[ Enciclopedia of Aesthetics, ed. M.Kelly. Vol.4. N.Y.- Oxford, 1998. Pp. 195-202 ]
RUSSIAN RELIGIOUS AESTHETICS (R.r.a) is the oldest and most peculiar trend in Russian aesthetics which continues to exist within the Orthodox culture from the 11th to the 20th c. The history of R.r.a. can be divided into four periods: 1. medieval (or Old Russian -- c.1000-1650); 2. transitional (c.1650-1700); 3. conservative or preservative (c.1700-1900) and 4. neo-Orthodox (c.1900-1950).
The first period: Old Russian aesthetics (O.R.a).
This period is marked by an implicit type of aesthetic consciousness which
finds its most adequate expressive forms in art, liturgy, and religious (in
particular, monastic) life, and not in theories and concepts which are set
in writing. However, even on the conceptual level a variety of texts of diverse
genres (chronicles, saints' lives, religious polemics, rulings of church councils)
reveal a rather complete picture of aesthetic ideas of medieval Russians.
O.R.a. has two main sources: 1. the artistic culture and mythological
consciousness of pre-Christian Eastern Slavs and 2. Byzantine aesthetics (see
separate essay) whose regular influence is felt in Rus since the end of the
10th c. The Eastern Slavic (inner, archetypal) element of Old Russian aesthetic
consciousness is characterized by the tendencies towards perceiving spiritual
phenomena as concrete, material, and palpable; viewing nature as sacred; visualizing
the world beyond and perceiving it as "documented" and determinate;
experiencing a feeling of mutual magical connection of all things. The Orthodox
Byzantine culture and aesthetics which come to Rus with the Christianization
of the Slavs are superimposed upon this substrate -- already rich, wholesome
and self-sufficient in its own way -- and both re-shape it and receive strong
influences from it. The written sources of c.1000-1350 well reflect the process
of formation of Christianized aesthetic ideas. The Slovo o polku Igoreve,
the "Story of the By-gone Years" (Povest' vremennykh let),
as well as the writings of Illarion, Kirill Turovsky, hegumen Daniil and other
learned writers reflect the views of medieval Russians on beauty (natural,
spiritual, artistic), art, the sublime, the heroic, which combine the elements
of both pagan and Christian Weltanschauung. Books, as the main carriers
of spiritual values, inspire particular reverence in medieval Rus. Together
with them, all that belongs to the sphere of spirituality is apprehended primarily
aesthetically -- as leading man towards God and bringing spiritual pleasure
and joy -- and is designated as beautiful. The characteristic features of
O.R.a. are: particular attention to the sensibly apprehended realizations
of spiritual beauty; endowing the beautiful with palpable thing-ness; thinking
of beauty as an expression of the true and the essential; specific sensibility
to the beauty of artistic activity; increased emotionality and positive mindset;
thinking of light (primarily visible light) as an important modification of
the beautiful. In arts (architecture, painting, applied arts), O.R.a. values
artistic wrought-ness, grandeur, colourfulness, luminosity, brightness, the
presence of precious materials. The church building is apprehended, first
of all, as an immense luxurious work of jeweler's art. The sacred apprehension
of nature by Eastern Slavs is replaced by the understanding of nature as a
beautiful work of the supreme Artist. They now see in it a beautiful order
(stroj) which delights the human soul. The main characteristics of
natural beauty are magnitude, height, roundness, "artistic wrought-ness,"
a particular ability to stand out in space. Towards the middle of the 16th
c., moral beauty gains a prominent position in the aesthetic consciousness
of Russians.
The period c.1400-1600 is the time of growth and consolidation of
a united and mighty Russian state -- the Muscovite Rus -- which is
headed by the Great Prince whose powers rival those of the Byzantine emperor.
Russian political thought advances the idea of the Great Russia as the direct
successor of the Byzantine empire in spiritual and political matters. The
16th-c. Russia sees the rise of the popular theory of "Moscow as the
third Rome." Orthodoxy forms the spiritual and ideological foundation
of the new "empire." Hence religious mentality during this period
is actively developed, and church art, literature, and aesthetics thrive.
