Pavel Florensky : the saintly scientist
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pavel-Florensky-Genius-Extraordinary-Russias/dp/1441187006/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1279606411&sr=1-1
A new book on Pavel Florensky promises to be a treat. A scientist turned priest, Florensky was a notable figure in Russia's 'Silver Age' - a promising turn to more cosmopolitan, thoughtful, liberal yet spiritual searching culture that was overcome by the antagonisms of history and the brutalities of war, revolution and civil strife that birthed 'communism'. Of which Florensky was a martyr, murdered in Stalin's purges, having lived, by all accounts, a life of self-offering in the gulag. He was canonised by the Russian Church Abroad.
He has a supple, imaginative turn of mind and his book on iconography is a masterpiece of quiet exploration and affirmative vision. I remember him saying there that the final judgement of the quality of any icon is when looking at it can you say, yes, this is the Mother of God yet how he arrives at this traditional theological view of the 'real presence' of the saint in and through the picture is anything but dogmatic or rigidly 'traditional'. He begins, I recall, with a fascinating account of reverse causality in dreams: how a dream's narrative incorporates (and leads up to events) that have not yet happened - the sound of the alarm clock that awakens us is a natural culmination, and is enfolded and transformed in the dream's narrative. There is a 'metaphysical priority' in the ordering of things that an icon reveals - it is not 'created' as a work of art, the painter reveals an aspect, the sacred aspect, of the nature of things.
Here is a painting by a master of the 'Silver Age' Nesterov of two of its most prominent intellectuals: Florensky and his friend, Bulgakov, who too took the trajectory towards priesthood, having set out as a Marxist orientated historian and economist. His happier fate was exile.
A new book on Pavel Florensky promises to be a treat. A scientist turned priest, Florensky was a notable figure in Russia's 'Silver Age' - a promising turn to more cosmopolitan, thoughtful, liberal yet spiritual searching culture that was overcome by the antagonisms of history and the brutalities of war, revolution and civil strife that birthed 'communism'. Of which Florensky was a martyr, murdered in Stalin's purges, having lived, by all accounts, a life of self-offering in the gulag. He was canonised by the Russian Church Abroad.
He has a supple, imaginative turn of mind and his book on iconography is a masterpiece of quiet exploration and affirmative vision. I remember him saying there that the final judgement of the quality of any icon is when looking at it can you say, yes, this is the Mother of God yet how he arrives at this traditional theological view of the 'real presence' of the saint in and through the picture is anything but dogmatic or rigidly 'traditional'. He begins, I recall, with a fascinating account of reverse causality in dreams: how a dream's narrative incorporates (and leads up to events) that have not yet happened - the sound of the alarm clock that awakens us is a natural culmination, and is enfolded and transformed in the dream's narrative. There is a 'metaphysical priority' in the ordering of things that an icon reveals - it is not 'created' as a work of art, the painter reveals an aspect, the sacred aspect, of the nature of things.
Here is a painting by a master of the 'Silver Age' Nesterov of two of its most prominent intellectuals: Florensky and his friend, Bulgakov, who too took the trajectory towards priesthood, having set out as a Marxist orientated historian and economist. His happier fate was exile.