symbol of Mary’s purity and virginity; apparently crystal was a relatively new invention at the close o f the 15* century. The specific identity o f other attributes, such as the vase of mixed flowers and a variety of fruits and vegetables, remains obscure to me. A reproduction may be found in Martin Davies, Carlo Crivelli (London: National Gallery, 1972), 36; or http://www.nationalgallerv.org.uk/cgi- bin/WebObiects.dll/CollectionPublisher.woa/wa/work?searchString=crivelli&searchField=Artist%2 0Name&collectionName=&workNumber=NG906. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. flesh.”) . T h e first half recalls the claims of Hokhmah/Sophia in Proverbs and Sirach, and the second half obviously refers to the Virgin Mary. 105 Figure 3.7 Carlo Crivelli, Immaculate Conception, oil on canvas, 1492 Florovsky is the only commentator to mention this painting. Though he is right that this work directly relates Sophia and the Virgin Mary as the Immaculate Conception, he makes several errors in his discussion, including the inscription, the National Gallery catalog number, the spelling o f the painter’s name, and the title o f the painting; I have confumed the attribution, title, and inscription with the staff at the National Gallery. The inscription is not a direct quotation of Proverbs, as Florovsky claims. The National Gallery believes it relates to both Ecclesiasticus 24:14 in the Vulgate (Sirach 24:9 in the NAB - textual issues with Sirach have produced several different versifications) and Proverbs 8:22-24, both Old Testament passages that describe Sophia, but here modified to serve to identify Sophia with the Virgin Mary. It is unknown if Crivelli altered the verses himself or borrowed the inscription from an unknown source. I am grateful to Mairi Flamilton of the National Gallery for her assistance. For more on the early iconography and history o f the Immaculate Conception, see Mirella Levi D ’Ancona, The Iconography o f the Immaculate Conception in the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance (College Art Association of America, 1957). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 106 There are also other ieonographies and doctrines of the Virgin Mary which reinforce the attribution of Wisdom to the Virgin Mary, such as the Virgin Lactatiae, or nursing (see note below), or the Regina Coeli (Queen of Heaven), or the teaching of Mary as Mediatrix of All Graces, a role which, though not officially taught by the Roman Church, strongly echoes the mediating role of Sophia in ancient Hebrew cosmology. Gnosticism, and many esoteric and occult systems, both ancient and modem. What is clear from the discussion is that in the West many of the latent sapiential themes in patristic Christianity that did not develop, as in the East, into an independent iconography of Sophia accraed to the figure of the Virgin. Thus in the 10* through the 15* centuries and for centuries after in the Roman West Sophia was strongly identified with Mary, much as she was in Russia, in part at least under the influence of the Westem European Roman Catholic iconography of the Virgin Mary. Hermeticism and Kabala The figure at the head of Hermeticism, a movement important for us but significantly less so than Mary and Christianity in the history of Westem culture, is not identifiable as an historical person; he is more likely a composite legend. The term Hermeticism derives from the semi-mythical third entury B.C. figure known as Hermes Trismegistus (or “Thrice-great”). The supposed author of numerous ancient texts with similarities to some aspects of Christian thought, including Poimandres, Asclepius, and the famous Tabula Smaragdina (The Emerald R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. Tablet),H erm es is considered the founder of Hermeticism, an esoteric 107 philosophy so diluted and pluriform by our times that “hermeticism” is virtually a synonym for any esoteric or occult philosophy.A ntoine Faivre has identified a number of features common to both Hermetism and modem hermeticism, including a state of mind inclined towards eclecticism and a philosophical attitude that denies any absolute dualism and that integrates a “permanent reference to a mythical scenario of fall and regeneration. Though modern hermeticism is interpenetrated with many other esoteric doctrines, including gnosticism, one can, however, make some useful distinctions between Hermeticism on the one hand and Gnosticism on the other. While the dominant discourse of a fall and redemption and the existence of secret or hidden knowledge is common to both strains of thought, Hermeticism’s belief in the essential unity of the spiritual and material worlds is opposed to the ancient Gnostic traditions of material-spiritual dualism and anti-cosmism. The result is a very different attitude towards the common motif of fall and regeneration; rather than a fundamentally pessimistic attitude towards the human condition, Hermeticism takes See Brian P. Copenhaver, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a New English Translation with Notes and Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Following the usage o f scholars in this field such as Antoine Faivre and Frances W. Yates, 1 will use the following definitions: “Hermetica” is the corpus of texts written by or attributed to Hermes; “Hermetism” is the direct school of thought o f Hermes and the Hermetica; “Hermeticism” is the term for the various esoteric schools and practices based on the Hermetica and Hermetism; “hermeticism” is the term for the broadest range of Hermetic influence, essentially a synonym for the esoteric occult. Antoine Faivre, “The Children o f Hermes and the Science o f Man,” in Hermeticism and the Renaissance: Intellectual History and the Occult in Early Modern Europe, ed. Ingrid Merkel and Allen G. Debus (Washington: Folger Books, 1988), 424-435. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 108 a more measured position on the “fallen” state of the world. Hermeticism avers that evil is real and the world is flawed, but not insuperably so; God is revealed in it. “There is an erudite Hermetism ... which revolves entirely around the idea that man can discover the divine, on one hand because of theurgic practices, and on the other hand by establishing a mystical relationship between the universe and humanity. One of the basic concepts of Hermetism (Hermetica as well as modern Hermeticism) is that one can regain his divine essence, lost since the Fall, by renewing his links with the divine mens [mind, i.e., wisdom]. This aspect was strongly emphasized during the Renaissance.”^ ^ This kind of philosophical and cosmological disposition encouraged the elucidation of systems of correspondences, analogies, symbols, and contacts between the material and human worlds with the divine. In short, it made Hermeticism much more amenable to adaptation within a Christian worldview, which helped to preserve and perpetuate hermetic thought. Hermes was even considered by Lactantius, a third century patristic author, to be the most important pagan philosopher and anticipator of Christianity.^^ Hermes’ popularity revived in the Renaissance, especially after the Tabula Smaragdina v^as made available in Latin. Hermes was even popular and “Christian” enough to be the subject of a large pavement mosaic in 1488 by Giovanni de Stefano in the nave of the Cathedral Ibid., 427. httD://www.ritmanlibrarv.nl/hermgnos-22.htmI. 3/6/2003. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 109 of Siena.^^ Through Christianization and adaptation, Hermeticism remained a living, if somewhat marginal element in Westem Europe. This is true of Hermeticism generally and of the alchemical branch of Hermetic thought. While Hermeticism is a pagan system, Kabala is a Jewish mystical system. Though the origins of Kabala are in a sense as old as the Hebrew scriptures, since it is on them that Kabala is based, Kabala did not come into existence as it is currently known until the middle ages. The most important early text is the Book of Zohar, or Splendor, which dates to the end of the thirteenth century. The basic theological content of the Kabala is a description of the Godhead according to the ten sephiroth, each of which is a personified emanation of an aspect of Yahweh-God. There are of course other elements, such as the transmigration of souls, which are beyond our scope and of less importance to the history of sophian esotericism. The ten Sephiroth, some of which come in pairs (like Gnostic generative syzygies) includes two which are of particular interest to the topic at hand. Hokhmah, or Wisdom, is among the sephiroth, but instead of being feminine, as in Hebrew Scriptures, is usually considered masculine, and is paired with the feminine Binah, or Understanding. Hokhmah and Binah are the first two emanations from the first and highest sefira, Keter, or Crown. These three together are considered a Robert H. Hobart Cust, The Pavement Masters o f Siena 1369-1562 (London: George Bell and Sons, 1901). In addition to sibyls and biblical scenes, the cathedral pavement also boasts a composition recognized as an Allegory of Wisdom. See Gershom Scholem’s standard work. Origins o f the Kabbalah, ed. R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, trans. Allan Arkush, (1962; reprint, Princeton: Princeton University Press and the Jewish Publication Society, 1987). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 110 higher level than the succeeding seven. Besides Binah, only the lowest of the sephiroth, Malkuth, is also feminine. As the lowest sefirah, Malkuth is also called Shekinah, or Jewel,^^ and represents the immanence of God to the world. “She is the World-mother... a gateway and opening that serves both as a channel conducting efflux downwards and as a step on the ladder of ascent used in meditations on the divine mystery.”^ ® The role of Malkuth-Shekinah - connected closely with nature, mediating the immanence of a transcendent divine - echoes and anticipates other representations of Sophia. The progression of the sephiroth as a whole describe both a system of levels of ascent from the mundane to the divine, and the descending stages of the hierarchy of emanations of the divine. Unlike the Platonic hierarchy, they all exist within the divininity, not outside it. Furthermore, the relationships between the sephiroth are not simply linear, but instead, there are twenty-two connections, each of which is also given a alphebetic and numerological value, and many more ways of arranging and defining the interrelationships. The ten sephiroth have also been inscribed on a tree of life and on the body of man. Highly complex systems of numerology and correspondences, including gematria (the conversion of letters into numbers and back into words), astrology, and magic of all kinds, have been combined with the sephiroth of the Kabala, seeking insights into the nature of the cosmos and the means to manipulate it. 29 For more on the notion o f Shekinah, see Scholem, 160-182. Moshe Hallamish, An Introduction to the Kabbalah, trans. Ruth Bar-Ilan and Ora Wiskind-Elper (Albany; State University of New York Press, 1999), 138-9. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. Ill Orignially, the Kabala was probably “a devotional system, meditations upon the ten aspects of God.”^ * Later it developed into the esoteric interpretive tool that was used by occultists through European history. The Kabala was adapted by European Christian culture in the Renaissance.^^ Through the works of such figures as Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Paul Ricci, and Cornelius Agrippa, as well as many others less erudite and measured, it became one of the important bodies of esoteric thought in the formation of Renaissance and later occultism. It was adapted to fit into the Christian and Christian-hermetic tradition, provoking investigations of heresy by the Roman Church, informing the Renaissance hermetic revival, alchemy, and later, Protestant mysticism, as well as remaining an independent and purely Jewish movement. We now turn to alchemy. Alchemy is an ancient art, the predecessor of modem chemistry and much of modem medicine. The most obvious purpose of alchemy is to turn base substances into finer, more valuable ones by esoteric and secret methods. This is most commonly imderstood as the transmutation of lead or other common, “base” metals into silver, or better, gold, but there is a speculative, philosophical-esoteric element in alchemy that makes it more relevant to our purposes, both as a metaphorieal teehnique, i.e., theurgy, and in terms of its influence on other esoteric strains of thought. In spite of some adepts’ claims that alchemy originated with biblical or Greco-Roman mythological figures, or even in Colin Wilson, The Occult: A History (New York: Random House, 1971), 207. For an aging but competent study, see Joseph Leon Blau, The Christian Interpretation o f the Cabala in the Renaissance (1944; reprint. Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, 1965). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 112 India or China, the practice of alchemy is best dated to the early centuries of our era in Alexandria, evolving from the Hermetic school with many eclectic accretions. “Hermetic philosophy provided the conceptual foundation upon which alchemy built its idea of the universe. Having accepted the idea of the unity of matter, and therefore of the material and spiritual worlds, alchemists believed that it would be possible to identify the nature of all the elements through experimentation, and to bring them to transmutation.”^ ^ In the religious pluralism of the late antique world, alchemy flourished, only to die out as the Westem Roman empire disintegrated. Suppressed in Byzantium, the practice was essentially lost in Christendom, but preserved in the Islamic world by the Arabs and others, from whence Westem Europe ‘rediscovered’ it in the medieval era. Once reintroduced into medieval Europe, there is the accrual of various Christian elements, and the heyday of European alchemy began. Alchemy was popular in Europe from the twelfth century through the seventeenth centuries, when scientific chemistry began to supplant it in physical sciences and esotericism generally tumed to social and personal mysticisms. Alchemy seems to have been little known and little practiced in pre-Petrine Russia. There is some evidence of interest in lapidary magic on the part of some Russian monarchs, including Ivan IV and Alexei, but generally alchemy was not an element in Russian culture until knowledge of it was imported from the West, Andrea Aromatico, Alchemy, the Great Secret, trans. Jack Hawkes (New York: Harry N. Abrams), 37. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 113 especially through Masonic connections in the eighteenth century, which will be discussed below.^"* The goal of the alchemists was to find the Philosopher’s Stone (in Arabic “al-chimiya”?)^^ which would facilitate the transformation of base metals into gold. Alchemical experimentation was essentially an attempt at tracing the creative activity of God backwards, starting with the common materials of the universe and transforming them in an accelerated, though nonetheless arduous and difficult, secret process, into the “earlier” and “higher” stages until one arrived at the first material of creation, the “pure” substance, the Philosopher’s Stone. Much of the symbolism of alchemy is arcane, complex, and even contradictory, especially between times, places, and authors. No claims can be made here to completeness, especially given the variety of texts and the popularity of the alchemical arts (for avaricious as well as sincere and spiritual reasons, no doubt). The complex, indirect, and initiatic literary and artistic techniques also See W. F. Ryan, The Bathhouse at Midnight: Magic in Russia (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), especially chap. 13, 357-372. The only ancient alchemical text known in Russia was called Secret secretorum, or Tainykh tain, and probably was introduced from Lithuania in the sixteenth century. Ryan notes that there are only two modem works in Russian that deal with alchemy, and then with alchemy generally and not in Russia. The word alkhimiia ‘alchemy’ is attested in Russian manuscripts only from the seventeenth century; the earliest fixed date is 1663. See N. M. Shanskii, Etimologicheskii slovar’ russkogo iakyka (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo Universiteta, 1963), s.v. “Alkhimiia.” Such a late dates confirm the likelyhood of Westem sources. The etymology o f “alchemy” and the related “chemistry” is unclear, often creatively manipulated by esoterlcists to support a desired meaning. The word came into european usage from medieval Latin through Arabic, which may have dervied it from a Greek source, xftpiot, meaning “transmutation” and identified with “khem” the ancient Greek variant for the native name for Egypt. More likely is another, similar Greek root, xupeia, meaning “pouring” or “infusion,” derived from the root for “ juice” or “sap,” which belies early botanical pharmaceutical practices, later expanded to include chemical and alchemical ideas. See Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, s.v. “alchemy.” R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 114 preserved the secrecy of alchemy, since initiates alone could really understand the meanings behind the obscure and metaphorical instructions of alchemical texts. One of the most common obfuscatory strategies is the anthropomorphization of the alchemical processes. Many of the descriptions of alchemical processes echo Christian soteriology, such as death followed by resurrection, and human life cycles, such as birth, death, marriage and reproduction, with the attendant sexualization of elements “combining” and producing new, synthetic substances.^® These analogies, though, are not merely a secret code to deter dilettantes and inquisitors; in its Hermetic(-Christian) roots alchemy is analogically speculative, seeking to discover the correspondences between and plumb the philosophical harmonies of the natural world and the human and transcendent worlds. The knowledge required to discover the secrets of the Philosopher’s Stone is thus the knowledge of the secrets of creation. More important to the true alchemist than the transmutation of metals into gold, creation of the Stone would vindicate alchemical theory. The Stone would represent or make materially manifest the accurate discovery of the secrets of the creation and connections of the material-spiritual worlds, the secret, in other words, of God’s Wisdom. Etymologically, the “philosopher’s stone” is the “stone of the lover of wisdom,” For example, one of the three manifestoes of the legendary Christian Rosencreutz (the mythical founder of Rosicrucianism), published in 1616, was titled “The Chemical Wedding.” Scholars believe the true author to have been Johann Valentinus Andreae (1586-1654). See Christian Rosencreutz (sic), The Chemical Wedding o f Christian Rosenkreutz, trans. Joscelyn Godwin , ed. Adam McLean. London: Phanes Press, 1991. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 115 and nothing less than the possession of the wisdom of the eosmos is the alchemist’s goal; the purpose of alchemy is to find Divine Wisdom. Because it is the ‘end’ of the alchemical process rather than a part of it, Wisdom receives comparatively little attention in the large literature of alchemy, which tends to focus on the process, not its completion. Nonetheless, some examples will show how the conception of Sophia/Sapientia is placed. In a seventeenth century alchemical text attributed to the Prophetesse Mary, alchemy is the path to Wisdom: “‘All the Philosophers teach [these things], except the Vessel of Hermes, because it is divine, and of the Wisdom of the Lord has hidden from Nations: and they who are ignorant of it, know not the Regimen of Truth, because of their Ignorance of the Vessel of Hermes.’”^’ In a sixteenth century reprinting of the thirteenth century De nova logica of Raymond Lull, there is an illustration of the ladder of creation to he mounted by the intellect. A structure stands on the top step, labeled “God,” with the caption “Sapientia edificauit sibi domum”: the familiar Sophian text of Proverbs 9:1, “Wisdom has built herself a house. The Practise o f Mary the Prophetesse in the Alchymicall Art, 1 7 * '’ century, qtd. in Aromatico, 41. As far I have been unable to determine, this text exists only in manuscript form in the British Library (MS. Sloane 3641. 1. 'The Practice of Mary the Prophetesse, in the Alchymicall Art'). Also worth mention is the attribution to a female author. Alchemical texts attributed to women and female alchemists seem rather uncommon in the corpus o f alchemical materials. This legendary Mary was credited with many alchemical works, was sometimes said to be the sister o f Moses, and is sometimes called Maria the Jewess; quite interestingly, “she was often made into a fourth completing figure to a trio o f male names,” rather like the accretion of Sophia to Trinitarian thought. (C.A. Burland, The Arts o f the Alchemists [New York: Macmillan, 1967], 22). “The Vessel of Hermes” is the sealed vessel in which the alchemical process takes place and a metaphor for alchemy tout court ~ also the origin of the phrase “hermetic seal.” Raymond Lull, De nova logica, 1512. Lull (sometimes Lully) was a Catalan saint, mystic, and reputed alchemist. The trope o f the staircase as a metaphor for spiritual prgress or ascent is rather common, so it is going too far to make a cormection with a staircase labeled with virtues that appears in Sophia iconography in Russia, at the top of which stands Wisdom’s house of seven R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 116 n S . m I Figure 3.8 Illustration to Raymond Lull, De Nova Logica, woodcut, 16* century Though neither Prophetesse Mary nor Lull personify Wisdom as a feminine figure (though Lull’ s text uses a personifying Scripture passage), given the pillars. In any case, the Lull illustration has nine steps; however, in other representations o f the alchemical process there are seven steps, labeled with the alchemical transmutations, topped with representations o f the end o f the alchemical process. The King and Queen, sun and moon o f the ‘royal wedding’ stage flank, or are below a winged phoenix, the red figure of the successful final transmutation, which seems remarkably like the fiery winged angel of the Novgorod Sophia - which, however, lacks steps. Frankly, the parallels to Sophia iconography are rather remarkable, but a stretch, especially given the lack o f documented alchemical knowledge in medieval Russia. See illustrations in Alexander Roob, The Hermetic Museum: Alchemy and Mysticism, trans. Shaun Whiteside (London; Taschen, 1997), 286,299,300, 301. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 117 anthropomorphic metaphors preferred in alchemy and Hermeticism, it is not surprising that a personified, feminine Wisdom figure does appear in many alchemical-hermetic representations of the cosmos. Indeed, since one of the axioms of hermetie philosophy was the microcosmie and theocosmic nature of the human — in other words, the human being was an analogue to the cosmos, and to God as well — the actions of the cosmos could be described in simple, human terms. The system of correspondences includes substance, human, eosmos, and divinity. The cormections implied between man, the macrocosm, and God are nicely illustrated by the alchemical illustration below wherein the (macro)cosmos, represented significantly by a woman, is literally linked by “the ehains of nature” to man, inscribed in the lower material world, and to God above.^^ Identified as Macrocosmas, the cosmos-woman, whose sexual features are marked with alchemical symbols, making her body the representation of the eonsummated alchemical act, forms the link between the man and God, and in the visual space spans the gap from the sublunar space inhabited by the man to the supra-cosmic, outside of the universe, her head and halo within the gloriole of the transcendent and unknowable God, identified by the tetragammon and whose hand is visible (so the chain can be attached)."^® This mediating position, regardless of the exact Allen G. Debus, Man and Nature in the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 28. Illustration from Tobias Schutz, Harmonia macrocosmi cum microcosmi (1654). I am grateful to Adam McLean for his assistance with this image. It is reproduced in Debus, Man and Nature, 28. Also noteworthy in the illustration are the portraits to the left and right, respectively, o f Hermes Trismegistus and Paracelsus, whose importance will be discussed below, and the figures of the four R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 118 identification of the Woman, and similarities in function to Gnostic, Hebrew, and Christian Wisdom make this a clearly Sophian image. wm ////_ ,- « V % 1 ^ s » / Figure 3.9 Illustration to Tobias Schutz, Harmonia macrocosmi..., engraving, 1654 The spout of lactation from the woman’s sun-breast is a further link to Wisdom, also shared with iconography of the Virgin and images of Sophia- Philosophia. For example, Neumarm offers an illustration of Sophia suckling two Aristotelian elements and the three alchemical substances. The figure is copied from a similar, but more complex diagram by Robert Fludd which links identifies the Cosmos-woman as Virgin Nature who is “The soul of the world,’ the mediator between the divine spirit and material expression.” In Fludd’s version, the Caption reads “Integrae Natureie - Speculum Artisque imago” - “Mirror of all nature and symbol of art” (Roob, 501). See below for more on the Nature-Wisdom relationship.. The Woman is chained in Fludd’s illustration not to Man, but to the Ape o f Art. See Robert Fludd, Utriusque cosmi majoris scilicet et minoris metaphysica, physica atque technica historia, 2 vols. in 1 (Oppenheim: Typis Hieronymi Galleri, 1617-[1624]). A partial translation is available in Robert Fludd, The Origin and Structure o f the Cosmos: Being a Translation o f Books One and Two o f Tractate One from Volume One qfUtriusque cosmi historia o f Robert Fludd, trans. Patricia Tahil, intro. Adam McLean (Edinburgh: Magnum Opus Hermetic Soinceworks, 1982). This arrangement also recalls the positioning o f the Virgin Mary in Catholic thought as Mediatrix of All Graces. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. men from a medieval manuscript/* Wamer comments, “From her earliest 119 images onwards, the [MJother of God has been represented nursing her child. ... [T]he complex of symbolism that associated the Virgin with Wisdom and with the Church transformed her into the nursing mother of many penitents, visionaries, and saints.” The cosmos woman’s lactation parallels both Neumann’s Vatican miniature and an Armenian miniature with Sophia suckling Peter and Paul (!), though Wamer argues by the Renaissance the Virgin’s milk was more about mercy, intercession, and humility than wisdom, and was disappearing as an indecorous activity.'*^ One important observation that must be made about alchemy, though, is that the discernment and elucidation of the secrets of divine wisdom are not contingent on divine revelation; rather, the material universe is subject to manipulation through knowledge of the natural world through the intellect of a human. The philosopher’s stone is, in a word, magic, and alchemy is a theurgie practice, wherein the alchemist seeks knowledge that is originally proper only to God, and its exercise allows its possessor to manipulate the physical world. On the other hand, Faivre comments, “The belief in the possibility of a knowledge of God Philosophia - Sophia, detail from Italian(?), medieval, probably hermetic manuscript, MS. Pal. Lat. 1066., in the Vatican Library, reproduced in Neumann, The Great Mother, pi. 174. A similar scene with Sophia can be foimd in a late M* century illustration to the alchemical Aurora Consurgens reproduced in Roob, 239. He does not provide details for his source. Maria Wamer, Alone o f All Her Sex, 192, 198, and see also chap. 13. Wamer provides no citation for the Armenian manuscript she mentions. One could also mention the long non-Christian tradition o f goddesses suckling children and even votaries. On the topic of Sophia, Engelsman, in The Feminine Dimension o f the Divine describes a prayer by St. Clement o f Alexandria where Christ has breasts and his milk is the gift of Wisdom. See Engelsman, 143-144. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 120 through contemplation of the world ... is linked ... to another apparently opposite ... tendency, that God, unknowable, reveals himself through prayer and religion.”" * ^ To this end, the alchemist’s laboratory in Heinrich Khunrath’s revealingly titled sixteenth century Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae {The Amphitheater o f eternal wisdom) is divided equally into worship and work space."*"* Though the alchemist’s laboratory work as theurgie experimentation coexisted with prayer as meditative speeulation leading to revelation, vitiating the purely theurgie element of alchemy, the manipulation of the spiritual-material cosmos remained the end of this esoteric art. , „ j / _ r 1 . « . ,T Figure 3.10 Paullus van der Doort, Illustration to Heinrich Khunrath’s sapientiae aeternae, engraving, 1595. Faivre, “The Children o f Hermes,” 426. Heinrich Khunrath, Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae (Hamburg, 1595). “The four circular plates Khunrath designed for his Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae, were ... engraved by Paullus van der Doort. The drawing o f the laboratory is credited to architectural painter Hans Vredman de Vries.” http://www.librarv.wisc.edu/libraries/SpecialCollections/khunrath/thumbs.html. 28 September 2000. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 121 From Word to Nature To this point, we have been speaking of hermeticism and alchemy in generic, synchronic terms. Within the Western tradition, however, alchemy and hermeticism are not static monoliths. One of the most important turning points in the theory and practice of alchemy and hermeticism was in the Italian Renaissance. Prior to the changes prompted in part by the rediscovery of ancient texts previously unknown in the West, such as the Emerald Tablet, attributed to Hermes Trismegistus,"^^ in part by the humanistic impulses in culture, the alchemical approach to nature functioned in much the same way as theological speculation: in a textually oriented system. Nature, or the natural world, was paired with the Bible as “divinely authored books.”" ^ ^ This idea was rooted in a “Judeo-Christian metaphorics of creation” that emphasized “the creative power of God’s speech.”" '^ We have already noted that the Old Testament associates Wisdom as much as the Word with the creative agency, and the Word is equated with Wisdom in Philo, the Wisdom texts of the New Testament and Nicene Christianity. At any rate, this creative Wisdom-Word “transferred to human apprehension of nature the characteristics of textuality associated with the word and authorship, thus making Translated by Marcelino Ficino in the Medici court under the auspices of the Neo-Platonic Florentine Academy. James J. Bono, The Word o f God and the Languages o f Man: Interpreting Nature in Early Modern Science and Medicine, vol. 1 (Madison: University o f Wisconsin Press), 12. 47 Ibid., 11. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 122 nature a book whose secrets could best be contained in words properly framed in human languages.”" ^ * True Wisdom or “Knowledge of the Book of Nature was, in short, embedded in linguistic mediations. For both biblical criticism and natural philosophy ... The result was the construction of a ‘bookish’ culture whose activities centered upon texts, language and their interpretation.”" ^ ^ I f C' . Figure 3.11 Albrecht Durer, Philosophia, illustration to Conrad Celtis’ Amoves, woodcut, 1502 Ibid. ' Ibid., 12. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 123 One illuminating example of this comes as late as 1502 in the work of Albrecht Durer, often associated with the Northern Renaissance, who did a woodcut of Philosophia to accompany Conrad Celtis’ collection of poetry, Amores. The central figure is labeled Philosophia. The top inscription reads "The Greeks call me Sophia, the Romans Sapientia. The Egyptians and Chaldaeans invented me, the Greeks wrote me down, the Romans handed me down, the Germans expanded me." The lower inscription translates as "That which constitutes the essence of heaven, earth, air and water, and that which embraces the life of man, as well as that which the fiery God creates in the whole world; I, Philosophia, bear all in my breast."^® Roob’s explication interprets the three books as Plato’s division of philosophy into rational, moral, and natural, with five nails in the cover for the senses.^* Around Sophia is a quadripartite wreath with a head by each part; each is a system of correspondences of seasons, winds, elements, temperaments, and ages. The four medallions have portraits of philosophers who, in conjunction with the upper inscription, trace the history of philosophy: Ptolemy the Egypto-Chaldean, the Greek Plato, CiceroA^irgil for the Romans, and Albertus the German. Also obvious is the obelisk with nine stages (like Lull’s ladder) of the seven liberal arts (like seven pillars), along with a phi for philargica (sensuality) at the bottom and a Albrecht Durer, woodcut from Conrad Celtis, Amores (Nuremberg, 1502). Reproduced and translated in Roob, Alchemy and Mysticism, 507. The image is o f course black and white, but the description of a fiery, i.e., red, God behind Sophia is yet another incident o f fiery red being associated with Sophia, like the Novgorodian angel. Durer’s image also shares with the Novgorod composition the surroimding circle, the throne, the crown, the royal garment, and the caduceus. Roob, Alchemy and Mysticism, 507. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 124 theta for theorica (pure contemplation).^^ What is interesting for us is the focus on the textuality and authority. Philosophia, who bears all the natural world in her breast, is defined and mediated by words and texts. Wisdom is as much the discourse of the philosophers as the realities of the natural world, “that which constitutes the essence of the heaven, earth, air and water.” In the Renaissance, the project of alchemy, as many other scholarly practices, gradually ceased to be one of following or offering interpretive commentary, however learned or brilliant, on authoritative ancient text. The shift is perhaps best illustrated by the thought of Paracelsus. Bom in Switzerland as Phillipus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, he is thankfully known to history as Paracelsus and lived in the first half of the sixteenth century. Throughout his checkered and peripatetic career, he derided the existing educational and epistemological structures of higher teaming, including the relationship between Nature and the Word. Paracelsus’ relationship with ancient sources is complex. He both used and condemned the ancient Galenic-Aristotelian theory of medicine based on four humors that correspond to the four elements (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile, corresponding to earth, air, fire, and water.) Not content with Galen’s authority but drawing on ancient alchemical theory, Paracelsus believed that all matter is composed of three substances: mercury, sulphur, and salt, and that more effective medical treatments based on this theory could be chemically derived. The Per Dieter Wuttke, “Humanismus als integrative Kraft,” in Dazwischen: Kulturwissenschaft auf Warburgs Spuren, vol. 1 (Baden-Baden: Verlag Valentin Koemer, 1996), cited in Roob, 506. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 125 alterations he proposed to Galen laid the basis for post-Renaissance chemistry and medicine. His achievements as the founder of modem iatrochemistry have eamed him a place in the history of science, but Paracelsus also stands at the beginning of a new chapter in the history of European esotericism. Under the influence of humanism and the nascent turn towards what we now call science, the Swiss physician not only altered the nature of westem science and medicine, but also esotericism and mysticism. The distinction is somewhat artificial, though. The tasks of the scientist and the occultist are essentially the same for Paracelsus, for there is not yet any clear distinction between them in the thought of his age, and paradoxically — to us, at least — some of the impulses in Paracelsian thought that stimulate experimental science are the same that generate a new esoteric mysticism. To operate “within and on nature, fathoming signs and manipulating the hidden virtues of things. This Paracelsus hints is what the wise man does. His wisdom comes, not from his intellect, not from his ability to read texts as a slavish scholar. For a brief and insightful discussion of Paracelsian chemistry and medicine’s conflict with the Galenic school, see Allen G. Debus, Man and Nature, chapter 2. For example, in a quick perusal of Paracelsus’ Archidoxes o f Magic, one finds not only an expected condemnation of Galen, but also a description o f the production of the Philosopher’s Stone, a discussion of the proper procedure for exorcisms (though ceremonials and conjuring are decried), the recipe for a salve to treat a weapon, so the wound inflicted by it may be cured, and instructions for the proper shape and inscription to be made on a fork fashioned from a horseshoe, which, when buried under a running stream, will in nine days cure impotence (“disease o f the members o f Generation”) caused by witchcraft “so we ought to resist Diabolicall Arts by Nature, as Christ proposed ...” Paracelsus, The Archidoxes o f Magic, trans. R. Turner (London, 1656; reprint, London and New York: Askin Publishers and Samuel Weiser, 1975). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 126 but from his ability to transform himself into a new Adam through his direct engagement with nature. The nature of this direct engagement has consequences at least as far- reaching for esotericism as the rejection of humoral theory for medicine. Paracelsus oriented himself towards a Nature unmediated by human text and language in which the Creator’s Wisdom can be discerned, studied, learned, explored, and used, defining the relationships between nature, man, and divinity in a doctrine of “signatures.” The Middle Ages’ “bookishness” was not abandoned, though — it remains the central image. As Bono explains, “Paracelsus’ nature itself is a ‘book,’ every page of which bears the unmistakable imprint - signatures - of the divine. No mere metaphor, Paracelsus’ trope signifies a profound engagement with the verbutn Dei and with the problem of how humans may gain access to it.”^ * ’ In the wake of Paracelsus, a strand of thought begins in which the ‘sacred’ texts of Renaissance and post-Renaissance culture become not Scripture and the natural world as mediated through the texts of ancient authority, but Scripture and the natural world itself. This shift will become crucially important. “What is radical and iconoclastic about Paracelsus [is his] radical turn toward nature as text.”^ ^ What we get is a new philosophy of Nature, and Nature’s Wisdom, ’ Bono, The Word o f God, 131. ’ Ibid., 129. "ibid., 30-31. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 127 equivalent to Divine Wisdom, is its object. In other words, Divine Wisdom could be seen as immanent in Nature.^* If one looks again at Sehutz’s diagram and compares the Cosmos-Woman to Durer’s woodcut of Philosophia, the nature of the change is clear. Schutz’s Sophia is naked and “natural,” standing, not seated. In Durer’s woodcut, even Sophia’s throne is inscribed with words, and she holds books. In Schutz, the eosmos is her throne, and its spheres the only inscriptions/text. There are still ‘philosophers,’ but they are of a very different kind, representing a different understanding of the history of thought. It seems they no longer mediate as much as they observe. Philosophia, in spite of her claim to contain the essences of nature within her, was created by the texts. Nature, the new object of study, is not the creation of the scholars. In Schutz’s illustration, Hermes pronounces his famous dictum from the Emerald Tablet, “As above, so below,” and Paracelsus says, “Separate and bring to ripeness. Boehme, Swedenborg, and Northern European Sapiential Speculation In northern Europe in the wake of the spread of Protestantism, the cult of Mary was derogated and in many places Marian shrines were desecrated and The immanence of Wisdom/Sophia in Nature helps strengthen the identification of Macrocosm/Virgin Nature in Fludd and Schutz’s illustrations with an underlying Wisdom motif (see above). The Latin for Hermes’ quotation reads, “Quod est superius, est sicut id quod est inferius,” and for Paracelsus, “Separate et ad maturitatem perducite.” Paracelsus’ comment is an alchemical mantra. My thanks to Adam McLean for his assistance with reading this engraving. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 128 destroyed. Without going so far as to claim that the absence of Mary in Protestant Europe created a “need” for a feminine divinity or divine figure, it is at least true that the feminine sapiential themes of the Bible that had ostensibly become the sole authority in Protestant Christianity could no longer effectively be expressed through the discredited figure of the Mother of G od.^** Whether or not there is a causal relationship, currents in German and Scandinavian Lutheran mystic thought brought Sophia explicitly to the center of speculative esoteric theology, incorporating many of the trends in European esotericism that we have discussed to this point: Mariology, Kabala, and the Paracelsian renaissanee. There were many mystics and much interest in pietistie mysticism in Protestant eountries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; two of the leading figures of this trend are Jacob Boehme and Emmanuel Swedenborg, both of whom also made important contributions to the European history of personified feminine Wisdom. Boehme and Behmenism are ehronologically first, and helped lay the basis for other mystical doctrines, including Swedenborgianism. “Behmenism was also deeply “ One o f measures taken by the Protestant authorities included the eventual revision of the historical canon o f the Bible. The process removed some of the sapiential books (including Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus/Sirach), which vitiated the sapiential content o f the Protestant canon. It has been proposed that the exclusion of some sapiential literature and the similarities o f that which was retained in form and content to that which was excluded further contributed to some suspicion of the remaining books, which would of course include the passages of feminine wisdom, and consequently caused the relative neglect o f this material in modem Protestant scholarship. Gender feminists and other critics also critique Protestant Christianity for its dominatingly masculine configuration of the divinity, though to be fair, the Catholic (or Orthodox) cult o f Mary doesn’t fare much better in such criticism. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 129 rooted in alchemy and Neoplatonic-Hermetic tradition into which alchemy merged.”® ^ Boehme was bom in 1575 in Silesia, and worked as a cobbler. In 1600 he had an epiphany while contemplating the sun reflecting off a pewter vessel; he believed he had understood the mystery of the universe. Boehme “profited much” from subsequent travel and friends “who knew much about the esoteric and occult,” for Boehme himself had little formal education.^^ He began publishing in 1610, and rapidly roused the ire of his local pastor and other Lutheran conservatives. Boehme was not the only thinker in “the spiritualist tradition in German Reformation thought”^ ^ who antagonized developing Lutheran orthodoxy. “Above all this tradition bequeathed to him a sense of the immanence of God, and an understanding of redemption as a turning inwards towards God through the renunciation of self-will.”^ '^ There is not time or space here to trace the development of Boehme’s thought, but a brief summary is needed, especially with respect to the issue of Sophia, since it plays an important part in Boehme’s simultaneously original and synthetic thought. It wasn’t the traditions he used, such as hermeticism or Kabala, that made Boehme unique, but how he adapted those traditions and their thought on Sophia. As Gibbons writes, “Boehme’s B. J. Gibbons, Gender in Mystical and Occult Thought: Behmensim and its Development in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 74. ® Jacob Boehme, The Way to Christ, trans. and intro. Peter Erb (New York: Paulist Press, 1978). Gibbons, Gender, 89. Ibid., 89. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 130 spiritualism was constructed within the framework of a distinctive metaphysics[, and] his thought on gender is inextricable from this metaphysics.”^ ^ Boehme’s divine Being has three principles that correspond to the persons of the Christian Trinity. Each principle has a property that illustrates or defines its relationship to the others. The First Principle or Person is the Ungrund, or Abyss, it corresponds to the Father and is marked as Fire or Darkness.®^ The Ungrund is utterly unknowable to humanity - indeed, it can not even know or recognize itself except by coming into the presence of the Light, the characteristic of the Second Principle, or the Son, by which also God is revealed to the World. The Third Principle is the combination of the Darkness and the Light, which corresponds to the Holy Spirit of the Christian Trinity. The metaphysical model of generation Boehme proposes is innovative and original. As Gibbons notes, “Boehme has added a dynamic aspect to the traditional Trinitarianism; he has made it into a doctrine of dialectical progress.”® ^ Some scholars claim Hegel’s famous dialectical method has a significant debt to Boehme; in fact, the Romantics and Idealists took “ Ibid. The idea of the Godhead as Abyss (or not-ground) is borrowed from the Ein-Soph o f Kabala. When Boehme writes about fire he doesn’t apparently mean light and heat, which are properties of fire, but the essence o f fire, which he associates with wrath, but also interestingly with a condition of absolute stasis and self-sufficiency. Part of the explanation might lie in the traditional properties of hell: Boehme sees the rebellion of Lucifer (whose name of course means Tight-bearer’) as an attempt to acquire more light or beauty than that with which he was created by repeating the process of the Ungrund’s self-recognition in coming from the fire and darkness into the light. Lucifer’s failure results in his isolation in the darkness and fire of hell, which shares these properties with the Ungrund’s condition, though differs in the Ungrund’s absolute self-sufficiency, which, of course, Satan lacks. See Pierre Deghaye, “Jacob Boehme and His Followers,” in Modem Esoteric Spirituality, ed. Antoine Faivre and Jacob Needleman (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 210-247. Gibbons, Gender, 90. O f course, both the ancient Gnostics and the Kabbalists construct cosmogonic hierarchies from generative pairs. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyrighf owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 131 much from the earlier esoteric tradition, but this will be discussed in more detail below. Insights into Trinitarian theology were not Boehme’s only contribution; perhaps more importantly for our purposes, “Boehme introduces an important new element to the godhead, the Virgin Wisdom, or Sophia.”^ * Of course, Sophia is certainly not “new,” but Boehme’s revival of a personal feminine wisdom is significant. Boehme is the first philosopher we have met who puts Sophia directly in the center of the speculative universe, the primary mediatrix and revelatrix of the Godhead.^^ She is the “visibility” of God,^° or the form of those functions of the Trinity which allow creation, mediation, and revelation. Boehme’s Sophia, like most speculative Sophias before and after, especially those that attempt to integrate themselves with Christian Trinitarianism, is intricate, polyvalent, and complex. The Virgin Sophia is not a person in the Trinity, but rather an emanation of God’s will and desire to create something that will reflect love back of its own will. Sophia is God’s imagination, the plan for creation, a perfect ‘mirror’ or reflection of God’s perfection. “Boehme designates this mirror as God’s visibility, or as the 68 Ibid. Given the closeness o f the ties of the Virgin Mary to Sophian scripture (see above), the closeness of Boehme’s Virgin Sophia to the Virgin Mary is particularly strong. Boehme’s Protestant critics and followers, like Martensen, would likely be loathe to explore this connection to the fullest extent. Martensen even goes out o f his way to willfully ignore Boehme’s own writings to claim that Boehme did not recognize Sophia as a person. See Hans L. Martensen, Jacob Boehme: Studies in His Life and Teaching, trans. T. Rhys Evans, revised by Stephen Hobhouse (1885; reprint. