A Multilayered Commentary in the Works of Mikhail Gershenzon-Pushkinist

The works of M.O. Gershenzon the Pushkinist are often considered in the context of Russia’s Silver-Age ‘Pushkin myth’, which is quite fair, but at the same time only partially true: it might seem that Gershenzon’s commenting on Pushkin served as an excuse to express his own philosophical ideas.This view detriments the concept of personal vision, put forward by thescholar,along with the acompaning idea of research subjectivity. By and large, an individual’s position, especially in the humanities, might be touched up by certain ‘mythology’. However, this general statement requires clarification of the individual position in each particular case. This article deals primarily with the research principles of Gershenzon-Pushkinist, his individual approach to studying and commenting the poet’s works, which enabled him to view Pushkin’s works as an important part of the World Wisdom, where the word of Revelation appeals to the ‘primal myth’. Gershenzon’s work “The Wisdom of Pushkin” (1917–1919) reveals the World Wisdom in the continuity of ideas and images traced in the history of the language. From this point of view, Gershenzon’s studies of Pushkin are read as a multilayered commentary of some presumed ‘original’ (ideal) text, which includs all the thingscreated and the things yet-to-come. The infinite space of the World Thought gives rise to circulating energies called by Gershenzon the ‘Streams of Spirit’ (see the book “Gulfstream”, 1922, about Pushkin and Heraclitus). These energetical currents bring together the ‘primal myth’, the ideas and images of the present and foreshadowings of the world to come. In this unity, the original text keeps being written incessantly, including every word of the poet, the scholar, the commentator, the reader

Art · Epistemology · Excuse · Literature · Mythology · Revelation · Subjectivity · Discourse Analysis and Cultural Communication · History · Law · Philosophy