1 The Development of the Image of Catholicism in Russian Literary Tradition: 1820-1949 Elizabeth Anne Harrison UCL PhD (Russian literature and thought) September 2013 2 I, Elizabeth Anne Harrison confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. Signed: Date: 3 Abstract This thesis examines the development of the image of Catholicism in Russian literary tradition between the end of the Napoleonic War and the end of the Second World War. It analyses Catholicism as represented in texts from several different genres – poetry, drama, essays, letters, travel writing and novels. The texts are taken from the work of Chaadaev, Pushkin, the Slavophiles, Gogol´, Tiutchev, the Russian Jesuits, Dostoevskii, Solov´ev, Rozanov, Merezhkovskii, Ellis and Dmitrieva, and Viacheslav Ivanov. The thesis argues that although aspects of the negative image of Catholicism in Russian literary culture remained fairly constant through this period of Russian history, the literary development of this image differed substantially from its development in polemics and essays. The literary sphere allowed Catholicism to be seen in a more open way. The treatment of Catholicism in poetry, novels and travel writing suggested that it be seen as a faith, just like Russian Orthodoxy. Writers depicting Catholicism in a positive light were striving for a universalism that they saw as the essence of being Russian. The thesis therefore reveals that while for some writers, ‘Russian’ and ‘Catholic’ were antithetical concepts, others had a receptive attitude to Catholicism, sometimes culminating in the act of conversion could be seen as a step towards the Universal and unity with the rest of humankind that all Russians should strive towards. 4 Contents Acknowledgements 6 Introduction 7 Part I: 1820-1853 20 Catholicism and Russian History, 1820-1853 20 Chapter 1: Catholicism in Russian Literary Culture, 1820-1836 25 Chaadaev’s ‘Lettres Philosophiques’ 25 ‘Apologie d’un Fou’: Responses to the ‘Lettres philosophiques’ 29 The Literary Sphere, 1820-1836 33 Conclusion 43 Chapter 2: The Writing of the Slavophiles and Tiutchev 44 The Slavophiles 44 Catholicism in Tiutchev’s Essays 51 Conclusion 58 Chapter 3: Nikolai Gogolʹ 59 Gogol′ in Rome: Confronting Catholicism 59 Accusations of Catholicism and Vybrannye mesta 70 Conclusion 76 Part II: 1854-1880 78 Catholicism and Russian History, 1854-1880 78 Chapter 4: Attitudes to Catholicism in the Era of Polemics 81 The 1850s: Russian Jesuits versus Slavophiles – Round One 81 The 1860s: Slavophiles versus Russian Jesuits, Round Two 90 Conclusion 101 Chapter 5: The Anti-Catholic poetry of Tiutchev 103 Tiutchev’s Poems and their Historical Context 104 The Image of the Pope 109 The Judgement of the Poet-Prophet 112 Conclusion 114 Chapter 6: Fedor Dostoevskii 116 Dostoevskii’s Image of Catholicism 117 Dostoevskii’s Answer to Catholicism 131 Conclusion 134 Part III: 1881-1909 137 Catholicism and Russian History, 1881-1909 137 Chapter 7: Vladmir Solovʹev 140 Solovʹev and Russian Literary Tradition 140 La Russie et l’Eglise Universelle 142 Catholicism in Solovʹev’s Literary Work 154 Conclusion 160 Chapter 8: Vasilii Rozanov 162 5 Rozanov and Literary Tradition 162 Rozanov’s Exploration of the Catholic World 167 Conclusion 179 Chapter 9: Dmitrii Merezhkovskii 181 Rome and the Third Rome 181 Saint and Sinner 188 Conclusion 195 Part IV: 1910-1949 197 Catholicism and Russian History, 1910-1949 197 Chapter 10: Russian Symbolist Poetry and Catholicism 199 Non nobis, Domine! 204 Ave Maria! 208 Anima Christi 211 Conclusion 214 Chapter 11: Viacheslav Ivanov 216 Ivanov’s Italy: Catholic Culture (1890-1924) 216 Ivanov in Rome: Conversion as Homecoming (1924-1949) 224 Ivanov and Literary Tradition 235 Conclusion: ‘Serdtse gordoe smirilos´’ 240 Conclusion 242 Bibliography 253 6 Acknowledgements I would like to thank the AHRC Master’s Research Preparation Scheme for funding my MA at SSEES UCL and the ESRC and CEELBAS for providing my CEELBAS PhD Scholarship. I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Pamela Davidson for her extraordinary support and advice throughout this project, and Dr Robin Aizlewood for helping to formulate the original proposal and for subsequent advice. Thanks are also owed to Dr Adam Ure for many interesting conversations and probing questions on matters relating to my thesis in the past four years. I am very grateful to Peter Harrison, Michael Harrison and Adam Ure for reading and commenting on my thesis. That being said, I am entirely responsible for any remaining errors. This thesis is dedicated to my parents, my mother Catherine Harrison (1954-2012) and my father Peter Harrison, the rocks on whom I am built. Mosaic of St Peter from the St Paul Chapel, Westminster Cathedral, designed by Boris Anrep and Justin Vulliamy, 1964. 