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949). Martensen was a friend and teacher of Soren Kirkegaard until his (Martensen’s) appointment as Primate Bishop o f Denmark. Kirkegaard’s deep objections to the institutional chinch ended their relationship. Martensen, Jacob Boehme, 41. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyrighf owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 132 eternal Wisdom, the eternal Idea. And he also calls this idea a Maiden [Virgin] ... the eternal idea, or Sophia (Wisdom) is described as a Maiden because it engenders nothing, but only receives and reflects the image. Although co-etemal with God, it is not God of God but simply the friend of God.”^ * In the ‘mirror’ of Sophia, God beholds a sevenfold cycle. Boehme describes the septipartite cycle telically and temporally, though he also avers that its reality and God’s perception of it are atemporal and eternal. Like the dialectical process of the Trinity, the seven stages or properties which Boehme labels ‘fountain-spirits’ also have a dynamic, dialectical movement.’^ In brief, they are as follows: the first, a property of harshness or contraction - God’s conception of self - interacts with the second property of attraction or expansion - the Godhead’s desire - to produce in a kind of incomplete and imresolved rotary movement, a third property of anguish or dread. The initial dialectical movement of the first three is reversed in the fourth property, a flash of spiritual fire or light, the basis of sensitive and intellectual life, as it illuminates and orders the darkness and fire by its will. The fifth property, a love-desire that arises out of the flash, is “a property Ibid. One might also note how Martensen relies on the language of the Arian heresy and the anti- Arian Coxincil of Nicea to try to show how Boehme’s idea coincides with and differs from the traditional interpretation of Christ as Logos-Sophia. The Arians disputed what was meant by Christ- Sophia’s being ‘co-etemaT with God, being an ‘image’ of God rather than truly God incarnate, based in part on Sophian passages in Proverbs. ‘God of God’ is a formulation from the Nicene Creed. For more see chapter two. The formulation ‘friend o f God’ seems dissatisfyingly vague and anything but ‘simple’ to me (and not, to my knowledge, part of the Arian-Nicene dispute). In the following description 1 have relied heavily on Gibbons, Gender, 89-92; Jacob Boehme, The Way to Christ, trans. and intro. Peter Erb (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 17-21; and Martensen, Jacob Boehme, 46-51. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 133 of [concentration or] coherence pertaining to all the qualities”^ ^ that counteracts individualism. This in turn generates a sixth property of eomprehensibility or the power of speech, and the seventh and final property is the summation and expression of the principles, or speeeh itself. There is also a system of correspondences to the Principles or the persons of the Trinity, which is not surprising since these seven sophian reflections of Virgin Wisdom form a perfect image of the triune God. The first four pertain to the first principle, the Ungrund/God the Father; the next two pertain to the Light/Son, love, the last to the Spirit, through which God is made manifest in creation. Boehme’s Sophia also shares with much Sophian speculation a material/spiritual duality in the image of Sophia. The seven fountain-spirits of wisdom “form Eternal Nature, the material counterpart of the Virgin Wisdom.”^ ^ Here we see again echoes of the dualistic ruminations of the Gnostics and perhaps a herald of the thought of the German Romantics and Idealists, and perhaps even Soloviev, too. As in Gnostic and Catholic theology, divine wisdom plays an important role in both the creation and mediation-salvation doctrines of Boehme’s Protestant Lutheran mysticism. In the Fall (both of Satan and of Adam), the harmony of Eternal Nature in Earthly Nature is disrupted. “It is only in the created world that the eternal harmony is disrupted. It is this broken harmony which differentiates the Gibbons, Gender, 90. As an added note about the influence o f alchemy, Boehme associated the first three properties with the salt, mercury, and sulphur, respectively, of Paracelsian alchemical theory. Gibbons, Gender, 90. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 134 creation, giving everything its own ‘signature’ or characteristic in accordance with whichever quality is dominant.”^ ^ While Paracelsus theorized about and advocated the practical manipulation o f ‘signatures’ observable in nature, curing disease by restoring certain natural harmonies or alchemically restoring a sample of matter to perfect harmony (viz., the Philosopher’s Stone), Boehme sought speculative knowledge of the origins of natural signatures in a contemplation of the divine, in other words, theosophy.^^ Boehme’s theosophy, according to Deghaye, is essentially “a theology of revelation.”^ * While it is not Wisdom that creates materially, God first imagines and reveals his works in his Wisdom, “then through divine imagination [which is also Wisdom,] these works, once brought into existence by the Word, are called to perfection.”^ ^ The Virgin Sophia forms a critical link in the communion between God and Man. God is present in Divine Wisdom, which is present in Eternal Nature, which is present in Earthly Nature. Without the Virgin Sophia, God is essentially unrevealed, and neither could the universe exist, nor could the humans within it, once created and then fallen, have any hope of salvation without her. Martensen says it this way: “Wisdom, Sophia, thrills with rapture and yearns for the manifestation of the marvels of Wisdom, although she herself is all these Ibid., 91. Not Theosophy in the same sense as Blavatskaia’s spiritualist revival movement, but theosophy in contrast to theology or philosophy. Deghaye, “Jacob Boehme,” 212. ™ Ibid., 224. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 135 marvels. In this union of the joy of contemplation and of desire, of imagination and desire, the eternal nature hidden in God is aroused, and now comes forward as the contrast or Contrarium of the Idea. The generation of the eternal Nature depends upon the magic of the desire, and is the power of summoning non existence into existence, without the use of material means.”^ ^ In other words, Boehme’s Wisdom is the Divine imagination, the Divine desire to make this imagination manifest, the perfect harmony of creation made in accordance with Divine imagination and will. The perfection of Eternal Nature is broken through the Fall. Boehme’s reading of the Fall of Humanity is different and interesting. Unlike most medieval and early modem readings of the Fall which attribute the event to the consumption of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil described in Genesis and fault Eve for being both weak in taking the fmit and using her sexuality to seduce Adam into eating as well, or Gnostic readings which interpret the serpent as an heroic bringer of knowledge, Boehme believed the Fall occurred in Adam’s falling asleep. Prior to his sleep he was an androgynous virgin, graced with the indwelling of the Virgin Sophia. In his sleep he contemplates his material, earthly body, and it is from this that the Fall results. When he wakes up, Sophia has left him and Eve has been separated from his flesh. The sexes are divided, indicative of the division and disharmony of Nature from Eternal Nature and God’s Wisdom. Thus for Boehme, 80 Martensen, Jacob Boehme, 43, emphasis original. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 136 sexual distinction, not the concupiscence linked with female gender, is the symbol of humanity’s Fall. This doesn’t exonerate sexual concupiscence, though: sexual union is an expression of the desire of the restoration to androgyny, but because it is rooted in the disharmony of the fall, it is flawed. Boehme’s Virgin Sophia is not only disembodied, but her spiritual gender is unrelated directly to sexual guilt in the Fall or real women. “Any linking of Sophia with an earthly Eve would have horrified Boehme. For [him] it was the height of impiety.”*' Boehme had substantial influence on theologians, mystics, philosophers, and others who came after him. One peculiar tale is that of Quirinius Kuhlmann, who married Boehme’s ideas with millenarianism and sought to initiate the reign of Christ and establish a cult of Sophia. He took his chiliastic teachings to Muscovy, where he became something of a celebrity until he, along with his adherents, was burned at the stake for freethinking in 1689, ending the first foray of Behmenism into Russia. The presence, however, of the German community in Russia, including Lutheran Pietists, who were receptive to Boehme’s ideas, spread Boehme’s religious thought in Russia. Connections between Germany and Russia in the eighteenth century made for the easier spread of German mysticism, even in Orthodox seminaries and academies.*^ Other noteworthy votaries in Westem Europe include Monsieur Poiret and Madame Guyon, famous for promoting heretical quietism in France, and another Frenchwoman, Antoinette Bourignon, Deghaye, “Jacob Boehme,” 230. See Zdenek V. David, “The Influence of Jacob Boehme on Russian Religious Thought,” Slavic Review 21, no. 1 (1962): 43-64. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 137 who developed a Behmenist misanthropic feminine mysticism that lead her to believe she was the Virgin at the end of time Boehme had predicted.*^ More ‘pure’ Behmenism was especially popular in England, lead by John Pordage and Jane Lead and manifested in the Philadelphian Society.*"^ Sincerus Renatus, the nom de plume of Samuel Richter, active in the 1740’s, integrated Boehme and Paracelsus into the hermetic sapiential tradition which was being propagated in Rosicrucian and Masonic circles. In France Louis- Claude de Saint-Martin, founder of occult Masonic Saint-Martinism translated Boehme (into French?) and popularized him among the Templar Masons. A series of German thinkers parallel to the rational Enlightenment were influenced by Boehme: Gottfried Arnold, Friedrich Oetinger (who promoted ‘sacred’ over ‘profane’ philosophy), Johann Michel Hahn (who practiced “theology in terms of chemistry”), and in the early Romantic era, Franz von Baader, who distinguished between Boehme, whose system he preferred, and the emerging Idealism- Romanticism of Hegel and Schelling, to which we shall shortly tum.^^ If Boehme was a modest shoemaker, unindicated as a mystical thinker of lasting influence, then Swedenborg might have been bred for such a role. The son of a Lutheran bishop, he was educated in Sweden’s Uppsala University and abroad. In this she joins the ranks of many women who have believed themselves singular prophets of Sophia, or Sophia herself incarnate. See chapter seven. See Gibbons, Gender, chaps. 5-7. This brief review recapitulates Deghaye, 229-242. The many strands o f mystical thought are evidence of the complexity of the many lines of transmission for sophian thought, a fully detailed investigation of which is beyond the scope of this study. Von Baader was also popular among Russian religious thinkers o f the early twentieth century. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 138 and turned his well-trained and wide-ranging rational and religious intellect to no lesser tasks than the operations of the universe and their underlying causes. An engineer and philosopher, theologian and mathematician, mystic, seer, and occultist, Swedenborg had many interests and talents. Swedenborg’s approach to Wisdom avoids many of the diffieulties eneountered by many of the Christian Sophian thinkers from the early patristic period to the present. They all encounter some difficulties incorporating and reconciling the feminine figure of the divine. Wisdom, with the Christian Trinity: Father, Son, and Spirit. Most Christian thinkers add on Sophia, but are careful to give her a subordinate role to avoid the accusation of positing a Quatemity instead of a Trinity. Swedenborg does not explicitly abandon the Trinitarian orthodoxy of Lutheran Protestant Christianity, but argues for a unity in the essence of the Deity that is only bifurcated. There is no attempt by Swedenborg to make Wisdom one of the Trinity’s persons nor a separate person, claiming it is more rightly understood as an impersonal principle. For Swedenborg the Trinitarian God is composed of two essential qualities. Divine Wisdom and Divine Love. This binary scheme corresponds to human gender. Wisdom, the Divine Feminine, is a full and necessary part of God, complemented by Love, a Divine Masculine. The principle of correspondences, common in esoteric systems, dictates that these principles of Wisdom and Love have actual corollaries in humanity. Thus wisdom is feminine and love is masculine, an interesting inversion of the more common masculine-intellect/feminine-emotion association. The theology of gender R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 139 that Swedenborg subsequently develops argues that conjugal relationships -- by which he means marital — best reflect the divine perfection, a position also later held by Soloviev, but for different reasons. It must be mentioned that conjugality was for Swedenborg a principally spiritual connection, echoing perhaps Boehme’s idea of spiritual marriage, except that it was between corresponding levels of spiritual “equals,” viz., divine masculine Love with divine feminine Wisdom or human male and human female rather than between human and divine. It should also be pointed out that while Swedenborg celebrated sexual union, unlike Boehme and most of his followers, he was not attacking conventional moral standards; adulterous or casual conjugality Swedenborg calls “scortatory” and “virtually synonymous with hell.”* ^ Though Swedenborg was a devout Lutheran, he has some very unconventional points in his theology that eventually lead to accusations of heresy, and caused his followers to found a separate church.*^ Swedenborg thought that there are three Gods, even though they are one, not one God in three persons. He thought the Trinity didn’t come into being until the Incamation. He thought Mary “stopped” being the Mother of God after the Resurrection. He thought there were people on other planets in the solar system. He rejects the need for Christ to atone for humanity’s sins as petty and below God, which carries forward a current from Gibbons, Spirituality and the Occult: From the Reniassance to the Modern Age (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 202. Swedenborg did, however, make allowances for prostitution and other behaviors at odds with his strict moral posture. 87 The church still exists today as the Church o f the New Jerusalem; among its more famous members was Helen Keller. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 140 Boehme that re-evaluates traditional thought on evil and darkness. However, while Boehme integrates them into the mystery of God, Swedenborg begins the denial of spiritual evil’s clear opposition to absolute good. Perhaps most provocative (and heterodox) of all, he thought there are two “advents” or Christian revelations: the first is the Incamation of Christ and his teaching and sacrifice. The second is not an apocalyptic retum of Christ, but the Word coming through the mind of a man in an age in which humanity is sufficiently advanced. In an astounding example of Enlightenment and personal hubris, Swedenborg thinks the age is his own and the man through whose mind and writings God is revealed is he himself, Emmanuel Swedenborg. Many other mystics believed they had particular insights that provide access to otherwise hidden spiritual truths, but few have claimed to have the exclusive revelatory authority of God Himself. Heresy and hubris notwithstanding, Swedenborg’s mysticism was powerful because it marks a shift in emphasis that is a new step in the evolution of esoteric thought. If the old dictum of correspondences had been, ‘As above, so below,’ Swedenborg could be said to have subtly .shifted the order to ‘As below, so above.’ He claimed to be clairvoyant, and confirmed the correspondences between earth and heaven by frequently visiting the empyrean. Far from being ineffable or incomprehensible, Swedenborg reported that it was much more like a perfected life on earth, including perfected interpersonal relations and even perfected conjugality.^^ He is credited with being among the first to practice seances and to Gibbons, Spirituality and the Occult, 84-85. At least in the lowest sphere o f heaven, of which there are three, according to Swedenborg. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 141 function as a spiritual medium in the modem sense, and to channel spiritual visitations. Swedenborg was far from the first to claim to discern the transcendental from the mundane, but the conception of the divine as so clearly similar to the quotidian is new. Swedenborg’s visions and writings integrated much of the preceding esoteric tradition, but transformed the higher world into an esoteric but essentially rational, comprehensible, and satisfyingly empirical higher sphere - comforting in that one’s home, spouse (conjugality is central for Swedenborg), as well as one’s identity, one’s self, would all be both preserved and perfected. As the discursive products of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment came to dominate European intellectual life, “Swedenborg reformed the occult philosophy and made it palatable to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sensibilities”^ ^ that were much less willing to grapple with a world that defied their understanding and control; in doing so, he also advanced the practice of the doctrine of correspondences to a new level. While S wedenborg does not have much to add to the discussion of a personified divine feminine Wisdom, he does have an important contribution to make to the direction and orientation of esoteric and occult thought, insofar as he represents a shift that (re-)introduces a focus on “real” women into the discourse on Sophia. He shifts the locus of the discussion from “heaven” to earth. Gibbons very succinctly distills the contrast between Boehme and Swedenborg thus: “Compared with Behmenism, Swedenborgianism represents a shift from preoccupation with R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 142 the femininity of the divine to a concern with the divinity of the feminine. In Swedenborg’s writings, occult speculation on gender has culminated in the Romantic notion of women as inherently chaste and spiritually uplifting.”^ '^ In a way, the Paraclesian shifting from word as divine to nature as divine now begins to be linked with an understanding of woman as divine.^' This imderstanding would grow and flourish in the nineteenth century, popularized as the twin obsessions of Romanticism, an ecstatic and (re-)sacralized nature and passionate love with an ideal(ized) woman, expressed as the primary subjects of a creative genius’ imagination. Of course, Swedenborg is not the only source of this ideological position which came to underlay so much of nineteenth century thought on gender and spirituality. Still, it is not until the end of the century when the nascent Modernist movement begins to question the conception of women initiated by the Swedenborgian re-envisioning of the relationship between femininity and divinity. In large part the influx of this construct of gender in nineteenth century Russia, its reinterpretation in the Russian context, and the Modernist destabilization and response to it forms the subject of the next chapter. However, we first must see how these ideas make their way to Russia, and what changes they undergo in the process. Much of the explicitly occult and esoteric heritage of the West was Ibid., 204. Though for much of European elite culture, Nature had lost its esoteric divinity in the Enlightenment, being little more than the “clockwork” of a deistic Creator. The concern with the connection of divinity and nature was to be restored, albeit in altered form, by Romanticism. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 143 unknown or untolerated in Russia (witness Kuhlmann’s fate as late as 1689) until it was transmitted into Russia by the rapid development and expansion of outwardly secular, implicitly Christian, and undeniably elite-cultural Freemasonry in the 18*'’ century. Freemasonry in Russia Although Freemasonry traces it legendary origins to medieval cathedral- building guilds, or even the stoneworkers who built Solomon’s temple or the Egyptian pyramids. Freemasonry as a modem movement began in 1717 in London.^^ It rapidly spread across Europe, quickly reaching Russia, possibly as early as the 1730’s, and certainly by the 1750’s. Peter’s reorientation of Russia toward Europe had made Russian elite culture more receptive to Freemasonry. Between 1770 and 1790 over one hundred lodges were formed in Russia, with most of the activity focused in the capital cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg, but also in dozens of provincial cities and towns.^^ Historians have explored some of the important contributions Freemasonry made to European culture and to a Russian nation that was rapidly becoming an integral part of it.^ "^ The establishment of European-style absolutist institutions and the adoption of many of the cultural Modern Freemasonry sometimes goes by the name of “speculative” Freemasonry, which distinguishes it from the older, “operative” Freemasonry, the distinction being that the “operative” masons’ groups were actually stonecutters’ guilds. Douglas Smith, Working the Rough Stone: Freemasonry and Society in Eighteenth Century Russia (De Kalb, 1 1 1 .: Northern Illinois University Press, 1999), 19-20. Margaret Jacob, Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 144 accoutrements thereof in the Russian empire made for fertile ground for Masonic activity. Beyond bringing a major European social movement to Russia, and in doing so providing a means for reinforcing European notions of civility, moral responsibility, public space, and sociability. Freemasonry made claims larger than other nascent social organizations, like the Petersburg English Club, or even philanthropic organizations. As Douglas notes, “In relation to existing religious and state institutions. Masonic discourse placed the lodge in a superior, though not necessarily antagonistic, position, claiming to provide its members with a body of knowledge and a set of practices necessary for a kind of self-improvement the other institutions simply could not offer. The advantages and significance of Freemasonry to the Mason were not simply social, or even moral, but of the greatest metaphysical and spiritual import. “The implicit assumption shared by the Masons, therefore, was that the lodge was not simply a seat of virtue and wisdom, but the seat. As the inhabitants of the sacred space, the Masons viewed themselves as constituting a ‘universal brotherhood of virtuous souls’ and ‘the most highly esteemed brotherhood.’”^ ^ In addition to its other contributions to Russian intellectual and cultural history. Freemasonry brought with it much of the heritage of Western esotericism and the occult. According to Mazet: “Masonry does have an esoteric content. But Smith, Working the Rough Stone, 95. Ibid. (emphasis original). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 145 ... this content appears to be rather unspecific, being made to a large extent of elements borrowed from various other esoteric traditions[.] ... Masonry functioned, during the last two centuries, as a kind of melting pot of different traditions.”^ ^ As a corollary, it also functioned in Russia as a clearinghouse for occult and esoteric knowledge through a number of activities, including printing, book collecting, the Masonic rites, ceremonies, and symbols, and other projects/activities aimed at claiming esoteric content and disseminating knowledge of such to its members. Protestant mysticism, Kabala, alchemy and Hermeticism, and various other spheres of esoteric knowledge first became widely spread in Russia through Masonic channels. Our interest in Masonry is of course in the Sophian aspects of the esoteric information it brought to Russia. In the face of the declining knowledge of traditional Orthodoxy on the part of the Russian aristocracy and cultural elites, the most likely place a Russian gentleman would learn about Sophia would be through his Masonic activities, for there was clearly a Sophian element in Russian Freemasonry.^^ One of the leading Russian masons. Count Elagin, author of this chapter’s epigraph, who reformed the structure of Russian Masonic lodges, was a Edmond Mazet, “Freemasonry and Esotericism,” in Modern Esoteric Spirituality, ed. Antoine Faivre and Jacob Needleman (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 272. “Gentleman” is consciously exclusive here. There was a masonic women’s movement, but it was limited mostly to France; there is very little evidence of any women’s so-called “adoption lodges” in Russia. For information on women in Freemasonry in Russia, see Smith, Working the Rough Stone, 28-30; in France, see Janet Burke “Freemasonry, Friendship and Noblewomen: the Role o f the Secret Society in Bringing Enlightenment to Pre-Revolutionary Women Elites,” History o f European Ideas 10, no. 3 (1989): 283-293; Jacob, Living the Enlightenment chap. 5 “Freemasonry, Women, and the Paradox of Enlightenment”; and Dena Goodman, The Republic o f Letters: Cultural History o f the French Enlightenment (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 253-259. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 146 devotee of Sophia and wrote that Freemasonry itself was Wisdom: “ta samaia premudrost’, kotoraia ot nachala mira u patriarkhov i ot nikh predannaia, v taine khranilis’ v khramakh khaldeiskikh, egipetskikh, persidskikh, finikiiskikh [?], iudeiskikh, grechesikikh i rimskikh.”^ ^ Russian Freemasons wrote poems devoted to Sophia, or dramas in which a character named Sophia is the h ero in e,w h ich became sufficiently conventional that Griboedov could later use his own Sophia in Gore ot uma to undercut the ideals Sophia represented in 18* century drama. Perhaps the most famous Russian Mason of all, Novikov, after he had been arrested and confined in Schusselburg fortress, wrote passionately about Sophia, notably in terms of fire and flames: Chto my alchem k sokrovennoi Deve Sofii i zhelaem dostich’ v Dukhovnoe s Neiu Brachnoe sostoianie, to proiskhodit iz ognennoi Liubvi Eia k nashemu Ogniu - D ushi... Ona, khotia my daleche es’my, bezhit na sretenie nam s ognennymi ochami, serdtsem i raspotertymi rukami i tseluet nash um v ognennoe osnovanie i vlechet nas iz naruzhnoi suetnoi zhizni v svoia vnutrennee osnovanie dushi. One of Novikov’s activities, besides the printing and publishing that eventually got him into legal difficulties, was also the creation of a private Masonic Ivan Perfil’evich Elagin, “Novye materialy dlia istoriia masonstva: Zapiski Elagina,” Russkii arkhiv no. 1 (1864), 106, qtd. in M. P. Odesskii, “Ob ‘Otkrovennom’ i ‘prikovennom’: Sofiia v komediiakh V. I. Lukina,” Literaturnoe obozrenie 3/4 (1994): 82. See Odesskii, 82-83 and Alexander Levitsky, “Masonic Elements in Eighteenth Century Russian Religious Poetry,” and I. F. Martynov “Rannie masonskie stikhi v sohranii hihlioteki Akademii Nauk SSSR (K istorii literatumo-ohshchestvennoe polemiki 1760-x gg.),” both in Russia and the World o f the Eighteenth Century, ed. R. P. Bartlett, A. G. Cross, and Karen Rasmussen (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1988). B. L. Mozdalevskii, K biografii Novikova: pis ’ ma k Labzinu, Chebotarev i dr.: 1797-1815 (St. Petersburg, 1913) 74, qtd. in Odesskii, “Ob ‘otkrovennom’ i ‘prikovennom’,” 83. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 147 library. Typically for the eighteenth century, this library was organized hierarchically into chambers.It was a major collection of the most important occult and esoteric texts from the ancient and European traditions, including Paracelsus, Ficino and the Hermetica, Boehme, and Swedenborg. If Odesskii is right in claiming that “napriazhermosf ezotericheskikh interesov russkogo obshchestva XVIll veka .. nagliadna i besspoma,”^ ® ^ it is equally true that the main source for esoteric material in the Russian Empire in the 18* century was undoubtedly Freemasonry. Much of the corpus of Western esoteric literature they read and possessed; the first chamber of the Masonic library had all the most important monuments of European esotericism. In terms of charting the continuing the influence of European Sophian esotericism on Russian thought, the problem is, of course, that Novikov was arrested, the Masonic press closed, the library was broken up by Catherine’s government and the “harmftil books destroyed.”* ^ " ^ The ability of Freemasonry as an institution to spread occult ideas, specifically ideas about Sophia, was substantially lessened by the end of Masonic publishing activities and the destruction of the library. Although Freemasons didn’t disappear completely from Russian society, their activities and cultural presence were restricted. Kenneth Craven, “The First Chamber of Novikov’s Masonic Library,” in Russia and the World o f the Eighteenth Century, ed. R. P. Bartlett, A. G. Cross, and Karen Rasmussen (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1988), 401-410. Odesskii, “Ob ‘otkrovennom’ i ‘prikovennom’,” 82. Craven, “The First Chamber of Novikov’s Masonic Library,” 401. Craven doesn’t mention which were the “harmful” books, what other copies may have existed and/or survived, or when they may have originally arrived in Russia. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 148 Still, it might be safely ventured that they ceased to be an effective force for disseminating esoteric ideas temporarily, but not completely. The arrest of Novikov and the end of Masonic publishing and hihliophilia was not the hegirming of a persecution of all Freemasons, nor the end of Freemasonry in Russia, but it did signal a hiatus in Masonic activity. In the 1790’s amid the pressures of the French Revolution and fears for stability most Russian Masonic lodges closed their doors. An abortive revival under Paul preceded a more genuine Masonic revival under Alexander 1 , but as Smith noted, “the link between the lodges and the conspiratorial forces of radicalism had become permanently fixed in the public imagination.”'* * ^ and when the lodges rejected police subordination and protection, politics caught up with them. Alexander ordered all lodges closed in 1822, and Nicholas outlawed Freemasonry in 1826. Despite Freemasonry’s suppression, however, the popularity of Romanticism and the new literary societies of a new generation of Russian Romantics provided a new means for the spread of esoteric and mystical ideas, though rather secularized by the works of the German Romantics. Some scholars even go so far as to ascribe to Freemasonry part of the impetus for Romanticism: “[T]he emergence of the cult of sentiment, friendship and brotherhood, characteristic of Russian Romanticism, as well as the Romantic belief that poetry can transcend the meaning of physical nature, were rooted in Masonic thought 105 Smith, Working the Rough Stone, 181. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 149 .. While this may be going too far, there were changes in the orientation of Freemasonic activity that heralded the nascent Romantic worldview. Odesskii aptly points out that there is a different character to Russian Freemasonry after the 1770s. The movement shifts from what Odesskii labels a “discovered” Sophia to a “revealed” Sophia. The earlier, philanthropic masonry of the 1770’s sought a wisdom found through moral reflection leading to the improvement of one’s character and philanthropic activity. The masonry of the 1780’s and later was of a somewhat different kind, and shifted to favor a “revealed” Sophia, a mystical and speculative wisdom who could only be found in the more solitary and secret study and practice of the esoteric occult. It was likely to this end that Novikov amassed such an extensive library of such materials. While Odesskii wishes to argue a general dichotomy between a “discovered” and “revealed” Sophia, what her model charts for the 18* century is the larger cultural shift from Enlightenment, concerned with rationality and the social whole to pre-Romanticism or Romanticism, which repudiated the rational and social-minded philosophe in favor of a cult of solitary genius communing with a mysterious and sacralized natural world. In this context, the shift in Masonic practice is one more symptom of a shift in European thought. Clearly the later, more speculative masonry served more effectively as a conduit for mystical sophian ideas. Indeed Romanticism more generally is another important influenee on Russian reception of Sophia, and the one to which we turn next. Levitsky, “Masonic Elements in Eighteenth Century Russian Religious Poetry,” 431. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 150 Romanticism and the 19th Century Occult Revival In France, the eenter of the Enlightenment, the excesses of the Freneh Revolution only pointed out what had already begun to emerge in the Enlightenment’s own thought: that the capaeity of Enlightenment prineiples of rationality, liberty, and progress was limited, and the maximum extension of these principles created anarehy and moral and social chaos, rather than order and progress. Not to say that the Enlightenment didn’t make lasting and beneficial contributions to European culture, but the intellectual energy of the Enlightenment began to dissipate as the 18* century drew to a elose. The Enlightenment’s interest was, in short, in forming an orderly society of fratemal, rational men centered on measured and measurable progress towards liberty and equality without relianee on a deity or powers outside those of the body politic and the rational mind. On the other hand, “At the eore of Romantic experience was the tendency toward an intramundane nature-mysticism in which the utter self-transeendence of interpersonal love provided the illuminative center, disclosing the process of reality as the emergence of life through death. Its culmination was achieved in man’s poetie articulation of it.”^ * ^ ^ Reductively put, fraternity gave way to romance, and civilization gave way to passions: European elite culture turned from Man and Society to Woman and Nature. Whatever the limits of such a blanket assertion, it is David Walsh, The Mysticism o f Innerworldly Fulfillment: A Study o f Jacob Boehme (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1983), 29. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 151 indeed true that an idealized or divine feminine played a central role in the works of some of the most important philosophers and writers of the Romantic era. Romanticism has been examined and evaluated in the light of pre- Enlightenment esoteric thought as scholars have explored the pre-Enlightenment sources of Romantic ideas. “It now appears that Romanticism and the revolutionary symbolisms that emerged from it consisted in large measure of a revival and a secularization of the earlier occult religious philosophy of the Renaissance.”* ® ^ Faivre writes that “In the nineteenth century, the word Hermeticism reappears ... pre-Romanticism and Romanticism is the time of its real rebirth.”* * ® The “extremely pronounced taste ... for the hidden face and form in beings and objects” common to Paracelsianism is manifested in “romantic Naturphilosophie, especially in Germany during the second half of the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries.” * * * Perhaps in part attracted to its exoticism and obscurity, Romantics in fact drew on the esoteric tradition of alchemy, hermeticism, Kabala, Mariology, Protestant mysticism, and other occult and esoteric sources. Some representatives o f this scholarship include Auguste Viatte, Les Sources occultes de romantisme, illuminisme—theosophie, 1770-]820 (Paris: H. Champion, 1928); Antoine Faivre, L ’ Esoterisme anXVIIIsiecle en France et en Allemange (Paris: Seghers, 1973); Ernest Lee Tuveson, The Avatars o f Thrice Great Hermes: An Approach to Romanticism (Lewisburg, Ohio: Bucknell University Press, 1982); and Walsh, The Mysticism o f Innerworldly Fulfillment, esp. Introduction; for an application of this trend in Russian criticism, see Lauren G. Leighton, The Esoteric Tradition in Russian Romantic Literature: Decembrism and Freemasonry (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994). Walsh, The Mysticism o f Innerworldly Fulfillment, 5. Faivre, “The Children of Hermes,” 429. Ibid., 426. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 152 One figure in German letters who cannot be overlooked in a discussion of either Romanticism or the divine feminine is Goethe. Bom in Frankfurt-am- Main in 1749, he is best known for his dramatic masterpiece, Faust, though he was also a novelist, lawyer, courtier, natural scientist, physicist, and occultist. He also studied art history, antiquity, and literature. He married his lower-class mi.stress late in life and had numerous romantic liaisons, including a platonic relationship with Charlotte Buff, the impetus for the novella of sentiment Die Lieden des jungen Werther, 111 A, which made his literary reputation outside Germany. He began composing Faust in the early 1770’s, published a long “Fragment” in 1790 and the complete text of Part One in 1808. The second part was written in the 1820’s and completed in 1831, being published only posthumously in 1832. In Faust, Goethe can claim credit for perhaps the single most famous line about Sophia ever penned: the concluding lines of Part Two of the great work, “Das Ewig-Weibliche / Zieht uns hinan.” (The Eternal Feminine / Leads us on/upward). The bibliography on Goethe in insuperable. Some recent works that deal with the issues of Faust and Gretchen, gender, love, and salvation, and the “Mater Gloriosa” and “Das Ewig-Weibliche” include: Michael Neumann, Das Ewig-Weibliche in Goethes Faust (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1985) and Hans Arens, Kommentar zu Goethes Faust II (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1989). In English, see Cyrus Hamlin, “Tracking the Eternal-Feminine in Goethe’s Faust 11,” in Interpreting Goethe’ s Faust Today, ed. Jane K. Brown, Meredith Lee, and Thomas P. Saine (Columbia, South Carolina: Camden House, 1994), 142-153; Christoph E. Schweitzer, “Gretchen and the Feminine in Goethe’s Faust,” in Interpreting Goethe’ s Faust Today, 133-141; Gail K. Hart, “Das Ewig Weiblichenasfuret dich: Feminine Leadership in Goethe’s Faust and Sacher-Masoch’s Venus,” in Interpreting Goethe’ s Faust Today, 112-122; Barbara Becker-Cantarino, “Goethe and Gender,” in The Cambridge Companion to Goethe, ed. Lesley Sharpe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 179-192. For recent biographies in English, see John R. Williams, The Life o f Goethe: A Critical Biography (Oxford and Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1998) and Irmgard Wagner, Goethe (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1999). On Goethe’s reception in Russia see Andre von Gronicka, The Russian Image o f Goethe: Goethe in Russian Literature in the First H alf o f the Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia: University o f Pennsylvania Press, 1968) and Josef Matl, “Goethe bei den Slawen,” Jahrbuch fur Kultur und Geschichte der Slawen, N. F., V lll, Heft 1 (1932), pp. 41 ff.(?) cited in Gronicka 275. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 153 In the first part of Goethe’s work, Gretchen is Faust’s romantic interest, and though there are also many other ‘real’ and ‘fantastic’ women, Gretchen’s importance as a character is third only behind Faust himself and Mephistopheles. If Faust is ultimately about Faust’s fall, “Generations of readers and critics of Faust I hsiV Q seen in Gretchen a sign of selfless, idealized femininity, who can ultimately redeem Faust.”'Although Gretchen is eventually executed for the infanticide of her and Faust’s illegitimate child and is replaced by a vision of Helen of Troy as Faust’s consort in the second part, she reappears at the end of Faust II. Faust dies, and his soul moves through Goethe’s “cosmic theater” complete with the jaws of hell, the eombat of demon and angels, a hieratic celestial ehoms, and so forth. The setting is not the heavenly city, the pinnacle of civilization, but a mountainous Romantic wilderness inhabited by monastic Fathers, offering lauds not to God the Father but to the Mater Gloriosa, who is as a rather transparent appropriation of the Virgin Mary."'' Faust’s intercessor before the Mater Gloriosa is the penitent soul that was once known as Gretchen, through whose offices he is advanced into the state of beatitude. It is the Mater Gloriosa and the spirit of Faust’s infanticide lover Gretchen, who are the agents of Faust’s salvation and the context for the proclamation about the “Ewig-Wiebliche.” 113 114 Becker-Cantarino, “Goethe and Gender,” 189. The parallel is not altogether precise. Mater Gloriosa is a name used for the Virgin; this figure is also called Queen, Mother and Goddess by Goethe. The conceit itself, the Virgin rather than Christ in judgment, certainly alters the typical Christian apocalyptic scheme; it recalls somewhat the wisdom motif o f the sedes sapientia. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 154 For many of Goethe’s fellow Romantics and later critics, “[A]n approximate consensus ... about the Eternal-Feminine ... would seem to be that the Eternal-feminine is defined by a form of erotic love ... idealized and purified by mythological and spiritual transformations, for which the desire of Faust’s soul ... for the penitent soul of Gretchen ... serves as the highest instance.”* * ^ Contemporary gender feminist criticism has generally accepted this reading but altered the conclusion about the value of this erotic desire. “The principle of the feminine, however ‘eternal,’ may thus be defined as the object of erotic desire, projected upon it by an opposing masculine impulse. ... [T]he destruction of an innocent woman is transformed into a celebration of the erotic desire which destroys her.”* * ® Although such a perspective gratifyingly broadens the debate, such accounts have several weaknesses. As Hamlin contests, ”[C]laims for the erotic encounter between male and female [as constitutive of the Divine-feminine], whether it be defined as seduction (as in the case of Gretchen) or as visionary- poetic appropriation (in the case of Helena), are too simplistic and reductive for the complex sjmibolic scope of Faust II. Some critics insist that the salvific feminine figures of Gretchen’s soul and Mater Gloriosa remain in a state of subordination, since there is an implicit paternal God posited above them.*** Other critics point out that even if there is a father- Hamlin, “Tracking the Eternal-Feminine,” 143. Ibid. "^Ibid., 153. As Becker-Cantarino. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 155 God, He is virtually nowhere to be found in Goethe’s presentation of judgment, leaving the reader to conclude that real power is vested in these ideals of divine femininity.**^ Though not an inconsequential question, whether the feminine represents a kind of autonomous principle in Faust or not makes little difference to Faust, for in either case, without the intercession of Gretchen’s soul and the Mater Gloriosa marshalling the choroi of angels who defeat the demons seeking Faust’s soul by pelting them with roses, Faust would be damned. Becker-Cantarino rightly observes, “[A] feminine maternal principle - whatever that might be - has become an aesthetic or religious medium for Faust’s transcendence into a higher world;”* ^ * * Although Becker-Cantarino is right in identifying the function of the Ewig- Weibliche, the summary dismissal of femininity, maternity, and principles is unwarranted. The Mater Gloriosa and the concept of ‘Ewig-Weibliche’ are placed by Goethe in a highly privileged position in terms both of plot and position. They invite authority and even if they are, as Becker-Cantarino avers, “a construct, a male fantasy,” to dismiss them as irrelevant is undoubtedly a critical mistake. Whether ‘she’ is incarnated in Gretchen’s penitent soul, the Mater Gloriosa, or a more abstract principle personified by idealized females, the function of Goethe’s Ewig-Weibliche is remarkably similar to many other divine feminine figures in various periods and doctrines; to function both as a mediatrix and as the See Schweitzer, “Gretchen and the Feminine,” 136-139 and Keneth Weisinger, The Classical Facade: A Nonclassical Reading o f Goethe’ s Classicism (University Park, Pennsylvania; Pennsylvania State University Press), 72. 120 Becker-Cantarino, “Goethe and Gender,” 190. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 156 manifestation of the divine, much as the Christ-Logos. Indeed, the lack of the presence of a Father-God at the end of Faust may mark an awareness of the esoteric tradition of the divine feminine; absent the Greeo-Christian Logos, the feminine Wisdom is understood as the revelatory aspect of an unmanifest and unknowable God, the visible or perceptible presence in the world of a divinity otherwise exterior to it. The Romantic setting and the pseudo-Christian context also links the Mater Gloriosa and the Ewig-Weibliche with Nature; it is going only a little too far to also call her Mater Natura. The scene is, after all, set in mythological-speculative terms, and encountered at the limits of Nature and a transcendent supra-Nature. The role played by the divine feminine in the work of Goethe’s contemporary, Novalis, bears some Romantic similarities to Goethe’s iterations of the divine feminine, but Novalis is less susceptible to the criticisms of androcentric, patriarchalist misogyny that have been leveled at Goethe. Novalis was born Georg Friedrich Phillip von Hardenburg in 1772. Together with Schlegel and Schliermacher, he “founded German Romanticism.”* ^ ^ One of the most literarily productive experiences of his life was, in his mid 20s, an intense infatuation with and engagement to Sophie von Kuhn, ten years his junior, who died at age 15 in 1797 of consumption before they could be married. Deprived of her love in life, he See Marilyn Chapin Massey, Feminine Soul: The Fate o f an Ideal (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985). Although Massey, a self-described “radical feminist,” argues sympathetically for Novalis’ cult o f femininity, she takes as her task not so much to map out a positive feminine ‘soul’ in German Romanticism and Idealism in such figures as Novalis or Pestalozzi. Rather, they serve as foils for the subsequent suppression o f such positive femininities by Fichte and Schleiermacher. Massey, Feminine Soul, 100. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 157 attempted to immortalize her in his writings, integrating her into a rebellious and highly symbolic worldview, a central feature of which was his near-obsession with the idea of the divine feminine and an intense devotion to the Virgin Mary. He did become engaged subsequently to another woman, Julie von Charpentier, but he channeled much of his spirit into his literary and philosophical efforts until his own death of consumption in 1801 at age 28.^^^ One critic has speculated that Novalis’ encounter with von Charpentier helped Sophie recede into abstraction, and strengthened his devotion to Sophie/Sophia and to the Virgin M ary.^^"* The most famous of his works are Hymns to the Night and Henry von Ofterdingen, a kind of digressive, dreamy bildungsroman with a very complex route for the eponymous hero, utterly saturated with symbolic and allegorical elements drawn from folk literature, cartomancy, hermeticism and alchemy, other esoteria, and flights of Novalis’ imagination. It is in this work that we shall look at Novalis’ cult of Sophia. On his travels, Henry falls in love with the poet Klingshor’s daughter, Mathilda. Henry’s proclamation of love literally makes Mathilda his divine intercessor; “’O my beloved, heaven gave you to me to be revered. I adore you. William Arctander O’Brien, Novalis: Signs o f Revolution (Durham; Duke University Press, 1995), offers an extended critique of the “Sophie myth” in the construction o f Novalis’ posthumous fame by Tieck in particular. To whatever extent O’Brien is right, the literary myth — or reality — is primarily a supplement to the sophian themes in Novalis’ work and only amplifies the importance of Novalis as a sophian for later Russians. Palmer Hilty, “Introduction,” in Novalis [Georg Freidrich Philipp von Hardenburg], Henry von Ofterdingen, trans. Palmer Hilty (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1964), 3. See also Regula Fankhauser, Des Dichters Sophia: Weiblichkeitsentwurfe im Werk von Novalis (Cologne: Bohlau Verlag, 1997). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 158 You are the saint who carries my petitions to God, through whom he reveals Himself to me, through whom he makes known to me the fullness of His love. What is religion but an everlasting understanding, an eternal union of loving hearts? Where two are gathered together, there He is in the midst of them.