The Three Philosophical and Critical Books by Vyacheslav Ivanov
as the Artistic Unity and the Cultural and Philosophical Manifesto

The article deals with the three philosophical and critical books by
Vyacheslav Ivanov: «Po zvezdam» (By the stars, 1909), «Borozdy i Mezhy»
(Furrows and Boundaries, 1916) and «Rodnoe i Vselenskoe» (Matters Native
and Universal, 1917) making a supertext unity, as the title implies. The author
describes in detail the planes of themes and ideas, compositional and architectonical
planes, images and symbols, stylistic plane in each book; analyzes the
correspondences between Ivanov’s poetry and philosophical and critical heritage
and directly between these books, and deals with genre of the book. Also,
the article is devoted to the place of Ivanov’s books in the critical, philosophical
and political polemics of the early 20th century.
The invariability of Ivanov's philosophical, aesthetic, and critical attitudes is
inherent both in his poetic books and in the books of his articles. In the light of
the book’s creation theory («knigotvorchestvo») in the beginning of 20th century,
the book «Po zvezdam» can be read as a manifesto of the world-building
symbolism art, based not only on aesthetic, but also on social and psychological
targets, determining the boundaries of personal and social spiritual development.
But with the thematic diversity, the book puts forward the ideas of reconstructing
the individual’s personal consciousness of the individual, formulates the
central position for Ivanov’s creativity «Thou art» («Ty esi»). The book «Borozdy
i Mezhy» carries on developing the author's personal philosophy of life,
that allows us to sum up the symbolism art results of the 1900s and outline ways
out of the symbolism art crisis (the main keynote is to overcome death). The
third book «Rodnoe i Vselenskoe» published during the Russian revolution and
including the articles written at the time of the World War, first of all, proclaims
religious rebirth and renewal as the general goal of Russia, the Slavic people
and Christianity. The First World War and the Revolution with all possible risks
are understood by Ivanov as a real opportunity to achieve this goal.
The utopia of the personal and universal spiritual self-determination is supported
by Ivanov’s conception of the world cultural development (primarily, of
literature), forming a powerful intertextual plan of his articles making some kind
of generalized cultural and philisophical model of the world. Through the prism
of this model he also considers the cultural facts of the present, the facts of the
history of literature and the facts of the Russian domestic and foreign policies.