Religion and the Russian Silver Age

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The early twentieth century witnessed two significant, nearly simultaneous cultural revivals in Russia: the Silver Age in the realm of aesthetics and the Russian Religious Renaissance in the realms of philosophy and theology. Both of these revivals shared a great interest in religious and spiritual questions as well as a generally low level of trust in religious institutions, i.e., the Russian Orthodox Church. This panel considers the relationship between religion and the Russian Silver Age in the cases of three of the period’s most prominent writers: Vasily Rozanov (1856-1919), Viacheslav Ivanov (1866-1949), and Andrei Bely (1880-1934). Andrew Whittington-Biehle examines Rozanov’s "Solitaria" and "Fallen Leaves" in connection with the theme of religiia byta, or “religion of the everyday,” an attempt to relate to God without the mediation of the Church. Melvin Thomas interprets Ivanov’s 1926 conversion from Orthodoxy to Catholicism as an organic development of ecumenical motifs that had already been present in his “Slavophile” writings during the World War I era (1914-1918). Melaniia Kalinina investigates the influence of Bely’s religious beliefs on his theory of poetics as articulated in his "Rhythm as Dialectics." Together, this panel offers new ways to understand how religion, specifically in its extra-institutional form, played a crucial, artistically productive role in the Russian Silver Age.

Sub Unit

• Literature: 20th Century

Chair

• Olivia Kennison, Brown U

Papers

• Religiia Byta: The Supremacy of Private Life in V.V. Rozanov’s 'Fallen Leaves Trilogy' - Andrew Alexander Whittington-Biehle, Princeton U

• The Eastern Romanophile: Slavic Ecumenism in the Thought and Poetry of Viacheslav Ivanov - Melvin Thomas, Princeton U

• 'The Spiral of Christ’s Impulse' or the 'Rhythmic Curve': Religious Contexts of Andrei Bely’s 'Theory of Rhythm' - Melaniia Kalinina, U of Oxford (UK)

Discussant

• Michael Wachtel, Princeton U