*^^ You are my air to breathe forever, my breast will never cease to draw you into it. You are divine glory, eternal life in its loveliest embodiment.As much as Henry’s effusiveness is the typical of the rhetorical somersaults of Romantic declarations of love, if carefully read, the passage blurs the line between Mathilda and the transcendental divine feminine. This ambiguity is enhanced by the passage which immediately precedes this, in which he tells Mathilda how he prayed to the Virgin Mary, “[H]ow fervently I knelt to the image of Mother Mary, when we came home early today, and how unutterably I prayed to her. I thought I would melt in tears. It seemed to me she smiled at me. I did not know until now what thankfulness is.”* ^ ^ In this context, his declaration of love could just as well be read as a relation to Mathilda of his prayer to Mary, the most potent Christian intercessor, Immaculate Conception, Mediatrix of All Graces, and most perfect human, excepting only Christ. Indeed, invoking the esoteric doctrines of signatures and correspondences, as well as Romantic conceptions of the immanence of the divine, Henry tells Paraphrase of Matthew 18:20 pfAB], “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst o f them.” N o v a l i s , 117. ‘^^Ibid. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 159 Mathilda, “[T]he higher world is nearer to us than we commonly think. We are already living in it here, and we perceive it most intimately interwoven with earthly nature.”^ ^ * In addition to the Sophian Mathilda, another Sophia appears in a fairy tale, perhaps inspired by Goethe’s Fairy Tale; at the betrothal feast of Henry and Mathilda, Novalis introduces an allegory of Sophia. In the tale, told by Klingshor, Sophie appears as the most powerful player in a complex allegory of love and imagination, wisdom and rationality, masculinity and femininity. In a vision experienced by Eros and Ginnistan, the Moon’s daughter, Sophia with her consort is seated on a throne at the apex of a rainbow above a beautiful flower — a parallel to the “blue flower” of Henry’s dream which opens the novel — which floats on a ‘“milk-blue”’ sea that floods and drowns the armies of apocalyptic Death. To this scene of Sophia enthroned in matemalistic glory is appended an alchemically- inspired scene of symbolic, androgynous union. Like Goethe, Novalis’ fiction features both the eponymous hero’s beloved, a ‘real’ woman, whose love is idealized, and a fantastic goddess-type woman who functions as a more explicitly divine saving and mediating power. Faust loves 118. The rainbow on which Sophia sits may be one of the sources for the Solovievan formulation of “deva raduzhnykh vorot”, and the “blue flower” has been invoked as a possible source for the name of the Moscow “Blue Rose” Symbolist society. See chapter five. Novalis,/fenry, 130-131. Dante, of course, is a predecessor to both of these and an important source for the Russian Symbolists, too. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 160 Gretchen, who ultimately leads him through his encounter with the Mater Gloriosa, while Novalis’ Henry falls in love with Mathilda. In the fairy tale told to eelebrate their union, Sophia plays the most potent role, restoring peace through love, as the concluding hymn relates, which resonates much like the conclusion of Faust would three decades hence: “The kingdom of eternity is founded,/ By love and peace all strife has been impounded,/ the dreams of pain are gone to us never,/ Sophie is priestess of all hearts forever.”^ ^ ^ Goethe and Novalis both incorporate elements of the Enlightenment’s eoneern, whieh was continued in Romantieism, with what Walsh calls “intramundane” reality, the perceptible, ‘real’ everyday that was the foeus of empirieal and rationalizing Enlightenment culture, as evidenced in esoteric fields in, for example, trends in Swedenborgian mysticism and early “diseovered” Masonic Wisdom.These are supplemented, however, with a Romantic recasting of the understanding of intramundane reality and a strong infusion of pre- Enlightenment esoteric material and thought. “[W]hen many of the leading figures of German Romanticism and Idealism - Tieek, Novalis, Schelling, Hegel, A.W. Schlegel, and others - were assembled together in Jena. ... the ongoing reeovery of the German mystical tradition ... promised to provide the symbolic structures Novalis, Henry, 148. Walsh, The Mysticism o f Innerworldly Fulfillment, 27. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 161 necessary for a modem philosophical articulation of man’s place in the process of reality as a whole.”^ ^ " ^ The idealized women in romantic literature are not merely women; they are correspondents for the transcendental fem inine and agents of her greater mediating power, often through an idealized, erotic love. Walsh continues, “Perhaps the most influential aspect of his (Boehme’s) teaching for Novalis and the Romantics was the idea of a mystical union between man and the divine Wisdom that represented the apex of the theosophie experience. Boehme had related it to an entire metaphysics of sex in which he explained that man’s true nature is his androgynous unity with the virgin Sophia, of which the physical conjunction of the sexes in this life is no more than a fallen reflection. This was reinterpreted by the Romantics to characterize the true fulfillment of sexual love as a union with the idealized beloved after death.”^ ^ ^ As intimated above, it is not only in literature that Romanticism drew on the Sophian philosophy/theosophy of Boehme, Paracelsus, and others. The connection between a sacralized Woman and a sacralized Nature is another important element in Romanticism/Idealism. An account of the immanence of the divine and the importance of humanity in the teleology of the historical process were central questions for Romantic/Idealist philosophy. No pretense can be made here to a complete accounting of the complexities of such thinkers as von Baader, Schelling, Ibid., 29. 135 Ibid., 28. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 162 and Hegel, but their ideas transformed much of the esoteric and mystical heritage of pre-Enlightenment Western Europe into a secularized philosophical form that exercised an immense influence on European and Russian culture. The particular importance of the thought of Hegel to Russian philosophical thought is well understood. Some scholars see Hegel’s dialectic emerging from Boehme’s conception of God as a dynamic, self-unfolding translated into a secularized account of world history.*^® “[T]he Boehmean construction was transformed from the unfolding self-revelation of God to the emergent manifestation of the universal process, and his still basically Christian mysticism became a seeular mysticism without God.”^ ^ ^ The understanding of Nature as text that had entered Western culture with the Paracelsian Renaissance was revised in the Romantic era. If, in the Renaissance, Nature became a text in which signatures and correspondences of the divine were to be read, in the Romantic era, the divinity wasn’t simply implied in the text of Nature, divinity became immanent in Nature. The divine and earthly incarnations of the ancient Greco-Christian Logos, was, in a sense, both discarded and reincarnated. Word, Nature, and Divinity were united, but rather than embodied in a masculine person as in Christ, they were disembodied into Nature, and re-presented, or re-embodied, in a metaphorical Woman. This Sophian figure had different names: “Mother Nature”, the muse, the World Soul. The more or less Ibid., 30. Hegel actually called Jacob Boehme “The first German philosopher.” Ibid., 28. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 163 rational unity sought by Schelling in his Idealist Naturphilosophie “gradually turned from Naturphilosophie to a mystical theosophy” closely tied to Romanticism that made Nature a metaphorical woman, which conversely also allowed real woman to be more ‘natural.’ This was a condition which could be both good and evil, for Nature could be both. Thus one can also note the profusion of blessed naked nymphs as well as seductive demonesses that cavort and stalk the canvasses of 19th century painting. In short. Romanticism made two very important connected contributions to the evolution of Sophian thought in Western European culture: the feminization of nature and the revival and secularization of the esoteric divine feminine. A third development of the 19th century is not directly a part of Romanticism, but is corollary to it, and indeed would have been impossible without the cultural conditions Romanticism created. It is the magical or occult revival, and it is to this we turn next. The 19* century saw a dramatic increase in European interest in occult and esoteric movements, including mesmerism (also known as animal magnetism and in an altered form today as hypnosis), spiritualism, and less-well-known movements around figures like Pierre Vintras.*'^® Spiritualism proved quite popular Jospeh L. Esposito, Schelling’ s Idealism and Philosophy o f Nature (Lewisburg, Ohio: Bucknell Unviersity Press, 1977), 153. See Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990) and Bram Dijkstra, Idols o f Perversity: Fantasies o f Feminine Evil in Fin-de-siecle Culture (Oxford: Oxford Unviersity Press, 1986). Vintras claimed to be on a crusade against Black Magic that led him to prison and exile. A contemporary of Constant, Vintras claimed to excommunicate the Pope, to interfere in satanic R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 164 in Russia as well, even in eourt circles/'*^ Various groups earried forward similar magical, occult, and esoteric doctrines. In short, in the emerging popular mass culture in the societies of industrializing Europe, the esoteric and the occult gained large enough followings to have earned the 19* century a name of “magic revival” or “occult revival.” If any one figure, however, is responsible for this, it is Eliphas Levi, perhaps the most important figure in the European occult revival. Born Adolphe Constant in 1810, he entered the seminary but left before taking final vows. By the time he died in 1875 he had “started a magical revival virtually single-handed.”^ '* ^ With Constant and the 19* century revival, the history of European occultism and esotericism takes on a different tone - one in which the societies and groups that pursued such knowledge were more open and popular than had ever been before. Some, admittedly were simple charlatanry, but many were wholly earnest. They took advantage of pseudo-scientific paradigms and emerging anxiety about a modern loss of knowledge and were designed to gain a broad base of adherents. The secrets were no longer kept secret, but the indifference of the majority of the population maintained something of the sense of elite and exclusive groups and kept the feel of the exotic and intiatic. rituals in spirit from hundreds of miles away, and to ordain to a priesthood of his own adepts of both sexes. The divine feminine as virtuous mediatrix and conversely as profane idol plays a role in Vintras’ schemes. See Christopher McIntosh, Eliphas Levi and the French Occult Revival (London; Rider and Company, 1972), esp. chapter 6. See Thomas E.Berry, Spiritualism in Tsarist Soceity and Literature (Baltimore: The Edgar Allen Poe Society, 1985). Wilson, The Occult, 325. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 165 Constant’s writings, though, made him more popular than Vintras, Kardec, Mesmer, and others, and he heralded the international and widely popular mysticisms and occultisms of figures like Papus, Blavatsky, Philippe, Leadbetter and Besant, Steiner, Roerich, Ouspensky, Gurdjieff, and others. For all his influence, though. Constant’s career was checkered, his writings often contradictory. “Much of what he wrote is turgid, confused, naive. His writings teem with apparent inconsistencies.”’" ^ ^ Still, there are elements that were the building blocks of a synthetic, esoteric world-view that proved tremendously influential in the occult revival, both for practical information and as a model of genre and corpus. Constant studied Swedenborg and his theories of correspondences, and he amplified Swedenborg’s hedging on the distinction between evil and good in the absolute. Among Constant’s central doctrines was that “apparent evil is the shadow image of the divine and is a function of man’s incomplete understanding of the divine nature” rather than a real division in the transcendental absolute.’" ’" ’ His best known image is of Baphomet, the supposed goat-god of the Knights Templar, in which he strove to represent “The resolution of apparent opposites from the higher perspective of divine oneness.”’" ’^ 143 Mc\atos]\, Eliphas Levi, 141. Thomas A. Williams, Eliphas Levi: Master o f Occultism (University, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1975), caption between 60-61. Williams, Levi, 60-61. Levi was an engraver and illustrator as well as author. His image of Baphomet is still widely used in occult literature today, including as the devil card in tarot decks. At any rate, this synthesis o f opposites such as good and evil into equivalents is semiotically (and spiritually) ill-advised, but is nonetheless a hallmark of occultism. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 166 Ultimately, more important than Swedenborg, Kabala and the Tarot were the two bermeuntic keys to bis revival and revision of ancient hermetic wisdom. Nonetheless, even in bis late works, these methods offered revelations on motifs from bis early career, when be was closer to the Catholic Church and had a strong interest in apocalyptic role of the feminine: “the utopian future of man; the role of the Virgin as a bridge between the ministry of Jesus and the future reign of the Holy Spirit; and the final experiencing, through love, of divinity.It is this second element, that of the divine feminine in the figure of Mary, that is of particular interest here.*"^^ His book. La Mere de Dieu, epopee religieuse et humanitaire (The Mother o f God), published in 1844, of which whole chapters, together with sections of another early volume on women, L ’ Assomption de la femme, ou le livre d ’ amour (The Assumption o f Woman, or. The Book o f Love), would reappear in his later, mature works. Dogma and Ritual (1856) and Key to the Mysteries (1861), published under the pseudonym Eliphas Levi.'"^^ His study of hermetic and Kabalistic magical lore serves goals that seems to reflect radical Romanticism and a mystical Roman Catholic Christianity. Constant’s socialist and radical tendencies prevent him from presenting a bourgeois, retrograde version of 146 Williams, Zev/, 15. One might also note the concurrent general revival of interest in the Virgin Mary in the 19"’ century in French Roman Catholicism, which Constant knew and practiced in his early years. Witness the appearances of the Virgin at Lourdes in 1858, and in Paris to St. Catherine Laboure in 1830, and the promulgation o f the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854, an image connected to sapiential speculation. While The Mother o f God is a manifesto, the more lyrical The Assumption o f Woman, a title which reflects the Catholic teaching that Mary was “assumed,” body and soul, into heaven at her death, is a translation of parts of Song o f Songs with Constant’s commentary, as well as translations from St. John of the Cross, St. Theresa (of Avila?) and Mme. Guyon. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 167 Woman, but what he produced is a curious blending of domestic ideology with radical politics and the esoteric tradition of woman, drawn from his reading of Balzac, revolutionaries, and religious ascetics and mystics, including Mme. Guyon, the Boehme-influenced quietist and heretic, and, of course, Swedenborg. Constant envisioned woman as apocalyptic mediatrix, just like many other Sophian thinkers, but the apocalypticism is rooted in a way possible only in the atmosphere of the cultural diffusion of Romantic philosophy’s intense interest in Spirit and History, wedded to a revision of the association of the feminine with Nature. Goethe and Novalis realized in literature a projection for their heroes of a translation into the immanent divine mediated or incarnated by the feminine, a movement philosophically framed by Schelling and Hegel and their followers; such a movement was adapted by Levi into an esoteric Christian context. His political radicalism is fused with a Christianizing occultism that enables Constant to both critique his society’s cult of domesticity and simultaneously create his own cult of idealized woman. In his “lyrical” L ’ Assomption de la Femme wrote, “[W]hat is woman? ... [Ljovers will answer, adolescent souls who love for the first time will say: Woman is God himself revealed in all his grace, smiling in all of his love. Woman is the consoling word, the future made visible so that we may have the courage to live. Woman is a mysterious being who bridges heaven and earth and who brings to the wretched dreams of benevolent spirit and consoling R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 168 angels. A single instant of Woman’s love is the inspiration of a lifetime; through Woman’s lips passes God’s breath.”* " * ^ Constant views history as moving towards an apocalyptic transformation into a utopian age of the Holy Spirit, but the agent of change is the Virgin Mary and the essential qualities of Woman: love, charity, purity, and so o n .* ^ * ^ In a shift from the Swedenborgian formulation, it is Love alone, not Wisdom, that Constant seems to identify with the central quality of Woman, Mary, and God. Even without the name of Wisdom, though, there is no do doubt that his predictions hinge on a representation of divine femininity, the centrality of these essential qualities of this femininity in the immanent transformation of humanity, and the eschatological nature and implicit divine agency of this utopian apocalypse. Just as Marx cast the historical and moral crisis of this age in economic terms and labor was the key. Constant cast them in theological ones, and his ideas on woman were the key. Later as Eliphas Levi, Constant was to integrate the basis of his faith in Woman into his elaborate synthetic doctrines of tarot, Kabala, and hermetic correspondences which became the basis for much 19* and early 20* century popular occultism. The interest in Woman, as both the domesticated feminine divine and the renascent divine feminine, was not unique to the mysticism of the occult revival on the margins of European culture inhabited by the likes of Levi. Williams, Levi, 23, qtd. from Adolphe Constant L ’ Assomption de la Femme (Paris: Le Gallois, 1841), 57-58. The tripartite division of history into Christian ages o f the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit originates with Joachim o f Fiore in the 13* century. The matemalization of the Age of the Spirit isn’t new with Levi/Constant. Constant’s use of Mary as an agent of Apocalypse, however, is intriguing. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 169 The later nineteenth century saw in European art and literature a concerted interest in the divine feminine. Certainly writers and artists have sought the inspiration of beautiful women for centuries. Still, the literature and imagery produced from the English pre-Raphaelites to the French Symbolists provided a wealth of variations on the theme for the Russian elite to draw upon, from images unlike as Redon’s interpretation of Dante’s Beatrice, himself recognized as a poet of the divine femine, to Burne-Jones’ or Gerome’s revisiting of the myth of Galatea. The place of Sophia, or the divine feminine under some other figure’s name, has a long and complex history in Western Europe. The influence exercised by this history on Russian development of Sophian though in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century is at least as much as that exercised by the Byzantine- Orthodox tradition that was discussed in the previous chapter. Of course, the sources from which Sophian motifs and information were drawn is as varied as the uses of which Sophia was made in the late Russian Empire. To this complex portrait, however, must also be added a discussion of the conditions and constructions of actual femininity in Russian culture, and a discussion of the current position of scholarship towards the issues of gender, power, divinity, and creativity that underlie the re-emergence of the cult of the Sophian feminine in early twentieth century Russia. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 170 Chapter Four Crisis in Femininity This chapter will begin to deal, at last, with the late Imperial Russian context in which the popularity of the divine or eternal feminine prospered. Bernice Rosenthal has eommented that “every poet and thinker had his ‘own’ Sophia,”* which summarizes nicely both the popularity and the multiplieity of Sophia in this period. Her eomment also highlights some of the problems for the researeher, since it implies both the necessity of understanding this notion of Sophia, since, if Rosenthal is right, it was so ubiquitous, and also the difficulty of sorting out the many different approaehes to Sophia to arrive at some comprehensible interpretation. These tasks not only bring to bear the literary, philosophical, theological, historical, and artistic background provided in the first two chapters, but also posit two important questions: first, what generated the burgeoning interest in Sophia and sophian themes in Russian eulture, and seeond, what means have been used to interpret and understand the relationship o f artists, thinkers, writers, and other cultural figures to the notion of Sophia? ' Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, “The Nature and Function o f Sophia in Sergei Bulgakov’s Prerevolutionary Thought,” in Russian Religious Thought, Judith Deutsch Komblatt and Richard P. Gustafson, eds. (Madison; University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), 154. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 171 This chapter will undertake to answer both these questions in order to lay the groundwork for a tjqjology of sophian experiences in chapters five and six, and will attempt to do so by reference to a notion of crisis. I believe there are two crises that need to be addressed into order to clarify our understanding of Sophia. The first is a crisis in late nineteenth and early twentieth century culture, a crisis in the understanding of the feminine and femininity in Russian culture in general and in Russian elite culture in particular. The second crisis is perhaps not a crisis as much as simply a situation that requires redress. Contemporary feminist scholarship has produced some startling and powerful insights into the construction of gender relationships and the encoding of often misogynist norms of power and authority in art, literature, and culture. At the same time, the demands of the contemporary feminist agenda have created some theoretical and critical lacunae that have led to a distortion of the reception of Sophia, lacunae with serious ramifications for the understanding of relationships of power and authority, divinity and humanity, and gender and value in early twentieth century Russian elite culture. This chapter will attempt to provide some corrective perspective. Crisis One Late Imperial Russian society was in serious flux. Major cultural and social changes were taking place the likes of which had not been seen since the Great Reforms, or perhaps even the Petrine era. Industrialization, urbanization, and intellectual foment, though different fi-om Western European experiences, were rapidly and radically altering the culturescape. The role of women in Russian R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 172 culture was also changing, too. In her 1990 book Sexual Anarchy, Elaine Showalter attempts to document “the myths, metaphors, and images of sexual crises and apocalypse”^ in English and American culture of the fm-de-siecle, discussing many of the areas of cultural change in terms of sexuality. Many of the soeial and cultural issues that Showalter sees as contributory to the sexual crises of the Anglophone world are present in pre-Revolutionary Russian culture as well; nascent feminism, homosexuality, revived debate over prostitution and epidemic syphilis, conflicts resulting from industrialization and urbanization, racism, and imperialism. Nonetheless, there were undoubtedly differences between Showalter’s Anglo-American “sexual anarchy” and the Russian fm-de-siecle era. Since Russia had only partially adopted the cult of domesticity — the oft- cited “angel of the house,” and it interacted in a complex way with native ideologies of gender, the baseline for measuring cultural change in perceptions of the feminine and femininity must be somewhat different than Showalter’s, which is relatively typical of Anglo-American feminism. Many of the notions enshrined in feminist scholarship simply do not apply easily to the Russian cultural milieu. As Laura Englestein cautions, “None of the interrelated protagonists of the Victorian sexual drama made a wholly successful transition to the Russian stage. ... Western notions of privacy, private property, and domesticity were not entirely absent, but they competed with values and social patterns” native to Russia’s particular ^ Elaine Showalter, Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siecle (New York; Viking, 1990), 3. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 173 historical and cultural development.^ Consequently any consideration of Russian models of femininity using Anglo-American models of feminism must be made with sensitivity to a potentially distorting incongruence between subject and methodology. Yet there was a crisis in the cultural conception of femininity in Russia. As Englestein asserts, there was “sexual as well as social chaos, the emergence of a new public space inhabited by female creatures with the independence and energy of men who sought a way to exercise power, or to claim power of a new kind, outside the frame of respectable family life.”" ^ The women who moved into this “public space” came from the peasant and developing urban working class, the meshchanstvo, and the intelligentsia and cultural elites as well. It is on this last group that our analysis will focus. In Russia as well as Europe, the creation of this “sexual chaos” and new “female creatures” was coincident with changes in the representation of women in the spheres of art, literature, and philosophy, connected with the shifting cultural construction of public/private, virtue/vice, male/female, real/ideal. The cultural products of the era, whether under the names of the Silver Age, the Russian Religious Renaissance, or the artistic Avant-garde, can be described as both responses to cultural anxiety about unstable notions of femininity and simultaneously constitutive of the destabilization. Artists, writers, philosophers. ^ Laura Engelstein, The Keys to Happiness: Sex and the Search for Modernity in Fin-de-Siecle Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 6-7. Engelstein, 275. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 174 and others drew on and helped to shape discourses of urbanization, revolution, religion, sexual deviancy, and modernist anxiety and ereative postures. To illustrate the problem and make connections between the various issues at hand, several examples from the period will be adduced, otherwise of little historical consequence and unrelated to each other except by the glimpses they offer into the divisiveness, ambiguity, and intensity of the cultural discussion of the feminine. In 1900 a young artist and archeologist named Nikolai Roerich answered a questionnaire in a parlor album, informing his hostesses and posterity of his preferences in a number of categories, including favorite food, favorite names, literary heroes, personal qualities, etc., but tellingly left two questions in the middle of the page unanswered; 1) favorite real life heroines, and 2) favorite literary heroines.^ In the midst of his alternatingly wry and serious answers, he lacked even the wit to jokingly name his hostesses. The blanks are resoundingly silent. Roerich was the scion of a wealthy family, well-educated, well-read, and socially well-coimected. His artistic training had made him a keen and sensitive observer of the people and things around him, and attuned to their more complex meanings, yet Roerich had no women whom he admired, or admitted he admired, either in life or art. There was no dearth of women around him, in life or literature. One plausible explanation is that Roerich’s being unsure about what women he admired is symptomatic of a much broader cultural ambiguity about what was or should be ^ L. V. Krorotkina, Rerikh v Peterburge-Petrograde (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1985), 81-82, qtd. in Jacqueline Decter, Nicholas Roerich: The Life and Art o f a Russian Master (Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press, 1989), 40-41. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 175 admirable in women, or, in other words, what the ideal woman was. Like Russian culture, Roerich was perhaps searching for a new formulation of the feminine in the midst of what Englestein calls “sexual chaos.” Within a few years he would find such a formulation. Not only would Roerich marry a woman who would be his romantic and intellectual companion for the rest of his life, but also he would begin painting a long series of divine women and goddesses in icons, frescoes, and easel paintings - including in 1934, Sofiia - Premudrost ’ Bozhii - and become the leader of a syncretic mystical peace and culture movement in which the divine feminine played a central role. We will return to discuss Roerich’s response to the sophian impulse in more detail below in chapter six. Without a doubt there were many others in Russian culture who were rather more sure of what their expectations were of women, and none too shy to proclaim them, especially when the destabilization of social gender norms conflicted with their own ideals. The “woman question” had been part of Russian culture for some decades, but “At the begirming of the twentieth century, there was an energetic influx of women into all spheres of creative work. Acting, literature, journalism, translation, and art were only a few of the professions that women pursued successfully.”^ These women helped stimulate the Silver Age’s discussion of gender, authority, and creativity, sometimes producing a chauvanistic backlash. For example, the increasing presence of female writers and women exercising their voices in creative cultural occupations prompted one N. la. Abramovich, a minor ® Mariia Mikhailova, “The Fate of Women Writers in Literature at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century: ‘A. Mire’, Anna Mar, Lidiia Zinovieva-Annibal,” in Gender and Russian Literature: New Perspectives, ed. Rosalind Marsh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 141-2. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 176 critic and writer, to pen a 1913 brochure Zhenshchina i mir muzhskoi kul 'tury. Abramovich’s piece ended with the startling conclusion, “V intellektual’noi zhizni mira uchastie zhenshchiny - nichtozhno. Tvorcheskoe ideinoe dvizhenie sovershaetsia vne ee. Etot itog bezstrasten, tochen, i vyiavlen samoi zhizniu.”^ No doubt we may be circumspect about Abramovich’s assertion, but the contrast of the urgent protest with the claim to dispassionateness illustrates the intensity of the cultural debate, and why the term crisis is particularly apt. For a woman to write rather than be written, and moreover, to pretend to the heights of what Abramovich calls “masculine creativity”* carried serious moral and social consequences. In 1910, the Zaria publishing house issued a literary sbornik with the title and theme of Zhenshchina’ , Abramovich contributed four pieces to Zhenshchina, including one under the Pushkinian nom de plume of Vladimir Lenskii. To an observer perceptive of the discourse of feminine evil parallel to that of the divine feminine it will not seem accidental that the only other such “thematic” sborniki published by Zaria were titled Grekh and Satan. Certainly Abramovich’s opinion is not the norm among, for example, the Russian avant-garde, who readily received talented women artists into their ranks. The stakes were high not only when the feminine and creative agency were ’ N. la. Abramovich, “Zhenshchina i mir muzhskoi kul’tury. Mirovoe tvorchestvo i polovaia liubov”’ (Moscow: Svobodnyi put’, 1913), 113. Abramovich’s pamphleteering echoes the work of the infamous Vienese Otto Weininger, who made similar arguments a decade or so earlier. ( “In the intellectual life of the world, the participation of women is insignificant. The creative movement of ideas is completed without her. This conclusion is dispassionate, precise, and manifest in life itself.”) * Abramovich, “Zhenshchina i mir muzhskoi kul’tury,” 15. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. Ml blended. It is not just women creating (i.e., for Abramovich at least, ‘acting masculine’) that generated debate and crisis, but the nature of women created or represented in art or literature that could also evoke very strong responses from many segments of Russian society . In the same year Abramovich’s volume Zhenshchina appeared (1910), the rather more sophisticated periodical Apollon mounted its ovra exhibition of contemporary women’s portraiture and published rnany pictures from the exhibition in the pages of its February issue for that year, along with a review of the newspapers’ reviews. Apollon’ ’s editor, Sergei Makovskii, deseribes the “Unexpected ‘storm’ arising aroimdthis intimate, ‘editorial’ exhibition [as a] remarkable occurrence.”^ Remarkable, indeed. Aside from the self-aggrandizing posture of reporting how sensational his own exhibition was, the reviews Makovskii eites of this exhibition are indicative of how intense the reactions were to ideas of femininity in Russian culture. All the critics seem to be seeking and not finding a particular construction of an ideal type of woman. In Sankt Peterhurgskie Vedemosti “G-zha Bazankur” wrote that the exhibition did not provide the, “tipa nastoiashchei russkoi zhenshchiny - zhenshchiny-materi, kotoraia geroicheski stroit’ i chinit’ razvalivaiushchiisia nash sovremermyi ochag, kotoraia idet na voinu, V tiur’my i bol’nitsy, v nauku, iskusstvo i literatury. ... Zhenshchiny vystavka ‘ Apollona’ - eto mutnaia, kotia i tsennaia nakip, a ne chistyi, neobkhodimyi dlia zhizni strany rodnik, kakoi predstavliaet soboiu gromadnaia ® Makovskii, Sergei, “Zhenskie portrety sovremennykh russkikh khudozhnikov,” Apollon 5(1910): 5. (“Neozhidannaia ‘buria,’ podniataiapressoi okolo etoi itimnoi, ‘redaktsionnoi’ vystavki... iavlenie znamenaternoe.) R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 178 massa russkikh zhenshchin!” Bazankur believed that Russian women ought to be presented as matemalistic philanthropists and cultural professionals, making public contributions to culture and the betterment of society. In contrast with this advocacy of a public, professional role for women, in Peterburgskaia Gazeta the reviewer, “G. S. Kh-kov,” wrote, “Ode zhe na vystavke obeshchannyi tip sovremennoi russkoi zhenshchiny? Vsiaki bezpristrastnyi ... zritel’ beznadezhno razvedet rukami i skazhet, chto vse vystavlennoe, ves’ etot podbor, est’ nagloe glumenie nad russkoi zhenshchinoi. On vstanet v eia zashchitu i gromko budet protestovat’ protiv psevdo-novatorov, derznuvshikh oskorbit’ milyi obraz prekrasnoi russkoi zhenshchiny, iskazhennoi v monomanii khudozhnikov.” Kh-ov seemed to prefer idle idols of bourgeois respectability. Others were more concise in condemning the moral character of the exhibition: one wrote “ostanetsia odno lish’ otvrashchenie k gg. ustroiteliam i tolkovateliam.” and another simply “dostatochno ondogo eia zagalviia - Porochnyia zhenshchiny.” Critical vitriol poured out upon artistic innovation is certainly nothing new, but the paintings reproduced in Apollon were not especially innovative or radical in style or content by 1910. Most of the women are simply posing as artistic models, not engaging in any activity that could be a sign of virtue or vice, yet clearly this exhibition of female portraiture struck a powerful chord, and elicited strong reactions to the idea of the feminine represented by the show. Makovskii’s own response is perhaps more interesting than the art itself: he tries to stake out for the exhibition a position enunciated by Mir Iskusstva a decade earlier, a position that ' All cited in Makovskii, Sergei, “Zhenskie portrety sovremennykh russkikh khudozhnikov,” 8-9. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 179 highlighted the difference between representations of women of the Silver Age and the preceding era: “Zadacha vystavki ostaetsia chisto-khudozhestveimoi, chto v dannom sluchae podrazumevaetsia zenshchina v eia esteticheskom, a ne realnom b ytii... Pravda iskusstva i pravda zhizni ne sovpadaiut; krasota i moral - v dvukh raznykh ploskostiakh.”^ ^ Of course, what Makovskii denies is precisely the reason the critics were so upset - the separation of the ethical and the aesthetic and the real and the ideal is not so simple or clear as the sophistieate art pour I ’ art posture of Apollon would have it, especially in such proximity to Russian Symbolism. This otherwise rather unimportant incident in the history of Russian culture illustrates how closely the crisis of femininity is linked to the other issues not only in society but also in issues facing the creative intelligentsia. The conscious disconnection on the part of Makovskii and other Russian cultural elites between “reality” and “representation,” and “moral” and “aesthetic” helped create the problems in defining roles and attitudes towards women. If art and literature retreat from providing social guidance, an important prescriptive discourse in culture is absent, especially in Russian culture, where politieal and moral discourse was so often sublimated into literary discourse. Indeed, Russian aesthetic thought is almost coterminous with Russian moral thought. Russia’s earliest art. Orthodox iconography, is not considered an aesthetic activity but a moral one - thus a monk- "Makovskii, Sergei, “Zhenskie portrety sovremennykh russkikh khudozhnikov,” 7-9. (“The purpose of the exhibition remains purely artistic, so that in this case to consider woman in her aesthetic and not her real existence ... The truth o f art and the truth o f life do not coincide; beauty and morality are on two separate planes.”) R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 180 artist would fast and pray rather than do preparatory sketehes or observe from nature.*^ Closer to Makovskii’s time, two of the most influential aesthetic theories of the late 19* century, those of Tolstoy and Chernyshevsky, both include an essential moral dimension in their theories of art: Chernyshevsky demands art serve social progress, Tolstoy Christian ideals.*^ For Vladimir Soloviev, the reticent father of Russian Symbolism, who reacts against both Tolstoy and Chernyshevsky, the beautiful, true, and moral good were inextricably interrelated. One result of abandoning social responsibility in art and literature is, of course, a freedom and experimentation that contributes to a further destabilization not only in aesthetic norms, but also in terms of the conception of the feminine. In Diaghilev’s brief essay on decadence and the new art that was the lead article in the first issue of Mir Iskusstva, this freedom and experimentation is the cause of the vibrancy he claimed defeated the accusations of decadence leveled against the World o f Art group. Of course, it was precisely the contribution of the ‘purely aesthetic’ to the destabilization of society (and femininity) that engendered the charges of decadence in the first place. To be fair to Makovskii, with whom this In fact, the Kiev-type Russian Sophia icons explicitly list sophian moral virtues on the steps leading to the dais where the figure of the Mother o f God stands (illustrations above in chapter two and below in chapter six). N. G. Chemyshevskii, “Esteticheskoe otnoshenie iskusstva k realnosti” in Izbrannye filosoficheskie sochinenii, 3 vols. (1855, Moscow, Gosudarstvennye politcheskie izdatelstvo, 1951), and Lev Tolstoy, “Chto takoe iskusstvo?” in Tolstoy on Art, trans. Aylmer Maude (1898, Boston: Small, Manyard and Company, 1924). Maude’s translation, made in consultation with and approved by Tolstoy, includes parts originally excised in Russian editions by the censors. Available in English in Sergei Diaghilev, “Complex Questions: Our Imaginary Decadence,” in A Revolution o f the Spirit: Crisis o f Value in Russia, 1880-1924, ed. Bernice Rosenthal and Martha Bohachevsky-Chomiak, trans. Miriam Schwartz (New York: Fordham University Press, 1990), 83- 90. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 181 discussion started, Apollon was not an especially ‘decadent’ publication. There was however, in some sense, a prescription for decadence in Apollon'^ position of pure aestheticization that it inherited from the World o f Art, if by decadence is meant that art should not provide moral models, and by extension of course that women in art ought not be moral images, but simply aesthetic models. The cult of decadence though, was not unselfconscious of the play it made with crucial cultural categories such as good and evil; it reveled in being blithely inconsiderate of them, even cultivating an image of engagement with the transgressive and taboo, actions designed out of ennui or curiosity to deliberately flout values cherished by others and to create scandal.*^ Figure 4.1 Photograph o f Valerii Briusov, 1900s ' Such as Bakst and Somov, Dobuzhinsky and Briusov, Sologub and Benois. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 182 One particularly good example of this is a photograph of Valerii Briusov from the early 1900s, in which the manipulation and juxtaposition of masculine and feminine, good and evil, public and private, art and life, real and ideal is nearly perfect. Briusov, who himself had a stable, bourgeois wife, postures (as usual) as an evil magus, but in this photograph with a bust of a woman in white stone. The manipulation of the feminine ideal is extraordinary. But the image here is not of the same nature as that held by Blok and Bely in their period of chivalric devotion to Sophia. Briusov invokes Galatea in using a stone, un-real woman, who is subject to his control. He casts himself not as the votary of a transcendental divine feminine but as a Pygmalion-theurgist. He is using an artificial ideal feminine as a foil to amplify his self-representation as the demonic male poet-mage. Briusov is playing a decadent, symbolic game precisely with the matrix of values and antinomies that are at the center of the cultural ambivalence towards the feminine. In addition to the fact that the influential intellectual movements of Symbolism and the World o f Art had abdicated responsibility for the social role accorded art and literature by Chernyshevsky in the 1860s - a role taken as an article of faith henceforward by many in the Russian intelligentsia, the need for a prescriptive art and literature was perceived as increasingly urgent as the structure of society was changing. Peasant migration, urbanization, industrialization, and educational opportunities were changing the ways men and women, class and caste related to each other. Compounding this was the sense of impending change, apocalypticism, fulfilled and yet unfulfilled by the events of 1905. These are also R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 183 issues that underlay the critics’ objections to Apollon’ ’s exhibition and its ‘decadent’ or offensive representation of women. Some elements in Russian culture did more than simply revel in the social and sexual chaos. It was not only the realists, the revolutionaries, and the liberals of the bourgeois establishment that bridled at this: the second generation of Symbolists had really demanded something more, too: they integrated Soloviev’s connection of beauty to good in their construction of the feminine and argued the feminine in art must be an aesthetic incarnation of a transcendental ideal, in which a moral dimension was integral. Their reaction to the crisis in femininity and engagement with the ideal feminine will be discussed in more detail below. One other cultural phenomenon also must be mentioned, one that explicitly invoked Sophia. They saw in the building anxiety and the revival of interest in medieval Russian art an opportunity to link the social and sexual levels of disorder, and they sought to restructure society using a newly revitalized divine femininity. Such was the self-appointed task of Pavel Muratov and the journal Sofiia, which ran only six issues in 1914. In Muratov’s Sofia, the strategy is neither to create an isolated aesthetic world or a new standard of beauty or behavior for real women, nor to enforce a moral double-standard in terms of gender and life. Taking its cue from the Religious Renaissance and late Symbolism, Sofia’s Sophia is about a new conception of value in culture, an abandonment of the demand for physical pulchritude in femininity and culture and concern with the transitory and material. In Sofia, the figure of Sophia is not an embodied woman, a real woman, or a R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 184 standard for real women in any way more than she is for men; she is rather an idea, a redeployment of the tradition of sophian spirituality that takes advantage of aspects of the 19* century’s ideology of femininity, to wit, that women are morally and spiritually superior to men, and offers it as the allegorical patroness for a symbolist-idealist program of social and cultural renewal through a spiritual-artistic renaissance rooted in Russia’s national, international and religious heritage. Their efforts yielded little fruit, both because such a task was perhaps impossible in the first place, and the outbreak of war forced the journal to close, but it is a response to the crisis in femininity that, especially in a study of Sophia, bears mentioning as a tantalizing might-have-been. Crisis Two Samuel Cioran’s Vladimir Solov ’ ev and the Knighthood o f the Divine Sophia is the only book-length study that deals explicitly with the theme of Vladimir Soloviev’s Sophia and the reception of his idea of the Eternal, Divine Feminine in Silver Age cu ltu re.C io ran ’s text is now dated, and flawed, not least because he fails to take into account the accomplishments and contributions of feminist scholarship in assessing the role and impact of gender and sexuality on the complicated nexus of power, authority, divinity, creativity, and sexual relationships in which the idea o f Sophia functioned. This study has no intention o f making the same mistake, but this is not to say that feminist methodologies are without Samuel Cioran, Vladimir Solov ’ ev and the Knighthood o f the Divine Sophia (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1977). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 185 imperfections. Just as there was a crisis in late Imperial Russian conceptions of the feminine and femininity, so there is something of a crisis in contemporary feminist scholarship on Sophia. In the Anglo-American world, studies of the late Victorian and fm-de-siecle era by feminist scholars have produced remarkable insights into the complex and half-invisible webs of power and sex that in many cases acted to maintain official social norms of patriarchalism. Just as scholarship like Cioran’s produces distortions by ignoring the issue of gender, the political demands of the contemporary feminist agenda - particularly gender feminism and related radical feminisms - sometimes engenders scholarship that likewise produces distortions through its exclusive focus on gender issues. What I propose here is a corrective, moderate feminist approach that incorporates many of the insights of various feminist approaches, but does not demand an exclusively gendered perspective. Consequently, the rest of this chapter will aim at outlining an approach that is conscious of the issues of power and gender without reducing the question to merely one of gender polities, reframing the issue of the representation of idealized women to account for the complicated and multivalent representations found in this era. There are three areas on which this approach will focus: conflation of good and evil, virtue and vice; conflation of real, live women and ideal, fictional women; and conflation of the positions of critic and text/subject. We have noted above how the categories of good and evil, virtue and vice, were manipulated by writers and artists of the Russian fm-de-siecle. Generally, in the approach of Anglo-American (and to a lesser extent French/Continental) feminist critics who have dealt with the issues of the representation of idealized or R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 186 demonized women in Russian and pan-European art, literature, and culture falls into one of two categories. In the first, representations of virtuous or vicious (in the sense of vice-ridden) women are simply two sides of the same coin: both are misogynist tools of a patriarchal leviathan used by men and even women themsleves to oppress and control women, praising them when they are submissive and tractable, damning and demonizing them when they are not. Such is the conclusions of works of literary and art historical criticism such as Elaine Showalter’s Sexual Anarchy, mentioned above, and the exhaustive and glib study by Bram Dijkstra, Idols o f Perversity}^ Dijkstra ranges across styles and decades, from one end of the continent to the other, convincingly adducing evidence of the exploitative and deviant sexual-scientific discourses deployed against women by artists, writers, and scientists from around 1850 to the first world war. Much criticism written from a feminist perspective about Russian literature adopts the same tack, where the laudable but “relatively belated rediscovery of much literature by Russian women” has allowed scholars “to learn from an impressive body of feminist scholarship and theory amassed by scholars working in other disciplines.”