The spell which the South cast over many poets from Northern Europe – Goethe, Byron, Shelley and Ibsen, to name but a few – is well known. Less familiar but equally potent was the enchantment which it held for the Russian Symbolist poet, playwright and philosopher Vyacheslav Ivanov, who was born in Moscow 150 years ago on 28 February 1866.

 
Portrait of Viacheslav Ivanov in later life, from the frontispiece of his poetry collection Chelovek (Paris, 1939) 011586.f.114.

After studying history and philosophy in Moscow, Ivanov travelled to Berlin in 1886 to pursue his studies of Roman law and economics under Theodor Mommsen, but at the same time discovered the writings of Nietzsche and the German Romantics, especially the mystical poetry of Novalis and Hölderlin’s highly personal evocation of ancient Greece. His passion for archaeology took him to Rome in 1892 to complete a doctorate in that subject, and it was here that he met the poet and translator Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal, who became his wife in 1899. Together they travelled to Athens, Geneva, Egypt and Palestine, as well as Italy, where Ivanov devoted himself to a new interest – the art of the Renaissance – as well as drawing inspiration from the landscape for his first sonnets.

Viacheslav Ivanov’s first work, Kormchiia Zviezdy (St Petersburg, 1903) 011586.h.101.

On their return to St. Petersburg in 1905, the Ivanovs’ home near the Tauride Palace became a vibrant literary salon and the cradle of the Symbolist movement. Every Wednesday, visitors including Aleksandr Blok, Nikolai Berdyaev and Vsevolod Meyerhold thronged to their soirées in such numbers that internal walls had to be demolished to accommodate them all. In a feverish cosmopolitan milieu, they discussed everything from ancient Greek to contemporary Scandinavian and French poetry, theatre and philosophy.

Facsimile of Ivanov’s handwriting from K. Balʹmont [et al.], Avtografy (Moscow?, 1920) RF.2005.b.173

As time passed, a second phase of Symbolism evolved, exchanging the influence of the French Decadents for that of Nietzsche and Wagner. Like them, Ivanov explored the message of the classical world for modern civilization, with special reference to the Dionysian mysteries and their role in the development of tragedy. Like Hölderlin, he was preoccupied by the gulf between the spiritual values of antiquity and the materialism and barrenness of contemporary society, and like Nietzsche with the contrast between the ecstatic cult of Dionysus and the joyless rigidity of institutionalized religion. He would follow Hölderlin in writing his own dramatic version of the legend of Prometheus, Prometei, in which he followed the principles of Aeschylean tragedy.

Viacheslav Ivanov, Prometei (Petersburg, 1919) X.909/88128.

The British Library copy, with its limp, unassuming cover, gives little idea of the importance of this work. It was printed under conditions of extreme austerity in the midst of the Russian Civil War (1917-22), testifying to Ivanov’s importance as a cultural figure who offered the hope that drama, the most powerful of the arts, could take the place of the Orthodox Church in guiding post-revolutionary Russia and offering a new kind of religious belief. Meyerhold in particular seized on Ivanov’s vision of a theatre in which (as in Wagner’s Bayreuth) there would be no separation between stage and auditorium, allowing actors and public to mingle and improvise freely, sharing masks, costumes and a sense of participating in a sacred rite where Dionysus/Christ would provide an example of ‘the total unity of suffering’.

The death of his wife in 1907 marked a turning-point in Ivanov’s creative as well as his personal life. His poetry became increasingly mystical, and he gradually abandoned it altogether in favour of a series of articles on Symbolism and translations of Aeschylus, Alcaeus, Sappho and Petrarch into Russian. Following the death of his second wife Vera (Lydia’s daughter by a previous marriage) in 1920, he became Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Baku, and, when the Soviet government finally allowed him to leave Azerbaijan in 1924, he settled in Rome as professor of Old Church Slavonic at the Collegium Russicum. His eclectic approach to religion culminated in his reception into the Russian Catholic Church  in 1926, claiming that by doing so he became ‘truly Orthodox’ and embodied the principle of the unity of the Eastern and Western churches before the Great Schism.

Frontispiece by Konstantin Somov for Ivanov’s Cor Ardens (Moscow, 1911) 11586.dd.14.

The British Library’s collections span the full range of Ivanov’s work, from a first edition of his earliest collection of poems, Kormchiia Zviezdy (‘Lodestars’)and the sumptuously-illustrated Cor ardens (‘The burning heart’ ) to a collection of facsimile autograph items by Ivanov himself and other leading writers of his time including Konstantin Bal’mont and Sergei Esenin. They bear witness to the creative vitality of a man whose ability to move effortlessly between cultural and religious traditions and the sensuous and the scholarly resulted in a vivid and inspiring view of their power to redeem and transform.

Susan Halstead, Content Specialis (Humanities and Social Sciences), Research Engagement