Konstantin Nikolajewitsch Leontjew

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Konstantin Leontjew

Konstantin Leontiev ( Russian Константин Николаевич Леонтьев ;. Scientific transliteration Konstantin Nikolaevich Leontiev ; born January 13 . Jul / 25. January  1831 greg. In Kudinowo ( Gouvernement Kaluga ), † November 12 jul. / 24. November  1891 greg . in the Trinity Monastery in Sergiev Posad ) is considered an important, albeit controversial, Russian thinker, religious philosopher and writer of the 19th century.

Life

Leontjew was born as the seventh child of the poor landowner Nikolaj Leontjew on the Kudinowo estate in the Kaluga governorate . In 1841 he entered the grammar school in Smolensk , but soon dropped out of school and was brought to St. Petersburg by his mother , where she enrolled him in the cadet corps in the fall of 1843. Due to an illness he had to give up his military career and at the age of 13 he went to Kaluga in 1844 , where he attended the third grade of the grammar school.

In the spring of 1849 Leontjew graduated from high school and was allowed to go to university without an examination. In the autumn he was enrolled at the Demidow Lyceum in Yaroslavl , but in the winter he switched to the medical faculty in Moscow.

The first literary work to appear in 1852 was the play “Marriage for Love”, which was not intended for the stage but for reading. In Leontiev's own words, "it was very lyrical and built on a sharp analysis of pathological feelings." Ivan Turgenev , to whom Leontiev had turned with his first-born, recognized the artistic talent of the young student and promised to encourage publication. However, neither the play nor the first novel “The Bulavinian Workshop”, which was produced during the same period, were approved for publication by the censors . The reasons for this may have been the highly immoral content, especially in the erotic sense, Leontjew later suspected.

Doctors were needed for the Crimean War of that time. The government offered eighth semester students a doctorate and double salary if they went to the theater of war. Leontiev welcomed this opportunity and volunteered as a military doctor. On August 1, 1854, he was appointed assistant doctor in the military hospital on the fortress Jeniche .

After the end of the war in 1855, Leontjew spent a relatively carefree time in the Crimea until he was discharged from the military at the end of August 1857 and in the spring of 1858 accepted a position as family doctor in the family of Baron Dimitrij von Rosen . After two pleasant years, Leontiev turned away from medicine entirely and decided to devote himself to literary work and make a living from it. At the end of 1860 Leontjew came to St. Petersburg , where he lived with his brother. However, writing did not bring him any secure income, so that he was forced to earn his living by teaching and translating articles from the German language.

At this time Leontiev had many acquaintances in literary circles in St. Petersburg. Here he got to know the Slavophiles and their teachings better. From them Leontiev took over the idea of ​​the cultural uniqueness of Russia, which fully corresponded to his aesthetic demands for diversity.

In the autumn of 1861 Leontjew, who shortly before had married the half-Greek Julia Politof, who came from a humble background, published his first great novel "Die Lindenschößlinge". Since there was no political tendency in it, it did not find the approval of its time, but was completely ignored.

As a result of a severe mental crisis, Leontjew now made the final break with his liberal past and fully professed conservatism. After nine months as a clerk in the Asian Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he was employed in the autumn of 1863 as a secretary and interpreter for the Russian consulate on the island of Crete .

When he arrived in Crete , Leontjew was extremely fascinated by the “oriental” life and culture, a fascination that would last his life. He traveled extensively, but after his wife fell ill with mental illness in 1868, Leontiev suffered from severe depression as he probably blamed himself for his wife's illness. She herself survived him by several years and died during the days of the Russian Revolution without her mental state improving.

In 1871 Leontjew visited the Athos monasteries , from which he was deeply impressed. The request for the secret monk ordination was refused by the spiritual leader.

After his discharge from the service in 1873, Leontjew devoted himself intensively to the problem of " Byzantinism and Slavism ", which was published as an essay in 1875 and sets out the principles of his worldview and is to be regarded as his main work. This work, too, like the “Oriental Novellas” published in three volumes by the publisher Michael Katkof in 1876, went completely unnoticed.