^ * Also, unfortunately, often to repeat its mistakes, as Marsh continues: “Yet, even in the 1990s, it is still fair to say that the ‘feminist critique’ of masculine texts and criticism has only just begun in relation to Russian literature.” Her volume is unapologetically an attempt to do little more than “emphasiz[e] the Bram Dijkstra, Idols o f Perversity: Fantasies o f Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siecle Culture (New York; Oxford University Press, 1986). Rosalind Marsh, “Introduction,” in Gender and Russian Literature: New Perspectives, ed. Rosalind Marsh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 4. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 187 profound misogyny of Russian and Soviet culture [and explore how] Russian women writers have adapted to or attempted to resist the patriarchal society and culture of their country.” There is much work by Slavicist feminist critics that is balanced, insightful, and nuanced; one must want more of this for and from feminist criticism in Russian literature and less of the simple documentation of misogyny and patriarchy in Russian literature. Another response to the virtue/vice question, well-represented by Nina Auerbach’s work on Victorian culture. Woman and the Demon, is both more sophisticated and relevant to the present study, but ultimately it is not more satisfying: Auerbach’s approach focuses on representations of supernatural femininity and argues that this cultural device, though apparently misogynistic, is actually testimony to the unknowable, uncontrollable power that women possess - a power that terrifies men. On this account, this literary and artistic imagery can be re-evaluated to be a demonstration of women’s power despite the “original” intention and/or reception. There is much to like about Auerbach’s analysis: the diseussion of both ideal and ‘real’ fictional women, which I will also address more below, the synthetic and insightful reading that exposes underlying myths in the Victorian myth of women. But the line she draws between angel and demon is utterly fluid. The Victorian English, and the Russians, too, knew that an angel is not a demon, and that good is not the same as evil, and used as a symbol these beings have very different meanings within their cultures and texts. Black is not ’ Marsh, “Introduction,” 23. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 188 white, even if gray is in between. No doubt sometimes the two are deliberately mixed, but in such a situation there is an exploitation of the recognized difference that makes the symbolic multivalency effective. The difficulty with both these models is the underlying assumption that the labels of “good” and “bad/evil” are defined almost exclusively in terms of the contemporary perception of the liberation or oppression of women. In other words, one broad model claims 19* century art is patriarchal, sexualized, misogynist and thus a priori “bad,” with rare exceptions of intellectually liberated (and consequently oppressed) women artists, whose work is re-evaluated as “good.” Auerbach’s model claims 19* century discourses at first appear misogynist as above and therefore “bad,” but the supernatural power often accorded women, in images of feminine insanity, sensuality, or evil, testifies to women’s real, almost invisible power and thus it is “good.” The problem with these approaches results from the focus on contemporary political values. The argument that I want to make is different: attention should be paid also to what is connoted as good and evil in the literature and art itself. In turn-of-tbe-century Russian culture, there is a funetional difference between images of transcendental feminine virtue/good and those of transeendental feminine vice/evil, notwithstanding perceptions of encoded misogyny in both from a modern perspective. In spite of the pretensions of many Silver Age figures to go, a la Nietzsche, “beyond good and evil,”^ * ^ a tendency that must be taken into For the role of Nietzsche in Russian culture, see Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, Nietzsche in Russia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 189 consideration, there is no doubt that “good” and “evil” are relevant and important categories, widely used and manipulated in the art and literature of the era, as we saw in the example of the photograph of Briusov above. A critique which does not address these important cultural categories in their context is inadequate. Rather than exalting the demonic representations of women as expressions of female power rooted in male anxiety over the uncontrollable feminine or universally demonizing the virtuous feminine as merely another apparatus of misogynistic control, there needs to be an approach offering insights about the purposes of the representation of the feminine and femininity in particular ways. A crucial distinction for the argument I plan to make is between real women and ideal women, represented in art, literature, and other products of creative, elite culture. When the distinction between the real and the ideal feminine is lost or subverted, the literary and artistic results are often conflicted, ambiguous, and interesting, and for more than simply as testimony to another variation on a theme of misogyny. The Silver Age is an interesting ground to test such boundaries, since not only was there intense interest in the transcendental ideal, both sacred and demonic, but also because the distinctions between life and art were consciously blurred, and the ability of art to change the real and help to incarnate a superior alterity was an article of faith for many. The Russian Silver Age had many conflicting discourses about the relationship between gender, art, and life, generating a variety of epistemologies at the intersection of the carnal, the creative, and the quotidian. Some Symbolist R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 190 figures chose to try to live an life of deliberate artifice, as when Briusov and Bely paid visits around Moscow, leaving calling cards from centaurs and unicorns. They knew that they were not these creatures and these creatures did not exist, but the point was to create an artificial atmosphere as though they did. This kind of practice is the opposite of constructivist mantra of art into life, ‘'iskusstvo v zhizn rather it is “life into art,” or more precisely life lived and created as art, zhiznetvorchestvo. Therein is part of the aesthetic failure of Symbolism: life is not art, and real women are not fictional women. Just as he attempted to manipulate reality by masquerading as an incarnate centaur, Briusov also integrated the manipulation of the feminine in life, as in art, too, cultivating demonic relationships laced with alcohol, drugs, mental illness, and illicit sex with at least two women, Nina Petrovskaia and Nadezhda L’vova, who subsequently took their own lives. In terms of theoretical approach to representations of the idealized feminine, most feminist theory, though quite different from the Symbolist world-view, makes similar claims that attempt to erase the distinction between art and life: for the feminist, the personal is the political, and both are directly mediated through art and literature. As the art historian Linda Nochlin states in the eponymous opening essay of Women, Art, and Power, “There is an analogy between women’s compromised ability - her lack of self-determining power - in the realm of the social order and her lack of power to articulate a negative critique in the realm of pictorial representation,” and she positions her ovm work “in those invisible streams of power ... [by] working to demystify the discourses of visual imagery ... R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 191 through a politics of representation and its institutional structures” in order to effect change in both society and academia.^* Feminist theory has taught, with a great deal of merit, that a representation of a beautiful woman is not just a beautiful woman. It is sometimes, even often, a simulacra of displaced desire, an object for voyeuristic sexual possession, a device that encodes social or political domination and control.^^ But it is also not just that. Perhaps one result of the distinction our culture makes between outer/visible and inner/invisible beauty is a situation in which beauty cannot ever be a reliable or authentic symbol of virtue. This impedes our ability as receivers of images of feminine beauty to believe that any representation of female beauty can be a “good” image. Beauty, as a transcendental category representing the aesthetic ideal, was a living and functional cultural concept at the turn of the century in Russia, linked, not least by Soloviev, to the Good and True. I would assert that there is such a thing, particularly in the context of early twentieth century Russia, as a conception of virtue and power, embodied in discourses of a beautiful, personal, feminine Sophia, that is not inherently prescriptive and oppressive for real women, and that contemporary feminist research has not been able to identify it as such. Indeed, it might even be argued, if the political and aesthetic must be linked, that given the relative status of women in the context of early 20* century Russia, 2 1 Linda Nochlin, Women, Art, and Power (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 32, 33. These have been explored in the work of Peter Berger, Griselda Pollack, Linda Nochlin, Rosalyn Krauss, and others. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 192 virtue linked with power in the guise of transcendental female authority can be considered progressive from a feminist perspective. If the relationship between life and art have been altered by some feminist criticism, then certain relationships of the critic to different aspects of the text and its personae have been neglected as well. The position of the critic relative to the author, narrator, and character is also sometimes distorted by feminist theory, especially in its methodological alliances with other decentralizing, ‘post-’ trends in criticism. One aspect of contemporary, post-modem criticisms are their tendency to dehumanize literature, to isolate text, language, and the production or manipulation of meaning from conscious human agency. The critical approach adopted here, that examines the interrelationship between the writers or painters of sophian discourses, their creative doctrines that included virtue and vice; immanence, symbol, and beauty; zhiznetvorchestvo, theurgic art, and artistic transcendence; the crises of femininity, urbanization, and modernization; and the real women who were integrated into their schema willing or no, simply makes no sense in the absence of the real, literary-historical persons. This text-oriented tendency in criticism finds an echo in some feminist scholarship in its tendency to construct discourses based on an abstracted notion of gender, constructed by language and culture as it may be, rather than on any real woman or women. To be fair, there is some feminist criticism which criticizes such strongly text-centered theory. Nonetheless, one final lacuna in feminist literary criticism must be pointed out. It is rooted in an observation that is almost too obvious: feminist critics tend to read literature from the perspective of gender-conscious women (feminists!). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 193 sympathizing and identifying with female characters in the text and seeking patriarchal and misogynist structures outside the text. In the case of Sophia, this produces some potential pitfalls that need to be pointed out and if possible, amended. One feature that repeatedly appears in an historical examination of Sophia and sophian figures is the positioning of the feminine as a mediating force between the usually male godhead and the presumptively male human. Such Sophias are generally regarded as subalterns of a patriarchal order by feminist critics. For example, Becker-Cantarino laments that Goethe’s use of femininity - the Ewig Weibliche - as a mere medium is misogynist, patriarchal, androcentric and depressing.^^ This misses something of the point, and only evaluates it from an external point of view, and fails to see the potential in what is a very common sapiential scheme. From the ‘inside’ of the fiction, from the perspective of the male human character, Faust, within the narrative, this sophian figure becomes crucially important, she is sacred and powerful, the sole link to the desired salvation, the embodiment of the transcendent good, beautiful, and true. Unable to contact a male pater-God, even if such a being is posited, implicitly or not, the votary of Sophia must rely exclusively on the divine feminine for inspiration, patronage, and intercession. This ‘male’ perspective is often ignored or neglected in feminist critiques. Even if it is considered as an incarnation of his desire, it finally must give the real power to her. In terms of power, authority, and gender. Barbara Becker-Cantarino, “Goethe and Gender,” in The Cambridge Companion to Goethe, ed. Lesley Sharpe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 179-192. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 194 there is virtually no power at all in the votary’s masculine position. In fact, the divine feminine has effectively usurped control of the patriarchal system, replacing it with a matriarchy.^"^ In terms of extra-textual, external struetures, one of the unique features of the cult of Sophia in the Silver Age is the intimate, intereonnected relationship of life and art that creates extra-textual relationships between the writers, artists, and thinkers with Sophia that echo Faust’s position within Goethe’s text. Both inside and outside the sophian works created by men, there exists a system of power structures that, based on the assumption that Sophia is not simply another name for the literary trope of the Muse, and is instead a real, spiritual being, is missed by critics taking a traditional feminist approach. This aspect of the relationships of power and gender will be incorporated into the analysis of Sophia in the works of Soloviev and his followers in the following chapters. The idea of wisdom is different than the virtues (or vices) traditionally associated with the English Victorian ‘madwoman in the attic’, or ‘the angel of the house,’ or even the ubiquitous Virgin Mary. Rather, wisdom is a virtue which is from its ancient origins practical, cerebral, and intuitive. The notion of Sophia is different than other personified virtues. Wisdom is a superior, more powerful virtue - recall St. Sophia was the mother of Faith, Hope, and Love.^^ Beauty, It bears mentioning that a similar scene occurs in Dante’s Divina Commedia, where Dante, lead to Paradise by his earthly love, Beatrice, must rely on the intercession of the Virgin for final salvation and admission to Heaven. Soloviev among many others interested in Sophia was also interested in Dante, and placed him among the ranks o f sophian poets. See above, chapter two. Love, translated as charity, makes this trio the theological virtues, which were considered superior to the classical cardinal virtues, fortitude, prudence, temperence, and R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 195 Liberty, or Justice are allegories - they represent a quality but have no truly personalized existenee. Sophia is different beeause she does exist as a disereet, personal being, not an subordinate of the divine, but a personal aspect of it. These two aspects of Sophia, namely that she is a quality which does not fit into the traditional feminine canon of virtues and that she is a person, not just an idea, are important. The former, because it begins to rebuild an image of women that retains much of the 1 9 * * ^ century European heritage of ideal women, i.e., natural, spiritual, and moral, but begins to cast them in a way which is palpably different: by marshalling feminine virtues under the rubric of Wisdom, they acquire greater authority, legitimacy, and indeed, power, and the latter, because it enables the easier appropriation of this more powerful conception of the feminine by women. The full consideration of Sophia’s characteristics problematizes the easy transference of the terms of the construction of gender and gender relationships that underlies much scholarship on these issues in the context of Western Europe. In her book. Bodies o f Modernity, on French art of exactly this period, Tamar Garb repeats the same assumptions about 19* century structuring of sexual difference and the gendered body; she uses them as much feminist scholarship does, a way of analyzing and subverting the distinctions and inequality of the discursive posture of the bourgeois male artist and feminine art object — the relationship not only of the artist and art, but of men and women. “Woman is the site of rest for the weary masculine imagination. She is youth to his age, she is beauty to his wisdom, she is justice. Wisdom, then, might be considered the highest virtue - though often humility is accorded this position in the medieval West. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 196 nature to his culture. Images of naked women disporting themselves in the landscape were the stock in trade of a culture which accepted such polarities as natural.”^ ^ The virtue of Wisdom, the very notion of Sophia as personified Wisdom, and the functions, multivalency, and scope of the ways in which she was understood, portrayed, revealed, and represented indicates a slippage between the conventions of gender structures accepted by modem scholarship as the sometimes unquestioned and even unquestionable state of things in 19*'’ century European culture, and the case of Russia and the reception of Sophia. In fact, Sophia as Wisdom undermines these neat categories in unexpected ways. In relation to the male votary, the Solovievan Sophia is age and youth, she is Beauty and Wisdom, she is Nature and Culture. Wisdom is a masculine category, the proprietary object of the “wise man,” but in this context it is refigured as the essential and personal, and potentially incamate, feminine. The ideal Sophia keeps the essential feminine qualities (youth, beauty, nature) and appropriates masculine ones (age, wisdom, culture). This kind of metaphysical androgynization is one part of the process of 'Sophiazation,' with roots in alchemy and Kabala.^^ This anrdogynizing discourse is mixed with a full endorsement of the power of spiritual-sexual love, and in the hands of Decadent Symbolists becomes a means of legitimating art and actions that violate norms of gender and sexuality, mitigating sexual differentiation. Tamar Garb, Bodies o f Modernity: Figure and Flesh in Sin-de-Siecle France (London: Thames and Hudson, 1998), 201-202. See Judith Deutsch Komblatt “Soloviev’s Androgynous Sophia and the Jewish Kabbalah” Slavic Review 50, no. 3 (Fall 1991): 487-496. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 197 Figure 4.2 Lev Bakst, Portrait o f Zinaida Gippius, pencil and pastel on paper, 1906 One example is Bakst’s famous 1906 portrait of Zinaida Gippius.^* Gippius’ sexually transgressive persona is well-known: “Just as provocative and more flamboyant than Gippius’ refined poetry and prose was her self-representation in life and in the area of Symbolist ‘life-creation.’”^ ^ Gippius is shovm in the dress of a late 18* century male, her body’s sexual characteristics (breasts, hips) concealed by the costume and pose. The only markers of gender in early 20th Olga Matich “Gender Trouble in the Amazonian Kingdom: Tum-of-the-Century Representations of Women in Russia” in Amazons o f the Avant-Garde: Alexandra Exter, Natalia Goncharova, Liubov ’ Popova, Olga Rozanova, Varvara Stepanova, andNadzhda Udaltsova, ed. John E. Bowlt and Matthew Druitt (New York: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2000), 75-93. 29 Matich, “Trouble in the Amazonian Kingdom,” 77. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 198 century terms, her hair and hosiery-clad legs, are also consumed as parts of the costume - never mind the amount of leg shown and the very fact that she is wearing pants are serious violations of gender norms. Most interesting, though, is the choice of period costume. While it is true that the Mir Iskusstva circle to which Bakst belonged relied extensively on the French eighteenth century as a setting for their art, there is perhaps more to it than that. Gippius’ pose and vesture casts her as a thinker, a philosophe, the exquisitely rational man of the Age of Reason. The type of man she chooses to be is a direct assault on conventional gender roles both of her time and the eighteenth century from which she ‘comes.’ Gard Avrites, “the eighteenth century provided the perfect prototype of the apparently fecund, free femininity ... the fictive and physical space for a transformation of modem woman into the elemental natural woman.” So do women appear in the art of Watteau, Boucher, and Fragonard, as well as in that of Gippius’ contemporaries and friends Benois and Somov. The portrait of Gippius does none of this, stubbornly and confidently resisting the “femininity constituted in the realm of nature ... a tried and tested product of culture.”^ ® While Gippius is just as ‘artificially packaged’ a representation of gender as a coquettish Parisienne of 19* century French art - maybe more so because she adopts ‘artificially artificial’ clothing - the gender-bending points out the arbitrariness of fashion as gender, making the ‘modem woman’ into a ‘historical man’ and a ‘modem man’ into ‘natural woman.’ These complex visual puns are Garb, Bodies o f Modernity, 150-151. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 199 heightened by the pose of Gippius as a philosopher that also introduces another pun that plays on notions of gender and brings the specific discussion of Sophia to bear as well: ‘philo-sophe’ etymologically is ‘one who loves wisdom.’ Through the complex layering of assumed and real identities, masculine and feminine, natural and rational, Gippius is both the devotee of Sophia and her symbolic (androgynous) incarnation. Gippius was certainly aware of Sophia and the role of sophia in culture and history. By the time of this 1906 portrait Gippius and her husband, Dmitrii Merezhkovskii, had survived creative and spiritual crises and elaborated a pagan neo-Christian synthetic eschatology that anticipated an imminent coming of an age of the Holy Spirit, in which the Holy Spirit would be a feminine figure, a doctrine indebted to Soloviev’s Sophian apocalyptic thought and rooted in a centuries-old Christian teleology. This is not to say that Russian culture was exempt from the kind of social and artistic structures that submit to feminist critiques. At the same time, Sophia and the complex extension of sophian principles into Russian culture and the differences between Russia and Western Europe force a closer examination before one can conclude with Rosalind Marsh: “The fundamental assumptions of patriarchal ideology - the perception of woman as object, ‘immanence,’ ‘nature,’ passivity or death, as opposed to man as subject, ‘transcendence,’ ‘culture,’ activity and life, have dominated all aspects of Russian social, political, and cultural life.”^ ' The appropriation and manipulation of sophian attributes contributed to the destabilization of femininity, but also give witness to the methodological Marsh, “Introduction,” 3. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 2 0 0 difficulties of grafting ideas about Western European strategies of construction and containment of visuality, textuality, and sexuality into the Russian eontext, a culture whose ongoing debate about its relationship to the rest of Europe not only signals complex and deep anxieties, but also real differences. In chapter seven, I will attempt to outline potential paths for future research by assessing the impact of Sophia on the position and fortunes of real women in Russian culture who in one way or another try to appropriate the powers of Sophia and use it to speak in their own voices. There is a difference between how men and women reacted to the renaissance of the female incarnate Wisdom of God or her various sisters. There are also important differences in the reactions among the men who devoted themselves to her; a typology of these responses will occupy the succeeding chapters. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 2 0 1 Chapter Five Despair: Soloviev, Blok, Kuznetsov Temy venchaiut smirennykh i mudrykh Blok Having traced the sources of the idea of Sophia, explored a destabilized cultural construction of femininity, and positioned the dissertation with respect to contemporary feminist theory, the task of distinguishing between kinds of sophian responses to the “crisis of femininity” to generate a typology of sophian responses begins. This will also require providing an explanation for the origins of the typological distinctions through mapping the complex intellectual terrain of the era and integrating the relevant cultural and creative issues. In doing this, it is to be hoped that this study will provide some insights into the importance and function of Sophia in Symbolist culture. We have seen now how the idea of Sophia has roots and sources both in the East and West, and how a destabilization in ideas of femininity in the last years of the Russian Empire created an opportunity for a particular revival of interest in a reformulation of ideals of the feminine. I plan to focus on religious and philosophical idealism, modernist themes such as the urban, dislocation, and R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 2 0 2 anxiety, and specifically Symbolist aesthetics with an emphasis on zhiznetvorchestvo and theurgy, in the hopes of finding new insights into the Silver Age as a whole and Sophia herself. Rather than attempting to deal with the whole of Silver Age aesthetics and thought in philosophy, religion, art, and literature at once, I will focus on three individual figures, each a leader or representative of different elements in Russian culture, who fall into the first typological category: Vladimir Soloviev, Aleksandr Blok, and Pavel Kuznetsov. I will label their creative posture sophian despair. An idea similar to sophian despair was first explored by Cioran, and his basic thesis remains sound: these figures are at first enamored of Sophia (or some sophian Divine Feminine) and inspired by her. They go through a period of enchantment and inspiration, produce paeans of art, literature, philosophy, or other creative work, but then become disillusioned or disappointed and subsequently produce works that are conspicuously neglectful, pejorative, or demonizing of their previous idol. However, Cioran does not satisfactorily explain what is specific about sophian despair, why or how the Symbolist milieu creates the circumstances in which this takes place, what other possibilities other than despair might be, or how the insights of gender criticism might inform the situation. He also claims (implicitly) that this process is inevitable, which it manifestly is not, as we will see below in chapter six. The creative failure that leads to sophian despair is both aesthetic and extra- aesthetic because Symbolist theory and practice is about more than simply art; in its R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 203 full development, it sought to be not only a poetics, but also a philosophy, most fully elaborated by Andrei Bely and Viacbeslav Ivanov - both of whom were interested in the divine feminine and acknowledged their debts to Soloviev. Symbolism extended into thought about life and “real” life’s aesthetic and metaphysical relationship to art. I hope to illustrate that the process leading to sophian despair is not accidental or “inevitable,” but often a result of a combination of cultural dynamics of theurgic art, zhiznetvorchestvo, and the ultimately tragic conflation of the real and the ideal. In short, in different ways all of these figures try to use theurgic creativity to inscribe upon actual women the incarnation of their ideals in a kind of modified version of the idea of life-creation, the elaboration of which will build upon the discussion in chapter four of the relationship between real and ideal and life and art. Individual variations on this basic pattern will be used to unite Soloviev, Blok, and Kuznetsov, but first the related Symbolist concepts of zhiznetvorchestvo and theurgic creativity will be discussed in turn to form the basis for understanding the process that leads to sophian despair. One of the principal ideas that describes the Symbolists’ attitudes towards life is that life is a legitimate, even necessary, realm of creativity, virtually equivalent to art. These ideas are rooted in Soloviev’s aesthetics. For Soloviev, “sovremennoe iskusstvo v svoei okonchatel’noi zadache dolzno voplotit’ absoliutnyi ideal ne v odnom voobrazhenii a i v samom dele, — dolzhno odukhotvorit, presushchestvit’ nashu deistvitel’nuiu zhizn’.”' Soloviev’s idea that ' Vladimir Soloviev, “Obshchii smysl’ iskusstva” in idem., Vladimir Soloviev vol 2, ed. Ern. Keikhel’ (Berlin: Zaria, 1925), 162. For more of Soloviev’s thought on art, see also Chtenie o R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 204 art must effect, alter, and spiritualize life is extended by the Symbolists who view themselves, as artists, as charged with the task of making life into art. Soloviev himself does not go so far as to claim that art is life, or life is art, merely that real art must not remain isolated from life, must alter it for the better by permeating the material with the spiritual. Art is a means to the end of the transformation of the living chelovek into the bogochelovek. Soloviev’s anthropology does not allow one human individual to act on and transform another, as if the other were only material. Infusing the spiritual into a being who is already spiritual is paradoxical; attempting to subvert the individuality and will of another human is not only impossible, but also sinful; the desired goal is making the spiritual potential in another spiritual being fully manifest. The seeond generation of Symbolists took Soloviev a step further, reading him selectively and maximally and living out their interpretation and extension of Soloviev’s mystical-philosophical aesthetics, modifying his Christianity and rejecting in large part the elements of aesthetic nihilism in the artistic credos of the first generation of more decadent Symbolists. One result of this greater reliance on Soloviev and less explicitly decadent posture was the increasing importance of the sophian feminine prineiple. In noting this development, Aage Hansen-Love has written, V otlichie ot starogo Demiurga, t. e. ‘d’iavola’ rannego simvolizma- dekadentstva, ‘novyi Demiurg’ vystupaet ne kak sopemik Tvortsa, no kak ispolnitel’ ego ‘zaveshchanii,’ t. k. ego tvorenie prodolzhaet bogochelovechestve, chtenie 7, O krasote v prirode, Pervaia rech ’ o Dosteovskom, Zhizennaia drama Platona. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 205 kosmicheskie pravila i uzory, vsledstvie chego neomifologicheskoe tvorchestvo rearkhaiziruet kul’turu, prevrashchaia ee v prirodu. I zdes’ ‘tvorchestvo’ poluchaet zhenskie, ‘materinskie’ atributy, Mat’ zhe ponimaetsia kak nositel’nitsa ‘materii-materiala’} Hansen-Love’s observations indicate both the fundamental connection between transcendental sophian themes and the creative postures of the second generation of Symbolists. Also implicit is the assumption that the immanent material for the creation of art and the creation of life is Feminine.^ One critic, looking back on the first decade of the new 20* century, commented, “In our time, ‘life’ is taken to mean the whole of the spiritual and well as the material world, everything which really exists. And the symbolist answer to the question [whether art should be for art’s sake, or for life], without any doubt, is that art must be for life, or better - that art and life are one.”'^ The nature of the Symbolists’ poetic word is different. As a symbol, it is not simply a signifier, but is mystically connected to the signified. It is, in a sense, alive. Art then, is “active” in life. Viacbeslav Ivanov formulated it concisely: “iskusstvo - ne ikonotvochestvo, a zhiznetvorchestvo.”^ ^ Khansen-Leve, Oge. “Kontseptsii ‘zhiznetvorchestva’ v russkom simvolizme nachala veka” Blokovskii SbornikXlV, ed. L. Pil’d and G. Ponomarev (Tartu: Tartuskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 1998), 72. ^ This maternal femininity becomes manifest in the work of Pavel Kuznetsov; see below. Gofinan, Modest, Book about the Russian Poets o f the Last Decade, qtd. in James West, Russian Symbolism: A Study ofViacheslav Ivanov and the Russian Symbolist Aesthetic (London: Methuen and Co., 1970), 118. ^ Viacbeslav Ivanov, “Zavety simvolizma” [1910] qtd. in Irina Papemo, “The Meaning of Art: Symbolist Theories,” in Creating Life: The Aesthetic Utopia o f Russian Modernism, ed. Irina Paperno and Joan Delaney Grossman (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 21. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 206 The Symbolists’ ideas about the nature of art and creativity itself, not just the proper sphere for artistic activity, are also important in understanding the sources of sophian despair. This idea of the interrelatedness of a spiritual as well as material reality in art also informs Symbolism’s philosophy of the nature of creativity. Because art and life were considered coterminous, the creative power of the symbolist artist could be extended beyond art into life. Symbolist creativity was undergirded by the powerful notion of theurgy. Theurgy is the compelling of a supernatural power to action, such as in magic spells, conjuring, or other incantatory activity, often with a creative end. In this meaning, it implies the power of the human over the divine. The idea of the magical power of words is common coin for the Symbolists, and the idea of the symbolist poetic word as constitutively creative is essentially theurgical. Bal’mont was fascinated by incantatory folklore, as was Blok, who approvingly drew parallels between poets and sorcerers; ‘“Koldun — samodavleishchii zakonodatel’ svoego mira.’”^ Blok believed that “from the beginning the Symbolist is a theurgist.”^ Maria Carlson has convincingly explicated the incantatory, theurgical poetics of Bely’s novel, Serebrianyi golub, arguing that theurgy “forms one of the cornerstones of Andrei Bely’s theory of Symbolism as a worldview.”^ Of course, the Symbolists did not invent theurgy; it ® Aleksandr Blok, “Poeziia zagovorov i zakliianii,” qtd. in Irina Gutkin, “The Magic of Words: Symbolism, Futurism, Socialist Realism,” in The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture, ed. Bernice Rosenthal (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1997), 227. ’ Maria Carlson, “No Religion Higher than Truth A History o f the Theosophical Movement in Russia, 1875-1922 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 200. * Carlson, 200. Bely’s novel was originally published as Andrei Belyi [Boris Bugaev], Serebrianyi golub: Povest’ v semi glavakh. Moscow. Skorpion, 1910. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 207 was part of Soloviev’s philosophy, for example, as well as many occult doctrines very popular at the time in Russia and across Europe. The founder of Theosophy, Elena Blavatskaia wrote in Isis Unveiled, “As God creates, so man can create. Given a certain intensity of the will, and [sic] the shapes created by the mind become subjective[ly real] ... Given a more intense and intelligent concentration of [the] will, and [sic] the form becomes concrete, visible, objective; the man has learned the secret of secrets; he is a Magician.”^ Zhiznetvorchestvo and theurgy are central elements in Symbolist creative theory, but it must be recalled that these devices are only partial means to an end, even if they are the primary circumstances that combined to create the conditions for sophian despair. With a belief that art and life are one and a belief that the creativity of the artist can be projected onto and alter the real world, a belief that this power extends to incantatory and ineamational limits, the only element absent is an object from life to be transfigured as art - a symbol to be created and made incarnate spiritually and materially. Hansen-Love has postulated that both of these elements are contained within the artist: “Poet, imeet svoistva ‘muzheskogo’ i ‘zhenskogo’ naehal” on ne tol’ko (vos)proizvodit slovo-tekst (muzhskoi tip ‘produktsii’), no i vosprinimaet i rozhdaet Semia-slovo iz sobstvennogo dukhogo tela, kak Mat’-Syra-Zemlia ill Sofii.”^ ® However, this model doesn’t fully accoimt ® H. P. Blavatsky [Blavatskaia], Isis Unveiled, vol. 1 (New York: J. W. Bouton, 1877), 62, qtd. in Maria Carlson “ No Religion Higher than Truth ”, 200. Kdiansen-Leve, 71. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 2 0 8 for the actions of the “Simvolisty-teurgy” and their relationship with their feminine principle. When an interest in a Divine, Eternal Feminine ideal is incorporated into this matrix, the real-life object is often not within the poet, but outside him - a woman. The context of the unstable, ambiguous nature of the feminine has already been discussed; this, combined with the historical context of Sophia, revived by Soloviev and the doctrines of Symbolist poetics is sufficient to explain why many artists, writers, and thinkers chose a woman as the object for their actions and “adopted the cause of perfecting a flawed woman into an incamation of das Ewig Weibliche.”* * However, the obsession with Sophia is about more than a beautiful or beloved woman, or the romance or naivete of youth, or an allegory of the poetic muse. As John Bowlt has noted, “The idealization of Woman as a symbol of perfection and wholeness was, of course, not new in the history of European and Russian culture, and there were precedents at various levels of artistic achievement.”* ^ The most important reason the Symbolists were interested in Sophia is because Sophia is the quintessential Symbolist S)mibol. Sophia is not incorporated into the Symbolist matrix, she is the matrix itself, both its practice and its object. Hansen-Love’s words have pointed out the basic connection between Symbolist creativity and the Etemal Feminine: “‘tvorchestvo’ poluchaet zhenskie, “ Irene Masing-Delic, “Creating the Living Work o f Art: The Symbolist Pygmalion and His Antecedents,” in Creating Life: The Aesthetic Utopia o f Russian Modernism, ed. Irina Papemo and Joan Delaney Grossman (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 53. Bowlt, John E. “The Blue Rose: Russian Symbolism in Art,” Burlington Magazine 68, no. 881 (August 1976): 572. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 209 ‘materinskie’ atributy,” but the connection is even closer than attributes, extending to the very substance of Creation.*^ As Andrei Bely wrote in Vesy the same year Blok’s Stikhi o prekrasnoi dame appeared, “Sposobnosf nashego poznaniia iznutri postigat’ glavneishiia cherty sushchnosti est’ mudrost i simvolizm - oblast’ eia primeneniia.”^ '* Sophia is the personification of the interrelationship between the material and the transcendent. Sophia reconciles within herself the material-spiritual dualism of the world as conceived by Soloviev and the Symbolists. Sophia is the incamation of the methodological keystone of Symbolist praxis, the distillation of the promise ofViacheslav Ivanov’s oft-cited dictum, a realibus ad realiora. In Sophia, Soloviev “provided Russian Symbolism with many of its major philosophical concerns. ... [H]e is responsible for its seminal pattern: the conception of the Divine Feminine within a symbolist scheme of transfigurative synthesis.In Soloviev’s philosophy, “Sophia is portrayed as both the aetive principle of the creative process and as its realized goal."”'^ There is no more important project in Symbolism than incarnating Sophia, which is exactly what Blok, Bely, Sergei Soloviev, Pavel Kuznetsov, (and in their own ways Khansen-leve, 72. Andrei Bely [Boris Bugaev], “Krititsizm i simvolizm,” Vesy 2, no. 2 (1904): 11. Cioran, Vladimir Solov ’ ev and the Knighthood o f the Divine Sophia, 7. Boris Jakim, “Introduction” in Vladimir Solovyov, Lectures on Divine Humanity, trans. Peter Zouboff, rev. and ed. Boris Jakim (Hudson, New York: Lindisfame Press, 1995), xiv. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 2 1 0 Merezhkovskii, Ivanov, Chulkov, Vrubel, ete.) and many others set out to do, and ended in sophian despair. Sophian despair as I have defined it is a creative posture, not an autobiographical situation, so it is primarily aesthetic, but the reason for sophian despair is not just about art and beauty (or lack thereof). It is more than aesthetic failure; it is also moral and metaphysical failure, because the attempt to incarnate Sophia is not only artistic, it is creative activity projected into life to alter the nature of another living human being. It is not simply the presence of an actual woman or women or just a romantic or other attachment gone wrong that leads to the consequences of disillusionment and despair in the life and works of Soloviev, Blok, Kuznetsov and others, but the attempt to blend one’s own creative work and someone else’ s life, to impose one’s art as a power, as a life-creating, life-altering force on another person, a woman who inevitably fails to incamate the impossible ideal - impossible not (only) because it is ideal, but because it is the artist’s desire, not the woman’s.*^ What Soloviev, Blok, Kuznetsov, and others expected from their human relationships was tragically impossible. The combination of zhiznetvorcheskii and theurgic elements draws biographical details into relevance not for critical comparison or artistic inspiration, but for the purpose of itself being transformed into artistic material. There are peculiar instances in literary hisotry where women performed this act upon themselves for the sake of male writers. See for example, Elisabeth Brofen, Over Her Dead Body: Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic (New York: Routledge, 1992). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 2 1 1 This process calls to mind, of course, the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea, which was quite popular in the 19* century in the wake of Romanticism’s classical revival and the valorization of the creative male genius. Andrei Bely explicitly uses this sculptural metaphor in another of his critical articles; it bears quoting at length: Iskusstvo ... kratchaishii put’ k religii; zdes’ chelovechestvo, poznavshee svoiu sushchnost’, ob’ediniaetsia edinstvom Vechnoi Zheny: tvorchestvo, provedennoe do kontsa, neposredstvermo perekhodit’ v religioznoe tvorchestvo - teurgiiu. Iskusstvo pri pomoshchi mramora, krasok, slov sozdast’ zhin’ Vechnoi Zheny; religiia sryvaet etot pokrov. Mozhno skazat’ chto na kazhdoi statue, izvaiannoi iz mramora, pochiet ulybka Eia, i naoborot: Ona - Madoima, izvaiannaia v vekakh.*^ Irene Masing-Delic has argued that the Symbolists adapted the Pygmalion myth to effect a movement not from art to life, but from life to immortality.*^ The insights offered by this account of sophian despair reveals that the actual process is not exactly what Masing-Delic describes; rather, the movement to a posture of sophian despair can be seen as a kind of inversion rather than extension of Pygmalion’s achievement: rather than a pieee of sculpted stone coming to life through the artist’s adoration, the adoring artist’s ministrations metaphorieally try to petrify a living woman. Recall, for example, Briusov’s photograph with a statue of a woman (figure 4.1). There are, of course, different variations on this pattern for Soloviev, Blok, and Kuznetsov, but taken as a whole they all fall into the category of a creative Andrei Bely, “Apokalipsis v russkoi poezii,” Vesy 2, no 4 (1904): 17. Compare Irene Masing-Delic, “Creating the Living Work o f Art,” 51-82. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 2 1 2 agent whose reinterpretation of femininity did not succeed and brought them eventually to despair. Each will be considered briefly in turn. Soloviev If there is any one figure responsible for reviving interest in the idea and figure of Sophia, it is Vladimir Soloviev. He has already been discussed extensively; one can hardly expect to discuss the notion of Sophia and the development of Symbolist poetic theory without mentioning him. One of the primary influences on the elite culture’s discussion of women in art and society, the nature of creativity, cosmology, and anthropology, Vladimir Soloviev was a philosopher, critic, poet, and mystic. The influence of his multifaceted work in philosophy, mysticism, poetry, aesthetics, even politics, is still being felt and assessed, and at the center of all these is his idea of Sophia. Soloviev’s Sophia is a complex, philosophical, mystical, and poetic matrix.^** The importance of the notion of Sophia to Soloviev’s creative and personal life can hardly be overstated. As he wrote an note appended to perhaps his most famous (and autobiographical) poem “Tri Svidanie” (1898), “samoe znachiteTnoe iz togo, chto do sikh por With the sincerity o f Polonius, Losev provides us with a list of aspects: “absoliutnyi, bogochelovecheskii, kosmologicheskii, antropologicheskii, universalno-feministicheskii, esteticheskii-teoreticheskii, intimno-romanticheskii, magicheskii, natsional’no-russkii, i eskhatoloigcheskii. [...]” A. F. Losev, Vladimir Solov ’ ev i ego vremia (Moscow: Molodaia Gvardiia, 2000), 224. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 213 sluchilos’ so mnoiu v zhizni.”^ * This assertion can be illustrated in both Soloviev’s life and works, and within the outlines of Sophian despair. Admittedly, Soloviev fits least well into the typological scheme outlined above, despite scholarship to the contrary. Consequently, a certain restraint needs to be made in offering him as an example of sophian despair. Certainly, the ecumenical hopes he had for the unification of churches, the transformation of individual humans through love into divinized, androgynous immortals, the desire for an apocalyptic reconciliation and amelioration of humanity - none of these things that he had advocated took place. There are two distinct stages to sophian despair: first, the attempt to incarnate Sophia in a living woman or women and second the failure and disappointment that result. The first of these, the attempt of Soloviev to incamate Sophia is demonstrable, but the interpretation of Soloviev as coming to a position of dissatisfaction or even satirical despair over his sophian hopes towards the end of his life is more controversial and complex. We will deal with them in tum, supported by several writers on Soloviev, including his nephew Sergei Soloviev, Konstantin MochuTskii, Lukianov, Cioran, Boris Jakim, Dmitrii Stremooukhoff, and Hans Urs von Balthasar, among others. Whether or not Soloviev came to a position of creative Sophian despair, it seems to not be directly connected to disenchantment with any particular living woman. It is true that Soloviev’s life was marked by the failure to sustain romantic “Tri Svidanie” first published in Vestnik Evropy 11 (1898): 328. Much ink has been spilled over this particular work of Soloviev’s, considered perhaps too often simply the key to much o f his biography. For an original and literary approach, see Judith Deutsch Komblatt, “On Laughter and Soloviev’s Three Encounters," Slavic Review 57, no. 3 (Fall 1998): 563-584. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 214 relationships with women, notably women, fortuitously or not, named Sophia. His first unconsummated love for a human Sophia began in the late 1870’s, when Soloviev met Sophia Petrovna Khitrovo at Krasnyi rog, the deceased writer Aleksei Tolstoy’s estate. He grew especially close to her after her husband was posted to Japan, and an intimate but the apparently platonic relationship remained so even after the death of her husband in 1894 (for whom Soloviev even wrote an obituary)despite a formal proposal of marriage on Soloviev’s part. Figure 5.1 Photograph of Sophia Petrovna Khitrovo, 1870s Vladimir Soloviev indicated he wrote the obituary in a letter quoted in S. M. Solov’ev, Zhizn ’ i tvorcheskaia evoliutsiia Vladimir Solov’ eva (Brussels; Zhizn’ s Bogom, 1977), 353, citing Vladimir Soloviev, P is’ ma VladimiraSergeevichaSolov’ eva, vol. 1, ed. E. L. Radlov (St. Petersburg; Obshchestvennaia Pol’za, 1908-1911), 136. The obituary, however, is not included in Soloviev, SS. