The Icon and the Axe

Particularly pervasive was Prometheanism: the belief that man- when fully aware of his true powers-is capable of totally transforming the world in which he lives. The figure of Prometheus, the Greek Titan chained to a mountain by Zeus for giving fire and the arts to mankind, had long held a certain fascination for radical romantics. Marx- had idealized this legendary figure; and Goethe, Byron, and Shelley had elaborated the legend in their writings. Now the Russians, as they plunged more deeply into the mythological world of antiquity, also turned admiring eyes to Prometheus.

Merezhkovsky translated Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound; others read Prometheus und Epimetheus of the Swiss Nietzschean, Carl Spitteler, or La scommessa di Prometeo of Leopardi. Ivanov wrote a Prometheus of his own in 1918, and objects as far afield as a leading publishing house and a key musical composition of Scriabin bore the name Prometheus. Revolutionary admirers of Beethoven in Russia as elsewhere saw themselves as "creatures of Prometheus" and hailed the Prometheus theme in the last movement of their hero's Eroica Symphony, in which Beethoven was thought to defy Christian doctrine about man by shouting "in a voice of thunder: 'No, thou art not dust, but indeed the Master of the Earth.' "17

Russians of this period sought like Prometheus to bring fire and the arts to humanity. Thus, their interest in questions of form and technique did not, for the most part, create indifference to social questions, but rather excitement over the possibility of solving them with the alchemy of art. Moreover, increased interest in contemporary European culture did not imply indifference to Russian tradition. On the contrary, the amassing in Russia of unparalleled collections of contemporary French art and the popularization of a wide variety of contemporary Western art on the shimmering pages of The World of Art (Mir iskusstva) coincided with the rediscovery, restoration, and reproduction of icons and the development of a new, more spiritualized form of religious art by figures like Michael Nestorov.

The diversity of Russian culture in the late imperial period is exemplified by the three most widely discussed events in Russian culture during the last year before the outbreak of World War I: the first performance of Stravinsky's ultra-modern, neo-pagan "Rite of Spring," the opening of the first large exhibit of fully restored ancient icons and the "futurist tour" of a group of avant-garde poets and painters. The first event took place in Paris, the second in Moscow, and the third in seventeen provincial cities. But there was little sense of conflict. As in the golden age of Pushkin, Russians of the silver age sought answers that would be equally applicable for all mankind. The preceding age of Alexander II and III and the succeeding age of Stalin were far more parochial. Populists and Pan-Slavs under the Alexanders were interested mainly in the peculiar possibilities of Russia: just as Stalinists concentrated on "socialism in one country." Populists, Pan-Slavs, and Stalinists all looked to the West primarily to learn from its natural scientists and social theorists. But Russian thinkers in this period looked at the full spectrum of Western artistic and spiritual experience.

With the enthusiasm of fresh converts, Russian artists saw in the newly discovered world of art something to be enjoyed for its own sake and exalted for the sake of all mankind. The term "Russian Renaissance,"

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VI. THE UNCERTAIN COLOSSUS

1. Crescendo

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which is sometimes used to describe the cultural activity of the early twentieth century, is appropriate in suggesting a similarity with the love of art and exaltation of human creative powers of the Italian Renaissance. Art offered Promethean possibilities for linking Russia with the West, man with man, and even this world with the next.

The exciting possibilities of creative art tended to lure many away from democratic socialism or liberalism which should perhaps have commanded the allegiance of the educated anti-authoritarian intellectuals. Nicholas Berdiaev, who had been interested in social democracy in the 1890's, reflected the new indifference to piecemeal reformism when he said almost derisively of the representative Duma of 1906: "These Russian Girondists will not save Russia, for something great and important is necessary to accomplish such a salvation."18 Creativity, he argued, was the only way in which the human spirit can free itself from "the prison" of ordinary life:

The idea behind every creative art is the creation of another way of life … the breaking through from "this world" … the chaos laden, distorted world to the free and beautiful cosmos.19