The aesthetic consciousness of this period includes a number of principles
which are most adequately realized in art but only partly acknowledged by
the medieval Russians themselves. In R.r.a., they do not become the subject
of literary discussion until much later -- in the 19-20th c. These are such
principles as the sobornost' of aesthetic consciousness, the sophiynost'
of art and artistic activity in general, the systematic character (or certain
synthetism) of church art, its increased artistic symbolism, its high spirituality,
canonicity.
Sobornost' signifies the essentially extrapersonal (supra-personal)
and a-temporal nature of aesthetic consciousness. This is the consciousness
of a community (sobor) of people, akin in spirit, who have reached,
in the process of communal liturgical life, a spiritual unity both with each
other and with the higher spiritual levels, ideally with God, i.e., who receive
gracious help from above. For this reason medieval Russian art and other products
of the spirit are essentially anonymous. The medieval Russian learned writer,
icon painter, or architect does not consider himself personally as the author
or creator of his own work, but only as a voluntary executor of the supreme
will which acts through him, a middle man in artistic activity, or an instrument
which is guided by the communal (sobornoe) consciousness of the Orthodox
Church. The communal (sobornoe) consciousness not only inspires creative
activity in medieval artists, but also preserves carefully the forms, schemes
and methods which have been worked out in the process of this activity, and
which are considered to be the most capacious and adequate carriers and expressions
of the Orthodox spirit.
It is for this reason that canonicity becomes the main principle
of medieval creative activity. The artistic canon reflects and embodies the
spiritual and aesthetic ideals of the epoch and establishes the system of
representational and expressive methods which is most adequate to those ideals.
In particular, the iconographic canon of Old Russian art which goes back to
its Byzantine prototype determines the ideal visual structures which contain
the ultimate graphic expression, for the Orthodox Middle Ages, of the essence
of the portrayed phenomenon (a personage, or an event form the Sacred history).
The faith in the divine origin of artistic activity leads to the
understanding of a work of art (icon, church building, literary text) as a
carrier of a certain supreme union of wisdom, beauty, and art. It is not until
the 20th c. that this trait of Old Russian art receives the name sophiynost'
(Pavel A. Florensky, Sergij N. Bulgakov) and a rather detailed theoretical
elaboration in the Orthodox culture. Hence follows the high spirituality of
this art, for nothing transient, material or base can penetrate into the sphere
of sophiynost'. The artistic aim at the expression of supreme spiritual
values of culture leads to the raising of the level of abstraction of the
language of art, as well as to the deepening of the degree of conventionality
of artistic expressive means, i.e., to artistic symbolism.
The system of these principles achieves its highest perfection and
expressive completeness in the art of Andrej Rublev (around 1400), the most
prominent painter of medieval Rus. Epiphanij Premudry, the most gifted hagiographer
of that epoch, together with his literary colleagues, devise and put into
practice the principles of a highly aestheticized literary style, which they
call "word-weaving" (pleteniye sloves) and which consists
in infinite multiplication of metaphors and exquisite and complicated epithets
around one thought.
The period c.1500-1600 is marked by a more pronounced literary expression
of aesthetic views in medieval Russia. The leader of the ascetically oriented
part of monks Nil Sorsky works out a Russian variant of "asceticist aesthetics"
(see: Byzantine Aesthetics), and Iosif Volotsky, his opponent in respect
to the organization of monastic life, is occupied with the re-thinking of
liturgical aesthetics. It is he who, for the first time in Rus, expounds,
in a rather detailed way, the Orthodox theory of the icon (see: Icon)
and the iconographical program for icon painters.