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 215 Soloviev’s nephew, Sergei, in his biography of his uncle, partially under the aura of his philosophy filtered through the experiences of intervening friends and events, casts Sophia Petrovna in the role of Soloviev’s earthly Sophia, adducing such details as the fact that Soloviev liked her in blue dresses, a clear echo of the lazurnye videnie of his mystical contacts with Sophia. He claims that Soloviev saw the mingling of Sophia Khitrovo and the divine Sophia. “V dushe liubimoi zhenshchiny Solov’ev vidit vsiu tu zhe boginiu, ‘dushy mira’, otdelivshuiu sebia ot bozhestvermogo sveta, oderzhimuiu silami khaosa i potomu nakhodiashchuiusia v sostoianii raspadeniia i stradaniia.”^ ^ There is no question that Soloviev addressed many poems to her,^"^ and Sergei goes so far as to claim that not only his poetry, but also his mystical writings were effected as well. Soloviev’s “Mediumicheskaia perepiska s Sofiiei perekihodit v perepisku s Sof ei Petrovnoi (Khitrovo).”^ ^ Though he separated himself from her in 1887, having resolved not to pursue her divorce and their marriage for the sake of her children, he was once again staying at her estate with her in 1892, though their relations seems to have taken on the character of a friendship rather than a romance, and continued as such until his death. Interestingly, he wrote almost no poetry during their five-year separation - until he met Sophia Martynova. S. M. Solov’ev, Zhizn’ i tvorcheskaia evoliutsiia Vladimira Solov’ eva, 209. Sergei Soloviev’s text, completed in 1923 and written under difficult circumstances, was to be issued for the 25* anniversary of his imcle’s death, but was never published. For example, “Pamiat”’, “Vse zhe: s novym godom staryi, bednyi drug”, and “A kogda pred toboi i mnoi.” S. M. Soloviev, Zhizn’ i tvorcheskaia evoliutsiia Vladimira Solov’ eva, 210. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 216 His relationship with Sophia Mikhailovna Martynova, whom he met in 1891, another inconveniently - or conveniently - noble and married Sophia, was rather more sudden and intense for him, and not, it seems, quite so requited. His attempts to cast his love in poetry, and through the same poetry to conjure hers in response, were unsuccessful. “Solov’ev veril, chto preobrazhenie cherez liubvi - ne poeticheskaia greza, a realnoe zhiznermoe delo. Liubov’ zdes’ na zemle dolzhna preobrazhat’ Al’donisu v Dul’sineiu. No sam on svoiu vozliublennuiu mog preobrazhit’ tol’ko v zerkal’nykh otobrazheniaikh iskusstva. U nego byla magia slova, no ne bylo magi dela, i v realnom zhizennom opyte magicheskii krug ego razomknulsia.”^ ^ It was in the wake of this infatuation and then the renewed attachment with Sophia Khitrovo that Soloviev composed his work on the nature and mystical potential of sexual love, SmysV liubvi. These relationships testify to some veracity in K. E. Eltsova’s claims in her memoirs about Soloviev; “To, chto zakhvatyvalo vsiu dushu i vsiu slozhnuiu zhizn’ Solov’eva, pomimo very i nauki, byla liubov’. On byl chelovek ochen’ sil’nykh chuvstv i sil’ noi strasti. ... Nechastnyi ikh [liubvi] kharakter byl, pozhalui, i neizbekhen - liubil on zhenshchin vlastnykh privlekatel’nykh, podchiniavshikh sebe, pritom slozhnykh, ne prostykh, kotorye ego muchili, i k samim mucheniiam K. Mochul’skii, Vladimir Solov’ ev: Zhizn’ i uchenie (Paris: YMCA Press, 1951), 202. Mochul’skii is guilty of the same projections in hindsight as Sergei Soloviev, for example, commenting on Soloviev’s trip to London and then Egypt on the heels o f (another!) rejected proposal to Elizaveta Mikhailovna Polivanova, he adduces Blok’s title to Soloviev’s vision: “Kak vsegda v ego zhizni, liubov’ zemnaia gotovila put’ k Liubvi Nebesnoi. 1 predchuvstviia [ch’ia? - DB] ne obmanul: Prekrasnaia Dama zhdala ego v Egipetskoi pustyne” (Mochul’skii, 63). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 217 ego kak by vleklo.”^ ^ While it seems imprudent to engage with Eltsova in psychological analysis of Soloviev, her testimony of the importance of his emotional attachments in combination with the ultimately impossible fulfillment of even the human aspect of his personal romantic life, much less the mystical- philosophical character Soloviev propounded for true romantic-sexual relationships, makes whatever attempts Soloviev may have made to translate his aesthetic theories on love and art into practice manifestly unsuccessful. One more incident from Soloviev’s biography must be mentioned; at the end of his life, in a fascinating reversal of the projection of creative power typical of the Symbolist creative process, a provincial spinster schoolteacher, Anna Schmidt, who had, apparently independent of any formal education, including any knowledge of Soloviev’s work, come to philosophical conclusions that held much in common with gnosticism, kabala, and Soloviev’s own thought, wrote to Soloviev. Intrigued, Soloviev, expressed initial interest in her works and ideas, until Schmidt told him that she was the incarnation of Sophia and that he was the incarnate Logos, and their union was predestined. Soloviev balked at being the object of another’s creative projections. After meeting with her, Soloviev tried to separate himself from her politely, becoming convinced she was unstable, and admonishing her to pray. The affair later attracted attention among Soloviev’s El’tsova, K. E. Sny nezdeshnie, qtd. in Vladislav Pasin, Vladimir Soloviev v Krasnom Rage: Ocherk literaturnogo kraevedeniia (Briansk: Grani, 1994), 8. (“That which occupied the whole of his soul and all the complex life of Soloviev, alongside faith and scholarship, was love. He was a man o f very strong emotions and passions ... The unhappy character o f his loves was, if you will, inexorable. He loved women who were powerful and attractive, above his station, and therefore complex, not simple, who tormented him, and to this same torment he was somehow drawn.”) R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 218 followers, like Sergei Bulgakov, who published some of Schmidt’s work.^* Schmidt later attempted to contact various symbolists to convince them of her mystical identity, but was not received or found them spiritually unsatisfactory (Bely was among the latter). While it is ironic that rather than projecting life- altering creativity onto others, Soloviev had it projected onto himself by a woman claiming to be the earthly presence of the Divine Feminine; his polite rebuffing of Anna Schmidt might also be taken as representative of a rejection of the project of incarnating Sophia. At any rate, if Eltsova is right, the cumulative effect of a life without success in the romantic love that he predicted could transfigure humanity in a way that friendship, fraternal love, or filial love certainly could certainly contribute to a sense of disappointment or failure. It is inviting to speculate whether or not such a sense of failure could have contributed in part to the growing feeling Soloviev had at the end of his life of “a gathering sense of the palpable power of evil in the world,”^ * ^ and an imminent apocalyptic event, an intuition shared by many of his contemporaries. His thought in this vein was most clearly expressed in the 1898 Tri razgovory and the included “Kratkii ocherk ob antikhriste” in terms of a mystical panmongolism and apocalypse, bearing witness to a conviction that the Bulgakov published her article “O budushche.” See also Sergei Bulgakov, “O Anne Shmidte” Berezvye Fecfeffjos'ri, 29 December 1915, 10-114. Shmidt’s work was pubished by which Bulgakov co-edited with Berdiaev. Sergei Soloviev discusses the affair in Zhizn ’ i tvorcheskaia evoliutsiia Vladimira Solov’ eva, 399-408. To be fair, Schmidt believed Soloviev was the apocalyptic Christ, returned to judge and rule, a position Soloviev sincerely couldn’t accept, Christian, Sophian, or not. Boris Jakim, “Introduction”, viii. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 219 Kingdom of Heaven would not come peacefully through sophian means as he had discussed early in his career, but with a violent apocalypse under a masculine Logos - Christ. The effects of this gradual disillusionment, if disillusionemnt it may be called, can be seen in Soloviev’s works. There is, however, a shift in his outlook in the last years of his life, and accordingly a shift in the role of Sophia. In the first part of Soloviev’s career, he envisioned history as the process of the ‘sophiazation’ of humanity, the achievement of pan-unity, vseedinsvto, the ultimate transformation of humanity through a peaceful, feminine-Sophian eschatology. In the broadest of strokes, after completing his education and producing mostly works of theoretical philosophy in the 1870’s, his interests turned to ecumenical reconciliation between Christian churches, specifically Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism.^* His hopes for a theocratic union of churches, and the initiation of a religio-cultural unity, sobornost’ , were unfulfilled, a goal to which he devoted much of his energy in the 1880’s. In the 1890’s he returned to primarily philosophical work, and at this time his sense of growing evil and apocalypse began to intensify. Mochul’skii describes ‘legends’ about Soloviev that he had visions of demons in the 1890’s, which, according to Mochul’skii, rather than weakening his sophian faith, strengthened it, as evidenced in poems like “Tri Svidaniia” and “Das Ewig Weibliche” and even producing a positive change in his physiognomy as his health failed, revealed in a In this he anticipated the Christian ecumenical movement o f the 20* century. Soloviev would no doubt be dismayed today at the recalcitrance o f Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei 1 1 to the overtures of Pope John Paul 1 1 . R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 2 2 0 photograph which shows, according to Sergei Soloviev, a “prozrachnost”’ in his face and a “nezdeshnyi svef ’ that echoes the Taborian light sought by Hesychast monasticism, a sign of sanctity. 32 Figure 5.2 Photograph o f Vladimir Soloviev, 1890s. This is the photo which Sergei Soloviev believed revealed his uncle’s ‘transparency.’ Mochul’skii, Vladimir Solov’ ev, 250-253. Christ’s Transfiguration on Mount Tabor is described in Matthew 17, Mark 9, and Luke 9. The Byzantine Hesychasts took this as a type for the teaching o f the potential transfiguration of the flesh of living humans prior to death which they brought to Russia with them, and as such it forms one of the theological bases o f Soloviev’s teaching o f the potential transformation of a chelovek into a bogochelovek. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 2 2 1 If Soloviev’s body became increasingly “transparent,” his works manifestly did not. The thesis for disillusionment in large part is based on the last major work Soloviev wrote, Tri razgovory, in which is included, as mentioned above, the “Kratkii ocherk ob antikhriste.” This text is a generically and philosophically complex. The character Mr. Z. is closest to Soloviev’s views in the main text, which is written as a Platonic dialogue, set as conversations between a group of Russian elites (Mr. Z., a General, a Politician, a Lady, and a Prince - a Tolstoyan straw man, with whom Soloviev strongly disagreed)^^ on three successive days.^"^ Judith Komblatt has argued that Soloviev’s texts are more sophisticated literary works both in genre and content than is usually supposed, and Soloviev’s self-deprecating style and critical and ironic jabs at “himself’ in his works do not in fact indicate how they have conventionally been read, i.e. a repudiation of his previous positions and activities.^^ Others have argued that this shift is symptomatic of his gradual disillusionment with his own earlier ideas Soloviev’s relations with Tolstoy were strained from the early 1880s, and broken from the mid 1890s. See for example Losev, Vladimir Solov’ ev i ego vremia, esp. “VI. Solov’ev i L. N. Tolstoi,” 402-409. The only other philosophical text Soloviev wrote as a dialogue is a French text, a dialogue between the philosopher and Sophia (reminiscent of Boethius’ Consolation o f Philosophy in its conceit), but unpublished in Soloviev’s lifetime and made available in Vladimir Soloviev, Vladimir Soloviev: La Sophia et les autres ecrits francais, ed. Francois Rouleau (Lausanne: La Cite; L’Age d’homme, 1978). See Judith Deutsch Komblatt, “The Tmth o f the Word: Solovyov’s “Three Conversations” Speaks on Tolstoy’s “Resurrection,” in Solov’ evskiisbornik: materialy mezhdunarodnoi konferentsii “VS. Solov ’ ev i ego filosofskoe nasledie, ” ed. I. V. Borisovaia and A. P. Kozyrev (Moscow: Fenomenologiia-Germenevtika, 2001), 66-86, and on the theme of laughter see Komblatt, “On Laughter and Soloviev’s Three Encounters.” R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 2 2 2 leading to the near elision of Wisdom from his apocalyptic cosmology. Samuel Cioran argues, “Solov’ev ... attempted to lure the Divine Feminine to this earthly realm, to work a syzygal alchemy that would bring salvation ... the deliverance of mankind and the world ... [Soloviev] sought the divine manifestation of the feminine principle, but found the ... ascendancy of the demonic inevitable.”^ ^ In “Kratkii ocherk” Soloviev essentially relates a modernized adaptation of the Book of Revelation and describes a rather more traditional, much more violent, Christological apocalypse; the story is read as the incomplete work of one very pointedly named Fr. Pansofius (“Pan Sofii, Poliak, chto li?” comments one of the conversants). Many of the signs described by John in Revelation are elided to provide the story with a more realistic than purely allegorical tone. One important scene that does appear is the Apocalyptic Woman sequence, where the woman, associated with both the Virgin Mary and Sophia-Wisdom in Christian exegesis for centuries,^* appears in the sky. Just as in Revelation she is clothed with the sxm, crowned with stars, standing on the moon, and begins to lead the Christian people to Mt. Sinai, at which point the narrative text ends. Mr. Z’s synopsis of the rest of the story doesn’t mention Sophia or the Apocalyptic Woman again at all; at the end Such as Ciroan and Dmitri Stremoouichoff, Vladimir Soloviev et son oeuvre messianique (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1935), avaiable in English as D. Stremooukhoff, Vladimir Soloviev and His Messianic Work, ed. Phillip Guilbeau and Hether Elise MacGregor, trans. Elizabeth Meyendorff (Belmont, Mass.: Nordland Publishing Company, 1980). 37 Cioran, Knighthood o f the Divine Sophia, 161. See above, chapter three. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 223 Christ reappears, dressed as a king, the stigmata visible on his outspread arms, and begins his thousand-year reign. Simply put, Sophia is rather marginal in this story. In addition, the actions of the Antichrist in the tale addresses many of Soloviev’s concerns and plans: his writings are clear, lucid, and speak clearly to the whole world, resolving the divisions that had plagued it, and he achieves the unification of the world’s Christian faiths, governing in a political-theocratic system. In short, he does what Soloviev had hoped and worked for, what Soloviev had wanted to do.^^ Some account is perhaps expected or required as to why this story, clearly a fiction within a fiction, but privileged within the text, and the very name of the putative author of which lends Soloviev’s endorsement is so Christological rather than Sophiological. If we are to take this as Soloviev’s vision of the apocalypse, even sjmibolically rather than literally, then the questions arise of whether this is to some degree a repudiation of his life’s work, and if not, why Sophia does not play a larger role. Can this neglect be fairly described as Sophian despair? The answer is both yes and no; “Kratkii ocherk ob antikhriste” is a text that beyond polemicizing with Tolstoyan anti-mystical moralism, signifies a confrontation between Soloviev’s Sophiology and a changing understanding for Soloviev of historiosophy, the nature of evil, and the action of God in the world. If the romantics, such as Hegel, sought to give meaning to human progress by The Apocalyptic Woman does appear at the moment the titular heads of Protestantism, Orthodoxy, and Roman Catholicism re-unify their true, exiled churches; the Sophian image becomes visible when the ecumencial unity o f Sophia is restored. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 224 integrating it into the process of universal history, then Soloviev found himself, like his friend Dostoevsky, confronting, from a Christian point of view, the paradoxes of their optimistic synthesis, which lay at the foundation of his own view of history.'*'^ The problem was twofold: first, Soloviev’s original ‘incremental’ Sophian eschatology, like the Hegelian world spirit, driving the historical process toward universal integration, in its teleological action suborns the principle of the collective and individual human freedom to will. Human progress did not automatically bring with it the moral development that could realize the Christian telos - the Kingdom of God. Human freedom to embrace evil, an evil Soloviev was increasingly convinced was real and powerful, could for Soloviev impede, even reverse, that process of creation of vseedinstvo, of sobornost’ , of universal bogochelovechestvo through Sophia. Second, Sophia, understood as the world spirit, as manifested by the individual, the national, even the human as a whole, is still limited, and the perfection of the universe which Soloviev saw as the end of Sophian-Christian eschatological thought, could not, by definition, be limited. Thus, no transfiguration like the vision of Mt. Tabor, no perfection is possible on a limited scale - including individual transfiguration in romantic love - for all the There is a literature on the relationhsip of Soloviev and Dostoevsky, who, despite their diffeences in age, became close friends towards the end o f the latter’s life. The most recent book-length study is Marina Kostalevsky, Dostoevsfy and Soloviev: The Art o f Integral Vision (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997). See also Rainkhard Laut, “K voprosu o genezise ‘Legendy o velikom inkvizitore’ (Zametki k probleme vzaimootnoshenii Dostoevskogo i Solov’eva),” in Rossiia i Germaniia: Opytfllosofskogo dialoga (fAoscovr. Medium, 1993), 307-321; R. Lord, “Dostoevsky and Vladimir Solov’yov,” Slavonic Review A2 (June, 1964): 415-426; S. Levitskii, “VI. Solov’ev i V)ostoe\s]di"' Novyi Zhurnali New Review A\ (1955): 197-209; andB. Schultze, S. J., “Solowjew und Dostojewskij,” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 15 (1949): 202-207. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 225 fearsomeness of its implications true salvation for humanity is only possible through a total soteriological eschatology outside of history. Hans Urs von Balthasar identified this aspect of Soloviev’s aesthetic theology: “The one thing he [Soloviev] has given up is the idea that the process comes to perfection within history. The harvest of the world is brought home, but not by man; it is brought home by Christ. ... He is the integration of all things. And if we believe ourselves capable of establishing within history some kind of signs of the end ... even such indication will never suffice to gain an overview of the real historical process as it appears from God’s own standpoint.”'^ ^ For Soloviev, the latent presence of Sophia in humanity and the world still requires active participation by humanity against the action of spiritual evil; this is why he polemicizes so sharply with Tolstoyan passive resistance to evil. “Tak kak na samom dele Khristos, khotia i voskresshii, nichego okonchatel’nogo dlia nas bez nas samikh sdelat’ ne mozhet.”^^ Soloviev realized he could not, and need not, enflesh Sophia by his poetry, perfect himself in romantic love, heal the divisions between churches, peoples, or nations, or conquer evil himself. Ultimately, he thought he needed only to remain devoted to, and to trust in God’s Wisdom in the form it revealed itself to him, to work, imperfectly, and await the salvation Christ had promised. “Eta eskhatologiia [imeet] ... grandioznost’ tseli [no eto ] ne tol’ko Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Gloty o f the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 3 Studies in Theological Style: Lay Styles, trans. Andrew Louth et al., ed. John Riches (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 349-352. Vladimir Soloviev, Pisma vol. Ill, 42. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 226 ne meshaet ei byt’ prochnym osnovaniem posvednevnoi praktiki po oformleniiu zhizni, no kak raz predpologaet ee.”" * ^ If in this way he yields to sophian despair, that despair gives rise to a new hope with sophian elements that was directly linked to Christological soteriology. Blok While Soloviev’s classification among the sophian despairing hinges on objections to the notion of despair, the obstacles to such a designation for Aleksandr Blok are rather questions regarding the sophian as a continuing, dominant element. Certainly he was deeply interested in Soloviev’s ideas about Sophia in the first period of his poetic career, which culminated with the publication of Stikhi o prekrasnoi dame in 1904, and many critics have noticed the continuing importance of the motif of the ideal or anti-ideal feminine in his poetry, linked to a variety of other thematic elements and a variety of real-life women. The question must arise, however, to what extent the later transformations and uses of the idealized lyrical woman remain sophian, and to whatever extent they do, in what specific ways his changing use of the sophian manifests sophian despair. This section will seek to demonstrate Blok’s continuing engagement with the sophian, and consider the elements even in the process of the initial fascination of Blok with Sophia that lead to the later manifestation of sophian despair. R. A. Galtseva, “Konkretnaia eskhatologia Vladimira Solov’eva,” in Solov 'evskii sbornik: materially mezhdunarodnoi konferentsii “V.S. Solov’ ev i ego filosofskoe nasledie," ed. I. V. Borisovaia and A. P. Kozyrev (Moscow: Fenomenologiia-Germenevtika, 2001), 449. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 221 Though Soloviev was able to engage Sophia as a mystic, philosopher, scholar, publicist, and poet, Blok was almost exclusively a literary creature. If poetry did not avail Soloviev (as it did not for several years in the late 1880s), he turned to other means: ecumenical political-religious activities, analytical philosophy, or pure mysticism. As a Symbolist poet and a rather hesitant critic and theoretician, Blok’s descent into sophian despair is qualitatively and philosophically different than Soloviev’s, linked to the difficulties of Symbolist theories of poetic language, the central role of the sophian idea in Symbolist creativity, and the Symbolist creative issues of zhiznetvorchestvo and theurgic art.'^'^ Among recent studies of Blok, one that focuses on the use of language at a metatextual level and also concerns itself with imagery of the feminine in Blok’s works is Gerald Pirog’s “Melancholy illuminations: Mourning becomes Blok’s Stranger.” Pirog’s work provides an excellent point of departure."^^ He extrapolates from Paul de Man’s view of Romanticism as an “aesthetic of ideology,”" ^ ® and applies the same idea to Symbolism, specifically to Blok’s city poetry, of which he takes the famous “Neznakomka” as a paradigmatic example. He implicitly extrapolates to Symbolism generally, since the city is a privileged '''' This is not to say that Blok had no interest in mysticism. See Aleksandr Etkind, “Russkaia mistika v proze Aleksandra Bloka,” Studio Slavica Finlandensia 11 (1994): 21-76. Pirog moves away from the Soviet biographically-based Blok criticism of Orlov and Mints that more or less dominated “Biokovedenie” since the 60s and towards a linguistic-based approach more driven by contemporary literary theory. Gerald Pirog, “Melancholy Illuminations: Mourning Becomes Blok’s Stranger,” Russian Literature 50 (2001): 103-123. In short, that the Romantics tried to ignore the gap between extemal nature and interior experience as manifested in poetic language, and that the tragic awareness o f the inadequacy of metaphysically contingent language to express the natural, extemal world drives Romantic poetry. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 228 location for demonstrating modernism’s aesthetic and epistemological disaffection and disruptions. For Pirog, Blok’s poetics, specifically Blok’s city poetry, of which he takes “Neznakomka” as a paradigmatic example, are typically modernist insofar as they are centrally concerned with the consciousness of the language’s inability to effectively construct meaning, yet despite the consciousness of this fact, he remains compelled to continue to attempt to do so; this tension, Pirog claims, produces his poetry’s power. However, Symbolism’s linguistic ‘problem’ is not the futility of using language as a tool for the aestheticization of nature and/or the naturalization of aesthetics, as de Man claims for Romanticism, attempting to cover up and, witting or no, suffer under the inescapable contingency of language. The assumption of the inherent self-subversiveness of language as a communicative medium is the postmodernists’, not the Symbolists’. Symbolist poetic language isn’t resisting the poet’s desire to bring it in accord with life. For Symbolism, language itself isn’t just symbolic, as it is for de Man, Pirog, and much of contemporary criticism, rather it is truly Symbolic. The Symbolist poets’ struggles exemplified here by the sophian failure of Blok, though other examples could certainly be adduced, are not against the resistance of language to life, but against the resistance o f life to language. Pirog’s post-modernist posture assumes a material reality inexorably misunderstood and what Derrida called the absence of the transcendental signified. The Symbolists of Blok’s stripe start from a different perspective entirely and R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 229 presume the presence of precisely what modem theory presumes is absent."^^ As a result, Pirog’s critical assessment inverts the terms of Symbolist poetics. While the argument that the inability of the poetic language to escape the contingencies of time, history, space, language, etc. is a typically modemist, the “non-decadent” element of Symbolism, especially in Blok, can be read otherwise: the resistance of historicity, time, space, humanity, to escape from their own contingencies is in tension with the liberating, apocalyptic, theurgic potential of artistic (read: poetic) language.''* Since Symbolists believe that Symbolist poetic language is truly symbolic, the tension that Pirog perceives is the result of the resistance of quotidian reality to transformation. This helps explain, for example, why Smysl ’ liubvi was among Blok and Bely’s favorite of Soloviev’s works; it provides a program for achieving this transformative effect through sophian romantic love with a woman, and it also points out how the idea of Sophia and the Symbolist conception of poetic language are closely connected: the transformative effect of both real, living love and poetic language are virtually identical. They find their common power as the actualization of the sophian understood as the latent presence of the truly real in reality and the conceptual connection between symbol and symbolized, the idea that catalyzes the consummation of For the purposes of this argument, by “Symbolist” I mean the “non-decadent” or “religious” Symbolists, among whom I count Blok, though with some reservations. The line between decadent and not is admittedly sometimes unclear or o f limited usefulness. However, as perhaps the greatest Symbolist poet, I am taking Blok to be more or less a ‘paradigmatic’ Symbolist - as, in fact, Pirog does. The arguemnt here is not about what the nature of language ‘really’ is (i.e., if the Symbolists or postmeodem perspective is ‘right,’) but only what the Symbolists’ thought about the nature of language, (i.e., an explication of the Symbolists’ perspective). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 230 transformation, spiritualization, salvation - either in life or through language/^ The feminine idea-being who demonstrates the immanence of the transcendental can be summoned into life through love and language. These ideas may strike some as rather ridiculous and their consequences as rather tragic, but in terms of understanding Blok’s relationship to poetic language and the sophian, the former is beside the point and the latter is the point. If one of the central ‘problems’ of Symbolist poetics is the contingency of life in relation to poetic language, in other words, the resistance of life to transformation through language, then this observation points towards the importance of the Symbolist strategies of zhiznetvorchestvo and theurgic art. The Pygmalion trope referred to above can be employed to illustrate the process of sophian creativity in Blok’s life - it is a myth of the same terms: the represented and the representation, life and art, and the ontological status of the ability of the creative will and its chosen medium to alter the relationship of phenomenon and noumenon. By Pygmalion’s art and love, the representation becomes the represented, the statue becomes the thing of which it is a statue, and signifier and signified collapse into one.^° Blok’s poetic speech, especially the early works, seeks such an apodictic character, the full potency of creative logos, working on This idea extended even into politics. This ‘idealism’ is essentially the program of the Vekhi group, that argues for political and social transformation based on individual spriitual renewal. Not surprisingly, several o f the Vekhi participants (Berdiaev, Gershenzon) participated in the journal Sojiia. It is also worth noting the misogynistic element in the original Pygmalion myth; Pygmalion undertakes the creation o f his statue because of his dislike of living women. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 231 and through the creative material of the sophian as incarnated in his love and later w^ife, Liubov’. Blok, applying a tragic combination of the ideas of zhiznetvorchestvo, theiugy, and apocalypticism, was in fact working to reverse Pygmalion’s achievement and turn his living wife, as the represented, into the representation, to calcify and petrify her through the theurgic power of his poetic art. Without oversimplifying a complex relationship, in these terms Liubov’ Mendeleeva Blok refused her role as the living, literary ‘monument’ of Sophia, in perhaps the best- known example of resistance to sophian theurgy. Blok at first was determined to transform Liubov’ through his poetry, his loving, literary adoration the opposite of Pygmalion’s animating caresses, and then he despaired based on her resistance to the spell of his lan g u ag e.T h e resistance of someone to whom Blok was so close and who represented the very center and purpose of his poetic task perhaps helps explain why Blok’s sophian despair is so vivid and deep. These claims about Blok’s poetics have to be demonstrated, however, in Blok’s work. A comprehensive examination of the whole of Blok’s oeuvre for sophian motifs is, given the restrictions of scope of this project, impractical. Since the poetic and semantic vmity of Blok’s cycles are particularly useful for understanding his work and the careful selection of poems is one of his important contributions to Russian poetry, it makes sense to look at composed cycles, rather I am only using Pygmalion to illustrate the mythopoetic process in Blok’s relationship with Liubov’, not claiming that Blok had an overt plan based on the Pygmalion myth - a myth which at any rate he no doubt knew, perhaps even through the mulitple cycles on the theme by the English artist Burne-Jones, a member of the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, of whom Blok was fond. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 232 than an indiscriminant selection of poems. I will isolate two artistic moments in Blok’s career, represented by poetic cycles, and use them to illustrate the movement from initial enchantment to sophian despair, supplemented by others of Blok’s writings as appropriate. The first is the first section, “Nepodvizhnosf,” of the first edition of Stikhi o prekrasnoi dame from 1904, and the second is the small cycle Ital ’ ianskie stikhi from 1909. In the fall of 1904, Blok published his first major collection of poetry, Stikhi a prekrasnoi dame. Blok’s later revisions radically expanded the content and altered the arrangement of his first collection of poetry. Sinee the object of this limited study of Blok is less the later reception of Blok’s poetry by himself than it is Blok’s move towards a creative posture of sophian despair, Joan Delaney Grossman advises us well; “If we wish a close view of Blok’s ‘poetic ideal’ as it stood in late 1904, and not filtered through later perceptions, it is the 1905 edition ... and not the later redactions, up to the ‘eanonical’ edition of 1922, reproduced in collected works, etc. that should be used.”^ ^ The first edition of Stikhi o prekrasnoi On the importantce of cycles for Blok, see David Sloanc, Aleksandr Blok and the Poetics o f the Lyric Cycle (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1980), Gerald Pirog, Aleksander Blok’ s Ital’iaskie stikhi: Confrontation and Disillusionment (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1983). Also Pavel Gromov, Aleksandr Blok, ego predshestvenniki i sovremenniki (Moscow: Sovetskii Pisatel’, 1966). Joan Delaney Grossman, “Blok and Brjusov,” in Aleksandr Blok Centennial Conference, ed. Walter N. Vickery (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1984), 163. Grossman’s reference to the 1905 edition is the same as mine to the 1904 edition; though the first edition was actually published in 1904, it was dated 1905. Grossman’s article includes an appendix which lists the original contents, and cross references it to the 1960 Blok Sohrianie sochinenii (Aleksandr Blok, Sobranie Sochinenii v vo s’ mi tomakh, ed. V. N. Orlov [Mosocw/Leningrad: Gosudarstvermoe Izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, I960]), hereafter Blok, SS. The new academic edition o f Blok’s works reproduces poems as Blok last edited them in 1922, but provides thorough publication histories for the cycle. See volume one of Aleksandr Blok, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem v dvadtsati tomakh, vols. 1-5 (Moscow: Nauka, 1997-2000), hereafter Blok, PSS. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 233 dame was divided into three sections. The first section, “Nepodvizhnost”’ is where Blok put most of the poems which relate directly to the prekrasnaia dama theme.^"^ Its very title semantically implies the fixedness of a statue, and this theme of immutability is evidenced in several of the p o em s.P erhaps not coincidentally, this section also represents the apogee of Blok’s literary fascination with and devotion to Sophia. While some of the forty-six poems from the original “Nepodvizhnost”’ section are not specific either in reference to Sophia or sophian themes, many of the poems have specific references that connect them to the semantic field of Sophia. A few examples, though, will suffice to demonstrate the important intermingling of Blok’s personal love for Liubov cast into lyric form, his creative fascination with Sophia, his understanding of the tasks of Symbolist poetic language with respect to reality, and the manipulation of sophian and Marian imagery that ties these all together. The overall effect is one of the interpenetration of art and life, but the results are manifestly an attempt at something more than either. Stikhi o prekrasnoi dame is an attempt by Blok, under the influence of Symbolist creative doctrine and Soloviev’s Sophia, to alter the world by the use of language, most immediately the part of the world that was Liubov’. Grossman, “Blok and Briusov,” 163. There is also, of course, a motif of movement in the cycle as well. This perspective is precisely the opposite of much Soviet Blok criticism. Z. G. Mints, for example, in idem., “Poeticheskii ideal molodogo Bloka,” in Blokovskii Sbornik (Tartu: Tartuskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, 1964), 172-225, acknowledges Soloviev’s importance to Blok, and recognizes the “earthly” aspect to the prekrasnaia dama', however, she accounts for Blok’s later turn against his sophian ideal in terms o f his growing consciousness of its irreality, and the embracing of R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 234 The thematics of Sophia, theurgic transformation, and Symbolist language begin to emerge almost immediately illuminatingly alongside the fear of mutability. The very first poem in Stikhi o prekrasnoi dame, “Predehuvstvuiu tebia. Goda prokhodit mimo,” bears an epigraph from the work of Vladimir Soloviev: “I tiazhskii son zhiteiskogo soznan’ia/ Ty otriakhnesh’, toskuia i liubia.”^ ’ The Soloviev poem from which this comes, “Zachem slova? V bezbrezhnosti lazumoi” comes from the period of his infatuation with Sofiia Martynova in the early 1890s.^^ Soloviev’s lyric voice sings the praises of a transcendental, eternal feminine, unnamed, but his devotion to her is mingled with his romantic love for a living woman. In Blok’s poem, the epigraph gives the the earthly aspect and the revolution, rather than the sophian despair of recognizing the irreality of pecisely that “zemnaia ... zhiznennaia” element and being unable to transcend it (222). ” The text o f Blok’s poem is short: Predehuvstvuiu Tebia. Goda prokhodiat mimo - Vse V oblike odnom predehuvstvuiu Tebia. Ves’ gorizont v ogne - i iasen nesterpimo, I molcha zhdu, - toskuia i liubia. Yes’ gorizont v ogne, i blizko poiavlen’e. No strashno mne: izmenish’ oblik Ty, I derzkoe vozbudish’ podozren’e, Smeniv v kontse privychnye cherty. O, kak padu - i gorestno i nizko, Ne odolev smertel’nyia mechty! Kak iasen gorizont! I luchezamosf blizko. No strashno mne: izmenish’ oblik Ty. Blok’s receipt of a volume of Soloviev’s poetry from his mother as an Easter present in 1901 is part of Blok’s literary biography. For more specific information on Blok’s exposure to and reading of Soloviev, see D. E. Maksimov, “Materialy iz biblioteki Al. Bloka (K voprosu ob Al. Bloke i VI. Solovieve),” Leningradskii gosudarstvennyipedagogicheskii institut uchenye zapiski 184 (1958): 351-417. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 235 reader familiar with Soloviev’s work an important clue to the lyric position of the speaker; he adopts the same lyric pose and the same poetic conceit. From the first poem, then, Blok has not only acknowledged his debt to Vladimir Soloviev and invoked Sophia, he also sets this as the tone for the collection.^^ There is more, though, to this choice of verse. Soloviev’s verse implies that the waking, real-life world is more of a state of dreaming than the reality described by his ephemeral lyrics of melancholy and love. The means to shaking off the mundane world is given by Soloviev as longing and loving Q'toskuia i liubid”). These are, of course, sentiments that dominate the collection and, at that point, dominated Blok’s whole oeuvre. The relationship between the semantics of the epigraph and the poem is complex. In the poem, metric, morphological, and semantic structures create the context in which the epigraph expands the meaning of the poem. The poem is composed of six stanzas made of iambic couplets, all penta- or hexametric.^® The immediately noticeable repetition of words, phrases, and even whole lines lends first of all an incantatory feel, but also creates a dynamic of expansion. Metrically, the repetitions are all keyed by hexametric lines; the first comes within the first hexametric couplet: “Predehuvstvuiu Tebia.” The second and third couplets provide a twofold expansion on the first stanza, now using two stanzas instead of Soloviev’s use o f a capitalized pronoun is also a regular device used by Blok to refer to the prekrasnaia dama figure. For a study of the ways and words Blok used to refer to “Her” see lu. A. Karpenko, “Imia prekrasnoi damy,” Russkoe lazykoznanie 1 (1983): 87-95. “ “Hexameter” is used here only to mean “six-metric-footed,” and not to imply the use of the “irregular” Russian “geksameter” used most often in translations of Classical Greek and Latin hexametric verse. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 236 one, the first hexametric lines of both beginning with the phrase, “Ves’ gorizont V ogne,” and both lines stretched - like the horizon - by an extra metric foot. The presentiments indicated in the first stanza are explained in more detail. The next repetition doubles the two of the previous one, consisting of the last four stanzas and cued by the repetition of a whole line, “No strashno mne: izmenish’ oblik Ty,” which is preceded in both the third and the sixth stanzas by a hexametric “horizon” line. The emotions and circumstances abbreviated in the first stage, explained further in the second, are further expanded in the third. Like an incantatory litany or the growing light of dawn, the repetitions expand the poem in a geometric progression. Against the background of this clear repetition of lines and words, the verb structure of the poem give further clues to the interaction of language, transformation, and agency. The use of non-past tense, conjugated verbs indicating active agency also form a pattern. In the first two stanzas these are only the lyric voice’s in first person: “predehuvstvuiu ... predehuvstvuiu ... zhdu.” In the second two the addressee is active in second person: “izmenish’ ... vozbudish’.” In the fifth and sixth stanzas, they alternate again: “padu ... izmenish’.” Never does agency as indicated by these verbs coincide within a stanza. The importance of who acts gives a clue to the importanee of the epigraph. In the poem cited in the epigraph, it is the addressee, “Ty,” who can throw off the mundane consciousness As a counterexample to the dynamic o f expansion the compoimd meter of the poem does not move from a preponderance of pentameters to a preponderance of hexameters; in fact, it is actually the opposite. However, the hexameteric lines do initiate the semantic expansions, thus giving the longer metric lines an association with the other devices of expansion and groivth in the poem. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 237 o f the speaker through her agency, by longing and loving. In Blok’s poem, these theurgic emotions are claimed by the speaker, “I molcha zhdu, - toskuia i liubia." The italicization emphasizes their importance and their essentially graphic nature, slightly different from the rest of the words. The speaker is terrified by the idea that the prekrasnaia dama, one perceived as a whole, as in the first couplet, would alter her oblik, her essence. The lyric voice’s terror is of her changing before the moment of transformation, the sophian dawn that is breaking on the horizon, arrives. By appropriating these feelings and this language in this incantatory lyric of sunrise and transformation that opens Blok’s collection, the speaker is usurping the power Soloviev gave to his Sophia to transform the speaker in his poem, the power Blok’s speaker needs because of his fear that the addressee will change. The emotions with which Pygmalion animated Galatea, love and longing, which Soloviev gave to his mystical-romantic beloved, are restored to the artist by Blok, but to be put to use as theurgic language to assure the sophian addressee’s immutability, to de-animate her. The underlying restrictive attitude evident in the use of the epigram’s language and the atmosphere of dread of mutation creates a tension with the structural dynamic of expansion and semantic hopes of dawn. This reflects Blok’s Symbolist perception of the resistance of life, here in Sophia was interpreted in Orthodox iconography as being representative o f the dawn of Creation, a reference to Proverbs. For example, Evgenii Trubetskoi, in his “Dva mira v drevne-russkoi ikonopisi” wrote: “Prikhodiatsia chasto slushat’, chto purpur Sv. Sofii est’ plamen’. No eto ob’iasnenie na samom dele nichego ne ob’iasniaet... [N]ebesnyi purpur ‘Sofii’ - purpur Bozh’ei zari, zachinaiushcheisia sredi mraka nebytiia; eto - voskhod vechnogo solntsa nad tvar’iu.” (Kn. Evg. Trubetskoi, Tri ocherka o russkoi ikone (1916; reprint, Novosibirsk: Sibir’ XXI vek, 1991), 50- 51. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 238 Soloviev’s formulation of “zhiteiskoe soznan’e” to the transfigurative effulgence symbolized by the sophian dawn. While Blok relied in “Predehuvstvuiu Tebia’ on a citation from Soloviev’s sophian poetry, in other poems he relied on different sources for the sophian references, including the visual. Another poem from “Nepodvizhnost”’ of somewhat lesser quality but still of significant interest, “Strannykh i novykh ishchu na stranitsakh,” relies on Orthodox iconography for its sophian text.^^ Though published without a title, the poem is titled in manuscript “Providen’e,” which, depending on the stress, introduces both a religious and visual dynamic.^'' While scholars have explored Blok’s literary citations, including, for example, Zinaida Mints’ protocolic articles on Blok and Pushkin, Blok and Gogol’, Blok and Tolstoi, and Blok and Dostoevsky, Blok was also inclined to invoke religious imagery to accompany his use o f religious, primarily Christian, motifs. Consider for example “Blagoveshchenie” and “Uspenie” from the l t d ’ianskie stikhi below. The text of the poem is as follows: Strannykh i novykh ishchu na stranitsakh Starykh ispytannykh knig, Grezhu o belykh ischeznuvshikh ptitsakh, Chuiu otorvannyi mig. Zhizn’iu shumiashchei nestroino vzvolnovan Shopotom, krikom smushchen, Beloi mechtoi nepodvizhno prikovan K beregu pozdnikh vremen. Belaia Ty, v glubinakh nesutima, V zhizni - stroga i gnevna. Taino trevozhna i taino liubima, Deva, Zaria, Kupina. Bleknut lanity u dev zlatokudrykh, Zori ne vechny, kak sny. Temy venchaiut smirennykh i mudrykh Belym ognem Kupiny. This poem is not to be confused with any of the verses in Blok’s nine-poem cycle titled “Providen’e” published in Zolotoe Runo 1 (1907): 31-33, originally written in the same period (1901-1902). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 239 In chapters two and three above the importance of the accretion of Marian elements to sophian theology and iconography were adduced, and, barring unlikely coincidences in Blok’s choice of words, the poem, through the invocation of iconographic representation, belies some awareness by Blok of the interaction between the sophian and the Marian. This type of device, the use of icons as a kind of poetic palimpsest, has recently been explored by Sarah Pratt in the cases of less likely candidates than Blok: Khlebnikov, Zabolotskii, and Maiakovskii.^^ Pratt argues that in the work of these poets “a virtual visual image lies partially hidden beneath layers of writing ... [they] create imagined icons that not only relate to the themes of the given poems, but th at... circle back to the theology and semiotics of the icon itself.”^ ® Blok engages in a similar poetic strategy in “Strannykh i novykh,” creating imagined icons that reinforce links between the Marian and sophian and themes of the prekrasnaia dama, but also serve to further the development of the linguistic concerns and theurgic projections in the text. At the begiiming of the poem the lyric voice is seeking the strange and new, but in the pages of “starykh, ispytannykh knig” which evokes an impression of ancient, esoteric, or revelatory texts, perhaps a subtle reference to a quest for wisdom. At any rate, the speaker’s study slips into daydream and is punctuated by Sarah Pratt, “Back to the Future: The Imagined Icons o f Mayakovsky, Khlebnikov, and Zabolotsky” (paper presented at “The Icon and Modernity: Mystery Meaning and Means,” sponsored by the Harriman Institute, Coliunbia University, New York, October 2003). 66 Ibid., 5. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 240 a moment of revelation initiated by the presence of white bird, an image perhaps of the Holy Spirit. Regardless of the accuracy of these observations of religious references in the first stanza, the second stanza and following stanzas seem to explain the insights of the isolated moment of enlightenment and set up a contrast between life in the transience and noise of the world and life in the immovable, still depths of a white dream associated with the prekrasnaia dama. However, the distinction between the two worlds is not absolute. The addressee, as well as life itself, is presented as split between the fixed, divine ideal, and noisy, agitated reality. This poem evokes the latent potential in the ideal of the prekrasnaia dama and seeks to activate it, even while recognizing and struggling with the resistance of life (and, biographically speaking, Liubov’) to transformative Symbolist language. The means to this sophian end is revealed at end of the third stanza. The end of this stanza, “Taino trevozhna i taino liubima, / Deva, Zaria, Kupina,” and the fourth, “Terny venchaiut smirennykh i mudrykh/ Belym ognem Kupiny,” both use and capitalize the unusual word “Kupina,” an archaic form of “kust.” Both the form and mention of fire link it to its only usage in modem Russian, the Old Testament story of Moses and the Buming Bush, or “Kupina Neopalimaia” in Russian.