“God is All. All Becomes God”: Religious and philosophical creed of “early” Vladimir Solovyov and its first readers

Abstract

The article presents an unknown text by Vl. Solovyov under the working title “God is All. All Becomes God”, which formulates briefly the religious and philosophical creed of the thinker in the second half of the 1870s and 1880s. The text has been preserved in draft and final versions. The article discusses the reflection and development of final manuscript abstracts in Solovyov’s works of the mid 1870 and 1880s.; necessary comments are given. On its example, the question is posed, whether Vl. Solovyov’s ideas were possibly adopted by Younger Symbolists from his unpublished manuscripts which relate to the treatise “La Sophia”. Based on the analysis of memoir sources, it is concluded that Moscow Younger Symbolists were the first readers of a number of these manuscripts. The hypothesis is put forward that “early” Solovyov’s numerous extracts of Sofia's themes from thinkers of Western esoterism could affect the reading circle of Andrei Bely in the first decade of the 20th century. In order to compare reading circles, the article presents an unknown analytical list compiled by the young philosopher and entitled “Hermetic books. Kabbalah Gnosis”, which particularizes the authors of esoteric schools that attracted Solovyov’s attention (and for the most part quoted by him), as well as the directions of their development. The appendix presents a fragment of the triad schemes of the “La Sophia” period.

Keywords

• vladimir solovyov
• v. solovyov’s manuscripts
• divine sophia
• younger symbolism
• andrei bely
• russian religious philosophy
• western esoterism