AATSEEL 2000: Washington, DC Conference Program Non-Panel Events Time: December 27, 2:00–5:00 p.m. Event: Executive Council Meeting Time: December 27, 3:00–9:00 p.m. Event: Exhibitor Setup (Exhibitors Only) Time: December 27, 4:00–8:00 p.m. Event: Conference Registration Time: December 27, 5:00–7:00 p.m. Event: Program Committee Meeting Time: December 27, 7:00–9:00 p.m. Event: AWSS Interviewing Workshop (Open to the Public, Preregistration Not Required) Time: December 28, 7:30 a.m.–7:00 p.m. Event: Conference Registration Time: December 28, 9:00 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Event: Exhibits Open Time: December 28, 5:00–7:00 p.m. Event: ACTR Board Meeting Time: December 28, 7:00–9:00 p.m. Event: Reception for Friends of the Middlebury and Norwich Russian Schools Time: December 28, 7:00–9:00 p.m. Event: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Reception Time: December 28, 7:30–8:30 p.m. Event: Committee on College and Pre-College Russian (CCPCR) Meeting Time: December 28, 9:00 p.m. Event: AATSEEL President’s Reception and Awards Recognitions, with entertainment by the Luther College Balalaika Ensemble (Laurie Iudin-Nelson, Director) Time: December 29, 7:30 a.m.–7:00 p.m. Event: Conference Registration Time: December 29, 8:00 a.m.–10:00 a.m. Event: Slava/Olympiada Breakfast for Pre-College Teachers of Russian Time: December 29, 9:00 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Event: Exhibits Open Time: December 29,10:15 a.m.–10:45 a.m. Event: AATSEEL Business Meeting and General Session Time: December 29, 10:45 a.m.–12:00 p.m. Event: Vision 20/20 Time: December 29, 4:00–7:00 p.m. Event: Indiana University Reception Time: December 29, 5:15–6:30 p.m. Event: ACTR General Membership Meeting Time: December 29, 7:00–11:00 p.m. Event: ACTR Twenty-Fifth-Anniversary Reception Time: December 30, 7:00–10:00 a.m. Event: Executive Council Meeting Time: December 30, 9:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m. Event: Exhibits Open Time: December 30, 12:00–1:00 p.m. Event: Program Committee Meeting Time: December 30, 1:30–2:30 p.m. Event: Silent Book Auction Panels Time: 28A Panel: 28A-1: Philosophy and Russian Modernism Chair: Jane Gary Harris, University of Pittsburgh Equipment: Overhead projector Slot: December 28, 2000, 8:00–10:00 a.m. From the “Blossoming Heart” to the “Rose of the World.” Daniil Andreev and Russian Symbolism Alexei Bogdanov, University of Colorado Daniil Andreev’s recently discovered visionary writings require a thorough examination in the light of the occult tradition in literature and philosophy. The works of Russian symbolists, whom Andreev called “my teachers and my ancient and stainless love,” provide an important link between the author of “The Rose of the World” and earlier sources of his knowledge and inspiration, both Western (Pythagoreans, Gnostics, Neoplatonists, Dante, Swedenborg, Blake, Romanticists, and Vladimir Solov′ev, among others) and Eastern (particularly Hindu and Buddhist). “Frighteningly, to a shudder, Andrej Belyj’s ‘heart is blossoming,’” Aleksandr Blok wrote in 1902. Blok was extolling Belyj’s emerging theory of symbolism as a “renewal of the oppressive Kantian epistemology.” Belyj’s goal was to reconcile the practice of symbolist poetry as spontaneous mystical creation with a conceptual system that would establish symbolism as an elaborate contemporary theory of cognition. In this paper, I argue that Andreev’s account and analysis of his mystical experiences related to artistic expression—his “metacriticism”—serves the same purpose and further develops the conceptual framework of symbolism as visionary art. For example, Belyj employed Solov′ev’s teaching of universal love, with its emphasis on the spiritual meaning of Sophia (the Divine Wisdom, the World Soul—a notion that originated in Ancient Greece and was later embraced by Christianity, especially by Byzantine and Russian Orthodoxy), in his interpretation of Blok’s poetic visions of the Beautiful Lady. Andreev, an admirer of Solov′ev, even acknowledges the Eternal Feminine as one of the three persons comprising the Trinity, but he claims to be able to identify the actual object of Blok’s vision more accurately—as Navna, “the Ideal Collective Soul of the Russian metaculture.” For Belyj, Blok was a true visionary whose poetic revelations of unseen worlds provided ample material for anagogic conceptualization. For Andreev, Blok (who had died long before the conception of “The Rose of the World”) meant even more: he was one of his “friends of the heart,” whose assistance in his transphysical (mystical) journeys Andreev compares to the guidance provided to Dante by Virgil. However, Andreev the metacritic does not hesitate to subject Blok to scrutiny, incorporating him and his poetry into a whole panorama of heralds— artists with a special spiritual mission. Andreev’s detailed descriptions of the transphysical planes and events that affect inspired artistic creation supply the kind of evidence that Belyj had been seeking in his anthropological studies under the guidance of Rudolph