®^ The Buming Bush has long been received in the Orthodox Church as an allegorical prefiguration or type for the Virgin Mary, since she was filled with the The story is related in Exodus, chapter three. This much is given in the notes in Blok, SS. The Russian name is actually more precise than the English, since the bush in the story, though on fire, was not consumed. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 241 grace of God but her nature remained unchanged, just as God dwelt in the bush but it was not consumed. Thus the use of Kupina makes sense in the sequence of “Deva, Zaria, Kupina,” since all have not only feminine linguistic gender but also feminine semantic cormotations; however, they have connections to Sophia icons as well. The only icon of the Burning Bush in the Orthodox canon is the allegorical iconographic representation of the “Bogomater’ Kupina Neopalimaia;”^ ^ the basic iconography is a bust-length image of the Virgin and Child in the center, occupying about one ninth of the surface area of the image, surrounded by the eight-pointed red and green wisdom nimbus that fills the rest of the icon, representing the dwelling of God in the Virgin, and visually making it a powerful icon of Feminine Wisdom. Moreover, the iconographic metaphor extends to the other two in the sequence as well.^^ The Kiev-type Wisdom icon centers on an image of the Virgin, or Deva, and the central angel figure of the Novgorod fiery-angel type, the best known Sophia icon, as pointed out above, is interpreted as being red because it is the light of the divine dawn, Zaria. In short, the addressee of the poem, “Belaia Ty,” the prekrasnaia dama, is invoked by a triptych of Marian Sophia icons - “Deva, Zaria, Kupina.” The Bogomater’ Kupina Neopalimaia was actually declared noncanonical in the 17* century, but it remained a popular composition nonetheless, especially and somewhat inexplicably in the center of so-called “compilation icons” of the Virgin which were composed in some cases of hundreds of labelled variants o f icons o f the Virgin, laid out in rows and columns that covered the whole surface o f the icon, often with an enlarged icon o f the Bogomater’ Kupina Neopalimaia in the middle. ® See above, chapter two, for a brief explanation of Sophia iconography. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 242 Figure 5.3 Left to right: Sofiia (Kiev Type), Sofiia (Novgorod type), Bogomater ’ Kupina Neopalim aiaN irgm of the Burning Bush The final stanza takes the triptych of immutable iconic images as a foil for the fading beauty of earthly women. Here, as in “Predehuvstvuiu Tebia,” the need for the immutability of the addressee is expressed, and linguistically achieved, by an extra-textual invocation of the eternal feminine - in this poem Mary-Sophia, in contrast to the transient nature of earthly pulchritude. In the salvific “Belym ognem Kupina” of the last line the speaker creates a direct link to the addressee, Belaia Ty, and the immovable belye mechty. The speaker seems to desire the substitution of an iconic image for a living woman whose beauty will not only fade, but which fails to win the Christ-like crown, available to the humble and the wise in the final couplet through the Marian-sophian Bogomater ’ Kupina Neopalimaia. It is the written word of “old and curious books” that catalyzes the insight that can deliver to “the humble and the wise” the soteriological white fire. The invocation of the addressee as “Deva, Zaria, Kupina” creates a brilliant verbal illustration through which, or even upon which, as a palimpsest, the Marian and R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 243 sophian flow into the imagery of the prekrasnaia dama and transfigurative hope. Yet despite the shift in intertextual points of reference, the themes of mutability and preservation with specific regard to the feminine addressee are again present in the context of a contrast between this mundane world and another. The question, of course, arises: would Blok have known of these Marian and sophian icons? The answer, while not conclusively affirmative, is likely so. While there is not specific documentary evidence, numerous sources on sophian icons were available, and he was documentably interested in Soloviev’s Sophia.^'^ Blok was also sufficiently interested in Marian iconography during this period that one of his closest friends, Sergei Soloviev, records Blok’s expressing an interest in writing a kandidatskaia thesis on the topic. This project, of course, was never realized. Ultimately the issue was Blok’s attempt to project the rhetorical atmosphere of these poems and so many others onto Liubov’s real personality. Blok, in love with Liubov’ Mendeleeva and under the influence of the idea of Sophia, was the lyrical creator of the prekrasnaia dama, but his inability to reconcile the living woman he loved with the artistic creation that his poetics led him to believe he ™ Sources published before the turn of the century include: (Protoierei) Petr Solov’ev, Opisanie Novgorodskago Sofiiskago Sobora (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Imperatorskoi Akademii Nauk, 1858); G. D. Filimonov, “Ocherki russkoi khristianskoi ikonografii: 1. Sofiia Premudrost’ Bozhiia,” Vestnik obshchestva drevene-russkago iskusstva pri moskovskom publichnom muzee 1-12 (1874- 1876): 1-20; Filimonov, “Dopolnenie k state o Sofii Premudrosti Bozhiei,” Vestnik obshchestva drevene-russkago iskusstva pri moskovskom publichnom muzee 1-12 (1874-1876): 36; P. L— v. [P. G. Lebedinstev], “Sofiia - Premudrosf Bozhiia v ikonografii severa i iuga rossii,” Kievskaia starina: Ezhemesiachnyi istoricheskii zhurnal 10 (Dec. 1884): 555-567. A brief descirption can also be found in Fedor Buslaev, “Dlia istorii russkoi zhivopisi XVI veka,” in Drevne-russkaia narodnaia literatura i iskusstvo, vol. 2 of Istoricheskie ocherki russkoi narodnoi slovesnosti i iskusstva (St. Petersburg: Obshchestvennaia pol’za, 1861), 294-299. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 244 could incarnate in his life through his poetry turned his creative devotion to the sophian divine feminine to the creative posture of sophian despair. Indeed, he was not the only one among the Symbolists and even his public to believe that he could, or even already had, succeeded in making Mendeleev’s daughter into Pygmalion’s statue, but with the name of Sophia instead of Galatea. As Grossman has written, “[T]he magnetism of Blok’s verses was such that, after a while, one began to see in Liubov’ the Beautiful Lady and not the woman herself, and, tragically for her, expected her to conform to the image Blok created.”^ * Liubov’s own reaction will be explored in more depth below in chapter seven. The imagery Blok had created continued to exercise its influence on his poetry, even as it evolved through the 1900s and beyond. 1 am certainly not the first to see Stikhi o prekrasnoi dame as determining his later development. Zhirmunskii’s “Poeziia Bloka” from 1921, Lidiia Ginzburg in Naslediia i otkrytiia,\96A, Maksimov’s Ideaputi vpoetichskom mire bloka, 1972, David Sloane’s Blok and the Lyric Cycle, 1987, have each and all, per Duffield White, “viewed the plot or ‘path’ that Blok follows through his poetry as predetermined by his radical fidelity to the special symbolic language created in his initial ‘prekrasnaia dama’ period.”^ ^ The claim is not that Blok’s work is static, but as Lucy Vogel, “The Poet’s Wife: Ljubov’ Dmitrievna Mendeleeva,” in Aleksandr Blok Centennial Conference, ed. Waiter N. Vickery (Columbus, Ohio: Siavica, 1984), 381. Duffield White, “Blok’s Nechaiannaia Radost’,” Slavic Review 50, no 4 (Winter, 1991): 780. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 245 Zinaida Mints has argued in Simvol u Bloka, Blok’s symbols evolve and accrue new meanings The sophian image of the prekrasnaia dama shifts from representing the potential transformation of the world to a symbol of its intractable degeneracy, the duality of transcendent potential and reality’s confounding fastness to the banal, everyday world that makes the Symbolists’ project all the more difficult, even futile. From the medium and central trope of Symbolist hope, she becomes a mark of despair, duplicity, and dissoluteness. Indeed, it is this kind of treatment of the sophian prekrasnaia dama that is given in the city women of “Neznakomka,” “Bezvremen’e,” or the role of Columbine in Balaganchik. One would think that these works would be a good place to look for sophian despair, and so they are. Critics have found plentiful evidence of parodic treatment of the symbol system of Stikhi a prekrasnoi dameJ'^ However, instead of these more obvious works, we will turn to the Ital’ ianskie stikhi to demonstrate Blok’s sophian despair. Though “Nepodvizhnost” from Stikhi o prekrasnoi dame is the poetic expression of Blok’s initial faith in Sophia and Blok’s short group of poems called Ital'ianskie stikhi encode Blok’s sophian despair, the two groups of poetry have important features in common. In terms of literary biography, their composition is closely connected to Blok’s relationship with his wife, Liubov’. Not only is the theme of the feminine Z. Mints, “Simvol u A. Bloka,” in Vmire Bloka: Sbornik statei (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1981): 172-208. For example. Mints, “Simvol u A. Bloka.” R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 246 prominent in both cycles, but they both arc a tightly organized group of poems unified thematically, carefully selected and arranged. The small size of the latter group will allow us to see manifestations of Blok’s sophian despair concentrated in a single cycle, rather than works scattered across genres and collections. Also, despite a different setting, the Ital ’ ianskie stikhi seize on themes similar to both Stikhi o prekrasnoi dame and the parodic works that preceded the Italian poems; the city, history, myth and religion, art and creativity, and the anxieties of modernity. A relatively small collection of verse, the Ital ’ ianskie stikhi were written as a result of a trip Blok and Liubov’ took to Italy in the early summer of 1909, and though some of the poems were written after they returned to Russia, all but the concluding epitaph (a translation from Latin) were finished that summer. Substantially smaller than the forty-six verses of the “Nepodvizhnost”’ section of Stikhi a prekrasnoi dame, Ital’ ianskie stikhi number only twenty-three poems under fifteen titles. The first publication of Ital’ ianskie stikhi was six of the verses in the January \9 \0 Apollon, with illustrations by Nikolai Roerich.^^ One of the illustrations by Roerich, o f a Tuscan hill-town, was actually owned by Blok, and he was especially attached to it. Blok was also very particular about his finished versions of these poems, absolutely refusing Sergei Makovskii’s attempts to get Blok to edit or rearrange them, (see Blok, PSS, vol. 3, 718-719). The poems were not, unfortunately, collected, arranged, and edited in their final form until Blok’s “canonical” edition of his own works in 1921, which was ignored for the first edition of Stilchi o prekrasnoi dame. However, the late date of the final composition o f the cycle is not excessively problematic in light o f the fact that the basic sequence remains more or less constant. For detailed publication history, see Blok, PSS, vol. 3, 718-722. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 247 ► • * * ' * ■ - • ' Figure 5.4 Nikolai Roerich, Italian Hill-town, illustration to Blok’s Ital’ianskie stikhi, 1910 The trip to Italy was not undertaken by the Bloks for the purpose of artistic research or inspiration. The trip, essentially a vacation, was made in the hopes that they could recover individually and as a couple from the difficult events of the previous years: Blok’s neglect of his wife, disease, and use of alcohol; their respective infidelities and separation; Liubov’s illegitimate pregnancy, their reconciliation, and Blok’s enthusiastic anticipation of the child; and then the difficult birth and death of their infant son, Dmitrii. Though the trip didn’t R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 248 particularly have the desired effect, some of the poetry is among Blok’s best and his personal favorites. A variety of women, historical, metaphorical, mythological, and contemporary, appear in Blok’s cycle, and the connection between these figures and both the re-visioned prekrasnaia dama, the sophian, and Liubov’ are at the center of this assessment, though the connections may not immediately be clear. The Ital’ ianskie stikhi have been studied by scholars including Lucy Vogel, Gerald Pirog, and Efim Etkind. Since the early 1980s, however, Ital’ ianskie stikhi have not been singled out in Blok’s oeuvre for much critical attention.^^ It is not with these scholars’ observations, though, that we will begin, but with Nikolai Gumilev’s unsympathetic. Acmeist interpretation of Blok’s intensely Symbolist work, which claims: There has been much conjecture about Blok’s Beautifiil Lady. People have wanted to see in her either the Woman Clothed with the Sim, or Eternal Femininity, or a symbol of Russia. But if we accept that this is simply a girl with whom the poet was first in love, then it seems not a single poem in the book would contradict this opinion, and the image itself, closer as a consequence, would become even more wondrous and gain infinitely from an esthetic perspective.^’ Lucy Vogel, Aleksandr Blok: The Journey to Italy (Ithaca: Comell University Press, 1973); Gerald Pirog, Aleksander Blok’ s Ital’iaskie stikhi: Confrontation and Disillusionment (Columbus, Ohio: Siavica, 1983); Efim Etkind, “Ten’ Danta (Tri stikhotvoreniia iz ital’ianskogo tsikla Bloka)” Voprosy Literatury 11 (1970): 88-106, and Aleksandr Flaker, Blok, Bellini, Fra Filippo Lippi. Rome(?): Russica Romana, 1996, vol. 3. 1 have not been able to examine this last work. Vogel’s work from the early 1970s is a valuable, if impressionistic, assessment o f the poems. The current study is sympathetic to its biographical approach to the poems because of the attention it pays to the interaction o f literature and life. Gerald Pirog’s book from the early 1980s is more technical, and its detailed focus on the poetry’s language and arrangement as creating a context for meaning beyond the level o f individual poems is important though not without flaws; the focus here will be more on combining the biographical elements, themes, and linguistic level rather than the arrangement. N. Gumilev, Sobranie sochinenii v 4-x tomakh (Washington, D. C.: Kamkin, 1962-68), vol. 4, 303-304; qtd. in Sloane, 145. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 249 Gumilev’s reading subverts the Symbolist pretensions of Blok’s art, attempting to strip them of the transcendental to reveal simple details of his relationship with Liubov’ Mendeleeva. This style of reading emphasizes the biographical dimension, and though this is an important aspect of Blok’s work, this reading quite obviously misses the point. Since the experiences that underlie his poems are cast in such elaborate and lyric terms, the poem and the experiences, such as Blok’s relationship with Liubov’, are assigned a meaning more complex and significant than mere biography. However, Gumilev’s deliberate lack of appreciation helps to point out an important aspect of Blok’s treatment of the elements in the Ital ’ ianskie stikhi that in Stikhi o prekrasnoi dame had sophian connotations. In Stikhi a prekrasnoi dame, Blok’s manipulation of intertextual references, as in the two poems discussed above, were linked to the attempt to theurgically summon Sophia into being, to fully incarnate her in his wife, Liubov’, and correspondingly petrify Liubov’. There was a living woman in Blok’s actual biography informing the lyrical incantations. Though Liubov’ was Blok’s only companion on the trip to Italy, neither she nor her lyric representative, the prekrasnaia dama, appear at all in the Ital ’ ianskie stikhi', neither do any of the titles or other naming strategies Blok uses in Stikhi o prekrasnoi dame, as catalogued by Karpenko, appear in Ital ’ ianskie stikhi What does appear is a series of real-life, historical, mythological, and See Karpenko, “Imia prekrasnoi damy.” The only possible exception is “Venetsiia” 2, which opens with a repeated “S nei. . . but there is no capitalization, which Blok usually used to refer to the prekrasnaia dama. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 250 religious women-symbols, and in the difference in his linguistic and lyric relationship with these the dissolution of his hopes in the power of his own creativity and the manifestation of his sophian despair is made perceptible. The shift that is being described by the term sophian despair reflects a difference in Blok’s perception of the world, the relationship of art and life mediated - or not - by ideas of zhiznetvorchestvo and theurgy, and the continuing though fundamentally different centrality of the idea of the sophian. While the prekrasnaia dama may not appear as such, the echoes of the prekrasnaia dama begin to appear in the very first poems of the Ital ’ ianskie stikhi. The strategy of a material-spiritual duality emblematized through the lyric feminine addressee is revisited. Efim Etkind, in his close reading of the first three poems (“Ravenna” 1 and 2 and “Devushka iz Spoleto”) of the cycle, describes this as a “kharaktemoe dlia Bloka protivorechie mezhdu ‘noumenalnym’ i fenomenalnym.”^ ^ As in Stikhi o prekrasnoi dame, Etkind points out, “V TtaTinskikh stikhakh’ sovmestilos’ ‘noumenal’noe’ i realnoe.” Aside from arguing convincingly that along with the shade of Dante, Blok invokes the shade of Beatrice, Etkind also claims that “Galla-Plakida ... okazalas’ voploshcheniem liubvi k bessmertnoi Zhenstvennosti,” and sees the dualtiy in “Devushka iz Spoleto” in the identity of “Vechnaia Zhenstvennost’ (nedarom imia ‘Maria’!), i real’naia temnokudraia devushka.”* ® The women take on a variety of guises in Etkind, “Ten’ Danta,” 106. *®Ibid., 105, 106. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 251 various places throughout the cycle. This mythical feminine appears as Salome in “Venetsiia” 2, bearing the poet’s head on a platter.^’ In “Florentsiia” 1, it is the city itself; he reviles the city for modernizing, first calling it Judas, then switching to and staying with the feminine “Bella,” who “predala sebia sama ... vseevropeiskoi zheltoi pyli.” Echoes of the anti-sophian whores of Blok’s city poetry emerge in “Florentsiia” 5. The black sky and brash artificial light form the backdrop for a lace-bedecked, dark-faced Italian Signora-neznakomka passing across the poet’s wine-clouded vision. The dominant image of an ahistoircal feminine though, is the Marian. Mary appears repeatedly throughout the cycle. First, she appears in “Devushka iz Spoleto,” as mentioned above, and again in “Madonna di Settignano,” yet again as the kovarnye, long-eyed madonnas of “Siena,” and “Sienskii sobor,” a statue in the interesting “Glaza, opushennye skromno,” and in paintings in “Blagoveshenie” and “Uspenie.” Critics have noted the presence in Ital ’ ianskie stikhi of the themes of historical, artistic, or transcendental reality in comparison with and distance from the presence of the lyric voice in a hot, noisy, despised modernity. In “F’ezole,” for example, of all the poetic tropes and sights or sounds in Italy, it is the transient, incisive device of the sound of an axe that Blok chooses to tie his present with the past of the early Renaissance. The device succinctly conveys that for all the similarities, he is still cut off from the past. The Marian and feminine imagery that For a discussion of Blok, the imagery of Salome in Venice, and the poetic palimpsest, see Olga Matich’s forthcoming work on Blok. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 252 Blok had been using through his whole career to evoke or echo the sophian prekrasnaia dama is ubiquitous in Ital 'ianskie stikhi, but, its representation is as art or artifice in crucial isolation from the artist in time, space, and condition. Despite the recurrence of these feminine images, it is important that they are not the incantatory idealization of living women. By assigning specific personal, historical- or religious-mythical identities, the lyric voice is manipulating only artistic images, women already petrified by the genius of art, their passing into history, or the fixedness of religious doctrine. The poet is writing about women who are not “real” manifestations, in the sense of living incarnations, of the divine feminine but who are only representations - Mary in the Renaissance art of Fra Angelico or Giannicolo di Paolo. Without oversimplifying Blok’s multifaceted work, his sophian despair evidences itself in the combination of the presence of sophian-linked women and the absence of a simultaneously lyrical and real woman whose linguistic transformation is the object of the poem. In short, if whatever sophian hopes that may be ascribed to Blok are linked to the theurgie application of the idea of zhiznetvorchestvo, then the marked absence of that potential in the presence of the imagery of the prekrasnaia dama is as much an indicator of sophian despair as the bitter easting of the sophian in terms of the corrupt, degenerate women of the modem city. As with Soloviev’s sophian despair, there is a new attitude, however, that also emerges: if the sophian cannot be incarnated, it can be represented. His theurgie lyrical incantations were not sufficiently effective, but Art, however, is R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 253 still worthwhile: it is perhaps the closest we can get to the Symbolist ideal. In “Florentsiia” 6, for example, Blok advises: Tak beregi ostatok ehuvstva, Khrani khot’ tvorcheskuiu lozh’: Lish’ V legkom chelnoke iskusstva Ot skuki mira uplyvesh’. This also recalls the metaphor Blok used in his article “O sovremennom sostoianii russkogo simvolizma,” written in the year following the Ital ’ ianskie stikhi, which describes the poet beginning on a height, descending into a valley, and climbing up the other side. While his current position is more akin to his starting point than the period in the valley and affords a better vantage, he is not, and does not wish to be, back where he started. While little attention has been devoted here explicitly to Blok’s self-perception as a poet, it is true that there are complex links between his early poetic and personal beliefs inspired by Soloviev’s idea of Sophia, and his later attitudes about art, the role of the poet, and his native Russia. What is also hopefully clear is the extent to which Symbolist ideas about language and the relationship of art to life underlie Blok’s lyrical wrestling with his own personal history and the course of his development as a poet. Blok’s friend and fellow Symbolist Briusov explained it thus: “Vremenno Blok mog ... sozdavat’ takie prekrasnye strofy ehistoi poezii, kak ego poslednie ‘ital’ianskie stikhi’ ... no ne V silakh okonchatel’no zaglushit v sebe vosponimaniia o bolee vysokykh R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 254 mechtakh iimosti.”* ^ The link between the Italian poems and the dreams of his youth is the image of the sophian transcendental feminine, his use of which is intimately tied up with his personal relationship with his wife and her inability to live within the power of his attempts at theurgical incarnation. Kuznetsov Rather than reconsider the fate of more famous figures in the light of the idea of sophian despair, figures such as Andrei Bely or Viaeheslav Ivanov, whose debts to Soloviev are well attested and whose invocations of the Divine Feminine are more well known, the final case study for the typological category of Sophian despair is the painter Pavel Kuznetsov.^^ Kuznetsov will also broaden the scope of the evidence into the realm of visual arts, one of the most dynamic and interesting areas of Russian pre-revolutionary culture. Kuznetsov has received much less attention both in Russia and the West than either of the figures who have been examined previously in this chapter. During the period of the flourishing of the Blue Rose Group, about 1903-1910, Kuznetsov went from being an enthusiastic art student from the provinces to the leader of the Moscow Symbolist art movement, fully immersed in Symbolist theory Valery Briusov, “Aleksandr Blok” in Russkaia literatureXX veka, ed. S. A. Vengerov (Moscow, 1915), vol. 2, 326-327, qtd in PSS vol. 3, 721. A catalog raisonne o f Kuznetsov’s work was published in Moscow in 1975: Pavel Kuznetsov, Pavel Kuznetsov, ed. L.A. Budkova and D. V. Sarabianov (Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1975). This fact is rather exceptional for an artist of his pre-revolutionary inclinations. References to paintings and other works by Kuznetsov will referred to by number in this volume, hereafter Kuznetsov, CR. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 255 and practice in Russian culture, and close to many of the leading figures in the Russian creative intelligentsia. The end of this period, though, saw Kuznetsov enter a serious artistic crisis. Kuznetsov, too, had become engrossed in the divine feminine, only to go through the same process of Sophian despair. The son of an icon painter from Saratov, Pavel Kuznetsov successfully sat for the examination for the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in 1897, after having already studied at the Saratov School of Fine Arts. He made an impression on his contemporaries and teachers through his indefatigability, colorful personality, and substantial talent.^"^ He and several other promising and iconoclastic young artists from Saratov attracted the attention of another Saratov native, the older and increasingly well-respected Miriskusstnik Viktor Borisov- Musatov. Borisov-Musatov beeame both a personal and artistic mentor to Kuznetsov along with Kuz’ma Petrov-Yodkin and Petr Utkin, who also were from Saratov. The first impulse for Kuznetsov’s turn to the feminine as a theme more than likely came from Borisov-Musatov.*^ Borisov-Musatov’s was obsessed with feminine images, evoked in lyrical, ethereal scenes, steeped in a neo-Romantic pathos, indebted to the work of Puvis de Chavannes and Maurice Denis, but prevented from degenerating into the hackneyed or derivative through subtle ^ The most extensive description are in his friend Kuz’ma Petrov-Vodkin’s memoirs, included in idem., Khlynovsk, Prostranstvo Evklida, Samarkandiia, ed. lu. A. Rusakova (Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1970). For bibliography on Borisov-Musatov, see A. A. Rusakova, Simvolism v russkoi zhivopisi (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1995), esp. chapter 4, “Viktor Borisov-Musatov,” 181-228. Also Rusakova’s monographs V . E. Borisov-Mustatov (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1968 and 1974). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 256 creative passion and a mystical and psychological vitality. Borisov-Musatov’s work lacks a painterly lyrical “I” that so defines both Soloviev’s and Blok’s intensely personal contact with Sophia, which may also have cued Kuznetsov’s less personal engagement with the divine feminine. A deep, dreamy sense of mystery and a diaphanous pictorial silence reigns in Borisov-Musatov’s work. Refined women in crinolines from the first half of the 19*'’ century glide through gardens or gauzy architectural spaces, or relax amid fountains and pale, sometimes impressionistic verdure. There is a sense both of dream and anachronism, a sophisticated, inaccessible irreality that is revealed through the veiled presence of a preternatural femininity. Kuznetsov was gregarious and energetic, able to learn but innovative and willing to submit to his intuitions. Kuznetsov took Borisov-Musatov’s thematic and techniques and made them his own, exaggerating and amplifying on several fronts: retaining the mystical sensibility, he injected a much bolder lyricism, even a deliberate primitivism. He also took and individualized the suppression of line, the preference for tempera over oils, the blended colors and evenness of palette to the point of monochromism, and of course the predilection for the feminine as the object of painting. The trend towards the dissolution of the need for ‘realism’ and physical verisimilitude in painting, begun by the Abramtsevo circle and continued under the aegis of Diaghilev’s Mir Iskusstva, offered an opportunity for Kuznetsov and other young Symbolist artists to place a subjective, transcendental reality at the center of R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 257 artistic practice. As John Bowlt explains, “[TJheir aim was indeed to record and, in turn, incite subjective psychological experience, implemented by replacing analytical observation by individualistic interpretation. This led, inevitably, to less emphasis on the rendering of concrete phenomena.”* ^ Through his participation with the journals Iskusstvo, Vesy, and Zolotoe Runo and the Moscow Society of Aesthetics, lead by Briusov and Bely, Kuznetsov was exposed to the emerging aesthetic thought of Symbolism, with its theories of theurgy in artistic representation and incarnation and the doctrine of zhiznetvorchestvo, as well as the pervasive concern with the feminine inherited from Vladimir Soloviev. He was certainly aware of the work of the literary symbolists, such as Blok’s Stikhi oprekrasnoi dame, Bely’s sophian collection Zoloto V lazure and his Simfonii, a name which Kuznetsov even used for some of his own paintings, likely borrowed directly from Bely. Art historians, perhaps most forcefully Peter Stupples, have argued that Kuznetsov’s Symbolist aesthetic was highly original, not only in Russian but in European art. There are common elements in style and motif within and among paintings, but nothing that can be easily concretized beyond intuitive, emotional imagery of a non-realistic, unindividuated otherness. 86 Bowlt, “The Blue Rose,” 571. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. ■ -r ■ Figure 5.5 Pavel Kuznetsov, Blue Fountain, 1905 (Kuznetsov, CR 89) Under the title of “symphonies,” small figures in landscapes, tapestry motifs, fountains, and feminine and maternal images appear, the latter in increasing number and importance; his use of color and the suspension of line, shade, and realistic form contribute to pictures that, though possessing a strong pictorial unity, all but defy iconological or narrative analysis.®’ Stupples’ attempts to see fallopian tubes and women’s bodies in Kuznetsov’s fountains, for example, evidence the difficulty of producing clear “readings” o f these works. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 259 Kuznetsov’s mentor Borisov-Musatov was melancholy, but not decadent. His protege Pavel was likewise inclined to the mystical and lyrical, but optimistic and perhaps naive. Some of these elements in his personality may have helped convince him of the spiritual potential in the visual application of Symbolist poetics. “As early as 1904 Kuznetsov had believed that the incarnation of the world’s higher truth was a pregnant woman.”® * In this Kuznetsov, though clearly under the influence of Symbolist and sophian ideas, is somewhat unique. Maternity is not a common theme among the Symbolists; Soloviev’s influential theory of sexual love even explicitly eschewed fecundity. Figure 5.6 Pavel Kuznetsov, Spring, 1905 (Kuznetsov, CR 75 [dated 1904]) Bowlt, “The Blue Rose,” 573. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 260 Works from this period, such as Blue Fountain (1905) and Spring (1905) convey both his emerging stylistic independence and the underlying connections of his images with ideas of a transcendental principle of femininity. Increasingly, Kuznetsov beeame interested in maternity and its cosmic, noumenal meaning. “[T]he themes of matemal love, birth, and maternity ... [took] on a new urgency in Kuznetsov’s work.” . Figure 5.7 Pavel Kuznetsov, Birth, 1906 (Kuznetsov, CR 100) At the end of 1905 he studied to become a midwife and then foimd work in a Moscow maternity hospital to be in close proximity to pregnant and birthing women. The documentation on this period of his life is scant, but it is clearly Peter Stupples, Pavel Kuznetsov: His Life and Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 60. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. reflected in his paintings, such as the delicate, energetic, and ethereal Birth 261 (1906). 90 l i ■ Figure 5.8 Pavel Kuznetsov, Self Portrait, 1906 (Kuznetsov, CR 1326) Nonetheless, the works he produced were not “realistic;” rather, he used the imagery to “describe the eternally regenerating, infinitely complex, psychologically interconnected elements of the life-force dissolved into momentary synthesis. One of the most revealing works from this period is a pencil Self Portrait (1906), in “The artistic necessity that gave rise to Kuznetsov’s ‘symphonies’ cannot be discovered with any certainty in the biographical material now available for study. That it is connected with a strong love for his own mother and estrangement from his father, as suggested by Rusakova, seems likely. It is clearly linked with the literary symbolists’ preoccupation with the divine nature o f the feminine.” Stupples, 62. 91 Stupples, Kuznetsov, 113. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 262 which the artist has placed himself between a large mother figure and an infant in the foreground, with an egg-shaped sun in the background. He seems almost unaware of their physical presence, gazing out of the picture, but his complete immersion in their atmosphere is unquestionable. As an extension of the conceit of placing oneself as artist among ones’ works, in this portrait Kuznetsov has translated himself fully into the world of his works. Unlike most other sophians, Kuznetsov did not try to incarnate Sophia in the object of his romantic or literary-philosophical affections. His interest in the feminine as a principle remained generic rather than specific, settling on a certain type of woman as representative of the divine feminine principle, rather than an individual. While most other representations of the divine feminine focus on vesting virtue or power in a romantic-erotic mediatrix, Kuznetsov’s imagery is notably asexual; his Sophia is not so much a mediatrix as a matrix.^^ His is not a feminine principle between this world and the higher reality, but a generative woman, not translating the beloved votary to an esoteric encounter beyond, but bringing the transcendental into the phenomenal world through the mystery of birth. Of course, this theme of life-source is connected to the motif of the fountain that is also pervasive in Kuznetsov’s work. Like the title of Briusov’s “Kliuchi tain,” for Kuznetsov, the feminine as matemal was the ‘Springs of the Mysteries. “Matrix” is etymologically, o f course, derived from mater, “mother.” The motif of maternity is coimected to the divine feminine in myriad \vays across many cultures. “Kliuchi tain,” with its ambivalent double-intendre on kliuch ’, was first delivered as a public lecture in 1903, and was published as the opening essay o f the first number o f Vesy in 1904, which Briusov edited. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 263 Kuznetsov and his circle found their name at the Blue Rose exhibition in March of 1907, sponsored by Zolotoe Runo, but were already nearing the end of their creative unity. Kuznetsov and the other “goluhorozovtsy” tried to create an atmosphere of unity in the deeply Symbolist exhibition, not only among their works, but also between the experience of the exhibition and the paintings and sculpture displayed. They covered the walls and floor with gray-hlue cloth, introduced quiet music, and passed out flowers, whose scent made the sjmaesthetic experience nearly complete. Ida Gofman, in her history of the Blue Rose circle, avers, “’Golubaia Roza’ stala naivysshei tochkoi, pikom, dostignutym dvizheniem moskovskikh novatorov.” And so it was; the group was already coming apart, and the personal and aesthetic divisions within S5 mibolism were soon to sap its strength as a movement. Kuznetsov, in fact, was already slipping into a serious creative crisis. The harmonies of cosmic maternal love soon gave way, and whatever hope Kuznetsov had invested in mystical Symbolism and the sophian eternal feminine withered. Kuznetsov’s thematic and stylistic methods were not radically altered, but they shifted to reflect a clearly pejorative judgment on the subject matter. A contemporary Russian critic has seen the shift as one from spiritual to the corporeal: “Ego prezhnie hestelesenye videniia stall priohretat’ teper’ nepriantuiu telesnost’”^'' In Stupples’ words, Kuznetsov’s “symbol world was moving from Ida Gofman, Golubaia Roza (Moscow: Pinakoteka, 2000), 141. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 264 the rhythms of joy to the distortions of sorrow. The title of some of the new works manifest his deepening disillusionment, such as Birth Blending with Mystical Forces o f the Atmosphere, the Awakening o f the Devil, 1906-7 (Kuznetsov, CR 1332), projected as an entry in Riabushinksii’s contest in Zolotoe Runo for images of Satan.^^ Others, such as Holiday and Visions o f a New Mother, are manifestly ironic. m Figure 5.9 Pavel Kuznetsov, Holiday, 1907 (Kuznetsov, CR 113) Stupples, Kuznetsov, 113. 96 Riabushinskii didn’t like any of the entries (including Kuznetsov’s) enough to declare a winner. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 265 Figure 5.10 Pavel Kuznetsov, Visions o f a New Mother, 1907 (Kuznetsov, CR 110) Not all critics immediately perceived Kuznetsov’s crisis. G. Tasteven, reviewing the second Salon Zolotoe Runo, interpreted this stage of Kuznetsov’s work as a synthesis of the technical innovations of decadent aesthetes and a moral religious content rooted in a mystical pantheism. He invokes'Kuznetsov’s use of the eternal feminine as sacrificial, but ultimately positive: “’The mystical sanctity of the [eternal feminine] is beginning, ready through suffering and torment to serve the embodiment of new lives. The young Baron Nikolai Vrangel, writing for the new journal Apollon, was much more perceptive of Kuznetsov’s actual mood: “Pavel Kuznetsov does not seek odalisques of the harem, who intoxicate with the sensuality of the flesh. Oh, no! Like a necromancer, he excavates graves. And his sick, consumptive creatures Empirik (G. Tatseven), “Neskol’ko slov o vystavke Zolotogo Runa” in Zolotoe Runo 2-3 (1909); i-iii, qtd. in Stupples, 109. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 266 appear like terrible nightmares. Their bodies are green-gray, earthy, dead. And the horror of abomination and shame, the sticky filth of the prostitute, the sickness of melancholy hospitals and the gray delirium of cellars enshroud these women like clouds of mist What caused this change? The precise moment or realization seems to have left no specific historical traces, but Kuznetsov’s path fits precisely with the pattern of Sophian despair. Inspired by the reverberations of Soloviev’s Sophia, Kuznetsov began producing art that idealized women and presumed a noumenal, transcendental meaning to femininity, especially maternity. Kuznetsov lacks one specific woman, but his sophian quest failed to reveal to him the immanence of transcendental truth in the specific type of real women in their reproductive cycles. This resulted in a shift of his images from ephemeral harmonies of subtle chromatic tones, seeking to evoke and convey a transcendental maternal ideal, almost Edenie in its primeval innocence, to necromantic and disturbing images of the same metonymic figures — lurid, deformed fetuses and their nightmarish, ghastly mothers. Kuznetsov went to the maternity wards not, as Stupples claims, in solidarity with the proletariat, but looking for esoteric artistic knowledge that he could derive from real experience in the presence of the “higher truth” incarnate. Kuznetsov was not the first artist to seek inspiration from experience - but the relationship of his experiences to the art he produced is typically tragic of the Symbolist cocktail Nikolai Vrangel’ “Liubovnaia mechta sovremennykh russkikh khudozhnikov’ Apollon 3 (1909): 30-45 qtd. in Stupples, 110. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 267 of life-creation, theurgic art, and obsession with the divine feminine: Kuznetsov was transfiguring peasant women in labor into delicate, otherworldly variants of a Mother Goddess. Stupples’ assertion of political motivation should not be entirely disregarded, though; social anxiety about the 1905 revolution was connected to sexual anxiety, and Kuznetsov’s ready embrace of the October revolution indicated in which direction his political sympathies lay. Furthermore, this use by a Symbolist artist of the new conditions of changing urban and social conditions is uncommon. In a sense, we can see in Kuznetsov more than many Symbolists, who simply eschewed the urban proletariat as even more vulgar than the philistine bourgeoisie, a direct interaction between the instability in social life and art. Be that as it may, Kuznetsov was not a political revolutionary - he was a Symbolist painter. As an artist committed to the exploration of transcendental somatic noumena, the quotidian reality of women (of the burgeoning urban underclasses) birthing was, somehow, ultimately disillusioning. Maternity was not the key {kliuch^^ he was hoping for; his generalized incarnate Sophias had failed him, just as the specific incarnate Sophia had failed Blok. The artistic backlash produced images like Bride, Holiday, Visions o f a New Mother, and Night o f the Consumptives?^ Once the path to a higher reality, the ideal feminine became a degenerate phantasm, engendering spite and despair. The “reality” of death and life, flesh, milk, and blood was (and is) a “’mysterious, terrifying and beautiful ^ Kuznetsov CR 112, 113, 110, 105, respectively. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. process,but artistically and spiritually it did not produce the desired effect for Pavel Barfolomeevich Kuznetsov. Kuznetsov, disillusioned, had turned from the energetie and creative neophyte to another decadent, fighting a rear-guard artistic action against the next new generation, like Malevich, Goncharova, and Larionov, who borrowed his energy and primitivism, and even some of his maternal and sophian themes, as in Malevich’s Woman in Childbirth (1908). 268 Figure 5.11 Kazimir Malevich, Woman in Childbirth, 1908 Kuznetsov ceded the field, abandoned the gauzy monochromatic refinement of the Blue Rose, and in part inspired by a trip to Paris, adopted a Gauguinian strategy, going not to Tahiti but Kirghizia, seeking the symbolic primitive instead of the maternal feminine. His style evolved to reflect the influence of Matisse and Gauguin, as well as the native art of the plaees he visited. His art continued to be Symbolist, and he returned to the theme of mystical femininity on occasion, as in the Kirghizian Girl (1910-1911) and Uzbek Woman (1920),*^* but the source of the symbolist aesthetic was never purely the feminine, it was always eonditioned by a Abram Efros, Profili, 96-7, qtd. in Stupples, 61. Kuznetsov, CR 151 and 320, respectively. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 269 specific historical placements in the exotic, ‘primitive’ cultures of the trans- Volga or central Asia. Figure 5.12 Kuznetsov, Uzbek Woman, 1920 In short, he abandoned the divine feminine as a sufficient means of conducting an artistic strategy of incarnating and revealing the harmonies between this world and the next. Just, though, as Kuznetsov found new hope in seeking harmonies in the exotic expanse of the Asian steppe, and later in the elegant forms of medieval R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 270 Russian frescoes and icons, so there were some whose engagement with Sophia, the Divine Feminine, the Wisdom of God, did not turn to disappointment and despair. It is to examples of such figures that we will turn next. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 271 Chapter Six Hope: Roerich and Bulgakov Despair, however, does not seem to be the only outcome of encounters with Sophia. There is another “response” which does not lead to disillusionment, but rather to a sustained interest in the power of the divine feminine - this is a very different creative posture than sophian despair, and the second typological category of responses to Sophia. For figures like Sergei Bulgakov and Nikolai Roerich, among others, like Fr. Pavel Florenskii,* the initial enchantment with the Divine Feminine became a central or dominant element in a lifelong interest, never reaching the stage of disillusionment common to perhaps Soloviev, but certainly Blok and Kuznetsov. This posture may be understood as contrasting with sophian despair, and will be called sophian hope. Sophia, or, in Roerich’s case, a composite divine femininity explicitly including Sophia, was important to both Bulgakov and Roerich before and after the revolution of 1917. Unlike Kuznetsov and Blok, Bulgakov and Roerich both ' Florensky is fascinating; while he is perhaps in some ways a more interesting figure than his fellow sophian Bulgakov, their thought is closely related to each other, and only Bulgakov will be discussed in depth. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 211 explicitly use the name, theology, and iconography of Sophia. Roerich’s Sophia, the Wisdom o f God from 1934 is the only painting I have found by any pre revolutionary artist the subject and title of which is Sophia. Bulgakov developed a full sophiological theology in exile in Paris, which resulted in charges of heresy and his embroilment in internecine ecclesiastical feuding. These observations also bring to the fore another commonality between Bulgakov and Roerich that contrasts them with the other figures discussed in the previous chapter; both of them left Russia and had extensive “sophian careers” outside of Russia. * Figure 6.1 Nikolai Roerich, Sophia, the Wisdom o f God, 1934 Post-revolutionary considerations don’t especially apply to any of the figures discussed in the previous chapter. Soloviev, of course, died in 1900, and Blok in 1922.^ Kuznetsov settled for a quiet career as a loyal member of the Soviet ^ Blok’s reaction to the revolution is complicated and subject to the vicissitudes of political perspectives from critics. It may not be going too far to say that Blok’s sophian despair continued unabated, even enhanced by the Revolution, and at the last stage of his sophian path, turned fully R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 273 art establishment, and sophian themes are essentially irrelevant to his rather dull pictures of oil fields, damn projects, and collective farms. The revolutions of 1917 and the events they set in motion drastically altered the political landscape of Russia as well as philosophical, religious, artistic, and literary culture, which inevitably influenced and altered “sophian” discourses as well, Bulgakov’s and Roerich’s not excepted. However interesting and worthy of study Bulgakov’s, Roerich’s, and others’ later sophian activities may be, a proper analysis of these works would necessitate the consideration of influences, experiences, and structures of the very complicated realities of emigration, exile, responses to sovietization and so forth, which is unfortunately beyond the scope of this study. This does not mean that we must be blind to their later activities; some works from the post-revolutionary period may be adduced to help indicate Bulgakov’s and Roerich’s earlier attitudes towards Sophia. Still, for good or ill, the period covered by this dissertation ends at the watershed of 1917, and for all the figures, Bulgakov and Roerich included, material written, painted, or otherwise created before the revolution will be the primary materials. The post-revolutionary careers of Roerich and Bulgakov also provide another diffieulty: sinee both figures belong to ideological/religious systems still practiced today, and their lives and works are of most interest to adherents to these systems, much of the scholarship tends to lean towards the hagiographical, with less pretension to scholarly objectivity than one might expect of 'writers on away from a transcendental Sophia to a communist Christ in “Dvenadtsaf,” in which the whore Katya, perhaps a last vestige o f divine femininity, is brutally slain. