The Russian Symbolist Viacheslav Ivanov on Aesthetic Experience as Religious

Viacheslav Ivanov (1866, Moscow–1949, Rome) is one of the most prominent Russian symbolist poets and a leading theorist of symbolism at the beginning of the twentieth century. The article demonstrates that Ivanov understood art (and, more broadly, aesthetic experience) as one of the most effective forms of contact between the human being and the spiritual world, as well as with its first cause. Ivanov distinguishes between three “aesthetic principles” of the universe, which all together constitute “the beautiful”—the sublime, beauty, and the chaotic—and links them to the three stages of being of the artist in the process of creative activity. The artist first passes through the chthonian, subconscious stage of demonic chaos. Next, artists undergo the process of ascent into the ideal, spiritual sphere, where they gain experience, which cannot be expressed in words. After that, the process of the descent of the artist towards the earth takes place, where artists attempt to express in the form of artistic symbols the experience that they have acquired. Ivanov sees the artistic symbol as a materially given structure, which nevertheless cannot be described in words. This structure not only expresses a spiritual essence, but also really and energetically manifests it. Hence, Ivanov sees the creator of high, symbolic art (“realist symbolism”) as an artist-theurge (theurgy is the art of the future, of the future mystery on the basis of a synthesis of the arts that receives divine assistance), who contributes to the augmentation of being. For the recipient, the artistic symbol is anagogical (from the Greek ἀναγογή, “leading up”). It leads one up from the real world to a more real one (a realibus ad realiora). According to Ivanov, both the symbol and its content, myth, are of divine origin; they are “embodiments of the divine truth.” Therefore, high art is one of the principal ways of one’s ascent to spiritual reality by means of sensory reality.