In the 16th c., a certain contribution towards the consolidation
of medieval aesthetic views is made by such thinkers as Maxim Grek, Vassian
Patrikeyev, Zinovij Otensky, monk Artemij, prince Andrej Kurbsky, and the
Church Councils of 1551 (the so-called Stoglav) and 1554. During this
period, the sphere of the aesthetic, and primarily literature and church art,
is intertwined tightly with the political, ecclesiastical and ideological
struggle between various Church and state factions. Canonicity and traditionalism
are acknowledged as the most important principles of art, but at the same
time artistic practice gradually departs from them: the fact which foreshadows
the beginning of the crisis of the medieval type of artistic thinking which
comes to its completion towards 1700's. A sharp polemic is initiated concerning
complex religious allegorical representations which appear in church icon
painting, as a result of which the symbolic theology of Pseudo-Dionysius the
Areopagite (see: Byz. aesthetics), and in particular his concept of
"unlike likenesses," is being interpreted, for the first time in
the Orthodox aesthetics, as the theoretical foundation of religious painting.
The characteristic feature of the second period of R.r.a.
-- transitional from the Middle Ages to modern times -- is the spirit of sharp
polemic between traditionalists and innovators regarding the main aesthetic
problems and the gradual departure from the medieval style in art under the
influence of the 16-17th-c. Western European art. The 17th c. sees the appearance
of manuals of grammar, rhetoric and arithmetic in Russian language, the creation
of special treatises on music and painting, regulative handbooks (chinovnik
from the Russian chin -- "order") on ceremonial aesthetics
("The Chinovnik of Arch-priestly Service," "The Order
(chin) of the Blessing of Water," "The Order of Anointing
for Kingship," "The Wedding Order," "The Order (uryadnik)
of Falconry," etc.), where aesthetic problematic holds a prominent place.
The characteristic tendency of the specific treatises on art which are written
c. 1650-1700 -- as a rule, promoting new methods and styles in religious art
which differ from the medieval -- is an attempt to prove that their methods
do not contradict the medieval (and even the Patristic) tradition, but, on
the contrary, realize it more profoundly than the earlier ones.
Thus, Simeon Polotsky, the most prominent court poet, playwright
and theoretician of art c.1650-1700, undertakes to replace the traditional
prose Slavonic translation of the Book of Psalms with a free poetic interpretation.
He justifies his efforts not so much by the fact that the Hebrew original
was also in verse, but mainly by an observation that poetic text allows for
a more laconic expression of thoughts, at the same time emphasizing and interpreting
their inner meaning. According to him, poetic form (metre and rhyme) brings
spiritual delight to the reader and thus facilitates the process of penetrating
the spiritual depths of the text.
Nikolaj P. Diletsky and Ivan T. Korenev, the authors of Musikijskaya
grammatika, the first treatise on music published in 1679 in Moscow, defend
the advantages of the new polyphonic ecclesiastical chant against the old
unison and believe that, far from denying the medieval tradition, the new
chant continues it on a higher level. A similar tendency manifests itself
in treatises on painting. The treatise of Iosif Vladimirov, a "new"
icon painter (ikono-pisets) and zhivo-pisets (Russian for "painter,"
literally the "painter of life," this term not being in use before
the second half of the 17th c.), is especially noteworthy for its fullness
and depth. Consistently defending the advantages of the new "life-like"
(zhivo-podobnaya, i.e., tending first of all towards an illusionist
and naturalistic representation of man) painting against the icons of the
older style, he supports his claim by the arguments of Byzantine iconodules
in defense of mimetic images (which only existed in Byzantium at an early
stage) -- in particular, the legend of the "made without hands"
(acheiropoietos) image of Christ (i.e., the image-imprint of the ideal
face of Christ on a piece of cloth which was imprinted by Christ himself).
In the 17th century, such "made without hands" images were painted
with great technical skill by Simon Ushakov, a friend of Vladimirov. The 17-18th-c.
traditionalists (first of all the so-called staroobryadtsy -- the "Old
Believers" -- but not only them) fight frantically against all those
westernizing (and, in their understanding, heretical) innovations in church
art and its theory, but they find little support from their mainstream contemporaries.
The artistic culture of Russia relentlessly departs from the medieval Weltanschauung
and artistic language in all genres of art. Within R.r.a. itself, new tendencies
take shape: towards the secularization of art, aesthetics, and culture, and
departure from medieval mentality. They become dominant in Russia in the 18-19th
c.