Steiner. Thus, continuing the occult tradition in literature and philosophy, Andreev adds another interesting dimension to the “profound kind of criticism” attempted by Belyj and other symbolists, his teachers. Cvetaeva's Ethics of Individuality: An Idiosyncratic Adaptation of Nietzsche's Thought Ute Stock, Cambridge University Well acquainted with his work, Cvetaeva saw Nietzsche as a kindred spirit. Yet this view depended on a highly selective, idiosyncratic reading of him. Analyzing Cvetaeva’s essay “Iskusstvo pri svete sovesti ”(“Iskusstvo”), which demonstrates the seminal influence of her ethical thought on her aesthetics, I highlight significant parallels between her thought and that of the younger Nietzsche. However, Cvetaeva’s refusal of Nietzsche’s later rejection of the transcendental—she actively misreads his last letters, signed as “The Crucified,” as an indication of his longing for the metaphysical—is crucial for an understanding of her ethics. Cvetaeva’s description of inspiration as a Dionysian, intoxicating visitation by the elemental, as the bliss of surrendering one’s own subjectivity, recalls Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy. Yet, stressing the supernatural source of creative energy, Cvetaeva resembles Nietzsche’s “superstitious” creator, the humble mouthpiece of an otherwordly force. Cvetaeva openly admitted her reluctance to share Nietzsche’s denial of the transcendental. Although she was not a spiritual person, Orthodoxy played a significant part in her self-definition as a Russian poet; she saw religion and morality as inextricably linked. Accepting the need for the existing moral standards, she never undertook a Nietzschean wholesale critique of morality, not even in “Iskusstvo.” Yet the insight into the fleeting nature of truth led her to experiment with provisional, individual ways of moral evaluation. In “Iskusstvo”, Cvetaeva undermined her own argument of an overwhelming creative force, by pointing to the poet’s potential for resistance. Locating a salvational element in art, which evokes Nietzsche’s Apollonian moment in tragedy, she recognized the poet’s responsibility, constrained only by the reader’s freedom of interpretation, which Nietzsche neglected. Extraordinary and isolated, Cvetaeva’s poet and Nietzsche’s sovereign individual are alike; they experience both disdain for others and the need to teach. Nietzsche’s master is distinguished by the wish to explore all aspects of human experience, Cvetaeva’s poet by the desire to transcend it, bridging the empirical and the metaphysical realms. Hence Cvetaeva’s readiness for self-sacrifice, clearly recalling the image of Christ. Unwilling to negate the transcendental, Cvetaeva nevertheless doubted the poet’s ability to access it. Destabilizing the categories of good and evil, the violence of the Revolution and the Civil War had rendered the transcendental unknowable. The concept of truth had become problematic: it could no longer depend on an absolute for justification. Instead of abolishing moral evaluation, Cvetaeva put forward an individual way of judging, strongly reminiscent of Nietzsche’s emphasis on the personal nature of evaluation: judgments needed to remain open to revision in the light of further insights into the truth. Her entire oeuvre constitutes a performance of this ethics of individuality: in its elusive character, it enacts the fleeting nature of truth. Cvetaeva’s emphasis on her own self cannot be disqualified as subjectivism; it demonstrates the multiple nature of individuality, prevents it from becoming a static absolute, and constitutes an overt protest against the subjugation of the individual by claims to universal truth. This acquires a political significance in Cvetaeva’s age of totalitarianism and the cult of the collective: much of Cvetaeva’s work is marked by a political engagement out of ethical necessity. Cvetaeva’s ethics of individuality is not without its difficulties: the relation to the Other remains problematic throughout, and Cvetaeva disregards the need for a passage from an ethics of individuality to an ethics of community. From a Nietzschean viewpoint, her desire for the transcendental prevented her from affirming the indeterminable nature of human existence in this world. However, Cvetaeva’s need for metaphysical certainty stems rather from the conviction that she is ultimately unable to solve ethical problems without it. Despite the contradictions in her ethical thought—respect for the Other and the need for self-affirmation, art for art’s sake and the poet as prophet, desire for and suspicion of the otherworldly—, Cvetaeva must be admired for her readiness to explore these contradictions to their full depth, regardless of the tragic personal cost. Shadows Cast Things: Kržižanovskij and the Epistemological Debate Karen Rosenflanz, Independent Scholar In 1932, Maksim Gor′kij refused to assist Sigizmund Kržižanovskij in his efforts to publish his work. Gor′kij wrote to Kržižanovskij’s friend: “The majority of humanity doesn’t care about philosophy, however it may be expressed … .