“O my radiant world, my game, my awakening ... of feelings of the unknown, the playing stream. Still, still, different, new, stronger, more tender, new bliss, new torment, new game. Until I disappear, until I burn. I am a fire, I am chaos... My world, revel in my freedom... if you can, be free like me. If you dare, be equal to me ... I did not come to teach, but to caress (but to torment). I bring not truth, but freedom. I call you to life, hidden aspirations, disappearing in the chaos of sensations. Rise from the mysterious depths of the creative spirit. Hatred and death will be defeated, and there will be a common joy that is boundless... Oh world, my life, the rays of my dreams. I will dress you in the splendor of my dreams, I will cover the sky of your desires with the sparkling stars of my creations...
Love and fight .. do not be afraid of your desires. Do not be afraid of life, do not be afraid of suffering, for there is no greater victory over despair.
The whole world will be flooded by the wave of my being. I will be born in your consciousness with the desire of the insane bliss of the immeasurable. And the universe will resound with a joyful cry: “I am, - and this temple of voluptuousness will burn. I'll burn."
No, I didn't write it. I copied this text from a notebook recently found by me with my youthful abstracts of the sixth volume of the Russian Propylaea, 1919, published by M. Gershenzon. I found a notebook, read it, and there was a natural desire to look further. ..But first, let's get back to the notebook. These are abstracts of the notebooks of our great Alexander Nikolaevich Scriabin. I don’t know how anyone, but many years ago for me, an impressionable young man in love with Scriabin’s piano preludes, etudes and sonatas, it was a test to suddenly find out that in fact these are all “little things” compared to Scriabin’s desire to transform human consciousness through spiritual action , which he was going to realize through the majestic work he had conceived, "Mystery", embodying the synthesis of all arts, erasing the boundaries between art and nature. For the fulfillment of the Mystery within seven (!) days, thousands of participants would have to be involved. This creation was supposed to reflect the artistic and philosophical concept of the existence of mankind, and its execution - to stimulate the re-creation and renewal of mankind, in other words, to change the world.Before Scriabin, not a single artist or musician dared to do such a thing. AThe basis for such ideas was Alexander Nikolayevich's deep conviction that everything that exists is a product of an act of free creativity. His creativity.
The realization of the fantastic conception of the Mystery was preceded by Scriabin's work on the "Preliminary Act", so to speak, an introduction to the Mystery. Work, alas, tragically interrupted by the untimely death of Alexander Nikolaevich. Remainedseveral dozen sheets of rough drafts of the score, notebooks, poems. These notes were published by Gersheson in the collection I mentioned above. The recordings include not only Scriabin's philosophical research, but also the texts of the "Preliminary Action", as well as the "Poem of Ecstasy".
Reading Scriabin's notes turned my whole idea of him upside down; the feeling of mystical awe that arose then does not leave me to this day. And then I finally paid serious attention to his symphonic works, and in a way that I would not have done before getting acquainted with the idea of the Mystery.
"Prometheus" (Poem of Fire), Op. 60 (1911). Conductor E. Svetlanov, piano S. Richter
(alas, no record will convey the sound of Scriabin's symphonies in the hall)
Further, I want to continue with the words of our philosopher A.F. Losev. This is from my non-electronic library. As Losev (who himself called himself a failed musician) writes, the impetus for writing Scriabin's Worldview was a brilliant and informative lecture on the work of People's Commissar Lunacharsky, known for his outstanding oratorical abilities, Scriabin. Read Losev's work need in full. Saturated with quotes from Scriabin, it helps a lot to penetrate the essence of his philosophy and, despite the fact that, as an academic scientist should, when analyzing Scriabin “by the bones”, Losev points out his some naivety and inconsistency, as a philosopher, Alexei finishes his work Fedorovich with the following phrase:
Here are a few more quotes from Losev's work.
“To understand Scriabin means to understand the whole of Western European culture and all its tragic fate. Scriabin is one of those who has the stamp of a whole history on him, and it is easier on him than on anyone else to see what these long and dreary centuries of life we have lived have meant and what we have now come to. Scriabin does not exist outside of broad historical horizons. This man, who has loved a lot and learned a lot, does not fit into any isolated scheme, whether we take it from the present or from the past. This scheme, if possible, is very complex and iridescent, and it is necessary to outline it, at least in the shortest way, in order to judge Scriabin and his philosophy in any concrete and clear way.
