“I’m interested not in a man but his attitude to Mystery” (symbolism of early Andrei Bely: theurgy and ethics of the artist)

Abstract

The author of the article analyzes the formation process of symbolism esthetics in creative work of A. Bely - the ideological leader of “argonaut” society. The study is based on his early theoretical publications, memoirs of his contemporaries and his own memoirs in which he doesn’t only restore the atmosphere of eschatological hopes of Moscow Solovyov-followers for “the end of the world history” and rebirth of humans, but also subjects the ideas of “the beginning of the century” of inevitable and bitter correction. Underlining that the discovered by Bely “the antimony between private life and life in ideas” was unconquerable (the poet’s break up with N.I. Petrovskaya), the author of the article unlike his predecessors doesn’t absolve the poet (as a person and as a theoretician of theurgic symbolism) from the guilt over it.

Keywords

• Андрей Белый
• аргонавтизм
• Н.И. Петровская
• символизм
• теургия
• «ми-стерия человеческих отношений»
• этика