In the 18th c. cultural and political reforms of Peter I actively
contribute to the process of secularization of culture. From Byzantium Peter
inherits the tendency towards the consolidation of monarchical empire, in
which even the Church is fully subject to the monarch. Thus it is Peter who
abolishes the highest ecclesiastical rank of the "Patriarch of All Russia."
In the matters of culture he abandons the course of national and religious
isolation of Russia from the West and starts to develop actively a variety
of Western trends in culture and art (often alien to Russian mentality) on
the Russian soil. Beginning with Feofan Prokopovitch (1681-1736) -- a priest
of the new orientation and one of the devoted follows of Peter I, who writes
"Poetic" and "Rhetoric" according to the spirit of similar
ancient and Western European treatises -- Russian thinkers, writers, and art
critics of the 18th-19th c. actively re-work and introduce the ideas of ancient
(Graeco-Roman) and modern European aesthetics into Russian culture. The views
and teachings of Enlightenment, Classicism, Romanticism, Sentimentalism, and
classical German aesthetics receive wide circulation during these centuries,
especially as part of university courses on aesthetics.
The 19th c. sees a rapid formation of democratic views and sentiments
among the Russian intelligentsia in the areas widely ranging from science
to literature and art which happens under the influence of Western ideas.
These views also hold sway in the areas of artistic creation and aesthetic
thought. A new democratic trend in aesthetics is formed, which is represented
by such prominent figures as Alexander I. Herzen, Nikolaj A. Dobrolyubov,
Vissarion G. Belinsky, Nikolaj G. Chernyshevsky, and Vladimir V. Stasov. In
this situation R.r.a. is pushed to the far background of culture and survives
only in part among the Old Believers, in the monasteries, and in the minds
of certain thinkers and writers.
Among the latter is one of the most prominent Russian writers Nicolaj
V. Gogol (1809-1852) who realizes, from his own experience as a
writer, the absolute futility of the tendency -- very popular at that time
-- of "aesthetic humanism," or an attempt to introduce morals into
society by means of secularized art. He reserves the power to overcome the
tragic dissonance between the aesthetic and moral principles only for the
sphere of religion, and points out the importance of the problem of relationship
between the Church and culture, as well as of a Christian metamorphosis of
secular culture. He is the first among Russian thinkers to introduce conscientiously
the idea and notion of "Orthodox culture." Now he sees the mission
of the artist only in awakening the souls for the encounter with God, in their
moral purification, and in the theourgical experience of realization of divine
justice (pravda) on earth.
The movement of "slavophiles" (slavyanofily), and
in particular the activities of Alexej S. Khomyakov (1804-1860) and
Ivan V. Kireevsky (1806-1856), becomes another noteworthy phenomenon
in R.r.a. Their aesthetics is based on a peculiar mixture of ideas from German
Romanticism and Orthodox aesthetics. It is Khomyakov who, for the first time
in the Orthodox culture, finally gives a definition of sobornost':
according to him, it is a mystical "unity of God and man," or a
certain ideal spirit of the people enlightened by the Christian faith. He
understands art as an expression of this spirit on the basis of divine love,
or as an artistic "self-consciousness of life" through the mediation
of the artist.
Alexander M. Bukharev (monastic name archimandrite Feodor;
1824-1871) -- a prominent figure in the 19th-c. religious culture -- attempts
to overcome the narrow ecclesiastical rigorism and present all contemporary
culture and art (including non-ecclesiastical) as imbued with the "light
of Christ" and cherished by the "secret warmth" of the Church.
By that, he tries to overthrow the unnatural (in his opinion) idea of secularism
in culture. According to him, any creative activity is an act of divine grace,
even if it has no clear external indications of its religious or ecclesiastical
character. Bukharev's conception thus removes the tragic character of the
situation which overwhelms Gogol in the late period of his life and forces
him to destroy the second volume of the "Dead Souls" as belonging,
in his opinion, rather to secular than to the Orthodox culture.
