“Memories of a Strange Man, Andrei Bely” as a diary of states of consciousness

Abstract

The article discusses the autobiographical practices of Andrei Bely in the “Memories of a Strange Man” (1918–19) and other publications, later in one form or another included in “Notes of an Eccentric” (1922). It is shown that the works in question differ from “ordinary” autobiographical and memoir texts by the fact that their author deliberately ignores the details of everyday life and focuses on the reconstruction of his spiritual journeys, on tracing and analyzing the ecstatic moments of mystical illuminations that are constitutive for the process of the rise of his self-conscious “I”. At the same time, ego-documents serve as a means of objectifying of “states of consciousness”, repression of traumatic experiences by transferring them from existential plan into speech acts (illocutionary or perlocutionary) that facilitate self-identification, self-reflection and, ultimately, creative recreation of oneself.

Keywords

• andrei bely
• “memories of a strange man
• andrei bely”
• “notes of an eccentric”
• william wordsworth
• spots of time
• fyodor dostoevsky
• friedrich nietzsche
• plato’s anamnesis
• peak experience
• abraham maslow
• oceanic feeling
• moments of spiritual awakening
• teleology
• wilhelm wundt
• rudolf steiner
• inner and external biography
• the actual and the possible
• autobiography