The Vertical Form: Iconological Dimension in 20 th Century Russian Religious Aesthetics and Literary Criticism (original) (raw)

This paper is an attempt to highlight and reflect on several interrelated issues that seem to be very important in terms of working out a relevant theological approach to the wide variety of artistic expression, particularly as far as theoretical aesthetics is concerned. I shall focus on some most characteristic ideas developed in 20 th century Russian religious philosophy that may appear to be significant not only for the Orthodox tradition of spirituality and thought in which they are rooted, but for other Christian traditions as well. As for the Russian Orthodoxy, it should be pointed out from the very outset that the relationships between theology and art have always been rather uneasy, and in fact confined to the theology of church arts, icons in particular. Based on the teachings of the Saint Fathers, the Russian Orthodox tradition has always been extremely rich in artistic creativity within the sphere of church arts; however, up to the present moment it has been quite reluctant in acknowledging deep spiritual dimensions of secular arts. There were, of course, many attempts towards religious evaluation of literature, painting, music or poetry, but the gap between " sacred " and " secular " art has always been present and articulated by the Church. I would not say, however, that it is typical of the tradition as such; rather, it was historically and, in some cases, spiritually determined, inasmuch as the primary concern of the Church is to keep people away from the temptations of the flawed world. The tradition, however dominated by certain prescribed norms or rules, is an " open system " , and its evolution is characterized by a dialectic of the canonical and the heuristic principles, the static and the dynamic. In Russia, it was not until the beginning of the 20 th century that the theoretical heritage of Orthodox iconology started being philosophically and aesthetically deepened and in some ways reassessed in the works of a number of prominent thinkers, so that it became possible to consider the challenge of overcoming the traditional gap between " religious " and " non-religious " spheres of creativity by means of developing a fundamental theoretical basis for the interpretation of art. In the present-day Russia, with the growing interest in theological evaluation of art and literature, this is one of the most crucial issues, as well as it has been in the West. The following observations, though covering just a few general and purely theoretical points, might provide, I hope, an outline of what could be called iconological thought in Russian religious aesthetics, how I view it, both rooted in and different (in terms of subject and treatment) from what is known as the theology of Icon. 1. Image/Icon as a Category of Religious Consciousness This is something that would, perhaps, seem quite natural to Western thought, whereas, for some reason, it is not a common way of reflecting upon the icon in Russia. In fact, the image has always been one of the central categories of Orthodox religious consciousness, a category linking together theology, aesthetics and anthropology. The concept of the Divine image that constituted the basis of understanding personal relationship between God and man was, at the same time, the major idea underlying patristic iconology: an icon is always an expression of the Divine image as an ontological reality present in human nature. However, the question arises: how is such an expression possible? From the very beginning, the image (εικων) has, therefore, two inseparable dimensions: ontological and epistemological, i.e. the nature of the image as revelation of the Divine is accounted for by the fact that it is an immanent structure, or category, of consciousness; and vice versa: cognition and experience of the Divine through the image is possible only because its ontological nature is asserted. It was precisely the categorical aspect of the image that Fr. Pavel Florensky, one of the greatest Russian religious thinkers, stressed in his