After Gogol the relationship and interaction between the aesthetic
element and Christian ethics in culture becomes one of the most important
problems in R.r.a. This problem becomes particularly acute for the great 19th-c.
Russian writers. Just as Gogol, Konstantin N. Leontyev (1831-1891)
-- a prophet of pure aestheticism -- towards the end of his life resolves
this problem in favour of Christian ethics. Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky centers
his literary activity around his attempts to resolve the tragic conflict between
the ethical and the aesthetic. As a result, the Russian writer choses the
ideal of early Christian ethics -- the highest Beauty which will "save
the world," or Jesus Christ himself in his eschatological aspect -- over
against the modernized (or diabolic, in Dostoyevsky's interpretation) Roman
Catholic "rationalistic" ethics of the Great Inquisitor. The great
Russian writer Lev N. Tolstoy (1828-1910) is also among those trying
to find a clue to the complex dialectic of the ethical and the aesthetic.
Towards the end of his literary activity he turns to the Christianity of the
early Church Fathers and severs his ties with secular culture, which he served
for decades in his writings, with the official Church, and with aesthetics
as such. He experiences a tragic inner discord between his personal mystical
experience and Western European rationalism which has been acquired from the
outside. As a result, both his manifesto "What is Art" and his other
works are subject to a strict dictate of panmoralism. Beauty has nothing in
common with the good. It follows that art which is based on aesthetic principles
is an empty amusement which leads humanity away from goodness: "aesthetic
pleasure is a pleasure of a lower rank." In the late period of his life,
Tolstoy rejects almost all famous names in art (Eurypides, Dante, Shakespeare,
Rafael, Michelangelo, Beethoven) and accepts only such art which contains
"truth" in its simplified religious form which is accessible to
people.
The new stage in R.r.a. begins with the philosopher Vladimir
S. Solovyov (1853-1900) and reaches its apogee in the writings of his
followers: philosopher Nikolaj A. Berdyaev (1874-1948), and especially
the theoreticians of neo-Orthodoxy Fr. Pavel A. Florensky (1882-1937)
and Fr. Sergij N. Bulgakov (1871-1944). This period coincides with
tempestous social and political commotions in Russia and world culture in
general, the latter undergoing essential changes under the influence of positivist
and materialist world outlook and the rise of scientific and technological
progress. Russia is not left behind in this process. Russian monarchy is on
the verge of a crisis, and many democratic and progressive-minded figures
in the early 20th-c. culture actively contribute to its downfall. The representatives
of avant-garde in contemporary art and aesthetics -- especially the futurists
and constructivists -- support all revolutionary movements in Russia, including
the Communist revolution. However, the representatives of R.r.a. maintain
their traditional conservative attitude in politics, althought the general
atmosphere of a mighty shift in culture has some influence even on their views.
The "Russian religious renaissance" of the beginning of the 20th
c. is largely an attempt of the most educated and creatively minded Orthodox
thinkers to bring the Orthodoxy into some degree of correspondence with the
contemporary Zeitgeist.
The aesthetics of Solovyov -- the founder of "neo-Orthodoxy"
-- whose thought is based on Neoplatonism, German classical philosophy (mainly
Schelling), and many ideas of the 19th-c. Russian aesthetics, is much broader
than religious, let alone Orthodox, aesthetics as such. However, his philosophical
concept of universal unity (vseyedinstvo), his understanding of art
as mystical "free theourgy" which transforms the world on the way
to its spiritual perfection, his concept of the symbol, and the mystical intuition
of Sophia as a cosmic and artistic creative principle (his sophiology) have
a strong influence on aesthetic theories in the beginning of the 20th c.,
in particular on the theorists of Russian Symbolism and neo-Orthodox aesthetics.
