The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature

168 The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature

The fin de sie`cle: Solovyov, Nietzsche, Einstein, Pavlov’s dogs, political terrorism

Between 1877 and 1881, Russia’s first great speculative philosopher, Vladimir Solovyov (1853–1900) delivered a series of spellbinding lectures in St. Petersburg on what he called “Divine Humanity” or “Godmanhood.”4 The audience included both a skeptical Tolstoy and an enthusiastic Dostoevsky, who was Solovyov’s good friend. The first lecture was devoted to Russia’s need for “positive [or affirmative] religion,” understood as the striving toward an absolute or ideal principle, which was the opposite of materialist positivism. “Contemporary religion is a pitiful thing,” Solovyov declared. Reduced to a ritual, “a personal mood, a personal taste,” it was no longer able to inspire or unite humanity. Several candidates had been put forward to fill the void, but all had proven inadequate: the institution of the Church, the ideals of socialism, the French Revolution, empirical science. Christian faith provided one part of the solution, by affirming the unconditional significance of each individual in the eyes of God. But secular humanism must complement this faith and converge with it.

A second factor in this religious renaissance, and seemingly at cross purposes to it, was the profound impact on Russian culture of Friedrich Nietzsche. Debts here were varied and vast. The ideas of the “super-human,” a radical reassessment of all values, and a “will to power” that could bestow health, dignity, and autonomy on creative artists naturally appealed to the tiny trapped Russian intelligentsia. The debt was to some extent reciprocal. In 1888, Nietzsche had remarked that the Dostoevskian underground “contained the most valuable psychological material known to him” – suggesting that the German philosopher was prone to take seriously metaphysical worldviews that Dostoevsky subjected to cruel satire; the novelist’s doubts were congenial to Nietzsche, the Christian epiphanies were not. Still, turn-of-the-century Russians found much to admire in Nietzschean thought. Symbolist journals like Mir iskusstva [The World of Art] translated broad swaths of Nietzsche’s prose. Especially popular were the ideas of Zarathustra as proud artist-leader, the social misfit as above society (not superfluous to it), and an “existential renewal and vital mythic vision” that would replace utilitarian moral criticism.5

The first generation of Russian Symbolism coincided with a renaissance of interest in Classical Greece and Rome, and to this group the most vital mythic vision revealed by Nietzsche was the myth of Dionysus. In that vision, the life force is simultaneously destructive and creative, cyclical, rebellious, ecstatic, at times nihilistic, but always transformative. The end point of Russian Dionysianism was a “new man.” For some, this coveted figure coincided with