Pavel Florenskij and Andrey Belyj – The Magic of Word and Symbol

Abstract

Pavel Florenskij and Andrey Belyj – The Magic of Word and Symbol. – Symbolists inspired by Plato understood word ontologically – word interconnects higher substance with a thing placed in the phenomenal world and thus it changes the thing according to the perfect idea. An exquisite role is played here by a poet and mystic. A symbolistic poet was a tool used for interpreting higher truths. Andrey Belyj can be taken as a typical example of such a poet and Pavel Florenskij, a mystic was, at the beginning, inspired by a prayer where the name of “God” was being proclaimed. Certainly, we cannot limit the thinkers this way. For example Florenskij was also a scientist and mathematician although he compared his abstract theories to his own religious experience.
Florenskij belongs to important theoreticians of Russian symbolism. He understands it as an attitude to world, culture and human life as whole. His viewing of symbolism was influenced by Belyj. What connected them, was mathematics – they both studied it at the same university in Moscow – and the approach to word and symbol.
In the first part of the article we investigate the influences reflected in Florenskij’s thinking about word and antinomy. In the second part we analyze reflection of Florenskij’s aesthetic-philosophical concepts in the ideological and creative world of Belyj, the attention being paid especially to his understanding of word and symbol.