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 274 academic philosophy, literature, or art history; this is especially the case with Roerich. Divesting the guru of his aura, or the saint of his halo, to understand what makes them react as they do to the influence of the divine feminine is part of the challenge of this chapter. Roerich Roerich was born in 1874 into a comfortable and successful family of mixed Scandinavian Lutheran and Russian heritage. His father, Konstantin Fedorovich Rerikh, was an Imperial court notary. Nikolai Konstantinovich first began publishing while still in gymnasium, writing hunter’s sketches in the tradition of Aksakov and Turgenev. He wanted to become an artist, but at his father’s insistence attended both the law faculty at Petersburg University and the Imperial Academy of Arts, studying with Chistiakov, the near-legendary professor whose students included Repin, Surikov, Serov, and VrubeT, but Roerich was disappointed in not gaining entrance to Repin’s studio. Instead he worked under Kuindzhi, whose landscapes deeply impressed an energetic and somewhat precocious young man whose interests in ancient Russian history, archaeology and ethnography, art and architecture were already formed. Kuidnzhi’s deep, expansive, landscapes, full of silent contemplation of the russkaia zemlia, exercised an influence that can be discerned even in Roerich’s last works. Roerich also became the protege of V. V. Stasov, who hoped that Roerich would become the leader of the next generation of academically-grounded Russian history painters. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 275 After graduating from both Petersburg University and the Academy of Arts, he began working as the assistant editor of the journal Iskusstvo i khudozhestvennaia promyshlennost’ , and in 1900 Roerich went to Paris on his own means to study. There he was unimpressed by the modernist trajectory in French art - Impressionism, Degas, etc. Rather he seized upon the work of Puvis de Chavannes, the painter whose work Roerich described in a letter as the incarnation of “mysli pogrebennoi emotsii”^ Puvis de Chavannes’ symbolistic work focused very much on mysterious women, unlike Roerich’s own work to this time, which had been dominated by historical painting, much in the nationalistic, institutionalized peredvizhnik tradition, and architectural studies. Clearly Roerich was being drawn in a different artistic direction. The fascination with de Chavannes becomes more clear later, as the Symbolist and the feminine become important devices in Roerich’s artistic and philosophical development. Upon his return to Russia, he married Elena Ivanovna Shaposhnikova, and traveled extensively about Russia, seeking antiquarian objects and archaeological sites. He was among the first Russian artists to begin to appreciate the artistic value of Russian icons, publishing on them as early as 1903. He also worked as the Secretary for the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts becoming the director of its museum and schools in 1906, and first visited Talashkino in 1903, where he became involved as a mentor to Princess Tenisheva and a designer for the kustar ’ ^ E. I. Polenova, Nikolai Rerikh (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1973), 57. Polenova implies she is citing Roerich, but doesn’t provide a citation for this or any other quotations. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 276 workshops."* He also became closely involved with contemporary art and literature, and he received in his home representatives of various trends, from Gorkii to Soloviev, Blok to Gumilev, and Stasov to Vrubel’, calling the inevitably heated debates the “kuznetsa mysli.He participated in the 1902 Mir Iskusstva exhibit, and subsequently many Russian and international exhibitions. His careers as tsarist administrator and art pedagogue prospered along with his artistic reputation. The beginning of the artistic unification of three thematic fields that were areas of interest to Roerich began to take place in 1906, and it was the idea of the divine feminine that became the device Roerich used initially to bring them all together: the Slavic prehistorical, the medieval Russian, and the Indian-Asian. He and Elena Ivanovna toured Italy and Switzerland that year, allowing Roerich not only to study art pedagogy (the reason for the trip) but also to explore contemporary and historical European art.^ His historical interest had always had a somewhat nationalist-romantic bent to it, and he rather romanticized the ancient past. His consciousness of Russian history was that of a vibrant and valuable culture much older than the Petrine reforms, even than the Riurikid dynasty and For Roerich’s early role at Talashkino, see Wendy Salmond, Arts and Crafts in Late Imperial Russia: Reviving the Kustar Art Industries, 1870-1917 (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1996), esp. chapter 4, “Princess Maria Tenisheva and the Talashkino Workshops,” 115-144. ^ qtd. in P. F. Belikov and V. P. JCniazeva, Nikolai Konstantinovich Rerikh (Samara: Agni, 1996), 75. The authors provide no source for their citation. ® He executed a series of sketches and studies of Italy, one of which he gave to Blok and served as the frontispiece for the first publication of Blok’s “Ital’ianskie stikhi” in Apollon. See above, chapter five. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. I l l Kievan and Novgorodian periods, into the remote depths of prehistory and stone age cultures on what was eventually to become Russian soil. More importantly, his long-standing interest in pre-historic Slavic culture began to be expressed not only in historical painting, but also in mythological painting. Roerich combines Symbolist artistic practices with his own nationalist interests in Zmievna of 1906, which depicts a pre-historic Slavic cosmogonic myth, in which a knight, the pagan god Perun, with the aid of a magic sword liberates the golden haired Sun-woman. ^ I Figure 6.2 Nikolai Roerich, Zw/evua, 1906 The crowned Sun-woman is deeply introspective, oblivious to the scene of mortal combat, and in contrast to the reds, browns and blacks that lend the canvas a threatening and ominous mood, she is in sophian pale blue with yellow-gold hair. Roerich’s understanding of Russia’s prehistoric position as a passage for numerous migrating peoples informed his understanding o f Russia as a syncretic Ludmila Korotkina, Nikolai Konstantinovich Rerikh (St. Petersburg: Khudozhnik Rossii/ Zolotoi Vek, 1996), 38 attributes this and other works to Roerich’s reading o f A. N. Afanas’ev’s Poeticheskie vozzreniia slavian na prirodu. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 278 land, where East and West met and mingled, and began to pursue not only an interest in Russian culture and history, but also Asian history and culture. His investigations of Eastern religious and folk traditions, begun in the 1890’s under the tutelage of Stasov, who believed in the common historical and cultural roots of Indian-Buddhist and Slavic cultures, began to bear considerable artistic fruit. Religious commissions gave him rein to emulate the iconic art in which he had been interested and explore the relationship between visual arts and architecture in structures that also consciously emulated medieval Russian ecelesial architecture. Perhaps the best example from the first period is the church at Parkhomovka. In 1906 he began working with the Russian Revival architect Pokrovskii (later he would work with the similarly inclined Shchusev as well) and V. A. Frolov, a friend from his student days and mosaicist, on a commission for the church of the Protection of the Virgin in Parkhomovka near Kiev. The project was commissioned by a Asianist academic, V.V. Golubeva. The opportunity to work in such a semantically and religiously charged environment for a patron (who designed the iconostasis himself with elements and symbols from paganism. Buddhism, and other sources) knowledgeable of and sympathetic to syncretic Orthodox-Asian religious-mythological art gave Roerich an opportunity to develop these tendencies in his own work. His mosaic of The Protection o f the Virgin was destroyed in the second world war, but photographs reveal the non-canonical R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 279 tendencies in his religious art to synthesize Slavic folk traditions, Orthodox iconography, and Asian mythology in style and content.^ Figure 6.3 Nikolai Roerich, Intercession o f the Virgin, Parkhomovka, 1906 Although adhering to the basic compositional norms of an icon of the Protection of the Virgin, the eomplex, multi-tiered composition features an unusually bare headed Virgin who looks more like Roerieh’s version of a Slavie pagan prineess than the Mother of God, whose veil (pokrov) anticipates the Madonna Oriflamma of 1924.^ The architectural motif in the Parkhomovka below her is based on Roerieh’s studies of medieval Russian eeclesial and military monuments rather than the eonventions of ieon architecture. ' Reproduced in Korotkina, Rerikh, 29. Belikov and Kniazeva 1996 reproduces Madonna Oriflamma dated 1932, and Kniazeva 1994 gives the same painting a date of 1924. The former seems more accurate. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 280 Most other Russian easel painters who began executing decorative religious commissions at the end of the nineteenth century, such as Bruni, Vaznetsov, and Nestorov, seem to be trying in their work to translate the hieratic and pious modalities of early Russian art into what is essentially late nineteenth century academic style.’® Their work is not without merit, and was very well received by their contemporaries, but today has lost much of its appeal, mired in ideologies of representation that have largely been discarded. VrubeT is, of course, a notable exception to this trend, and so is Roerich.” He is not an artist of nearly the same genius as VrubeT, but his work reveals his deep interest in the art of Slavic folk culture and Russian medieval artistic style and mode, and the integration of this into his own compositions gives his work at this stage more internal coherence than that of, for example, Vaznetsov. Roerich was eventually to fulfill sketches for paintings or mosaics for five churches, the last of which was the Church of the Holy Spirit at Princess I have borrowed the notion o f a “hieratie mode” (and adduced my own similar variant, the “pious mode”) from Paul Driskell, Representing Belief: Religion, Art and Society in Nineteenth Century France. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992. What Driskel attempts to show is the existence of a ‘mode’ of representation exclusive o f stylistic considerations, linked to a Byzantine revival, which pervades French religious art of the 19* century called the ‘hieratic’ or ‘iconic’ mode; “Despite the variety of styles in which religious art was produced in the nineteenth century [in] France, the hieratic mode tbrms a discrete, coherent, and pervasive tendency. ... The hieratic style is one ‘that has a nearly religious solenmity, majesty, and ritual stiffness.’ ... [It is the manifestation] of a special language of form particularly appropriate to sacerdotal content. Some ... qualities ... associate[d] with the concept are frontality, stasis, severity, and an emphatic reduction of pictorial illusionism” (Driskel, Representing Belief, 4). “ Also one might mention here the work o f Kuz’ma Petrov-Vodkin, including his work with Petr Utkin and Pavel Kuznetsov on the mural decorations of the Church o f the Virgin o f Kazan in Saratov in 1902, which created such a scandal that they were destroyed by the authorities. See Rusakova, Kuznetsov, esp. chapter 4 “Saratovskaiatesrkov’. ‘Alaiaroza’,” 39-45 and Stupples, esp. chapter 3, “The Church of the Virgin of Kazan” 27-34. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 281 Tenisheva’s Talashkino estate.*^ The pinnacle of Roerich’s pre-revolutionary work on the sophian divine feminine is the execution of the mural paintings in the apse of the Church of the Holy Spirit, titled the TsaritsaNebesnaiaP Figure 6.4 Nikolai Roerich, TsaritsaNebesnaia,'Ta\d.s\^ino, 1911-1914 The structure was called “Khram Sviatogo Dukha.” Alone, khram is usually translated as “temple” which in English has a decidedly non-Christian connotation, while the likely alternative, the English “church” means almost exclusively a Christian structure. Other words like minster, abbey, chapel, cathedral, shrine, oratory, etc. all have specific meanings that make them unsuitable. Clearly the choice o f name at Talashkino, like the decorations, was deliberately vague, and unfortunately impossible to fully render in English. However, in deference to its ostensible status as an Orthodox place of worship, ‘church’ seems the best choice. For an excellent analysis of Roerich’s involvment at Talashkino, including the Church o f the Holy Spirit, see John E. Bowlt, “Nikolai Roerich at Talashkino,” Experiment!Eksperiment 1 (2001): 103- 2 1 . R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 282 The structure was ostensibly an Orthodox church, just as Roerich’s painting was ostensibly Orthodox iconography, but the deviations from the norms of Christianity, both semantically and iconographically, make the syncretist thematic altogether clear. Indeed, the local ecclesiastical authorities were not deceived; they tried to intervene and enforce canonical norms. However, since the church was being built on Princess Tenisheva’s private land with her private funds, they were without jurisdiction and powerless to prevent Roerich from proceeding.*'^ Roerich’s first sketches on this theme was actually executed for the decoration in Parkhomovka, but he was unable to realize his designs until later, and the Eastern element became much stronger compared to the Parkhomovka mosaics. Figure 6.5 Nikolai Roerich, Tsaritsa Nebesnaia, study, 1906-1911(?) The church wasn’t actually on Talashkino, but the adjoining property, also owned by the Tenishevs, called Flenovo. Still, local church authorities were unable to stop the project from going forward. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 283 The original painting is preserved only in photographs, and a surviving colored sketch gives some idea of the color scheme of the original mural. Taken together they provide enough visual information to discuss the Tsaritsa Nebesnaia in the context of Roerich’s enchantment with feminine divine Wisdom. Tsaritsa Nebesnaia does not correspond to any canonical or traditional Marian icon. The image of the Mother of God enthroned as the hypostasis of Wisdom is interwoven with the bodhisattva of mercy Avalokiteshvara, hypostasized as a woman, who in Tibetan Buddhist mythology represents the power and strength of the feminine aspect of creation. Like the sophian Marian mosaic in the apse of St. Sophia in Kiev, the Tsaritsa Nebesnaia appears without the Christ child, but unlike the Kiev mosaic, she is enthroned and flanked by cityscapes and angels.*^ Roerich was extremely well-versed in iconography and ancient Russian architecture; it is not inconceivable that the architectural motifs are a reference to the Greek inscription on the arch above the apsidal mosaic in St. The best reproductions are to be found in Roerikh (Petrograd: Svobodnoe iskusstvo, 1916), 101, 178, 179, 181, 182. This volume, which had a run o f only 500 copies, includes critical articles by lu. K. Baltrushaitis, Aleksandr Benois, A. I. Gidoni, Stepan laremich, prose works by Remizov, ten short stories by Roerich, a catalog of his works to 1916, and lavish illustrations. The photographs of the Tsaritsa Nebesnaia appear to have been retouched somewhat, but there are photographs of the sides o f the arch, all but invisible in the often reproduced photograph, as well as a close-up of the Tsaritsa herself, which reveals apparent relief work in her crown, undetectable in other pictures. These picture are more finished than the photograph above, indicating that they may be photos of the finished project, rather than the more candid picture o f Roerich with his brother and sons and the mmal in media res. In these pictures, though, the glazing on the windows is different, creating some doubt as to where and when these photographs were taken. In any case, these pictures create something of a mystery about the Tsaritsa and the accuracy of accepted truths in the scholarship. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 284 Sophia in Kiev, which this image already echoes, taken from Psalm 46: “God is in the midst of it [the city]; it shall not be moved.”* ^ Other features include her dark complexion, her Indian-inspired golden crown and veil with jeweled side drops to accompany her halo, the cinnabar and vermilion mandorla, the animal and vegetal patterns on her dress which evoke pagan Tree of Life motifs, which Roerich had also worked on as separate compositions, her hands folded in prayer, but with a distinctly Asian stylization.^^ Cruciform motifs adorn the crown, veil, mandorla, and cloth on which she is seated. At her feet is the River of Life, an image from the Book of Revelation linked with the Tree of Life, but also an Eastern motif, populated by people in boats who give a sense of the monumental scale of the Tsaritsa.^* The arch above helps anchor the image below in Christian iconography; a central throne with book and Psalm 46:5 (NRSV). See above, chapter two. The city could also be a reference to the Book of Revelation. Roerich regularly painted apocalyptic themes, and there is a close association between sophian and apocalyptic iconography. In Revelation 21,9-19 (passim.), St. John writes, “One of the seven angels ... said to me, ‘Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.’ He took me in Spirit to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from G od .... It had a massive, high w a ll.... The foundations of the city wall were decorated with every precious stone” (NAB). This is the scene immediately preceeding the description o f the River o f Life in chapter 22 (see below), which lends more credibility to Revelation as an important subtext. On the motif of the Heavenly Jerusalem in Orthodox iconography see A. M. Lidov, “Obraz Nebesnogo lerusalima v vostochnokhristianskoi ikonografii,” in lerusalim v russkoi kul’ ture, ed. A. L. Batalov and A. M. Lidov (Moscow: Nauka 1994), and B. L. Panich, “Obraz Nebesnogo lerusalima v vostochnokhristianskoi iskusstve: Dinamika ikonografii ili ikonografiia dinamiki?” Bogoslovie Filosofiia Slovesnosti: Trudy VRFSh 5 (2000): 57-80. For a maximalist feminist discussion of the feminine element and the Tree of Life motif in Slavic culture, see Joanna Hubbs, Mother Russia: The Feminine Myth in Russian Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988). Rev. 22:1-2: “Than the angel showed me the river of life-giving water, sparkling like crystal, proceeding from the throne o f God and of the Lamb down the middle of its street. On either side of the river grew the tree of life ...” (NAB). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. cross, a traditional icon of Christ,*^ is flanked by two saints, who can be identified as St. John the Baptist and the Virgin, two angels, and then a series of male saints with crosses, which make this much like the traditional deisis arrangement - exeept that the Virgin and St. John are on the wrong sides, a fact which Roerich could not but have known - a subtly subversive element, perhaps.^*^ 285 Figures 6.6 and 6.7 Nikolai Roerich, Madonna Oriflamma,\'^yi and Mater Mira, 1924 The Tsaritsa Nebesnaia reappears in virtually all these details, down to the pattern and folds in her drapery, except in a blue palette and veiled instead o f This composition is also found at the top o f Novogorod/Fiery-Angel type Sophia icons, among other places. Another possibility is that the photo is reversed, but this seems unlikely. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 286 crowned, in the 1926 Mater ’ Mira, and she is also clearly one of the prototypes for the later Madonna Oriflamma. This dominant place in his oeuvre given to imagery of the divine feminine did not pass unnoticed by contemporaries and critics; Erik Gollerbakh identified Sophia both as the object of Roerich’s love and, oddly, as Roerich himself: Rerikh ... Eto imia uzhe davno stalo oboznachaf tselyi kosmos, tvorcheskoi volei khudozhnika vyzvannyi v zhizni, — tselyi mir obrazov glubochaishego znacheniia, odushevlennyi mudrost’iu v antichnom smysle slovo: Sofiia est’ ‘masterstvo,’ umenie sozdavat’ veshch’; podlinnye khudozhniki nedarom imenuiutsia u Pindara i Aristotelia mudrymi. ... Drevniaia Mat’-Zemlia, bezmolvnaia, mnogostradal’naia, veshchaia, tol’ko izbrannym otkryvaiushchaia sedye svoi tainy, — neizmennaia tema Rerikha, neizmennaia ego liubov’. The question arises, then, why did Roerich not suffer the same fate as those who fell into Sophian despair? To answer this question, we must look at his art and his writings in terms of the ideas that caused sophian despair in others and see if they differ, and if so, how. Like many intellectuals and artists of his time, Roerich was interested in the spiritual and became involved in various mystical and esoteric occultist activities searching for ‘truth,’ and finally coming to believe in a syncretic spiritual reality. As later biographers would write, “Mir, lishermyi chudes, byl dlia nego ne zhivym mirom, a mertvoi skhemoi dogmatikov ot religii, filosofii ili nauki.”^ ^ Art is connected to this sense of the spiritual and miraculous, and it is in part the responsibility of the artist to lead society. In a metaphor that bears resemblance to Erik Gollerbakh, “Iskusstvo Rerikha” (1939) in Derzhava Rerikha, ed. V. P. Kniazeva (Moscow: Izobrazitel’noe iskusstvo, 1994), 254-255. P. F. Belikov and V. P. Kniazeva, Nikolai Konstantinovich Rerikh (Samara: Agni, 1996), 174. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 287 Kandinsky’s triangular conception of the relationship of artists to society and social spiritual progress, Roerich writes, “Dlia togo, chtoby skovalas’ stroinaia epokha tvorchestva, nuzhno, chtoby vsled za khudozhnikami vse obshchestvo prinialo uchastie v postroike khrama.”^ ^ He was involved in spiritualism and attended seances, and like Kandinsky thought much of Blavatskaia and Theosophy, though he never joined the Theosophical society. In his specifieally Indian subcontinental interests he was doubtless encouraged in part by the work of Blavatskaia, whose supra-religious syneretic Theosophy exploited not only European esoteric traditions, but Indian and Asian systems, asserting their fundamental unity in a wisdom revealed to her by mysterious ‘mahatmas.In the impulse for constructing a cultural unity he drew Nikolai Rerikh, “Radosf iskusstva,” 1. (internet text) This article was written in 1908, several years before Kandinsky would publish On the Spiritual in Art. Roerich’s article was apparently not published until 1914, so it is not possible to know if he did not revise it. If the hagiography is true, Roerich was uninterested in claiming primacy or prestige, even refusing medals at art exhibitions, so it makes little sense that he would try to ‘pre-date’ Kandinsky. On the other hand, Roerich, like Helena Blavatsky, was in fact very adept at unconventional social and political maneuvering and self-promotion. An interesting comparison might even be made between Roerich Tsaritsa Nebesnaia and Kandinsky’s 1912 Lady in Moscow. On Kandinsky and Theosophy, see Sixten Ringbom’s works on Kandinsky; on Lady in Moscow, see Marit Werenskold, “Kandinsky’s Moscow,” Art in America (1989): 96-111. Though Blavatskaia was dead by this time, Roerich’s thought comes close to hers in many respects. His wife, Elena Ivanovna, made a translation o f Blavatskaia’s works into Russian, which she had begun before Nikolai finished the Talashkino paintings. For more on Blavatskaia, see below, chapter six. For a history of the Theosophy in Russia, see Maria Carlson, No Religion Higher than Truth: A History o f the Theosophical Movement in Russia, 1875-1922 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton Unviersity Press, 1993). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 288 on the work of Soloviev, with whom he had become acquainted, through Stasov, before Soloviev’s death in 1900?^ For Roerich, art, in the tradition of Symbolism, is an effective aid on the path of cognizing the spiritual real, though Roerich’s wide-ranging interests and activities carry him well outside the Symbolists’ usual spheres of activity. In the article “Radosf iskusstva” written apparently in 1908 hut not published until 1914, Roerich gives an extended description of how he understands pre-historic, stone age life. In the debates on the condition of pre-civilized humanity Roerich is unequivocally a Rousseauan, idealizing and romanticizing the difficult and primitive conditions in which stone ages cultures existed. More important than the Rousseauan tendencies and the sometimes overly detailed references to certain academic categories and sites, the article provides important clues on Roerich’s ideas on the position of humanity with respect to the world in which we live, and the functions of divinity, nature, and art that connect to his ideas on Sophia. Art for him originates as a decorative practice, rather than a metaphysical or purely aesthetic one, and it is in this that he sees the future of art as well; “[OJtkuda pridet radosf budushchego iskusstva? Radosf iskusstva - o nei my zabyli - idet. ... [S] osobennoi ostrotoiu vyrastaet soznanie o nastoiashchei ukrashaemosti ‘dekorativnosti.’ O dekorativnosti kak edinstvennom puti i nachale Soloviev’s idea for unity had been rooted in Christian religious considerations - Soloviev’s own attitudes towards Asian cultures were a mixture o f disinterest and fear, a remarkable exception in an otherwise extremely broad-minded and tolerant thinker whose attitudes towards Judaism and Catholicism were sharply at odds with the dominant attitudes of his time. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 289 nastoiashchego iskusstva [sic].”^^ Decorative or ornamental art is the original principle of art, and the future of art, indeed even the future of society, lies in reclaiming the joy of art as decorative. “V ogne zhelanii radosti - zalog budushchikh iarkikh dostizhenii. Dostizheniia eti sol’iutsia [?] v apofeoze kakogo- to novogo stilia, seichas nemyslimogo. Etot stil’ dast kakuiu-to epokhu, nam sovershenno nevedomuiu. Epokhu po glubine radosti, konechno, blizkuiu pervym luchshim nachalam iskusstva.This last part is a crucial idea, because it points the way for Roerich’s program of Symbolist-inspired culturally-syncretic nature mysticism. The decorativeness of true and authentic art for Roerich is connected with the rootedness of art and culture in nature, in the earth, in the very land and rocks themselves. This device is used by Roerich to implicitly justify his own blending of archeology, spirituality, and artistic practice. He then leads the reader on a voyage into the depths of the stone age, painting it as a pure and valorous time of interesting and complex cultures, with sophisticated decorative arts and a wide variety of tools and material culture. The proximity of early cultures to nature engenders the joy of decorative art and the use of natural materials to decorate and create in intimate imity with the latent spiritual power of the Earth. In the Paleolithic era, “Chelovek uzhe stal tsarem prirody ... 27 Nikolai Rerikh, “Radost’ iskusstva,” 1. Ibid. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 290 Veseloe vremia! - vremia bezchislennykh pobed. ... Dvizhnyi chudesn5 oni instinkami garmonii i ritma chelovek, ... vpolne vstupaet v iskusstvo. The obsession with the stone ages becomes more clear as Roerich explores the significance of stone as a material at the basis of human communal and civilized life. Roerich argues that it is from the mystical and aesthetic qualities of rock that art and civilization began, and modem readers should confront these qualities for themselves: Esli khotite prikosnut’sia k dushe kamnia - naidite ego sami na stoianke, na beregu ozera nodymite ego svoeiu rukoiu. Kamen’ sam otvetit na vashi voprosy, rasskazhet o dlinnoi zhizni svoei. .. .V rukhakh ozhivaet nuzhnoe orudie, by ponimaete vsiu tonkost’, vsiu skul’ptumost’ otdelki ego. Iz-pod sediny naletov nachinaet skvozit’ chudesnyi ton iashmy ili iadieta. V vashikh rukakh kusok krasoty!^® What this article does make clear is that by 1908 the basic stmctures of Roerich’s thought, also evidenced in his easel painting, mosaic work, and mural projects across this period, including the central position of the sophian Etemal Feminine, were in place. Concisely, Roerich affirms in terms decidedly bent towards the mystical three things: first, that art and human life are directly connected by nature; second, that East and West meet in Russia and are connected by culture; and third, that nature and culture are connected by the symbol that merges the two - Sophia, the divine feminine. As he later wrote in Mother o f the World, “To both East and West, the image of the Great Mother - womanhood - is the bridge of ultimate unification.” 30 Ibid., 15-6. Talking to rocks seems a bit strange, even for Roerich. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 291 The role and funetion of Sophia is central here, but remains significant only as a symbol. As much as he wants the masses to help build the temple of art, and even go out and talk to. rocks, for Roerich, the feminine, as the other recurring images and ideas in his oeuvre, like warriors, heralds, serpents, angels, buddhas, boats, monks, cities, and even rocks, remain profoundly symbols, images or artifacts that can help put humanity in contact with a higher spiritual plane, but all these things, women included, do not lose or change their terrestrial nature. As powerful as art is, it is not transfigurative or incamational. On this point witness the Madonna Oriflamma, related, as mentioned above, to the mosaic of the Protection of the Virgin in the eponymous church in Parkhomovka. The composition has changed, though, and the veil is now Roerich’s banner on which three circles are enclosed in a ring, representing the unity of art, science, and religion in the sphere of culture. This was the symbol of the Roerich Pact movement, which became an international initiative lead by Roerich to promote cultural unity and protect cultural treasures, especially from war. The Madonna Oriflamma, with its Asian elements, is also a reconception of the Western European Veronica’s veil imagery, except that in the place of the face of Christ, Roerich has put his symbol of human culture. The Madonna is a symbol of peace and love, the bridge between spiritual nature and authentic culture, and between East and West, and has no referentiality to a single woman or category of women.^^ The story of Veronica is a variant of the story of the image of Spas ’ nerukotvornyi (Christ-not- made-by-hands), an apocryphal tale according to which the King of Abgar sent for Jesus to heal R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 292 In some ways Roerich makes an especially good comparison with Kuznetsov. Despite considerable differences in artistic focus and background, they both had powerful encounters with the idea of Sophia. Kuznetsov sought the sources to higher harmonies in maternity, hut did not find them, so he subsequently turned alternatively to primitivism, central Asian exoticism, and Russian medieval art for the keys to the mystical, a path that actually has much in common with Roerich, though the demands of Soviet ideology shifted Kuznetsov’s art away from its Symbolist roots and significant early achievements. Roerich’s pre-revolutionary art is more limited in both its pictorial experimentalism and in a sophian sense; despite its similar ambitions to being ‘spiritual,’ and an expression of higher harmonies. Unlike Kuznetsov, Roerich’s artistic credo didn’t transgress the theurgical border of seeking to actually incarnate Sophia. Bulgakov If for Roerich the sophian divine feminine became one of a cluster of mutually reinforcing images in his art and philosophical-political activities, for him, but Jesus made an impression o f his face in a cloth and sent it in his stead, which miraculously cured the king. It also forms part o f the basis for legitimating icon painting. The ‘icon’ was reputedly preserved in Constantinople, but was lost to the vicissitudes o f time. Orthodox representations show only the cloth and Christ’s face — there is no woman in the story. The Catholic story of Veronica (whose name, ‘vera-ikona’ means ‘true image’) is that she wiped Christ’s face to comfort him while he carried the cross to Golgotha, and he left an image of his face in the cloth. She is usually shown holding the cloth with the image o f Christ’s face on it. This “true image” is reputedly still preserved in Rome at St. Peter’s. In any case, Roerich’s placing a symbol o f human culture in the place o f Christ’s likeness can be read either as an apotheosis o f the value of human culture, i.e., human culture reflects the divine image, or as a blasphemous affront to Christian doctrine - or both. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 293 Sergei Bulgakov, Sophia was the single image that reinforced virtually everything else. Figure 6.8 Mikhail Nesterov, Philosophers, 1917 For Bulgakov, Sophia became the central element in his philosophy, economics, and theology, in part under the influence of Fr. Pavel Florenskii. Just as Bakst and Gippius played with the pose and etymology of philosopher to invoke a sophian subtext in her 1906 portrait (see chapter four), a well-known portrait of Sergei Bulgakov and Pavel Florenskii by Mikhail Nesterov from 1917 employs the same pim; the painting, which shows the two thinkers walking at Sergiev Posad, is titled Philosophers. Indeed, there are perhaps no other Russian thinkers of the twentieth century who deserve the title in both senses more than Florenskii and Bulgakov. Although Bulgakov’s major sophiological works were written in emigration, his abandonment of Marxism, conversion to Orthodoxy, and confirmed interest in Sophiology was complete before the revolution, and this process is perhaps as interesting as the later exposition of his fully developed thought. In fact. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 294 some of his most explicit work on art was done before the revolution. Florenskii’s aesthetic thought was a direct source for Bulgakov, and while he is perhaps in some ways a more interesting figure than his fellow sophian, only Bulgakov will be discussed in depth here. Bulgakov’s biography read in hindsight as he wrote it in his Avtobiograficheskie zametki much later in life predicts his eventual position as a priest and theologian, but there were many turning points that could have lead in different directions.^^ Bulgakov was bom in 1871 in a small town in Orel province into the family of a sixth generation priest and a mother of mixed clerical and petty noble origins. His childhood, regulated by the life of the Church and flawed parents - his father was an alcoholic, his mother had nervous disorders - seems to have been rather unhappy. Although he entered the seminary, he had a crisis of faith and switched to a secular gymnasium, matriculating to Moscow University to study economics, where he became a leading “legal” Marxist in the 1890’s. In his autobiography, he describes the beginnings of a religious re-conversion on a train to the Caucasus mountains, in 1895, where the light of the setting sun on the peaks moved him; in nature Bulgakov began to experience a revelation of God. He also says something similar about his feelings for his wife, Elena Tokmakhova, whom he married in 1898, while still a Marxist and political radical: “1 soon recognized the same thing the hills had told me in their triumphant glow, in the shy and quiet Sergei Bulgakov, Avtobiograflcheskii zametki (Paris, 1946). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 295 glance of a maiden, by other shores, under other hills. ... the revelation of love spoke of another world which had been lost to me.”^ ^ He went to Germany to do research, was active in German radical politics, but he reports when he went to Dresden and stood before Raphael Sanzio’s Sistine Madonna, he broke down, wept, and prayed, and then he returned for many mornings to do the same thing.^'* By the time he completed his dissertation in 1900, he was disillusioned with Marxism, and began searching for another way. Essentially he moved from the Marxist camp to the growing Idealist movement, which took Kant as its philosophical point of departure, believing in the primacy of the ethical over the scientific, the metaphysical over the material, and abandoning the positivist dialecticism that had first led Bulgakov to the study of economics and philosophy; his thought did not, however retreat from political engagement. He was involved with the religious-idealist reform movement and the Merezhkovskiis’ Religious-Philosophical Society; he was editor of Novyi Put ’ with another former Marxist, Nikolai Berdiaev, until they split with Merezhkovskii and Gippius over the proper path for reform. He and Berdiaev were still secularists, advocating Sergei Bulgakov, Avtobiograflcheskii zametki, qtd. in Catherine Evtuhov, Sergei Bulgakov: A study in Modernism and Society in Russia, 1900-1918 (Ph.D. diss., University of California Berkeley, 1991), 28. It is perhaps not accidental that it should be this particular picture, that had attained iconic status not only in the world o f art, but also in the world of Russian religion and philosophy. Chernyshevky declared in Esteticheskie otnosheniia iskusstva k deistvitel'nosti that “It is well known that our senses soon tire and become satiated, i.e., satisfied [...] A man cannot look at a picture, even by Raphael, every day for a month without wearying of it.” Dostoevsky took up the challenge, according to his second wife, who recalled that in the fall of 1867 while living in Dresden Dostoevsky did precisely this. See Konstantin A. Barsht, “Defining the face: observations on Dostoevskii’s creative process” in Catriona Kelly and Stephen Lovell, eds., Russian Literature, Modernism, and the Visual Arts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 35. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 296 Westem-style liberal reforms, while the Merezhkovskiis sought a new religious basis for saving Russia.^^ The 1905 revolution drew Bulgakov further into polities; he was elected a member of the Duma and though independent, was close to the Kadet party, and came to advocate a Christian Socialist viewpoint.^^ The failure of the post-1905 reforms, somewhat ironically, pushed Bulgakov in the direction of the Merezhkovskiis at the beginning of the decade - towards religion as the means of reforming society. This is the posture he adopted as one of the contributors to the famous collection Vekhi in 1909.^^ Several other events around 1909 made it a turning point for him personally: he was increasingly in contact with Fr. Pavel Florenskii and re-reading the works of Soloviev. Yet the most important event in 1909 was the death of his four-year-old son, Ivan. The impact of this event on his world-view and as a result on his philosophy and life were significant. He had had a conversion experience in 1908, but seeing in his “Ivashechka’s” death an immediate reality of the Resurrection, he drew even closer to Orthodoxy. It is after 1909 that he becomes converted to sophiological Orthodox Christianity, the last ideological ''smena vekh” in his life. Together with other Vekhovtsy and like-minded intellectuals including Mikhail Gershenzon, Fr. Pavel Florenskii, Prince Evgenii Trubetskoi, and G. A. See Evtuhov, Bulgakov, 65-103. See George F. Putnam, Russian Alternatives to Marxism (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1977); Putnam includes a chapter on Buglakov as a Christian Socialist. Sergei Bulgakov, “Geroizm i podvizhnichestvo” in Vekhi: Sbornik statei o russkoi intelligentsii (Moscow: 1909), 23-69. Available in English in Boris Shragin and Albert Todd, eds. Landmarks: A Collection o f Essays on the Russian Intelligentsia, 1909, trans. Marian Schwartz (New York: Karz Howard, 1977,23-63. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 297 Rachinskii, he founded the journal Put’ and set off on an explicitly religiously- oriented intellectual way. The personal and professional tasks he faced were not insignificant. Having come to reject materialist positivism in the form of Marxism and identify inadequacies in neo-Kantian idealism, Bulgakov “faced the extraordinarily ambitious program of simultaneously refuting and transcending both Kant and Marx. ... the only source intelleetually powerful enough to succeed in such an enterprise proved to be Christianity.”^ * In spite of the rather daunting task he set himself, his Sophian enchantment did not turn. If anything, it intensified; he took priestly vows in 1918, and subsequently as professor, rector, and dean of the emigre St. Sergius Theological Institute in Paris, he published a monumental series of works on sophian theology. Between the intensification of his interest in Sophia and before the events that earried him out of Russia - he was among the intelleetuals expelled after the revolution - Bulgakov plaees his sophian ideas at the center of two major pre revolutionary works, Filosofiia khozhiaistva, published in 1912 and Svet nevechernii, completed in 1916.^^ While the former deals with the problems of eeonomies and labor and the plaee of the individual in economie theory, the latter deals with questions of religion, art, and their nature and role in human life. Evtuhov, Bulgakov, 234. Filosofiia khoziastvo has been reprinted as a facsimile edition (Paris: YMCA Press, 1976) and repeatedly in the last decade in various compilations of Bulgakov’s works, including S. N. Bulgakov, Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh, 2 vols., vol. 1, ed. S. S. Khoruzhii (Moscow: Nauka, 1993) and an edition in English translation, Sergei Bulgakov, Philosophy o f Economy: The World as Household, trans. and ed. Catherine Evtuhov (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 298 Though they seem rather disparate, they both center on a related Solovievan and sophian idea - the interaction between the individual and sobornost or unity. If Marxist anthropology reduced the individual in history to a function of the collective class to which he or she belonged, Kantian metaphysics too strictly focused on the individual, separated as a subject from other objects. Bulgakov found both systems overly maximalist and not sufficiently responsive to what he saw as the need to recognize the necessity of the primacy of both the philosophical individual and community. Both Filosofiia khoziaistvo and Svet nevechernii try to stake out a functional middle ground between Marx and Kant, rooted in a sophiological Christian metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics. Of course, a full discussion of Bulgakov’s theological philosophy is impossible here. Since the discussion of the typological structure of “sophian despair” relies on the interrelated elements of zhiznetvorchestvo, theurgy, and the position of the individual in modernity, these issues will also be addressed in the consideration of the sustained sophian hope of Bulgakov. We will explore the differences between Bulgakov’s ideas about the relationship between art and life, reality and creativity, and the role of Sophia and those that were at the center of the sophian despair for figures like Blok, Kuznetsov, and Soloviev. If Blok and Soloviev believed in theurgy, Sergei Bulgakov certainly did as well, but the difference between their notions of theurgy and its relationship to Sophia is substantial. Just like symbolist poets and artists, Bulgakov bases his idea of theurgy in Soloviev’s philosophy, but interprets and expands on Soloviev rather R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 299 differently. While for the poets of Sophia, the creating human has a legitimate claim to theurgie power, Bulgakov sees theurgy as an exclusively divine act, perpetrated only by God. Bulgakov, the renegade Marxist and soon to be Orthodox priest, believed humans can participate in theurgy, but this is limited to such things as the Orthodox divine liturgy or prophesy, etc. This is not the end of the story, however. Bulgakov coins a companion term “sophiurgy” by which he means an artistic (or other) creative act, perpetrated by humans, but accomplished by the element of sophian divinity (sofiinost ’ ) within th em ."^* ^ Bulgakov thinks that when the term ‘theurgy’ is invoked, what is meant is usually ‘sophiurgy’ or even ‘anthropourgy,’ a human creative act without any participation of divinity. One can assume what he means by anthropourgy is profane art. An example of this, though he does not use the word anthropourgy directly, is a short article on the art of Picasso, titled “Trup Krasoty.” The article bears resemblances to an article by Berdiaev, written the previous year that appeared in the journal Sofiia!^^ Bulgakov finds Picasso mystical, but demonic. While affirming Picasso’s artistic talent, power, and unity, his comments on Picasso’s images of women indicate what anthropourgy might mean, as well as testifying to the importance of the sophian in Bulgakov’s conception of art: “Picasso’s paintings[’] ... main subject is unquestionably woman, the Feminine itself, ... How then does the painter see and feel the Feminine? This is the key to Sergei Bulgakov, Svet nevechernii (1916; reprint, Moscow: Respublika, 1994), 320. 41 Nikolai Berdiaev, “Pikasso,” Sofiia 1, no. 3 (1914): 57-63. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 300 understanding art, since the eternal Feminine, the world’s soul, is the mother and mistress of all art. In Picasso’s art she appears in unutterable humiliation as a hideous, heavy, shapeless, and decomposing body, indeed as the very corpse of beauty, seen in god-defying cynicism, in diabolical malice, as a decaying astral corpse, or with the snake-like leer of a witch. And all those visions live and are something like miracle-working icons of a demonic nature; an uncanny power flows from them.”" * ^ Beyond creating a hierarchy of types of creativity, Bulgakov’s thoughts on creativity reflect a consciousness of the aesthetic debates of the Silver Age.'*^ Though the art of Picasso wasn’t to his liking, he demonstrates a clear sympathy towards the second generation of Symbolists’ ideas and struggles with art - perhaps in part a result of his friendship with Viacheslav Ivanov, who even attended his ordination in 1918. Bulgakov, “Trup krasoty,” Russkaia mysV 8 (1915): 100-106. trans. in Sergius Bulgakov, A Bulgakov Anthology, ed. James Pain and Nicholas Zernov (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976), 69. Berdiaev’s article is more interesting, drawing parallels between the art of the Italian quattrocento and Picasso as both rooted in material, fleshy beauty. To Berdiaev, Picasso’s art manifestly reveals the lack of spirituality in material substance, and he expresses hope for a new kind o f art that transcends the material. Bulgakov contradicts Berdiaev here, insisting that Picasso’s art is spiritual - but diabolically so. Picasso’s works were held in private collections in Moscow, especially Shchukin’s, but made available to the interested. Both Berdiaev’s and Bulgakov’s articles respond not only to Picasso’s works, but also to the first appreciation of Picasso published in Russian, Grishchenko’s Pikasso (Moscow: 1913). For Berdiaev’s article in the context of Sofiia, see David Borgmeyer, “Venus and Sofiia: Renaissance Revisited,” (paper presented at the Mid- Atlantic Slavic Conference, New York, October 1998). For a more contemporary art historical perspective on Picasso’s paintings as icons, see Mindy Taggard, “Picasso’s Woman with a Fan as an Icon,” The Nelson-Atkins Museum o f Art Bulletin 5 (1982): 83-87. Ironically from Bulgakov’s perspective, Taggard also argues that there are similarities between Orthodox icons and Picasso’s work, and she discusses the consequences for his reception by the Russian avant-garde. Also, they indicate something of his closeness to Berdiaev, for whom the creative act was becoming more and more profoimd - eventually in his thought postulated as prior to all being itself, even that of God. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 301 Predictably, given his interest in political action and its connection with religious and philosophical thought, Bulgakov rejects Diaghilev’s and later Makovskii’s “art for art’s sake” decadence; sofiinost’ Z L n d . sobornost’ in art requires the renunciation of self-sufficient aesthetic idealism. “Theurgie art was not centered (as Decadence was) on the individual soul of the artist.”'^ '^ The theurgists like Ivanov, Blok, and Bely, though only “sofiurgists” at best in Bulgakov’s terms, tried to create a world around themselves through Symbols, a simulacra of the immanent divine, often represented as Sophia, in distinction with the purely decadents, like Briusov or early Bal’mont, who created an aesthetic reality for themselves that they recognized as having no more or less reality than the constructions of bourgeois philistinism, revolutionary zeal, or religious piety. For the decadents, beauty was an amoral and independent criteria; the categories of good and evil, like life and art, were interchangeable because they were meaningless. The only difference between such antinomies in the eyes of artists and writers like Sologub or Somov was that transgressive eroticism and hedonism were more enjoyable and more attractive, and this makes them antithetical to Bulgakov. Bulgakov even easts his objection to decadence in the same mythical terms as Briusov’s photographic pose with the stone bust of a woman: “[Sub’ektivnoe, idealisticheskoe] iskusstvo ostaetsia chuzhdym tragieheskogo razlada [zhizni i iskusstva], i Pigmalion, vliublennyi v mramomuiu Galateiu, v Joan Delaney Grossman, “Neo-Kantism, Pantheism and the Ego: Symbolist Debates in the 1890s,” Studies in East European Thought Al, nos. 3-4 (December 1995): 179-93. