Merezhkovskii, Dmitrii
MEREZHKOVSKII, DMITRII
MEREZHKOVSKII, DMITRII (1865–1941), chief proselytizer of the religious renaissance in Russia in the early twentieth century. Scion of an eminent Saint Petersburg aristocratic family, Merezhkovskii was educated at the Third Classical Gymnasium and at the Historical-Philological Faculty of the University of Saint Petersburg (1884–1888). Interested in metaphysical and existential issues, he dissented from the positivism and materialism of his contemporaries and searched, all his life, for a new and all-encompassing higher ideal.
In the 1890s, he championed mystical idealism as the bridge between the atheistic intelligentsia and the believing peasantry, campaigned against mandatory social didacticism in literature, introduced Russians to French symbolism and the philosophy of Nietzsche, and reintroduced them to classical antiquity and the Renaissance. Versatile and erudite, he expressed his ideas in poetry, literary criticism, essays, novels, and plays. Major works of this period are Symbols (1892), a book of poems; "On the Causes of the Decline of Russian Literature and on the New Trends in Poetry" (1893), an influential essay sometimes considered the manifesto of Russian symbolism; New Verse (1896); and The Outcaste (1895), later retitled Death of the Gods, a historical novel about Julian the Apostate. Attracted by pagan values of earthly happiness and Christian ideals of personal immortality and love, and unable to choose between them, by 1896 Merezhkovskii had concluded that Christianity and paganism were two halves of a yet unknown higher truth.
Around 1900, Merezhkovskii advanced a new interpretation of Christianity, designed to synthesize the "truth of heaven" and the "truth of the earth," and based on the second coming of Christ and on a forthcoming third testament. Proclaiming a new religious consciousness that stressed the human need for faith and religious quest, he dismissed historical Christianity as obsolete and rejected the asceticism, altruism, and humility preached by Russian Orthodox Christianity. Major works of this period include Tolstoy as Man and Artist with an Essay on Dostoevskii (1901–1902), which treats these writers as exemplars of the religious principles of the flesh and the spirit respectively; Birth of the Gods: Leonardo da Vinci (1901); and Antichrist: Peter and Alexis (1905). Together with Julian the Apostate, the last two comprise his historical trilogy, Christ and Antichrist.
To disseminate their views (sometimes called "God-seeking views"), Merezhkovskii, his wife Zinaida Gippius, and Dmitrii Filosofov founded the Religious Philosophical Society of Saint Petersburg (November 1901–April 1903). The society, which featured debates between intellectuals and clergymen on burning issues of the day, became a focal point of the religious renaissance. The minutes of the meetings were published in the Merezhkovskiis' review, Novyi putʾ (New Path, 1902–1904), founded as a showcase for the new trends in art and thought. Permitted to reopen in 1907, after the Revolution of 1905, branches of the society were later founded in Moscow and in Kiev. Through these public activities and through his writings, Merezhkovskii's ideas reached a wide audience, challenged traditional verities, inspired other reinterpretations of Christianity, and even stimulated the Bolshevik secular religion of "God-building," which featured worship of the collective spirit of humanity instead of God.
The Revolution of 1905 led Merezhkovskii to consider social and political questions. He interpreted it as the first stage of a great religious revolution that would usher in the kingdom of God on earth. He denounced autocracy as a tool of the Antichrist, and advocated religious community, viewed as a kind of Christian anarchism, as the solution to social conflict. Hostile to Marxist materialism and collectivism, he claimed that socialism stifles creativity and argued that Jesus Christ is the supreme affirmation of the individual. Major works of this period are Dostoevskii: Prophet of the Russian Revolution (1906), The Coming Ham (1906), and Not Peace but a Sword (1908). He opposed Russia's entry into World War I, welcomed the February Revolution, but regarded the Bolshevik regime as the reign of the Antichrist. He cooperated with attempts to overthrow it, both before and after his emigration in 1919, until his death in Paris, in 1941.
Bibliography
Most of Merezhkovskii's important works can be found in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 24 vols. (Saint Petersburg, 1911–1914). Works in English translation include Death of the Gods (London, 1901), The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci (London, 1902), Peter and Alexis (London, 1905), The Menace of the Mob (New York, 1921), and an abridged version of Tolstoi as Man and Artist (Westminster, England, 1902). Useful secondary literature includes my own D. S. Merezhkovsky and the Silver Age (The Hague, 1975); Charles H. Bedford's The Seeker: D. S. Merezhkovskiy (Lawrence, Kans., 1975); D. S. Merezhkovskii: Myslʾ i slogo (D. S. Merezhkovskii, Thought and word), edited by A V. Keldysh, I.V. Koretskaia, M. A. Nikitina, and N. V. Koroleva (Moscow, 1999); and D. S. Mereshkovskii: pro et contra, edited by D. K. Burlak et al. (St. Petersburg, 2001).
Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal (1987 and 2005)