“Even without Scriabin's music, reading only the text of his recordings, one cannot help but shudder before the boldness and unusualness of his expressions. So no one ever said. Such words were not uttered by any mouth. It surpasses in boldness anything we have ever read or heard. Here, perhaps, all the mysticism that mechanistic Europe was capable of fades.
“No one so loudly and boldly called himself God. Nietzsche's "Superhumanity" pales and seems insufficiently solid before Scriabin's individualism.
“... the world-divine Mystery of the “I” is accomplished in three acts - an indistinguishable aspiration and chaos of passion, a differentiated multitude and an aspiration to embrace everything, and, finally, the last ecstasy, as an embrace of everything and a return to nothing, to peace. Such is the brief formula of the mystery of the world and God.
“In describing the third stage of the divine Mystery — the all-encompassing fusion in ecstasy — Scriabin spared no colors. His friends say that this was his relentless dream of the last period.
“Everything is drowning in erotic Madness and Delight. There is no greater criticism of Western European culture than the work of Scriabin, and there is no more significant sign of the “decline of Europe” than this sweetness of ecstasy, in front of which the heavy mass of libraries and science is dust and dust, flying lighter than fluff.
“This madness of blood and sex, frenzy and ecstasy in unity with the divine flesh of the world, I did not find anywhere in European philosophy, art and religion.”
“In the individualistic anarchism of Scriabin, it is the highest achievement of European culture, but, according to the laws of dialectics, its highest negation. It is impossible to understand Scriabin without understanding and suffering these terrible centuries of modern European culture, in their difference from the Middle Ages. Only the independence and divinity of the “I”, which the new Europe dreams of, which destroyed religion and the church, only all these endless overflows of metaphysical and epistemological individualism make Scriabin and his incredible philosophy understandable.
«
Historically - Scriabin is the highest tension of Western European thought and "creativity and together - the end of it."
(A.F. Losev. 1919-1921)
BIOGRAPHY
Quest (continued)
These moods, merging with Scriabin's unshakable conviction in the great, life-changing power of art, led him to an idea that was a further development of the ideas of the finale of the First Symphony and the unrealized opera. It was the intention mysteries”, which from now on became the central matter of his life for him. "Mystery" was presented to Scriabin as a grandiose work in which all types of arts are combined - music, poetry, dance, architecture, etc. However, according to his idea, it should not have been a purely artistic work, but a very special collective "action ”, in which no more or less will take part, like all of humanity! It will not be divided into performers and listeners-spectators. The execution of the "Mystery" should entail some kind of grandiose world upheaval and the advent of some new era.
The formation of Scriabin's idea of the "Mystery" was influenced by the mystical "teachings" widespread among some of the intelligentsia. Scriabin imagined India to be the venue for the performance of the “Mystery”, the “action” was to be performed in a temple specially built for this with a dome in the shape of a hemisphere, standing on the shore of the lake so that, together with its reflection in the water, a ball shape was formed - the most perfect form.
In the idea of the "Mystery", despite its extreme phantasmagoria and isolation from reality, the specific historical situation of the era was reflected in its own way, albeit in a bizarrely distorted form. The feeling of the inevitable death of the existing system, the brewing crisis of bourgeois society was felt in their own way by those who welcomed the coming revolution, and those who feared it. In the minds of the idealistically and mystically inclined circles of the intelligentsia, the expectation of great social upheavals took the form of a premonition of "world catastrophes" and death, filled them with fear and aroused deeply pessimistic moods. This kind of mood found a particularly vivid reflection in the work of some symbolist poets.
However, unlike many of his contemporaries, Scriabin was fundamentally far from decadent, pessimistic moods. On the contrary, from the moment the idea of the "Mystery" arose, he was seized by a tremendous spiritual uplift. Realizing his main, as it seemed to him, life "mission", he is imbued with deep optimism. "Mystery" seemed to him a great, joyful holiday of the liberation of mankind, and the brewing social storms were perceived as signs of a gradual approach to this holiday. A little later, in 1906, he wrote to his former student M. Morozova: “The political revolution in Russia ... and the revolution that I want are different things, although, of course, this revolution, like any ferment, brings the onset of the desired moment."