The aesthetic views of Berdyaev which follow from his personalist
philosophy are of a mystical and romantic orientation. One of the main themes
in his philosophy is the concept of creative activity which brings to their
logical completion the ideas of theourgy (in art, culture, life, and being
as a whole) which are present in Russian aesthetics since the time of Gogol
and are partly developed by Solovyov and Vyatcheslav I. Ivanov. Berdyaev sees
the meaning of human life in creative activity, for it is only in it that
man can truly assimilate himself to God the Creator and the Supreme Artist,
and achieve, with His help, a breakthrough from the "ugly" earthly
life to the supreme cosmic "life in beauty." To this point in history,
creative activity realizes itself most fully in art. However, art is tragic
for it has not been able to fulfill its main -- theourgical -- goal
and has stuck in earthly reality, instead of rising to the level of cosmic
being. Berdyaev distinguishes between Christian and pagan art. Pagan (Graeco-Roman)
art reaches the classical completeness of its forms in this earthly immanent
world. It knows of no other higher world and does not long for it. On the
contrary, Christian art is the art of "transcendental longing" for
another world, of "transcendental breakthrough" into that world.
This is why it is essentially incomplete, in its highest sense, for it does
not reach the other world in reality, but only points at it in its symbols.
Berdyaev distinguishes between the two main types of artistic activity:
realism and symbolism. He sees realism as the ultimate form of adaptation
of art to "this world" which in its foundation is ugly. Therefore,
realism is the "least creative form of art." True art -- especially
Christian art (in a broad sense: the art of Christian regions in general)
-- is always symbolic to a certain degree, for it creates the symbols of the
other world. It follows that art attains its highest state in symbolism as
an artistic trend of c.1850-1900. However, it is also in symbolism that it
reaches the limit of its own capacities, or its own crisis. It is symbolism
that reveals the tragic character of artistic activity in a particularly acute
manner. The symbol is a "bridge crossing over from the creative act to
the hidden, ultimate reality" and hanging over empty space with its other
end. In symbolism, artistic activity outgrows itself and goes beyond the limits
of art in its traditional understanding: it leaves the sphere of culture and
flows into being itself. It is Berdyaev who gives, finally, a clear definition
of theourgy to which the aesthetic consciousness of Orthodoxy is constantly
drawn throughout almost all of its history. "It is not culture that theourgy
creates, but new being; theourgy is above culture. Theourgy is art which creates
a different world, different being, different life, beauty as being ... Theourgy
is man's acting together with God: acting in a divine way, joint creative
activity of God and man." In addition to this, Berdyaev considers the
problem of art as theourgy mainly as a Russian problem, and it is with theourgy
that he connects the future "Slavo-Russian renaissance."
Florensky -- one of the most prominent Orthodox theologians
and a scholar of encyclopedic knowledge and universal orientation who draws
on all previous experience and achievements of human culture -- pays a particularly
close attention to aesthetics and art. For him, it is God who is the "Supreme
Beauty, through the participation in which all becomes beautiful." Hence
the aesthetic, according to his definition, is not some particular section
of being or consciousness, but a force, or energy, which penetrates all layers
of being. Beauty and (spiritual, divine) light are important ontological and
epistemological factors in his system. It is in them and through their mediation
that man "cognizes" the tri-hypostatical Truth in the mystical acts
of liturgy, contemplation of icons and, above all, monastic feats, which fills
him with ineffable spiritual joy. In his understanding, then, the main aesthetic
subjects are monks who devote their whole life to the contemplation of spiritual
light. On the other hand, asceticism is, in the full sense of these terms,
aesthetics and art. The ascetics themselves, Florensky stresses, call their
activity the "art of arts," and the goal of their activity -- "contemplative
knowledge" -- the "love of beauty" (this is how Florensky translates
philokalia, in opposition to the traditional ecclesiastical translation
"love of goodness"), as distinct from the rational "love of
wisdom" (philosophia). Moreover, this activity does not limit
itself only to contemplation, but even -- ideally -- has a goal of real transformation
of the flesh of an ascetic into more spiritual and luminous substance already
in his lifetime, i.e., a real crossing of the border between the material
and spiritual worlds. On the level of cosmogony, it is Sophia the Wisdom of
God who dwells at this border: a certain unknowable Person and the creative
principle of God, his creating energy, the spiritual foundation of the world
and man who makes them beautiful. Hence, the sphere of the aesthetic and beauty,
in its most intricate forms, is the transitional sphere between the heavenly
and earthly worlds. However, the supreme beauty, in its pure form, is revealed
only to select monks-ascetics, and therefore its real carriers in the world
are symbols in liturgy and art (in its purest form -- in the icon).
