Byss and Abyss: Orientations toward Immanence and Transcendence in Russian Thought and Literature

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

From the literature and philosophy of the Russian "Golden Age" to samizdat manuscripts circulating in the dank metaphysical salons of the "schizoid underground" of 1960s Moscow, Russian authors and thinkers have consistently concerned themselves with what they have perceived to be a crisis of spirit and matter. As Jacob Boehme writes in his exegesis of the Mosaic Genesis, Mysterium Magnum (1623), "[T]he eternal free will hath introduced itself into [darkness and pain]; and so also through the darkness into the fire and light, even into a kingdom of joy; that so the Nothing might be known in the Something, and that it might have a sport in its contra-will, that the free will of the abyss might be manifest to itself in the byss, for without evil and good there could not be any byss [ground or foundation]." This panel, then, will constitute an investigation of various approaches to the question of the "here" (the mundane) and the "beyond" (the divine), and whether these ideas are immanent and continuous or stark in their transcendent separation. The presenters' papers will address moments either of self-unfolding or of sudden miraculous occurrence in the world of beings, knowledge, and immediate experiences relating to something fundamentally other.

Sub Unit

• Religion, Philosophy

Chair

• Maria T Obolewicz

Papers

• Tolstoy, 'The Power of Darkness', and Sublime Anagogy - Bradley Underwood, Northwestern U

• Nikolai Strakhov and the Synthesis of Wholeness in Nature and Human Consciousness - Jillian Pignataro, Northwestern U

• Laughter as Gnosis in Yuri Mamleev's 'Metaphysical Realist' Works - Charlie Smith, U of Illinois at Chicago

Discussant

• Randall Allen Poole, College of St. Scholastica