'The Spiral of Christ’s Impulse' or the 'Rhythmic Curve': Religious Contexts of Andrei Bely’s 'Theory of Rhythm'

• In Event: Religion and the Russian Silver Age

Abstract

In his study “Rhythm as Dialectics” (1929), Andrei Bely proposed a method for calculating and constructing the “rhythmic curve” of Pushkin's poem “The Bronze Horseman.” In the first version of the text on rhythmic gesture, written in 1917 in Sergiev Posad, Bely extensively quotes the first hymn of Symeon the New Theologian, identifying his discovered "Rhythm-the-Reason" with the God-Logos praised by Symeon. In the same version, Bely refers to his method of correlating rhythm and meaning in poetry not merely as a discovery but as a miracle. The rhythm that Bely sought to explore in his research was meant to “resurrect” the poetic word within a utopian horizon, akin to the Second Coming. This paper will demonstrate how Bely's complex religious views, which he was forced to conceal in Soviet Russia, are reflected in his theory of poetic rhythm of the late 1920s.

Author

• Melaniia Kalinina, U of Oxford (UK)