Vladimir Sergeyevich Soloviev

Vladimir Sergeyevich Soloviev , 1853-1900, Russian religious philosopher and poet; son of Sergei Mikhailovich Soloviev. Soloviev believed in the incarnation of divine wisdom in a being called Sophia, a concept that greatly influenced the young symbolist poets, especially Blok. He advocated a synthesis of Eastern and Western churches in Russia and the Universal Church, which he wrote in French in 1889 (tr. 1948). The imminent coming of the Antichrist was the theme of his Three Conversations on War, Progress, and the End of History (1899, tr. 1915). The best known of his mystical poems is Three Meetings (1899), which describes his visions of Sophia. Soloviev is also noted for political writings and literary criticism.

Bibliography: See biography by M. d'Herbigny (1918); studies by E. Munzer (1956) and P. M. Allen (1973).

Soloviev, Vladimir (1853–1900). Russian poet and philosopher. From 1873 he was a friend of Dostoevsky. As a poet, he was a leader of the Symbolists; as a philosopher, he was influenced by German idealism and gnostic occultism; as a theologian, he was a proponent of visible unity with Rome, after initial sympathy with the Slavophils. Underlying all was a vision of Sophia (Wisdom), the creative and redemptive feminine principle, providing a fragile coherence increasingly threatened by apocalyptic disaster.