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8. MO Gershenzon — Metaphysical Historian of Russia's —————— 8. M. O. Gershenzon — Metaphysical Historian of Russia’s Silver Age: Part 1 —————— 8. M. O. Gershenzon — Metaphysical Historian of Russia’s Silver Age: Part 1 It is intriguing to consider Mikhail Gershenzon’s historical writings in the light of Russia’s Silver-Age cultural system.1 Certainly the poetry of the time was intimately connected with the spirit of the age, but historiography? Was it also influenced by formal experimentation, an interest in religion, and a concern with psychology and the life of the individual rather than issues of politics and legal rights?2 Above all, M. O. Gershenzon would make a perfect test case, since among historians he was perhaps the most in tune with his time; he befriended symbolist poets, studied religion, and took a deep interest in spiritual problems. Gershenzon should be viewed as a representative of what Marc Raeff called “the Slavophile historiographical tradition, ” because he tried to reveal to his readers the internal, spiritual life of his heroes.3 As opposed to the “Westernizer” tradition represented in Gershenzon’s day by Ivanov-Razumnik, Semyon Vengerov or Pavel Miliukov, who saw the evolution of Russian history as revealing an on-going struggle for social progress, the “Slavophile” historians focused their attention on the “accomplishments of the spirit.” Not social justice, but evidence of religious inspiration excited their interest. Of course some of the differ- ences in historiographical approaches derived from the subjects being studied, but the choices of what to study and how to present material also characterize each group. Gershenzon was among the most promi- nent figures in the group, which included historians and writers as Vladimir Ern, Georgy Fedotov, Vasily Rozanov, Konstantin Mochul’sky, Lev Karsavin, Nikolai Berdiaev, and Georges Florovsky. Gershenzon’s claim to originality is primarily based on his new, sensitive depiction of spiritual portraits. Attempting to project the 1 There are many sources for a semiotic system, but perhaps the most appropriate in this context is Yury Lotman’s The Semiotics of Russian Cultural History, ed. Alexander D. Nakhimovsky and Alice Stone Nakhimovsky (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985). 2 For a general description of Russia’s Silver-Age culture, see Victor Erlich, Modernism and Revolution: Russian Literature in Transition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), 14-31. 3 M. Raeff, “Russian Intellectual History and its Historiography, ” Forschungen zur Osteuropäischen Geschichte 25 (1978): 279. — 141 — —————— II. M. O. Gershenzon and the Intellectual Life of Russia’s Silver Age —————— literary, social, aesthetic, and moral norms of the past in order to show historical figures from within their own value system, in this biographi- cal genre Gershenzon featured his literary craft, historical subtlety and intellectual depth. Mikhail Tsiavlovsky described it this way: “The genre of Gershenzon’s work, a genre in which he achieved a high mastery con- sists of the historical portraits of the leaders in literature and culture, the creation of ‘Images of the Past’ [Obrazy proshlogo] on the basis of archival materials published for the first time with a philosophical- artistic interpretation.”4 The genre itself was part biography, part historical interpretation and part literary essay. It was not, however, a catch-all form, but crafted to embody Gershenzon’s aim of describing the psychological condition of an individual as a mirror of the motivations of an entire epoch. Gershenzon’s approach had many of the features of biography, but biography was not its main aim. He focused his attention on an individual, describing his idiosyncrasies and evolution, but the goal was always to capture the character of the epoch as a whole, its emotional and intellectual premises—in other words, the essential ideas and emotions that lie at the base of the self. Therefore, the historian is not interested in everyone, but exclusively in individuals who act as “carri- ers of ideals, ” who reflect the inner life of the entire age. Consequently, Gershenzon made a firm distinction between “history” and “biography, ” considering himself a historian. In his essay on Nikolai Stankevich, he writes, “Stankevich interests us not in his uniqueness, but histori- cally. Our goal is to depict his spiritual development in so far as it ap- pears as a full and pure reflection of the intellectual movement of the 1830s.”5 From 1900-1925, Gershenzon created finely drawn portraits of the most important thinkers of Russia’s nineteenth century: Ivan Kireevsky, Alexander Herzen, Vladimir Pecherin, Nikolai Stankevich, Ivan Turgenev, Yury Samarin, and Nikolai Gogol’. In a sense, Gershenzon produces at least three different kinds of textual modes, i.e. kinds of narratives within texts.6 The first kind is 4 M. Tsiavlovskii, preface to M. Gershenzon, Pis’ma k bratu (Moscow, 1927), v. “Obrazy proshlogo” refers to the title of one of Gershenzon’s collections of articles published in 1912. 