Dual Faith of Evgeny Ivanov

The article, based on materials from two archival funds of the Manuscript Department of the Pushkin House, recreates in detail one of the most significant components of the spiritual life of Evgeny Ivanov (1879–1942), a writer and religious thinker, a close friend of А. Blok. It is the history of his long-term worship of Vera Komissarzhevskaya, which influenced not only the formation of his worldview but also his work (first of all, his unfinished articles about H. Ibsen’s female characters, about the high destiny of theatre actors, about religious faith). Ivanov found himself in a situation of religious dual faith (Orthodoxy and the rudiments of the Khlystism, Christianity and the interest in Slavic paganism), being at the same time in platonic love with two women under the name Vera — Komissarzhevskaya and V.N. Dyukova, his cousin. The materials presented in the study, including previously unpublished fragments of the diary, can be considered as a kind of backlight to the history of the creation of the poem “On the Death of Komissarzhevskaya” by A. Blok (1910). Most importantly, they explain the appearance in this text of the image of “promised spring.”

Art · Art history · Christianity · Faith · Literature · Orthodoxy · Paganism · Poetry · Slavic languages · Theology · Worship · Classics · Discourse Analysis and Cultural Communication · Philosophy · Religious studies · Sociopolitical Dynamics in Russia