Thus, an exceptionally complex relationship was formed between Scriabin's general worldview and his musical creativity. As is often the case in the history of art, an outstanding artist who sensitively felt and artistically truthful, embodying certain aspects of the reality around him with great power, turned out to be above his limited ideological views. Thanks to this, the musical works created by Scriabin during the years of full creative flowering are incommensurable in their objective content and historical significance with those idealistic philosophical ideas with which he subjectively associated his art.
From the moment the concept of The Mystery arose, it became for Scriabin the main, ultimate goal of his work. This idea was hatched by him until the last years of his life, while growing and expanding over the years. However, its grandiosity and, most importantly, the absolute fantasticness and real impracticability, which Scriabin himself, obviously, could not but realize in the end somewhere in the recesses of his soul, forced the composer to postpone the direct implementation of the Mystery plan, although some musical material gradually emerged from him.
4.2 The path to the "mystery" of A.N. Scriabin
One of the brightest representatives of the art of the "Silver Age" at the time of its rapid flowering is Alexander Nikolaevich Skryabin. For many decades, Russian musicology has been far from unambiguous in its assessment of his work - censorship considerations did not allow researchers to reveal the essential aspects of the music of the Russian genius, officially called the “idealist-mystic”.
Like many creators of the "Russian cultural renaissance", Scriabin had a special renewed outlook on the world and did not look for support in the artistic experience of his immediate predecessors. He is alien to the everyday life of the figurative sphere of critical realism, the soil-based attitudes of the "Kuchkists" and the orientation towards folklore sources. At the same time, the beginnings of his music are deeply national. They are associated with the revival in the culture of the "Silver Age" of the lost worldview of man in his cosmic divine essence. Scriabin's faith was not dogmatic. The composer's thoughts and dreams specifically reflected the traditional Russian God-seeking with its maximalism and passionate frenzy of feelings, the ideals of unity and catholicity, refracted through the prism of the intellectual religious seductions of the "edge of the ages".
Scriabin's "transpersonal" desire to discover 2new worlds2 is intertwined with the religious and aesthetic attitudes of many non-traditional areas of art, primarily with symbolism. The keen desire of the Russian symbolists to comprehend the “sign of another world in this world” and the “beauty of the transformed cosmos”, to embody the “connection between the two worlds” explains the composer’s increased interest in phenomena that go beyond the objective world and the usual parameters of human existence. This gives rise to the binary, bipolar beginnings of his music: impulses towards the grandiose, universal, macroscopic, and at the same time the desire to delve into the "microcosm" of the human soul, into its subconscious fundamental principle.
The embodiment of the deep states of the human psyche occurs in the composer's works as if "by touch", through changeable, elusive and not amenable to rational analysis sensations. Scriabin's music is saturated with sophisticated rhythms, out-of-tonal "wanderings", texture, shrouded in a haze of harmonic figurations. Unconscious volitional impulses, sensual longings and vague unreal insights intertwined in it.
Of all the philosophical ideas poured out by the composer in a touchingly imperfect poetic form, the thought of the divine power of creativity and of the artist-theurge leading humanity to happiness is the most important. Scriabin became an ascetic of this doctrine. All his intellectual abilities, all the power of his musical genius were aimed at finding ways for the concrete embodiment of the "Mystery" - an act of transfiguring humanity with the help of the magic of art.
The contours of the "Mystery" were built in the mind of the composer for more than ten years. He understood that he was taking on the most difficult task, but he believed in the realization of a great spiritual act. The initial version of the incarnation of the "Mystery" is called the "Preliminary Action." This is a grandiose cathedral performance, or Service, in which all of humanity participates. The music of the "Preliminary Action" has survived only in fragments (40 sheets of rough sketches). It was the main component of a synthetic act, including a "symphony" of sounds, aromas, colors, dances, processions, moving architecture, rays of the setting sun, ritual clothes of participants - performers and spectators.
