Selected Essays

Front Cover
Northwestern University Press, 2001 - Literary Collections - 328 pages
Winner of 2002 AATSEEL Award for Best Translation into English
A poet, critic, and theoretician during the Silver Age of Russian poetry, at the turn of the Twentieth century, Viacheslav Ivanov was dubbed "Viacheslav the Magnificent" by his contemporaries for his erudition, sumptuous and allusive poetry, and brilliant essays. He provided Russian Symbolism with theoretical underpinnings based on classical and biblical mythology, the aesthetics of music, philosophy ranging from Plato and Kant to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and a profound knowledge of classical and modern European poetry.

In choosing material for this volume of essays, Robert Bird and Michael Wachtel have covered a broad range of Ivanov's interests: the aesthetics of Symbolism, theater, culturological concerns, and on such influential figures of the period as Nietzsche, Solovyov, Tolstoy, and Scriabin. Also included are extensive notes on the essays in which classical, biblical, and poetic citations and allusions are identified, the aesthetic and theoretical contexts are clarified, and certain translation problems are briefly discussed. This volume provides valuable insight into the theory of Symbolism as it developed in Russia.

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Contents

The Symbolics of Aesthetic Principles
5
Two Elements in Contemporary Symbolism
13
The Testaments of Symbolism
36
Thoughts on Symbolism
50
Manner Persona Style
59
On the Limits of
69
The Games of Melpomene
89
The New Organic
95
On Leon Baksts Painting Terror Antiquus
144
Toward a Morphology
163
Nietzsche and Dionysus
177
The Religious Task of Vladimir Solovyov
189
Lev Tolstoy and Culture
200
Scriabins View of Art
211
Notes
229
Bibliography of Works in English by Viacheslav Ivanov
319

On the Joyful Craft and the Joy of the Spirit
113
On the Russian Idea
128

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