“Siloam of Blindness”: Valery Bryusov’s Insights and Delusions Regarding the Tragedy by Vyacheslav Ivanov “Prometheus”

Valery Bryusov became the author of the first printed response to the tragedy by V. Ivanov “Prometheus” (1919). Researchers interpret the pathos of Bryusov’s response diametrically opposite, calling it either harsh and negative, or restrained and cautious. Bryusov, indeed, criticizes Ivanov for the inconsistency of ancient culture and the arbitrariness of the interpretation of the Prometheus myth. Specifically, Bryusov believes that Ivanov invents a new meaning for Pandora, and modernizes Prometheus, putting Nietzschean and his own ideas into it. Relying on the works of German classical philologists of the 19–20th centuries, we show that, when developing the Prometheus theme, Ivanov focuses on the modern scientific idea of the Prometheus myth, without distorting anything and achieving the effect of novelty in an Alexandrian refined selection of mythological material and a bold compilation of motifs and features illuminated by tradition. Thus, the ancient genesis has such features of Pandora as her creation by Prometheus, linked with the theft of fire and the completion of human creation, the Dionysian and titanic character of Pandora, her marital relationship with Prometheus and the relationship with agriculture. To Bryusov, such features of Prometheus as demiurgy and the relationship with Dionysus might seem alien to antiquity. They are absent from Aeschylus and Hesiod, but they were also founded in antiquity. Bryusov is the first to note the Nietzschean character of Ivanov’s “Prometheus”. Ivanov retains the main features of the Nietzschean concept of Prometheus: God-fighting, the idea of the activity of sin, Prometheism and Luciferism of culture. The scheme of tragedy, which Ivanov offers at the end of his preface to the work, is also connected with the “Birth of Tragedy”. Bryusov also subtly captures the Ivanov’s layer in Prometheus. It consists primarily in the inclusion in the Promethean myth of the concept of “You are”: Prometheus appears as a male, personal self, God-defying opposing the divine self (Animus), and Pandora — first as a wandering Psyche, and then as a Psyche-avenger (Anima). Bryusov’s response to the Ivanov’s tragedy could have been due to his close acquaintance with the process of creating the work. Bryusov becomes one of Ivanov’s confidants, who is informed about the stages of work on “Prometheus”, the idea of which is formed during the period of mutual interest in Nietzsche on the part of both poets.