The temple in Ancient India, where the "Mystery" was to take place, was conceived by the composer as a giant altar, towering above the true plane - the Earth. Scriabin seriously tried to implement the planned project and even, according to some information, negotiated the purchase of a land plot in India for the construction of a temple. Thinking about the "Mystery", the composer said: "I do not want the realization of anything, but the endless upsurge of creative activity, which will be caused by my art."
Scriabin can be attributed to that galaxy of Russian "geniuses and prophets" who seemed not to notice human anxieties, unrest and worldly fuss. The composer, separating the mundane from the sublime, created a special world of musical expression, ahead of his time, anticipating many innovations in the art of the 20th century. Scriabin's music serves as an example of great art, born on the basis of an optimistic selfless faith in its all-conquering power.
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Church singing
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He conceived the "Mystery" "... for the orchestra, light and choir in 7000 voices, which was supposed to be performed on the banks of the Ganges, designed to unite all of humanity, to instill in people a sense of great brotherhood (as you know, another great romanticist associated similar hopes with his 9th symphony, L. Beethoven). A tragic symbol can be seen in the fact that the work on the "Mystery" was interrupted by the absurd death (from blood poisoning) of the 42-year-old composer in 1915.
Torosyan V.G., History of education and pedagogical thought, M., Vladospress, 2006, p. 202.
“The Mystery Project was grandiose and fantastic. Its contours were built in the mind of the composer for more than ten years. He understood that he was taking on the most difficult task, but he believed in the realization of a great spiritual act, designed to bring the desired liberation to humanity. And yet doubts tormented the soul of the composer. He decided on some preliminary version of the incarnation of the Mystery and made sketches of the so-called "Preliminary Action" - a grandiose cathedral performance, or Service, in which all mankind participates.
In the poetic basis of the "Preliminary Action" there are clear echoes of Christian, or rather, Old Testament stories in which the characters communicated with the Creator. Dialogues between I and You can serve as an example of this:
Me: Who are you, glorified by the sound of white?
Who are you, dressed in the silence of the sky?
You: I am the last achievement,
I am the bliss of dissolution
I am the permissive diamond
I am the all-sounding silence
Death white sound
I am freedom, I am ecstasy.
The picture of the universe in the "Preliminary Action" is full of mystery and deep meaning:
We are all one
current directed,
To the moment of eternity.
On the path of humanity.
It is no coincidence that the temple in ancient India, where the Mystery was to take place, was conceived by the composer as a giant altar towering above the true temple - the Earth. So he embodied in a peculiar way the Russian idea of catholicity, which had a huge influence on symbolist artists. Note that in the interpretation Vyach. Ivanova catholicity personified with the ability of art to unite people in a single spiritual impulse. Conceived Vyach. Ivanov"mystery theater" was not much different from Scriabin. He also dreamed of destroying the ramp - the "separating strip" between the stage and the audience. However, there should not be a spectator as such in the Mystery, everyone is a participant.
Scriabin went the same way, but further. He tried to overcome the purely technical difficulties of the embodiment of the Mystery. It is known that he negotiated the purchase of land in India for the construction of the temple. Thinking about the Mystery, the composer said: "I do not want the realization of anything, but the endless upsurge of creative activity that will be caused by my art."
Scriabin's conviction in the particularity of his own mission was extremely developed:
I am the apotheosis of the universe,
I'm the goal, the end of the end...
I wish in the hearts of nations
Record your love...
I give them the peace they desire
I am the power of my wisdom.
Peoples, rejoice - waiting for centuries
The end has come of suffering and sorrow.
The composer believed in the goal of the Mystery, in the cherished “enchanted shore”, to which all mankind aspires, and took responsibility for the spiritual transformation of people. He saw the means of such a transformation as a synthesis of the arts, a synthesis of sound, color, action, and poetry.
