Gnosticism and Mallarmé: on one translation case

Abstract

The most original concept of Gnosticism proposed in the Russian scholarship by Marianna Trofimova, takes into account experience of modernist poetry, due to which the researcher reinterpreted the relationship of fact, interpretation, personal revelation and social experience in the early Gnosticism. M. Trofimova brought Gnosticism closer to the aesthetics of symbolism, while her consideration of Gnosticism as a social phenomenon partly ignored aesthetic side of this mystical movement. Aesthetic Gnosticism was completely conceptualized by M. Trofimova’s adepts. On the example of translations Stéphane Mallarmé’s poetry, made by Olga Sedakova, the productivity of such an interpretation of Gnosticism is proved both for the development of Russian poetry and for clarifying the relationship between social and individual aesthetic experience in crucial periods of culturalprogress.

Keywords

• gnosis
• gnosticism
• stéphane mallarmé
• marianna trofimova
• olga sedakova
• translation
• religious art
• poetry of modernism
• ecstasy
• social cognition
• phenomenology of creativity