born September 10, 1893
When I was a student in the late seventies, I was utterly captivated by the books of Alexei Losev, and I was certainly not alone. They were not easy reading, in fact you had to labor over every page. But just about everyone in my student world felt they had to try to get to the bottom of his Classical Mythology or Classical Philosophy of History.
How far readers managed to get through these books varied, and Losev – the man and his works – were seen as a kind of high ideal, a level of spirituality that it was not easy to measure up to, but that raised the bar and influenced the direction your reading and thought would take. Losev also published the multivolume History of Classical Aesthetics, and, after lengthy struggle, a brief biography of Vladimir Solovyov. There were also early works by Losev that came out in the late 1920s, the very names of which sounded like mystical incantations: Music as a Subject of Logic, The Philosophy of Name, The Dialectics of Number in Plotinus, Essays on Classical Symbolism and Mythology…
Losev himself, by then a wise patriarch of sorts who had been through the crucible of life, seemed, and really was, a man from another era. His odd professor’s cap, his glasses, even his almost total blindness, combined with his spiritual vision – all this shaped the image of an odd, inscrutable, and fascinating sage who had penetrated the depths of ancient cultures and attained the very heights of philosophical and religious enlightenment. To all this was added an aura of the martyr, a religious philosopher who – after making some additions to his work The Dialectic of Myth that did not pass the censors and that sharply criticized socialism and Soviet authority – was arrested in 1930 and lost most of his sight while in solitary confinement and laboring on the White Sea-Baltic Canal. He was freed after Maxim Gorky’s wife, Yekaterina Peshkova, who was associated with the Red Cross, and worked tirelessly as an prisoners advocate, intervened on his behalf.
After his release, Losev, now disabled, was permitted to teach classical culture and philology, but not philosophy, a field in which he had earned a dangerous reputation. It was not until after Stalin’s death that he was allowed to publish, and he then quickly became the idol of the intelligentsia. His romantic image was further enhanced by rumors that he and his wife had secretly taken monastic vows in the late 1920s and, while formally remaining a family, in fact were living as ascetics. The philosopher’s second marriage to his disciple Aza Takho-Godi, was allegedly intended to enable her to inherit his house, library and archives.
Such was the strange and romantic image of an emissary of the Silver Age who somehow managed to survive the building of Communism and bring us his erudition and Hellenic wisdom.
Years passed and Losev died, having lived a long and, despite everything, productive life, surrounded in his final years by a circle of adoring disciples and admirers. Perestroika burst on the scene, and for a time the books of half-forgotten and forbidden philosophers became bestsellers, later, as might have been expected, finding their place as the obscure realm of the specialist.
Any sense of Losev’s unusualness largely faded with time. But the mid-nineties brought with them shockwaves. The publication of secret police archives finally revealed just what it was that Losev had added to The Dialectic of Myth to earn himself a trip to the White Sea-Baltic Canal. It is hard to convey the horror experienced by many of his readers. It turned out that the revered philosopher had described a struggle between Christianity and Satanism, equating the latter with socialism and… Jews. On top of that, the man who had written the tenderest, loftiest of letters to his wife (who had also wound up in the Gulag because of him), apparently had written that, “Just as in reality woman can have no dignity, there can be no such thing as Jewish dignity” and “a real Jew, like a woman, does not have his own ‘I’.”
Amidst the ferment caused by such statements, his wrathful and insulting words about the Russian people, for whom the best he had to say was that they were a “many-million strong flock of sheep,” were somehow barely noticed. And there was this: “Workers and peasants are crude, banal, low, and they are given to a vulgar zeal for brawling; envy of all that is spiritual, ingenious, and free; foul language; the tavern; and a cynical complacency in ignorance and idleness.”
What were Losev’s readers to do, having become accustomed to seeing him as a sort of spiritual paragon? Impassioned arguments broke out. For some, Losev had become a harbinger of Russian fascism (among his writings there had even been apparently sympathetic citations from Hitler, on the subject of the Russian people), carrying forward the anti-Semitic line of Russian philosophy and culture. Others had harsh words for those criticizing the philosopher, claiming that the questionable phrases were taken out of context, or asserting that documents mysteriously emerging from the depths of the KGB could not be trusted, and saw signs of a provocation and defamation of the great thinker. What is interesting is that both sides were represented by thoughtful and intelligent people who inspired respect.
But soon forces not so respectable entered the fray, and from both sides venomous accusations began to fly – “anti-Semites,” “Russophobes,” “fascists,” Chekists,” and on and on. It became increasingly difficult to get to the bottom of what Losev had actually said.
Why was he released from the camps? Because of Peshkova’s intercession? There were many she tried to help – why was she successful in this case? Because of his disability? When did Stalin’s executioners ever worry about the health of their prisoners? Perhaps the powers that be took a liking to Losev’s ideas, which paid tribute to the Russian Orthodox idea and autocratic rule and saw Western liberalism as the fruit of those same “Satanic” and Jewish forces?
Was he a relentlessly persecuted thinker who lived above the worldly fray? But why then was he permitted to work in many educational institutions, and why did the Soviet authorities – albeit after Stalin’s death – permit him to publish his many works?
Was he a true Orthodox Christian or a heretic, not sparing the Church his criticism?
Who will answer these questions? Who will settle the question of Alexei Fyodorovich Losev for posterity? Maybe there is nothing to settle? Perhaps we should just leave ourselves his marvelous books – so difficult to read, yet so captivating? Or does the shadow of Losev the man fall on Losev the thinker?
Where can we turn for answers?
Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.
Russian Life 73 Main Street, Suite 402 Montpelier VT 05602
802-223-4955
[email protected]