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 302 sushchnosti, dazhe ne chuvstvuet potrebnosti ee ozhivit’ This kind of self- contained illusionary art is insensitive to the real distinction Bulgakov perceived between art and life. As long as such art isn’t interested in living reality, there is no difference between a statue and a woman. Symbolist art, for Bulgakov, does not sever the connection between the two worlds, rather, it acts as a bridge and is conscious of the higher power of art - Beauty. The question that arises is whether sophian art, or Beauty, as Dostoevsky famously put it, can save the world; in other words, ean art complete the sophiurgic transfiguration of the world?"^^ This question for Bulgakov defines the living boundaries of art. Art cannot achieve fully a realibus ad reliora, it ean only point the way, show, symbolically refer to it, testify to it. For Bulgakov, the objeet of art is Beauty, and art is not and cannot be Beauty in the same way philosophy isn’t Truth."^’ “Iskusstvo iavliaet Krasoty i pleniaet eiu, no ono bessil’no sozdat’ zhizn’ V krasote i tem stat’ podlinno sobomym, vselenskim.”'^ * The incamational and transfigurative power of art - even sophian, sophiurgic art, is restricted. The inability of art to achieve the artist’s tme goal. Beauty, can engender a crisis of art. Bulgakov recasts in explicitly religious terms the Symbolist transfigurative desire: the artist wants to bring the Taboric light, the symbol of transfigured humanity, into focus and change the world through his art. This desire Bulgakov, Svet nevecherii, 330. It is worth noting that Dostoevskii was one of Bulgakov’s favorite writers, ranking with Soloviev. Bulgakov, Svet nevechernii, 321. Ibid., 331. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 303 does not alter the fact that it is not finally possible, but it does point out the profundity of artistic creativity. The realm of real sofiurgy isn’t the conventional realm of art, but a deeper creative urge, rooted in a “bespredmetnoe i vsepredmetnoe khudozhestvo,” a consciousness of the holiness of everything, to have an art beyond art - “Zaiskusstvo.”'^ ^ '* As Bulgakov himself stated in the article on Picasso, for him the sophian eternal Feminine is the center of art, and he is sympathetic to the Symbolist project of theurgical art. Nonetheless, he does not believe in the literal life-creating power of art. Again, he draws on the m5 dh of Pygmalion, a myth which above was seen to have been inverted by the potency of Symbolist poetics into the petrifaction of living women. Bulgakov allows for deep love of art, but keeps the distinction between statue as art and woman as human separate. Proizvedeiiami iskusstva mozhno liubovat’sia, vliubat’sia v nikh, no lish’ dlia togo, chtoby tem sil’nee chuvstvovat’ tsepi ‘prezrennoi zhizni.’ I nel’zia ikh liubit’ zhivoi chelovecheskoi liubov’iu, ibo uzvaiannaia Galateia v mramornom krase svoei vse zhe lishena teploty muskulov i krovi, est’ poddelka.^® His stricter definition of the limits of human artistic creation, what he calls sophiurgy rather than true theurgy, that grows out of his Orthodox Christian worldview, insulates Bulgakov from the tragic disappointment that his mentor Soloviev and to a greater extent other Symbolists followers of his suffered. Given his attitudes towards self-referential art and his reaction to Picasso, there seems little question that Bulgakov would have responded negatively to Malevich’s and the Futurists’ “zaum” and the “bezpredmetnoe” art of Suprematism. There is nothing that I know of that documents such a response; nonetheless, the degree of coincidence in spiritual strivings in Bulgakov and Malevich as well as in actual artistic vocabulary is remarkable. 50 Bulgakov, Svet nevechernii, 319. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 304 The key to the difference between despair and hope seems to be in aesthetic philosophy specifically as it is formed in relationship to metaphysics. All thought about Sophia essentially addresses the relationship between the person and a posited Divinity, the human sphere and the divine sphere, Creation and the Creating power. Bulgakov believed in the theurgie power of art like Blok and Bely; he thought that proper art could help to change the world. However, he placed the poet/artist within a cosmology that puts the individual in imitation of and subordination to the Orthodox Christian God. For him, creativity has prescriptive limitations; not only ought it to reveal Christian truths and values, but excessive egoism and emphatic individuality are serious errors. There is no doubt that Bulgakov was fully immersed in elite culture of the early twentieth century, but he never sought to make any actual woman or women an incarnation of his vision of the Divine Feminine. This does not mean that he did not have romantic relationships; he was and remained married. The distinction for Bulgakov between living human women and Sophia, between his creative work and his romantic and domestic life, between his powers and authorities and those of his God, remained clear. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 305 Chapter Seven Conclusion: She Speaks Wisdom has built her house, she has set up her seven columns. Proverbs 9:1 (NAB) To this point, this dissertation has traced the course of the sophian divine feminine in outline through historical, literary, and artistic processes that led to its emergence as a powerful cultural force toward the end of the nineteenth century in Russia. In chapter four the ambiguous and changing nature of the reception of the idea of femininity that provided a catalytic environment for this phenomenon was examines, as well as the unique qualities of both Sophia and the Russian cultural milieu which poses problems for the easy transfer of Anglo-American gender scholarship and inhibits its use as an effective model for understanding the function of the ideal feminine in general and Sophia in particular in pre-revolutionary Russia. A typology of reactions to Sophia was developed in chapters five and six, drawing on a wide variety of cultural figures, active in literature and criticism, history and archaeology, theology and philosophy, and the creation of art and the creation of life. The different disciplines by which these figures expressed their interest in, devotion to, and sometimes hatred for Sophia has required different R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 306 approaches to understanding their works, but these approaches have all been oriented towards illustrating the centrality of Sophia to the Russian ereative intelligentsia in the first decades of the twentieth century. The pereeptive reader, however, will have noticed one marked feature of homogeneity among the figures discussed in this project: they are all men. Yet women and ideas about women are at the very center of this dissertation’s topie. It may seem strange then, that no women have been discussed; and it is, because women were just as much a part of the culture that produced this fascination with Sophia as men were. There are many women for whom Sophia was as telling on their lives and works as she was on men - though not always by their own choice. The responses to Sophia by women, willing and unwilling, will be discussed in this chapter. It is not at all intended to be a comprehensive discussion, even of one figure; the full articulation of this theme would require another project at least of this size, yet this survey is an integral part of the project. The typological structure outlined and explicated in the above chapters is imperfect when it comes to dealing with women’s sophian responses. Liubov’ Mendeleeva, for example, was somewhat taken by the mystical and romantic effusiveness of Sasha Blok. When they were married, Blok could not treat her like a mere mortal wife, but rather he tried to make her into an incarnation of Sophia. She rebelled, and she, Blok, and their marriage suffered. Her response isn’t sophian hope, but nor is it sophian despair. A separate and somewhat more provisional typology then, will be set up here. It both is and is not a model for future research. As a part of this study projected R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 307 from the beginning, it is a part of the research represented by this text, but at the same time, insofar as it is not a fully articulated argument in support of the typology it projects, it contains prospects for future exploration of the theme of Sophia among women in Silver Age Russia. In Tolstoyan fashion, this concluding chapter will both an end and a begirming. There is not space or time to give a full account of the women, but it is to be hoped that it will be sufficiently representative. Rather than the bipartite division that was applied to men, there will be three types: women who claim to actually be Wisdom or possess esoteric wisdom, women whom men claim to be incarnations of the Divine Feminine, and women who themselves create works about Sophia or the sophian divine feminine without claiming a more privileged status for themselves. The first type are women who themselves claim to be incarnate Wisdom or have some extra measure of special or divine wisdom, including Anna Schmidt, Elena Blavatskaia, and Anna Mintslova, a Blavatskaia imitator who drew Ivanov and Bely into a mystical relationship. Shmidt has already been discussed above briefly; although her claims for Soloviev were beyond what his Christian conscience could bear — although he no doubt wished to become a bogochelovek, he had no illusions that he was the Bogochelovek incarnate, the reversal of gender in the projection of roles and the critical repsonse to it is interesting. When Briusov and Bely paid visits around Moscow, leaving calling cards from centaurs and unicorns, or seriously discussed a trip to Novodevichii to look for such creatures, they are deploying innovative creative strategies, acting as Symbolist “life- R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 308 creators”; when Blok, Belyi and Sergei Soloviev decide that Liubov’ Mendeleeva is Divine Wisdom Incarnate, they are serious poets “creating life.” When Anna Shmidt calls on Vladimir Soloviev and says he is the Logos and she is Sophia, she is unstable and crazy. Perhaps she was actually mentally ill, but it is worth noticing an apparent double standard here. Another Russian woman who claimed spiritual authority, though not to be Sophia incarnate, was Madame Blavatsky. Elena (or Helena) Petrovna Balvatskaia was not personally aequainted with any of the other figures whom we have discussed. Bom twenty years before Vladimir Soloviev in 1831 in Ukraine to aristocratic parents, she was an integral part of the occult revival in the Anglo- American world. After much travel, including, she claimed, some years in a Tibetan monastery, she founded the Theosophical Society in New York in 1873, and moved it to India in 1879. She published among many other lesser works the ponderous syncretist tome The Secret Doctrine in 1888, and later the more ponderous two-volume Isis Unveiled in 1892. She claimed to be teaehing a synthetic ancient wisdom, of which modern religions were descended variants, having lost or altered elements of the truth over the ages. It is wholly reasonable to say she laid claim to a special wisdom, both in her own right as an accomplished occultist, but also as a medium for revelations, which came to take the part of letters from mysterious “mahatmas” or wise god-like men in the Himalayas, who would “transmit” their revelations through Blavatsky. Many religious leaders R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 309 rejected her claims, though she gained a large popular following, especially in England and America, but also across the European continent. To defy the institutions of organized religion, more powerful then than today, she directed her preaching not in competition with them, but above them: “No religion higher than Truth” was the motto of the Theosophical Society - and Blavatsky was the mediator of that Truth. The legitimacy of her ability to teach and transmit was a complicated blend of East and West, respectability and barbarity, masculinity and femininity, authority and marginality in part through her being from Russia, a place which was, to the Anglo-American bourgeoisie that was her main audience, a half-Asian, half-European borderland only slightly less exotic than India or Tibet. She reinforced this cultural bivalency by affecting an aristocratic Russian heritage and notoriously uncivilized public behavior, utterly at odds with notions of bourgeois respectability. This doubling of ethnic identity was repeated with her sexual identity, both physically and ‘metaphysically.’ Her body was “Awkwardly situated with respect to ‘true manhood’ and ‘true womanhood,’”' Her asexual body was not male, hut neither was it markedly female. Implying neither the Venus of Willendorf nor the Venus de Milo in her ample shapelessness, she was thoroughly uncanny in a society with strict social norms of gender differentiation. “Blavatsky exploited that situation to claim spiritual authority as a man (HPB) and spiritual powers as a woman (Helena Blavatsky).”^ * Joy Dixon, The Divine Feminine: Theosophy and Feminism in England (Baltimore; The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 14. ^ Dixon, The Divine Feminine^ 16. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 310 The truth is especially difficult to sort out with Blavatsky. Indeed, the legitimacy of the whole Theosophical movement rested on her veracity; yet there are serious doubts with regard to her accounts of her travels and other biographical details, the sources of the “mahatma letters,” the secret panels and trap doors in the seance rooms of the Theosophical Society’s headquarters in India, and so on. Nonetheless, regardless of whether or not her claims were true, Blavatsky had a magnetic personality, plenty of charm and bravado, and enough shrewdness and knowledge to succeed at her chosen profession. The official report of the English Society for Psychical Research concluded that she was a charlatan, but complimented in doing so: “For our own part, we regard her neither as the mouthpiece of hidden seers, nor as a mere vulgar adventuress; we think she has achieved a title to permanent remembrance as one of the most accomplished, ingenious, and interesting impostors in history.”^ Whether she was a prophet or a quack, whether she really had access to ancient wisdom or not, she certainly had plenty of worldly wisdom, and in any case the interaction of the two and the potential intersection and adaptation of feminine mystical doctrines and identities makes her a subject of interest. While essentially all of Blavataky’s career took place outside of Russia, the Theosophical Society and Theosophy were an important part of the general occult ^ Society for Psychical Research, “Report of the Committee Appointed to Investigate Phenomena Connected with the Theosophical Society,” Proceedings o f the Society for Psychical Research 3 (December 1885): 207, qtd. in Maria Carlson, “Elena Balvatskaia,” in Russian Women Writers, vol. 1, ed. Christine D. Tomei (New York: Garland, 1999), 244. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 311 revival in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century whose influence was strongly felt in Russia, especially on the Symbolist generations, notwithstanding the literary assault from one of Vladimir Soloviev’s brothers, Vsevolod, who had been one of Blavatsky’s best friends and promoters in Russia, imtil he suffered what might be called his own variant of sophian despair and permed scathing exposes of her charlatanry and fraud, publishing them a year after her death in 1891. Though dimmed, her reputation and the popularity of Theosophy revived as the Sjmibolist mood grew in Russia. One particularly interesting incident at the intersection of Theosophy, Symbolism, and women appropriating the discourse of the divine feminine is the appearance in Russia of at least one more or less direct Blavatsky imitator, Arma RudoTfovna Mintslova, the daughter of a Moscow lawyer and a Theosophist, who cultivated an uncanny, asexual appearance very similar to Blavatsky’s and also cultivated similar pretensions to mystical esoteric authority. She “claimed to be a clairvoyant and a psychic healer; she was subject to hallucinations, trance states, and the usual assortment of paraoccult phenomena considered de rigueur for genteel ladies of the theosophical persuasion at the turn of the century.”" * Her theosophical and literary activities (she translated Novalis and Rudolph Steiner) allowed her to insinuate herself into Symbolist circles, and she eventually separately convinced both Andrei Bely and Viacheslav Ivanov (shortly after the '' Maria Carlson, “Ivanov-Belyj-Minclova: The Mystical Triangle,” in Cultura e Memoria: atti del terzo Simposio Internazionale dedicate a Vjaceslav Ivanov, vol. 1, ed. Fausto Malcovati (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1988), 64. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 312 death of his wife, Lidiia Zinovieva-Annibal) that she was, like Blavatsky, the conduit for spiritual wisdom from secret sources, on a mission for mystical and esoteric forces, and charged with establishing circles to facilitate the transmission of secret wisdom. “[S]he was arrogant and demanded love, time, spiritual intimacy, and total obedience from those whom she was psychically ‘helping’. Like Mme. Blavatsky, on whom she modeled herself, Minclova could be charming and fascinating; like Mme. Blavatsky, she enjoyed having power over people, controlling and manipulating them.”^ She became a spiritual adviser of sorts to both writers, drawing them into a of “mystical triangle” assembled on a Theosophist foundation from a conglomeration of Anthroposophy, St. Martinism, Rosicrucianism, Asian exoticism, her own imagination, and a variety of other occult sources, with herself at its head. Ivanov was somewhat detached throughout the process, but Bely’s nerves were quite strained in 1908 when he came under her influence and he became, as he often was, enthusiastic to the point of credulity. Mintslova had concealed the third part of their “‘mystical triangle’” from Bely until the beginning of 1910, when he learned the third corner Mintslova had been concealing in Petersburg was none other than Viacheslav Ivanov. Bely soon became disenchanted, having expecting a Rosicrucian sage or some such, and instead Ivanov’s somewhat detached and dilettantish attitudes toward Mintslova’s occult doctrines brought Bely to the realization that his hopes in this Blavatskaia imitator ^ Ibid. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 313 were ill-founded. He refused to go to Italy at her behest for a “Rosicrucian initiation,” and the mystical triangle dissolved. Mintslova’s attempts to achieve spiritual power over men failed, and in an end to the incident worthy of the end of Symbolist novella, Mintslova got on a train in Petersburg bound for Moscow and was never seen or heard from again. Mintslova’s story provides a very interesting incident of a woman in the Russian Symbolist milieu claiming, like Blavatsky, particular occult wisdom or knowledge, and trying to use that claim to exert authority over others, especially men. In terms of symbolist poetics, Mintslova was claiming a sophian role, and projecting the authority that accrued to that position to create not a Logos, as Shmidt attempted with Soloviev, but votaries, as Blok and Bely had been to Liubov’ Mendeleeva Blok, and Soloviev had been (after a fashion) to the Sophias in his life. Mintslova did not, however, claim to be Sophia incarnate, or to attract her followers through a sublimated erotic echo of divine beauty or charm, but only to possess sophian wisdom. Both the structure of Mintslova’s attempt to claim rather than receive authority as a woman in the context of sophian devotion and the failure of that attempt are events that could easily submit to interesting analysis and provide insights into authority and gender in the Silver Age. The second type of sophian women are not those who claim to be Sophia or at least sophian, but rather have the role thrust upon them. These are women whom men seek to make into Wisdom, foremost among whom is Liubov’ Mendeleeva Blok, but also Soloviev’s Sophias: Sophia Khitrovo and Sophia Martynova. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 314 Kuznetsov’s brithing mothers might also be mentioned. These women are often made mute by their male “creators.” While the figure of the mute woman is not uncommon, its meaning is ambivalent. Certainly, speech, or voice, is an indication of power, so the deprivation of speech is a deprivation of power. The power of speech is attested by a variety of means, not least of which is the Symbolist doctrine of the theurgie power of the word.^ Sophias rarely speak, though, as in Soloviev’s consummative vision in “Tri Svidanii” and Blok’s poetry, whose beautiful lady rarely breaks her silence and ultimately declines to provide the anticipated revelation. This is a rather common trope, for Eva Buehwald has also pointed out the potence of feminine silence in the work of Andreev, for whom women were a “mystical-symbolic incarnation of the primitive moral bases of life.”^ For Andreev, “Woman’s intuitive superiority places her in effortless contact with a greater universality which Andreev’s male protagonists can only struggle to attain. For Andreev, this instinct for the universal means that women do not posses or require expression in the ordinary terms of men.”* this gives them “a singular and mysterious power which stems directly from their identity in silence.”^ The ® See among many other secondary sources, Irina Gutkin, “The Magic o f Words; Symbolism, Futurism, Socialist Realism,” in The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture, ed. Bernice Rosenthal (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 225-246. ^ James Woodward, Leonid Andreev, A Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), qtd. in Eva Buehwald, “The Silence of Rebellion: Women in the Work of Leonid Andreev,” in Gender and Russian Literature: New Perspectives, ed. Rosalind Marsh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 223. * Buehwald, “The Silence of Rebellion,” 223. Ibid. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 315 phenomenon of the mute eternal feminine is also evident in early Russian cinema. In the work of the pioneering director Evgenii Bauer, the character of Lidiia is strongly connoted as an iteration of the divine feminine, as an incarnate Sophia in The Dying Swan. Already muted by the genre itself, the character is doubly silenced; she is portrayed as a mute, who can only communicate by writing on a slate. However, given the vicissitudes of Russian elite culture’s discourses on women, further research is needed to carefully determine whether these silent women are simply misogynistic representations of the an exalted but powerless feminine, or if there is more complexity than that. There are strong elements of speech in the historical Sophias. The biblical Hokhmah “calls from the heights out over the city.” Sophia is linked to the Greco-Christian Logos; later, Boehme denotes speech (influenced by the Logos) as an aspect of Sophia. Even so, there is also From medieval times, Russian culture has had an idea of the wisdom of silence. The apophatic wisdom of hesychast silence and Tiutchev’s famous line, “A thought once spoken is a lie” may be taken to imply that silence may be greater than speech. The question of feminine silence may be read in different ways; if a positive statement of truth is impossible, Sophia - Wisdom - must remain mysterious and silent to remain truthful. Be that as it may, when the women who are cast in the role of Sophia do speak, it is of particular interest. Liubov’ Blok has left a rich autobiographical text. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 316 I byV, i nebylitsy o Bloke i a sebe}^ The text is a complicated reaction to being “zhena poeta.” She both rejects what she sees as her being a “funktsiia” of his poetry, and in other ways, embraces it, and manipulates a variety of cliches about beautiful women in art, the prekrasnaia dama that was and wasn’t her, and the interaction of these images with her perception of self. One of her recurring motifs is her relationship to her own body, which she “displays” repeatedly in the text, first as a sixteen year old girl admiring her young, naked body before the mirrors in her parents’ home. This motif of vanitas is of course common, usually shown as a vice from the hand of a male artist.** On another occasion she describes disrobing for her lover "Dagobert" and “staging” her nakedness: ... ia sbrosila s sebia vse i raspustilsia blistateTnyi plashch zolotykh volos, vsegda legkikh, volnistikh, kholenykh. V nashe vremia imi i liubovalis’ i gordilis’. Otbrosila odeialo na spinku krovati. Gostinichnuiu stenku ia vsegda zaveshivala prostynei, takzhe spinku krovati u podushek. Ia protianulas’ na fone etoi snezhnoi belizny i znala, chto kontury tela ele-ele na nei namechaiutsia chto ia ne mogu ne boiatsia grubogo, priamogo sveta, padaiushchego s potolka, chto nezhnaia i tonkaia, oslepitel’naia kozha mozhet ne iskat’ polumraka ... Mozhet byt’ Dzhordzhone, mozhet byt’ Titsian ... Nachalos’ kakoe-to torzhestvo, vne vremeni i prostranstvo.*^ Liubov’ Dmitrievna Blok, / byl', i nebylitsy o Bloke i a sebe, ed. L. Fleishman and I. Paulmann (Bremen: Kafka-Presse, 1977). This edition has been translated in Lucy Vogel, trans. and ed. Blok; An Anthology o f Essays and Memoirs (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1982). See also Lucy Vogel, “The Poet’s Wife: LJubov’ Dmitrievna Mendeleeva,” in Aleksandr Blok: Centennial Conference, ed. Walter N. Vickery (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1982), 379-403. The text used by Fleishman and Paulmann was not checked against the manuscript in TsGALI, now RGALI; access was prohibited at the time. The text was circulated in samizdat’ and has a fragmentary character; it was again printed in V. V. Nekhotin, ed. and intro. Dve Liubvi, dve sud’ by: Vospominaniia o Bloke i Belom (Moscow: XXI vek - Soglasie, 2 0 0 0 ). Nekhotin provides a fuller publication history, but his text is also based on a typescript, not the archival manuscript. " See among other treatments of the theme, Bram Dijkstra, Idols o f Perversity and Tamar Garb, Bodies o f Modernity, especially chapter four, “Powder and Paint: Framing the Feminine in Georges Seurat’s Young Woman Powdering Herself,” 115-143. Liubov’ B \ok,I b y l’ , i nebylitsy, 62. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 317 Although she invokes Giorgione and Titian, her almost embarrassing and rather squalid description of her pose calls to mind rather Cezanne’s perfectly titled The Eternal Feminine, painted in 1877, an exposure of a voyeurism in nineteenth- century art that Garb calls an “erotics of vision; ,13 r Figure 7.1 Paul Cezanne, The Eternal Feminine, 1877 Cezanne’s painting fixes the ideal feminine as a visual fiction through the physicality of its paint and the incongruence of the female figure and the very earthly hullabaloo that surrounds her. In a similar way, Mendeleeva-Blok invokes the aura of the prekrasnaia dama, the sublime beauty of Renaissance Venuses, the golden hair, whiteness, purity, and triumphant transcendence by which Blok For a discussion of the painting, see Garb, Bodies of Modernity, chapter six, “Paul Cezanne’s The Eternal Feminine and the Erotics of Vision,” 178-196. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 318 apotheosized her, but her scene is fixed in physical reality, in her own human flesh, white though it be, paraded for voyeuristic consumption in a shabby provincial hotel room, first by a retrograde lover and then by the reading public. While Mendeleeva-Blok had not the literary skill of her husband, her profession - an actress - and her life among the Symbolists used her to the manipulation of masks, performance, and self-presentation. She seems to be playing both the Eternal Feminine and Manet’s Olympia, parading and parodying herself. In either case, she uses her pen and her body, to retum to a metaphor that has been recurring, to re-animate the Galatea that Blok’s verses petrified, even if as a sympathetic libertine more than a sublime goddess. Certainly when this Sophia speaks, what she has to say is deeply interesting not only for the insights she can offer into Blok, whom she knew perhaps better than anyone, but also for the fascinating refraction of the thematics of the idea of the divine feminine Sophia, who she both was and could never be. Sofiia Petrovna Khitrovo, the longest and most constant love of Soloviev’s life, was rather more decorous, but not potentially less interesting. She was the niece of Aleksei Tolstoi’s wife, also Sofiia, and for whom she was named, and grew up in the house of the famous author. An intelligent and well-educated woman from a prominent family, she, too, took up her pen often. She conducted a correspondence with Soloviev, and also is the author of a volume of memoirs, relating a great deal about the domestic life of Aleksei Tolstoy, still unpublished.''^ The only publication o f her writings is a fragment in an appendix, S. M. Lukianov, “O zapiskakh S. P. Khitrovo, rozhdennoi Bakhmetevoi,” in A. F. Losev, Vladimir Solov’ ev i ego vremia (Moscow: R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 319 The correspondence between Sophia-Khitrovo and Soloviev’s conception of the divine feminine principle was perhaps less direct than that of Mendeleeva-Blok to Blok’s. Besides being the object of his poetry and his love, she was also involved with Soloviev in literary matters - she actually advised him not to publish his poem, “Tri Svidanii,” perhaps his most famous piece of verse. There is no study that I know of that offers a significant analysis of the interaction of Sophia Khitrovo and Soloviev as a sophian dialogue, much less her reactions to being the object of his love and his mystical speculations. The third type of women in the typology of women’s relationships to the sophian is women who as creators themselves generated sophian material. In recent years, literary scholars have revived interest in many Russian women writers of the early twentieth century, many of whom were just as engaged as their male colleagues with Sophia and questions of the representation of femininity and its meaning. Among potential figures for inclusion are Zinaida Gippius, whose self- fashioning and gender games are (in?)famous, and whose manipulation of the sophian in her portrait by Bakst was discussed above in chapter four; Lidiia Zinovieva-Annibal, who could be interestingly both a creator of sophian material and a created Sophia of her husband, Viacheslav Ivanov. Ivanov’s response to Zinovieva-Armibal as a sophian figure intensified after her death in 1907; it was in this period that he came under the influence of Mintslova. Thought Ivanov’s Molodaia Gvardiia, 2000), 596-609. Unfortunately, Lukianov deals primarily with the portion that discusses her childhood and the Tolstois, not Soloviev. The fate of her manuscripts, in Lukianov’s possession in 1918,1 don’t know. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 320 relationship to Dante has been explored, his sophiazation of his dead beloved may also have echoes in Novalis’ work. Another fascinating figure is the poet, artist, politician, and later social activist, Orthodox nun, and French resistance fighter, who had as many names as lives: lulia Pilenko/Kuzmin- Karavaeva/Skobtsova/ Mat’ Maria, who was married to both a Cossack and a Jesuit (at different times). One who particularly stands out as a good candidate for an exploration of sophian themes in her work wrote under the pseudonym of Allegro. In life. Allegro was Poliksena Sergeevna Solovieva, a scion of the prominent intellectual family and one of a dozen siblings of the rather more well-known Vladimir Soloviev. Born in 1867, 14 years after her famous brother, she became a respected poet and prosaist, writing in the Symbolist mode, was an exhibited artist, having studied at the Moscow Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, and was the founder and editor of an innovative and progressive children’s journal Tropinka. She made the first complete translation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland into Russian, and her first collection of poetry Inei, which she illustrated herself. The bibliography on Solovieva is not substantial. See Z. Gippius, “Poliksena Solov’eva,” Vozrozhdenie [Paris] 89 (May, 1959): 118-125; “Poliksena Solovyova,” in Women Writers in Russian Modernism: An Anthology, trans. and ed. Temba Pacbmuss (Urbana and Chicago: University o f Illinois Press, 1978), 190; Poliksena Sergeevna Solov’eva, “Poliksena Sergeevna Solov’eva (Allegro),” in Pervye literaturnye shagi: Avtobiografii sovremennykh russkikhpisatelei, ed. F. F. Fidler (Moscow: I. D. Sytina, 1911), 91-94; Diana Burgin, “Solov’eva, Poliksena Sergeevna,” in Dictionary o f Russian Women Writers, ed. Marina Ledovsky, Charlotte Rosenthal, and Mary Zirin (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994), 618-621; Nancy Lynn Cooper, “Poliksena Solov’eva,” in Russian Women Writers, vol. 1, ed. Christine D. Tomei (New York: Garland, 1999), 583-604, including some translations; and Nancy Cooper, “Secret Truths and Unheard-of Women: Poliksena Solov’va’s Fiction as Commentary on Vladimir Solov’ev’s Theory of Love,” Russian Review 56 (April 1997): 178-91. These somces list some additional sources. For an example of a contemporary review of her work, see Aleksandr Blok, “P. Solov’eva (Allegro). Inei” (review) in Blok, SS, vol. 5, 564-567. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 321 appeared in 1905, using, when any gender was indicated, a male lyric voice, masking and voicing a lesbian orientation.*^ Her poetry has received very mixed reviews both from her contemporaries and modern scholarship. Grand Duke Konstantin Romanov, who wrote under the pen name of K.R., admired her work and the Imperial Academy of Sciences, of which Konstantin was president, gave Inei its first Pushkin Gold Medal in 1908, but Diana Burgin, whose work often centers on recovering the accomplishments of forgotten women writers, writes that her work does not “reveal more than run-of- the-mill competence.”* ^ Nancy Cooper explains these variations as a matter of taste in poetry and scholarship; Solovieva’s work appealed “to a segment of the reading public that appreciated ‘pure poetry’ with religious and mystical themes but rejected the bold experimentation and dissonant notes within modernism.”* * In her poetry, often very serene to point of melancholy. Allegro dealt with metaphysical and philosophical themes, dealing with issues of gender and creativity, the real and the ideal, love, death, and salvation. In her prose, too. Allegro engaged with similar issues. For example, in the story “Nebyvalnaia,” which appeared in a collection of short stories under the title ‘‘Tainaia Pravda ” i P. Solov’eva (Allegro), Inei: risunki i stikhi (St. Petersburg: R. Golike and A. V il’borg, 1905). Burgin, “Solovyova”, 620. 18 Cooper, “Poliksena Solov’eva,” 586. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 322 drugie rasskazy, published in 1912, she offered a literary critique of her brother’s Smysl Liubvi}'^ The hero of “Nebyvalnaia,” Granitsyn, is finally able to compose an article titled “About Love” in which true love is neither asceticism, nor fecundity, nor lasciviousness, but the path to a spiritual utopia. He is able to write only under the aegis of a newly-made acquaintance, an appropriately named Sofiia Aleksandrovna, to whom he becomes deeply attracted. In echoes of Gogol’ and Dostoevsky, when he finally steals a lustful kiss from her, she flees, and then she and her apartment simply disappear. As soon as the thinker, Granitsyn, turns from his path of cerebral rumination on love’s salvific powers to pursue a physical, carnal goal, Sofiia (who is, incidentally, married) ceases to physically exist. The conflict between creative, theoretical ideas about love and the physical and emotional aspects, sympathetically and ambiguously handled, and the mingling of the real and illusory, both in the ‘objective’ world and the ‘subjective’ relationship, makes “Nebyvalnaia” a very interesting sophian text. The disappearance of Sofiia Aleksandrovna also echoes the real disappearance of Anna Mintslova, more so since Solovieva frequented the Ivanov’s “Bashnia,” but the blending of Symbolist life and fiction is complete; Solovieva wrote the story as early as 1903, but didn’t publish it until 1912, allowing Anna Mintslova to enact it in her life without knowing it had been written. 19 Cooper, “Secret Truths.” R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 323 It is a matter for debate whether Allegro’s story is an attack on the transcendent and transfigurative power of sophian love, an assertion that the total spiritualization of love, claimed as possible by her brother, is an impossible phantasm; or, if the fault is simply that of the particularity of Granitsyn’s “weakness of the flesh;” or, if Solovieva, perceiving her brother’s recognition of the impossibility of eschatology within history, is sympathetically reiterating the philosopher’s recognition of the limits of the immanent divinity to which he came late in his life. In other stories in this collection, “Plemiannitsa” and “Tainaia pravda,” men who respond to women by failing to separate real women from the idealized, sophian feminine engender pain and imhappiness, in what can be read as attack on the situation described above that leads to sophian despair. The demands of realizing total, theoretical sophian love in this world seem impossible, but Solovieva retains a sophian optimism, in part through the imagery of the Virgin Mary “as a figure sanctifying women’s physical and spiritual being, vindicating women as mothers and as beings whose strong capacity for love encompasses the sexual side of their nature.”^ ® Examples are stories such as “Mindalnoe derevo: legenda,” in which the main character is the Virgin Mary, who nurses a blighted almond tree to health to gain a father’s recognition of his daughter’s marriage and child,^* or “Petrovna,” in which a deceased servant woman’s illegitimate grandson appears, and the characters recognize for the first 20 21 Cooper, “Secret Truths,” 189. The comaprison between Mary nurturing the barren almond tree by natural means begs comparison with Christ’s blighting the fig tree by thaumaturgic means (see Matthew 21, Mark 11). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 324 time that the title character’s profound and saintly lovingness grew from her maternity. The themes of maternity and fecundity are tied to the sophian feminine, not unlike Kuznetsov and decidedly different than most other Silver Age sophians, such as her elder brother, Blok, Ivanov, Merezhkovskii and Gippius, to all of whom she was close. Solovieva’s stories are also in an interesting way the fictional, artistic incarnation of her brother’s theories, rather than an attempted real one, and though she was clearly sympathetic to them personally and artistically, she responds to them in complex ways. Cooper writes, “Solov’eva’s work combines veneration of the Eternal feminine with elements of a feminist critique of this veneration, and utopian dreams of human perfectibility with traditional modes of Christian belief. Her work thus brings together some of the central concerns of the age in an idiosyncratic configuration.”^ ^ Conclusion Cooper’s comments point not only to the relevance of Solovieva’s work, but also to the importance of the idea of Sophia as a “central concern” in the period. It is precisely the elucidation of this central concern that has been the object of this study. The divine feminine is an integral part of Silver Age cultural activities; viewing the era through the prism of Sophia and her less direct iterations offers insights into such other important themes such as the relationships between real and ideal, the writer and the text, religion, and spirituality and creativity. Other abiding 22 Cooper, “Secret Truths,” 191. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 325 concerns of the Symbolist movement and modernism more generally are closely conneeted to Sophia, sueh as theurgie creativity, zhiznetvorchestvo, the meaning of good and evil, the impact of urbanization and structural problems of modern society, the definition and importance of art, and the changing roles of women and men in Russian society. It is to be hoped that this study has made apparent that the interest of this era in the idea of Sophia is not an aecident. “Certainly the fact that all of these writers and thinkers chose the Divine Feminine as the symbol and content of their systems is worthwhile examining in itself as evidence of what must be considered one of the most remarkable, if not unique, traditions in modem Russian eulture.”^ ^ The tradition of Sophia, as we saw in the first chapters, has an ancient and complex history, including an historical presence in Russia from the beginnings of its reeorded history in the 1 0 * * * eentury. At the same time, much of the information about this latent idea in Slavic Orthodox culture was abandoned or negleeted, and was reintroduced from Western Europe, where sophian ideas had wound their own peripatetic route through the labyrinth of Westem European eivilizations. As the 1 9 * * ’ century drew to a close, a series of circumstanees colluded to create an interest in Sophia related to a destabilization of ideas about the nature and meaning of the feminine. The rapidly industrializing eeonomy ereated new urban and semi-urban classes, and large groups of women visibly outside of their traditional places in the peasant family economy. Liberal and radical elements’ 23 Cioran, Knighthood o f the Divine Sophia, 7. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 326 agitation for rights and opportunities for women began showing results, and professional and elite women began to have an inereasingly publie role in soeiety in professional and creative worlds. At the same time, anxiety over declining sexual morality, epidemic venereal disease, and political instabilities contributed to a growing feeling of imcertainty. The pervasive fin-de-sieele apocalypticism among the intelligentsia was not a result solely of sueh social, political, and sexual factors, but they did indeed play a part. Sophia is recognized as relevant to Symbolist literature, but the importance and centrality of Sophia for understanding Symbolist poetics and their influence beyond the bounds of literature has been perhaps underestimated. For almost all of the most important figures in the Russian Symbolist movement, the Religious Renaissance, and the artistic Avant-Garde, Sophia, the divine feminine, played a role, at least as a foil or apt metaphor, but for many of them, she was an obsession who finally became an image of fruitless despair or an icon of sustaining hope. It is tempting to dismiss much of the interest in Sophia as a collective grasping for an easy or comforting solution to these problems, an attempt to return to a femininity that is perceived as stable and unthreatening, often with recourse to claims of a fictional naturalness, passivity , and objectified beauty that invoke the ideology of domesticity and benign feminine respectability. While it is true that there were those who blended this kind of reaction with the themes of Sophia, such as the bombastic misogyny of critics like Abramovich, the phenomenon of Sophia is by no means reducible to sueh a formulation. The sophian is patently not a R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 327 retreat into a comfortable conservatism, but much more rather an attempt to rethink the nature of the feminine, and at the same time social structures, cultural practices, even the very nature of being. The idea of a sophian eternal femininity that is not subject to the vicissitudes of political, social, and cultural change may have offered some the promise of knowledge and succor that transcends anxieties about modernity, masculinity, and eschatology, but the figures who were most strongly attracted to Sophia were not men and women who sought solace in unintellectual formulae, thought in worn-out cliches, or eschewed social or cultural progress. Through their art, poetry, philosophy, or work in any other of the wide variety of cultural fields, men and women like Soloviev, Gippius, Blok, Ivanov, Muratov, Solovieva, Bulgakov, and others, though drawing on concepts of profound historical age, were oriented ineluctably forward, trying to transform their society and the world into a better place through new ideas, not trammeling it in the sexual or social norms of the previous eentury. To dismiss their aspirations as historical or sexual retrospectivism, as doctrinaire Marxism or feminism might, is to fail to take account of an intricate and exciting process that could be personally tragic or transformative, sometimes both, but in any case was at the very core of the spirit of the age, and is a key to understanding some of the most important and most perplexing of their ideas about art and life, belief and creativity, gender and authority. The ubiquity of Sophia and the profundity of the issues her presence R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 328 raised merits more attention than has been accorded to her, a situation that this dissertation has in some measure attempted to ameliorate. Indeed, in the last decade there has been a decided revival of interest both in Russia and the scholarly community abroad in the lives and works of the pre revolutionary creative intelligentsia who were individually exiled, punished, or silenced by the Soviet government, whose work was often unpublished, and whose legacy was suppressed. Many of these are the same figures whose interest in the sophian divine feminine was most intense. In the context of this revival of interest, a synthesizing study of Sophia across the period and its most important figures is especially appropriate, and a model for understanding how and why Sophia meant what she did is clearly needed. Whether Soloviev, Blok, Kuznetsov, Bulgakov, Roerich, or any others who came under Sophia’s ‘veil’ ended their obeisance to Sophia in a despair either of hopeless loyalty or a complete break, or if Sophia became the manifest guiding principle of their lives and works, the common interest in Sophia points to what various other critics have alluded to, but none have thoroughly explored: that Sophia is a central concern, even the “seminal pattern” of Silver Age culture, and thus fundamental to understanding it. This project is complex, and has only been begun. Among the difficulties are the reticence of many in naming Sophia, so that finding her traces and echoes requires more careful searching, and the uniqueness of Sophia’s identity, that forces the reconsideration too, of dominant models of authority and gender borrowed from Anglo-European scholarship. There is R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 329 certainly more work to be done, especially in the exploration and understanding of the significance and impact of the sophian on women’s creative work and certainly women’s creative work on the sophian. Nonetheless, an attempt has been made here to develop a typology of responses to Sophia, both for men and women, but not to fix a definition of Sophia. Even at the end of this study, the polyvalent and polysemantic nature of Sophia makes a precise definition elusive; this is not to be wondered at; true knowledge of the fullness of Sophia, the Wisdom of God, is beyond the grasp of humanity, but still it is something worth seeking. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 330 Bibliography Abramovich, N. la. Zhenshchina i mir muzhskoi kul ’ tury. Mirovoe tvorchestvo i polovaia liubov’. Moscow: Svobodnyi put’, 1913. Abrams, M. H. 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Borgmeyer, David Matthew
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Core Title
Sophia, the wisdom of God conceptions of the divine feminine in Russian culture, 1880--1917
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Doctor of Philosophy
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Slavic Languages and Literatures
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University of Southern California
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Art History,Literature, Slavic and East European,OAI-PMH Harvest,women's studies
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505100
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