Florensky understands the symbol not only as a semiotic unit but
also as an ontological entity. Not only it signifies something else, but also
manifests it in reality, possesses its energy, and appears as a "living
mutual interpenetration of two entities." Florensky extends the ancient
Jewish understanding of the symbol (or name) as a bearer of the essence, together
with the Byzantine notion of liturgical symbol, to the general concept of
the symbol. Among such symbols he includes, first of all, the icon, which
he considers to be the highest achievement of the art of painting of all times
and nations. When he considers in detail the peculiarities of artistic language
of the icon -- including its canonicity, "reversed perspective,"
particular ways of organization of space, symbolism of colour and conventional
character of forms -- and compares all this with the language of modern European
painting ("renaissance-type," according to his terminology), he
comes to the conclusion that it is starting from the "great" masters
of Renaissance who had rejected the medieval Weltanschauung and artistic
language that the decline of representational arts begins. Florensky is convinced
that the essence of art is not the conveyance of visible forms of the material
world, or of psychological states of man, but symbolical expression and the
ascent, with the help of conventional images of art, to the everlasting spiritual
world, and ultimately to God. Florensky pays much attention to the question
of synthesis of arts in liturgy, as well as to the philosophy and aesthetics
of the ritual, the problems of the canon and the organization of space-time
continuum in art.
Bulgakov largely continues Florensky's tradition in aesthetics.
The corner-stone of his teaching is sophiology: the essentially antinomical
teaching about Sophia which appears to him as an "impossible" for
the intellect, alogical mediator between God and the world, as a "round
square," a "square root of minus one" and, at the same time,
as the original aggregation of all ideas of the creation -- a neo-Orthodox
re-thinking of the (Neo-) Platonic theory of pre-existent ideas -- and as
a creative principle of being and art. In fact, his sophiology can rightly
be called neo-Orthodox aesthetics in the full sense of the word. At the centre
of it Bulgakov, just as Florensky, places the teaching about the icon, which
he sees as an essentially antinomical phenomenon (because of its ability to
represent the non-representable God) ideally embodying the sophijnost'
of the creation due to its canonicity. Under sophijnost' Bulgakov understands
the expression of the primordial ideality of the material world in this world
itself. The main criterion and indicator of the level of sophijnost'
of a thing or a work of art is beauty, which is at the same time understood
as the "revelation of the Holy Spirit" in matter, as the "sacred,
without sin, palpability and perceptibility of the idea," i.e., as "spiritual,
sacred corporeity." Bulgakov draws a particular attention to the category
of corporeity in its ideal understanding, or "spiritual corporeity,"
for it forms the foundation of art. The artist "intuits beauty as the
realized sacred corporeity" and strives to express it in his own art.
According to his opinion, the ancient Greeks perfectly succeed in this task
in their sculpture (especially in nude figures), as well as the medieval Orthodox
artists -- in their icons. Hence, he defines the work of art as an "erotic
encounter of matter and form, their enamoured confluence, the idea which has
been felt and has become beauty: it is the shining of the ray of sophijnost'
in our world." Bulgakov makes no essential distinction between beauty
in art and nature. The latter he understands as a "great and wondrous
artist," and art he understands very broadly, as it is customary for
the Orthodox tradition in general. And it is man, in all his "spiritual
corporeity" and ideal "life in beauty," who is the main work
of art. However, this "life in beauty" for the human being is difficult
and tempting, for here is, Bulgakov recalls Dostoyevsky, the field of battle
between the devil and God. "Earthly beauty is enigmatic and ominous,
like Gioconda's smile ... Longing for beauty, torments through beauty is the
scream of all the universe." It is possible to overcome this tragic character
of beauty in the world (an idea common to the whole of neo-Orthodox aesthetics)
with the help of the theourgical function of art which would then cross the
boundaries of its proper works and in reality transform the world and man
on their way of eschatological sophijno-aesthetic transfiguration,
or the uplifting of the created world to its pre-existent Beauty, or Sophia.
