Dmitry Merezhkovsky

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Dmitry Merezhkovsky bigraphy, stories - Russian novelist, poet, religious thinker, and literary critic

Dmitry Merezhkovsky : biography

August 2, 1865 – December 9, 1941

Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky ( 2 August (14 August) 1866 – December 9, 1941) was a Russian novelist, poet, religious thinker, and literary critic. A seminal figure of the Silver Age of Russian Poetry, regarded as a co-founder of the Symbolist movement, Merezhkovsky – with his poet wife Zinaida Gippius – was twice forced into political exile. During his second exile (1918–1941) he continued publishing successful novels and gained recognition as a critic of Soviet Union. Known both as a self-styled religious prophet with his own slant on apocalyptic Christianity, and as the author of philosophical historical novels which combined fervent idealism with literary innovation, Merezhkovsky was a nine times nominee for the Nobel Prize in literature, which he came closest to winning in 1933.

Books

  • The Romance of Leonardo Da Vinci, ISBN 4-87187-839-2,

Merezhkovsky’s ideas

Merezhkovsky’s first adopted philosophical trend was the then popular positivism, a trend his brother Konstantin (a future well-known biologist), who had great influence upon him, was the follower of too. Soon, disillusioned in formal positivism but never rejecting it wholly, Merezhkovsky turned to religion. Seeds of this hybrid (European positivism grafted to what’s been described as ‘subjective idealism’ of Russian Orthodoxy) sown on the field of literature study brought forth a brochure entitled "On the Causes of the Decline and the New Trends in Contemporary Russian Literature". This manifesto gave a burgeoning Symbolist movement both ideology and the name as such: Merezhkovsky was the first in Russia to speak of symbols as definitive means of cognizance modern Art.

In the center of this new train of thought was the notion of "rejecting the rational in favour of the intuitive" by means of exploiting what the author termed as ‘spirituality of a symbol’, seeing the latter as a perfect means of describing Reality, otherwise unfathomable. Only a symbol, according to Merezhkovsky, could burrow circumvent through to reach an object’s deeper meaning, whereas (quoting, as he did, Tyutchev) "thought, whilst being spoken, turns a lie": Interestingly (according to D.Churakov), Merezhkovsky, pronouncing ‘the death of metaphysics’ and putting forward the idea that only language of symbols could be an adequate instrument for discovering the modern world’s pattern of meanings, was unwillingly following Auguste Comte, the difference being that the latter was employing these ideas in scientific fields, while the former proposed to use them in literature and criticism.

The Third Testament

Merezhkovsky’s next and most fundamental step ahead as a self-styled modernist philosophy leader was taken in tandem with his young intellectual wife Zinaida Gippius who from the first days of their meeting started generating new ideas for her husband to catch up on, fully develop and bring into shape. It was in this feedback-driven cooperation that the 3rd Testament theory was born, or rather revived, transplanted from its Middle Ages Italian origins into the early 20th century’s Russian ambience. It was the 3rd Testament that formed the basis of the early 20th-century Russian New Religious Consciousness movement which in turn kick started the Religious-Philosophical Society into action, again Gippius producing basic ideas for her husband to formulate them and become the driving force of. Borrowing the original idea from Joachim of Fiore, a 12th-century theologist, Merezhkovskys created and developed their own concept of man’s full-circle religious evolution. In it the Bible was seen as a starting point with God having taken two steps towards Man — for the latter to respond with the third, logically conclusive one.

According to Merezhkovsky, the 1st (Divine Father’s) and the 2nd (Divine Son’s) Testaments could be seen only as preliminary steps towards the 3rd one, that of the Holy Ghost. With the first maintaining the Law of God and the second — the Grace of God, what the third Testament should do is bring Liberation to the human race; the 1st Testament revealing the God’s power as gospel Truth, the 2nd transforming the gospel Truth into Love, the 3rd translating Love into Liberation. In this last Kingdom "pronounced and heard will be — the final, never before revealed name of the coming one: God the Liberator," according to the author.