14 - Eschatology and hope in Silver Age thought

Summary

Panmongolism! Although the word is wild

It caresses my ear,

As though full of the portend

Of God's great fate.

Vladimir Solov′ëv, 1894

It is only natural that this chapter should begin with an epigraph from a poem by Vladimir Solov′ëv (1853–1900), arguably the figure most influential for the modernist thinkers in Russia's pre-revolutionary period. That this particular poem, “Panmongolizm” (“Panmongolism,” 1894, published 1905), should have pride of place is also no accident. These four lines, the first of a nine-stanza paean to a mysterious Asiatic force bent on the destruction of holy Moscow, preface Solov′ëv's own “Kratkii povest′ ob Antikhriste” (“Short Tale of the Antichrist,” 1899), published the year before he died. Two of the lines also serve as epigraph to the poem “Skify” (“The Scythians,” 1918) by the symbolist poet Aleksandr Blok (1880–1921), thus in many ways bracketing the two-decade period known as the Silver Age of Russian culture. Between the two appeared a number of other poems, essays, and stories about an apocalyptic invasion from the East, most notably “Griadushchie gunny” (“The Coming Huns,” 1904–1905) by Valerii Briusov (1873–1924). The juxtaposition of these three poems serves as a door into the spiritual and philosophical preoccupations of an entire generation of intellectuals as they anticipated the demise of Russian autocracy.

The anxiety permeating the Silver Age centered in large part on a perceived tension between individual and whole, between the ethically autonomous lichnost′ and the amorphous masses, and thus concerned the very meaning of humanity.