One more significant theme in aesthetics -- that of the relationship
between culture and civilization -- is taken up by R.r.a. already in the 20th
century. Vladimir V. Weidle (1895-1979), a prominent religious art
critic and thinker who leaves Russia after the October revolution, perceives
a well-pronounced crisis and even "dying" in contemporary art (cf.
his principal work "The Dying of Art," 1937). The causes of the
latter he sees in the domination of rationalism and mechanistic principles,
in the rift between the humanity and nature (all these things he defines as
the traits of civilization which is taken in opposition to culture), and ultimately
in the loss of religious faith and religious Weltanschauung. True sound
art, according to his belief, is always tightly connected with religion and
is religious in its foundation (whether the artist recognizes himself as a
believer or not), "for artistic experience is in its very depth religious,
since no creative act can exclude an expression of faith, and because the
world which harbours art is ultimately transparent only to religion."
Even the basic notions lying at the foundation of the interpretation of art,
according to Weidle, are rooted in religious thought. Among these notions
he mentions, first of all, transfiguration, incarnation, sacrament, antinomical
wholeness, and miracle. The phenomena described by these notions belong as
much to art as they do to religion, although art and religion as a rule are
not identical. Art and religion are "con-natural" in their essence,
and the "logic of art is the logic of religion." However, they do
not substitute, but supplement and strengthen each other in culture. Certainly,
even in modern times not all artists of genius have been religious in a narrow
ecclesiastical sense. However, they were creating in the world which was still
penetrated with "secret religion," the world which was "truly
human, guided by conscience." Contemporary art is dying not because the
artist ceased to be a believer, but because he stopped acknowledging his creative
act as a sacrament.
C.1900-1930 R.r.a. has a strong influence on Russian culture in
general and affects the views of many artists, writers and thinkers. E.g.,
it is this aesthetics that serves, together with other spiritual trends, as
a foundation for the main theoretical treatise -- "Concerning the Spiritual
in Art" -- and the deeply mystical artistic activity of Vassily V.
Kandinsky, the founder and theorist of abstractionism. The founder of
suprematism Kazimir S. Malevich, who is otherwise removed from any
particular religious tradition, sees his "Black Square" as the new
icon of the 20th c. One of the most prominent 20th c. Russian poets Alexander
A. Blok receives the Russian revolution of the 1917 in a mystico-Christian
light. The image of Christ plays a prominent role in the art of Mark Z. Shagall,
a Russian Jew of a Hassidic religious orientation. We also find the echoes
of R.r.a. in the aesthetic system of Alexej F. Losev (1893-1988), a
prominent 20th-c. Russian aesthetician, philologist and philosopher, one of
the followers of Solovyov who receives a secret consecration as a monk already
in the Soviet era. In his book "The Dialectic of Artistic Form"
published in 1927 he outlines a system of aesthetic categories -- in a rigorous
dialectical form which is characteristic of him -- relying on Neoplatonism,
phenomenology, and Orthodox aesthetics. This system includes such successive
categories that generate (express) each other as eidos, myth, symbol, person
(art belongs to this level), the energy of the essence, and the name of the
essence. In the way Losev develops such categories as symbol, person, energy,
and name, as well as in his consciously acknowledged principle of antinomies,
a strong influence of neo-Orthodox aesthetics is felt, although as a whole
Losev's aesthetic system by far transcends the boundaries of R.r.a. as such.
The destiny of the last representatives of R.r.a., just as that
of the majority of Russian intelligentsia of the beginning of this century,
is tragic. After the establishment of the totalitarian communist rule, many
of them were deported or forced to emigrate. The ones who stayed in Russia
fell victim to repression (as Florensky who was executed in a Stalinist concentration
camp) or were forced to change their occupation (as Losev who devoted himself
mainly to the study of Antiquity after serving his term in a labour camp).
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