7 Introduction ‘When one reads Dostoyevsky – I believe that for us all he must be an author to read and reread, because he has wisdom – one perceives what the Russian spirit is, the Eastern spirit. It is something that will do us so much good. We are in need of this renewal, of this fresh air of the East, of this light of the East.’ (Pope Francis, conversation with journalists, August 2013)1 Замкнулась тяжелая дверь. Во храме мы собраны к требе. Мы стали как дети теперь. Мы дома, мы снова на небе!2 On the face of it this extract from a simple poem ‘V khrame’ (1930s) by the Russian Symbolist poet Lev Kobylinskii-Ellis (1879-1947) is unextraordinary. Yet behind the poem lies an interesting story, for Ellis was a Russian who converted to Roman Catholicism in the 1930s, and Catholics were (and remain) a tiny minority in Russia. For many years Russians were legally discouraged, if not prohibited, from becoming Catholic. Ellis’s poem describes an imagined, or universal, Catholic church as a place where he felt at home, and this poem evokes his spiritual experience of worshipping there. This strikingly subjective vision is turned by the poet into an appeal to a universal concept of spirituality, religious experience and brotherhood that goes well beyond the realms of the personal. The fact that by the 1920s and 1930s Ellis (and some of his contemporaries) felt able to express their Catholic faith in their poetry reveals the considerable cultural and religious distance travelled from the negative reactions to the publication of one of the ‘Lettres philosophiques’ written by Petr Chaadaev (1794- 1856) a hundred years earlier. This thesis charts the ground covered between these two points and seeks to explain how such a change came about. This study presents a cultural history of the development of the image of Catholicism in Russia in the period between the Napoleonic Wars and the end of the Second World War, a pivotal period in the formation of Russian national identity. Although Catholics are a minority in Russia, they have been a majority in Western Europe for centuries. The tension between the pervasive historical-cultural influence of Catholicism and Russian attempts to counter this influence has had a major, yet little 1 Transcript and translation of an interview with journalists, see http://www.indcatholicnews.com/news.php?viewStory=23070, accessed 8/08/13. 2 Lev Kobylinskii-Ellis, ‘V khrame,’ from Krest i lira, in Ellis, Stikhotvoreniia, Tomsk: Vodolei, 1996, p. 270. 8 charted impact on Russian thought and literature. This research examines key texts taken from a wide range of sources and genres, including poetry, novels, essays, travel impressions, literary criticism and correspondence. The focus is on published or widely known texts, but also embraces ‘private’ genres such as personal letters. It is not a comprehensive study of literary works, nor of all polemics and correspondence touching on Catholicism, but it aims to analyse key examples in various genres and from different points in time in order to illuminate the trajectory of the image of Catholicism through this era. The thesis does not discuss the ecumenical movement in detail, nor does it go into depth on questions of theology, philosophy or ecclesiology, but instead takes an approach grounded in the disciplines of cultural history, intellectual history and literary analysis. No attempt will be made to compare Russian Orthodoxy and Catholicism; the aim is to analyse the images of Catholicism created by Russian writers in order to gain insight into the development of this tradition through their works. This tradition unfolded against a historical background that tended to marginalize Catholicism. As is well known, Russia has been an Orthodox country since it was Christianized, and never underwent a Reformation in the sense that many Catholic countries did. The notion of what it means to be Russian is partly based on the historical legend (laid out in the Primary Chronicle and elsewhere) that the ancestors of modern Russians ‘chose’ Orthodox Christianity over Islam and Catholicism. As the envoys reported to Prince Vladimir: И пришли мы к немцам [i.e. Catholics] и видели их службу, но красоты не видели никакой. И пришли мы в Греческую землю, и ввели нас туда, где служат они Богу своему, и не знали мы — на небе или на земле: ибо нет на земле такого зрелища и красоты такой, и не знаем, как и рассказать об этом, — знаем мы только, что пребывает там Бог с людьми, и служба их лучше, чем во всех других странах.3 This re-telling of the choice of Orthodoxy over Catholicism by reference to beauty as a guiding principle rather than to any socio-political motivation (although this was, in reality, a major factor) foregrounds the importance of aesthetic criteria in matters of religion and a mystical sense of the Divine present in Orthodox liturgy. However, the extract implies that the particularity of the rites seen in Byzantium could unite believers by a universal sense of what was beautiful and spiritually correct.