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Abstract:

Vyacheslav Ivanov’s article “Beside life” (1916), published on the occasion of the first performance of the play “Joy will come” in the Moscow Art Theatre, is examined as a summary characteristic of D. Merezhkovsky’s religious and journalistic activity. V. Nemirovich-Danchenko treated the play as a work about the conflict between “fathers” and “children”. He emphasized the character of the former Narodnik, who is joined by Katya from the religious youth. For Merezhkovsky, Katya’s character personified the readiness of young forces inspired by non-church forms of religion and prepared for political action. The author’s dissatisfaction with the interpretation of the play emerged in his discussion of the performance with the cast and in the article “What joy will come”, which remained unpublished. Ivanov singled out in the play, similarly to Nemirovich-Danchenko, the character of Katya and the promise of a “miracle”, as well as an attempt to establish the theory of religious communality by overcoming Dostoevsky. The accusations made by Merezhkovsky against Dostoevsky were rebutted by Ivanov in his article “The visage and visards of Russia. On the study of Dostoevsky’s ideology” (1917). By “visage” and “visards” he does not refer to Dostoevsky, as in the article “The prophet of the Russian revolution (To the anniversary of Dostoevsky)” (1906). Instead, these relate to the spiritual states of Russia personified, in his opinion, by characters of “The Brothers Karamazov”. In this sense, an interpretation of Dostoevsky built upon distortion of his thoughts and imbued with ideas (poisons, in Ivanov’s terms) of “Western civicness and scholarship” is regarded as an example of Luciferic Russia, rather than the one Ivanov saw Dostoevsky as a prophet of.