Abstract
Post-Revolutionary society is a theocratic anarchy; Christ Himself is the sole ruler. There are no institutions and no authorities. Love replaces law and renders limitations on power, such as Constitutions or legal guarantees of personal rights, unnecessary. Once all men learn to love one another injustice and exploitation will cease. All mankind will become one, a “cohesion of flesh and blood in a new real essence, a living universal body, the church.” A “superorganic” society, “divine humanity” will be formed.1
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References
Ne mir, p. 109.
Griadushchii, pp. 172-73.
Ibid., pp. 170-75, 180.
Ne mir, p. 7. Merezhkovsky specifically used the concept and the word absurd (nelepost’) though he had not yet read Kierkegaard.
Ibid., pp. 18-19.
Bol’naia, p. 76.
Merezhkovsky, “Lermontov: Poet sverkhchelovechestva,” V tikhom, pp. 157-205.
Griadushchii, pp. 69-73, 102-10.
Ibid., pp. 74-75. As Merezhkovsky defined it, “internal vagrancy” is the “ultimate psychological conclusion of nihilism,” the “nakedness of spiritual poverty.” Internal freedom, the acceptance of positive goals, must accompany mere freedom from external restrictions.
Griadushchii, pp. 72-73.
Bylo i budet, p. 277.
V tikhom omute, pp. 36-39.
Griadushchii, p. 115; V tikhom, pp. 37-39.
Griadushchii, p. 77. See Bol’naia, pp. 167-72 for Merezhkovsky’s conception of the “freedom to fly.” The Wright Brothers invention of the airplane was the signal for a sermon on man’s will to ascend to heaven.
Sören Kierkegaard, “The Present Moment,” in T. Hollander, ed. and trans. Selections From the Writings of Kierkegaard (New York, 1960), pp. 245–46.
Ne mir, p. 34.
Dve tainy, p. 123. Merezhkovsky’s statement that Nekrasov loved the earth “as the body of the mother” and Tiutchev loved it as the “body of the beloved,” eternal mother, eternal beloved, “one sister … the other bride. Now they are two, but soon they will be one … the heavenly will be earthly,” indicates that modern man’s sexual problems will also be resolved.
Griadushchii, p. 18.
Ne mir, pp. 12-13, 31-32.
Griadushchii, p. 173.+
Ne mir, p. 166.
Ibid., p. 109.
Bol’naia, p. 74.
Merezhkovsky, “Sochestvie v ade,” in PSS (St. Petersburg, 1911) 15 vols. XII, 237–38. Although this edition is less complete than the 1914 one, the particular essay is omitted from the 1914 PSS.
Ne mir, p. 31.
Bylo i budet, p. 13.
Merezhkovsky, Vom Krieg zur Revolution (München, 1918), pp. 137–42, 161-74. See also Pachmuss, Zinaida Hippius, pp. 180-99.
Zinaida Hippius, Siniaia kniga (Belgrade, 1929), p. 26.
Pachmuss, Zinaida Hippius, pp. 193-205.
I. Yasinsky, Roman moei zhizni (Moscow, 1927), p. 258; Pechaf i revoliutsiia (Moscow, 1921), no. 1, p. 180; Merezhkovsky, Filosofov, Gippius, and Zlobin, Das Reich des AntiKhrist: Russland und der Bolschewismus (München, 1922), especially the chapter “Schwarzes Heft.”
Zernov, pp. 37-38.
P. Stanlis, ed. Edmund Burke: Selected Writings and Speeches (New York, 1963), pp. 440, 454.
V tikhom, p. 93.
Meilakh, p. 171. “Hymn to the Worker” is a Minsky poem.
For a view of fascism as a theory of transcendence see Ernst Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism trans. Leila Vennewitz, New York, 1969.
Slonim, From Chekhov to the Revolution, pp. 188-89.
Erlich, p. 92, points out that Briusov was not disturbed by the Red Terror.
Erlich, p. 111, says: “ ‘Who am I,’ inquires Blok, in effect, to stand in the way of history. Who am I, the son of a privileged class, to judge the first acts of the awakening masses. Is the destruction of my own group, of my artificial hothouse way of life too high a price to be paid for overdue social change?” See also, p. 99.
They were particularly close to Hippius. Blok often accompanied her to rehearsals of her drama The Green Ring, being produced by the Alexandrinsky Theatre in Petersburg. See Pachmuss, Zinaida Hippius, p. 189. In 1914, Blok wrote a poem to her. See Olga Carlisle, Poets on Street Corners (New York, 1970), pp. 38-39.
Florovsky, p. 468.
Slonim, From Chekhov, p. 203.
Gray, p. 215. 43 Ibid.
M. Beketova, Aleksandr Blok (Petrograd, 1922, reprinted, The Hague, 1969), p. 101.
Ibid., pp. 101-102.
Blok’s 1906 drama Balaganchik features a hero who pursues a beautiful woman only to find out in the end that she is a cardboard doll. The prostitute motif is best seen in his poem “The Unknown One” (Neznakomka) and after 1908 Russia became his female symbol. According to Erlich, only the love object changes; his themes are all erotic. See pp. 103-108.
Aleksandr Blok, “Religioznye iskaniia i narod,” Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh ed., Orlov (Moscow, 1955), pp. 56–62. See also, “Literaturnye itogi 1907 goda,” in Zolotoe Runo 1907, no. 11-12 (Nov.-Dec), pp. 91-93.
See, for example, Florovsky, p. 468.
An English abridgement may be found in Marc Raeff, Russian Intellectual History: An Anthology (New York, 1966), pp. 364–71, see especially pp. 366, 371. An English translation of “The Scythians,” and “The Twelve” may be found in B. Guerney, ed. and trans. An Anthology of Russian Literature in the Soviet Period (New York, 1960), pp. 16-29.
Maslenikov, pp. 147-48.
Bely, Lug, p. 4.
Poggioli, Poets of Russia, pp. 158-59.
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© 1975 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Rosenthal, B.G. (1975). The Theocratic Society. In: Dmitri Sergeevich Merezhkovsky and the Silver Age. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-9036-7_9
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