5 M. Gershenzon, “N.V. Stankevich (1813-1840), ” Novyi put’ 11 (1904): 52. I borrow this argument from James Scanlan, introduction to A History of Young Russia, by M. Gershenzon (Irvine: Charles Schlacks Jr., 1986), xx-xxi. Scanlan writes, “Not individuals but types: thus Gershenzon viewed his own studies, and he wished them to be judged by the canons of history, not biography” (xxi). 6 On modes, see Alistair Fowler, Kinds of Literature: an Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes — 142 — —————— 8. M. O. Gershenzon — Metaphysical Historian of Russia’s Silver Age: Part 1 —————— straightforward narrative history: Gershenzon tells the reader who Kireevsky or Samarin was, and proceeds to record something about their childhood, family, career path, and so on. The second type of text flows from the very nature of his subject, which is the intellectual his- tory of a number of complex writers, most particularly the Slavophies and their kin. The ideas that the Slavophiles professed were rarely cut and dried, and resist easy and obvious summary. They literally demand that the historian present some explication of their meaning. Here Gershenzon steps in with gusto and offers his own interpretation not simply of what those ideas were, but how they originated in the thinker’s life. He doesn’t make this up out of whole cloth, of course, but in making these Slavophile texts comprehensible to his readers, he’s forced to rely upon his own philosophical background and his intui- tive insights. Finally, the third mode consists of those times when he injects his own philosophical beliefs into the very structure of his argu- ment. However, he tends to do this in his historical works in an almost imperceptible way. One minute you’re discussing Kireevsky’s life; then Gershenzon begins to present you with an explanation of the relation- ship between life and ideas, and, almost without missing a beat, he may begin to insert ideas or value statements that are more the expressions of Gershenzon the philosopher and participant in Landmarks (Vekhi) than of the gifted intellectual historian. Gershenzon’s method led immediately to objectivity/subjectivity questions. For example, his view that the human spirit is more complex than any logical form raised doubt about whether he could claim any objective knowledge at all (either the individual is comprehensible or he/she isn’t) and whether he could know supra-individual phenomena as a result of the study of an individual (such as society, social move- ments, and intellectual milieu). To resolve these dilemmas, Gershenzon makes a distinction between an individual as a “type” and an individual as “typical.” No one individual can be a “type, ” but people can serve as typical representatives of their age. In The Decembrist Krivtsov and his Brothers, Gershenzon explains, “Krivtsov is not a ‘type.’ Actually no individual can be a type. But he has a characteristic personality that is immensely valuable for the historian. It is not easy through individual (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982). I acknowledge the help here from my colleague at Tulane, Samuel Ramer (email from December 18, 2012). — 143 — —————— II. M. O. Gershenzon and the Intellectual Life of Russia’s Silver Age —————— expression to perceive the traits of an epoch, and still more difficult in an analysis of ephemeral feelings and thought to open the far horizons of history, but if it is possible at all, the task is worth the effort.”7 Gershenzon thought that he had resolved the intractable problem of historical knowledge—how the historian can know the past—by sepa- rating knowledge into two categories, interior and exterior. Although an individual’s soul can never be fully known, his external behavior and writing can inform us about the nature of his internal condition.8 In The History of Young Russia he writes, “The [book] does not consist of a series of portraits, but rather an entire picture of the epoch marked by the successive change of personal experiences. That is why I call it a history.”9 Metaphysical principles guide Gershenzon’s interpretation of his- tory and are based on his “cosmic philosophy.”10 The principal idea is that each individual has a single spiritual source and is originally spiri- tually complete (tsel’nyi). The object of the historian is to discover the spiritual completeness lying beneath the seeming divisiveness of the exterior facts of a person’s life. Gershenzon sought out individuals who “unconsciously desire harmony with the universe” or its corollary, the rejection of “logical reason.” In addition, his heroes try to attain that particular state of the soul when there is unity between the way one thinks and lives. Ideally there should be no cleft between reason and will, thinking and being, conceptual and instinctual life; the way one thinks should not conflict with the elemental or natural feeling that innately inheres in the individual.11 Gershenzon thought he had found a foundation for his own ideas in Slavophilism generally and in par- ticular in the work of Ivan Kireevsky.
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