The very idea of expanding the boundaries of music, merging it with other forms of art, of course, is not new. We have already spoken about this important position of the aesthetics of symbolism more than once. Nevertheless, Scriabin was extremely cautious in the matter of art synthesis. He has no music connected with the word. He, like his contemporary poets, avoided open, finished, straightforward thoughts. His music is not so much really connected with the word, but associatively masters the images of philosophical poetry. The purity of musical, or rather, instrumental self-expression was more important for the composer than theoretical doctrines. Thus, Scriabin's work embodied an important symbolist idea about music as the highest of the arts, about music as a "super-art", capable of expressing all the riches of artistic culture through sound flows. Mystery was supposed to fulfill the mission of universal spiritual purification. The very idea of such a conciliar action could have arisen only in the context of the ideas of the daring artists-philosophers of the Silver Age. Not by chance Vyach. Ivanov wrote: “... The theoretical provisions of his (A.N. Skryabina - Note by I.L. Vikentiev) about catholicity and choral action ... differed from my aspirations, in essence, only in that they were also directly practical tasks for him.
Rapatskaya L.A., Art of the "Silver Age", M., "Enlightenment"; "Vlados", 1996, p. 54-56.
I bought a book by Boris Schlozer dedicated to the outstanding Russian composer Alexander Scriabin in a second-hand bookstore a couple of months ago, in early October of this year. Berlin publishing house "Frontiers", 1923; the book came to Moscow through the library of some Russian union in Cairo (the book has stamps of this library in French). I immediately discovered that the book is a great treasure in its content; moreover, it seems that no one scanned it and did not post it on the Web, except for a number of I bought a book by Boris Schlozer dedicated to the outstanding Russian composer Alexander Scriabin in a second-hand bookstore a couple of months ago, in early October of this year. Berlin publishing house "Frontiers", 1923; the book came to Moscow through the library of some Russian union in Cairo (the book has stamps of this library in French). I immediately discovered that the book is a great treasure in its content; Moreover, it seems that no one scanned it and did not post it on the Web, except for a number of quotes from the book. Doubly unique.
Boris Schlozer is clearly a dialectically and integrally thinking author. He has an evolutionary vision, an understanding of the dialectics of development; as an author, he combines broad knowledge of Western and Eastern philosophy (including theological schools) with a beautiful, one might say - elegant, style of presentation of thoughts. On this particular example, we can conclude what amazing heights the national culture of the early twentieth century reached (at least in the person of its individual outstanding representatives). What a pity that all this spiritual wealth was consigned to oblivion under the yoke of historical processes and large-scale socio-cultural catastrophes; the task of our and future generations is to remember all this heritage.
Schlozer was well acquainted with Scriabin (Schlozer's sister Tatyana was married to the latter), so he was able to accurately reconstruct the composer's views, opening up access to his inner world through dialogue. In Schlözer's exposition, Alexander Scriabin is revealed not as a spontaneous Nietzschean, but as a person who has passed the path of development from individualism and a radically individualistic view of creativity as an ecstatic path to a rather sophisticated view of synthetic art and a deeply mystical worldview. Scriabin's cherished dream was the realization through his work of a certain Mystery, which was supposed to transform the world and bring the general spiritual awakening of mankind closer. Scriabin's work is permeated with the intuition of mystical states of consciousness and spiritual vision; all of it, from its earliest examples, is an attempt at a passionate conjuration of the world and humanity to the ultimate and triumphant self-fulfillment and self-fulfillment.
In his story about Scriabin and his creative process, the author, in my opinion, penetrates very deeply into the psychology of creativity and offers an extremely plausible model of the act of creation on the example of the composer's activity.
He writes about Scriabin as follows: “Entirely immersed in the elements of life, he strove not to create beauty as such, but to experience it. He saw his goal not in the creation of aesthetic values, but in the achievement of a certain, especially intense form of life. He wanted to "be". He yearned for a real transformation, not an image or likeness of it. In essence, Scriabin valued life above art; in the latter, he saw only a means of enriching, deepening, refining life, and later - a mystical power. For him, in the foreground was always a person, an artist, his creativity, and not at all the crystallized products of this creativity” (p. 66).
“He entered the temple of Apollo only in order to immediately put into practice those images that he saw there. “From this life to another life through art,” he said about himself and his work” (p. 69).
Over the next months I will try to write down a number of vivid quotations from the book so that I can get an impression of the material and the meanings raised by both the author and Scriabin in their work.