The tight financial situation forced Leontjew to work as a censor from 1880 to 1887. During this time, Leontiev's religious and aesthetic worldview developed more and more. In addition to a collection of historical-political essays in two volumes under the general title “Orient, Russia and Slavery”, the two essays “From the fear of God and love of humanity” and “From general love”, which was published on the occasion of the famous speech Dostoyevsky's at the inauguration of the Pushkin monument in Moscow was made for publication.

For the first time Leontjew reaped public reaction to his work, whose core question “What is Christianity?” Hit the nerve of the time. The essay "Of general love" gives Leontiev's basic view of Christianity, supports his historical-philosophical thoughts from the side of the religious and is an expression of Leontiev's ever increasing preoccupation with Christianity. So he visited the hermit monastery Optina Pustyn ' with interruptions and made the acquaintance of Starez Amwrosij and later with the writer Vladimir Solovyov , with whom he was to become a close friend.

Already in the winter of 1878, after a time that was both mentally and materially difficult for Leontjew, the two had met in St. Petersburg . “ Soloviev was twenty-four years old at the time, while Leontiev was about fifty. Solovyov was a metaphysician , outspoken theologian , gnostic , poet, and a politically astute writer who was inclined towards humanism and liberalism ; Leontjew, on the other hand, was a naturalist , who had the science school behind him, artist, esthete and romantic, far removed from all gnostics and also from all political agility, simply a writer with a very complicated and in-depth way of thinking. ”Both Solovyov and Leontjew influenced each other in the period that followed, despite them Diversity again and again mutually in their thoughts.

After his time as a censor, Leontjew returned to the Optina Monastery, where he led a half-monastic and half-manorial life. During this time he not only received frequent visits from Solovyov , but also from students and foreigners from Leo Tolstoy , whom he considered the pinnacle of the realistic direction in literature, but sharply criticized as a religious and moral preacher. Alone with his insane wife and a few servants, Leontiev became more and more lonely.

After he had finally received the secret monk ordination in Optina on August 23, 1891, Leontjew went to the Trinity monastery of Sergiev Posad on the advice of the Starez Amworsij, who had been his spiritual leader and at times also a material supporter . Here he spent the last months of his life until he finally died on the morning of November 12, 1891 at the age of 60 from complications from pneumonia.

His body was buried in a monk's robe in the cemetery of the monastery.

philosophy

Leontjew was an eccentric, ruthless connoisseur, especially in his youth, but was nevertheless not irreligious. This attitude was combined with a pronounced elitist outlook on life, due to his aristocratic origins. From these elements, what one may call the »aesthetics of submission« arose from the very beginning. (The parallel to Nietzsche is obvious, but it would be imprecise to sell Leontjew as a “Russian Nietzsche”. The pronounced religiousness of Leontiev speaks against this.)

Leontjew regards " aesthetics as the best yardstick for history and life". In this way, the self-conquest, the ascetic achievement in the life of the individual, combined with the devotion to Christian doctrine, becomes an aesthetic appearance that goes beyond the monotony of everyday life.

Mixing Christian ideas with liberal-humanitarian views is a danger to the Russian people , especially in the form of a "rose-water Christianity" advocated by Dostoyevsky (as Leontiev said). It can only avoid this danger through a kind of revitalization of Byzantinism and through the belief "in the fertility of the Turan addition in our Russian blood, partly also in the blessing of the appropriation of authoritative and strong German blood." If one wants to preserve the values ​​and tradition and thus the aesthetics , which in Leontiev's thinking can only develop from aristocratic rule, it is necessary to “freeze Russia”.

The conservative attitude of Leontiev, who was not only a devout Christian , but also a great advocate of the aristocracy , was rejected by the majority of the Russian intelligentsia .

influence

Leontiev, who - like many of his contemporaries - was looking for a Russian answer to the Enlightenment in the West, was punished by disregard by the Russian intelligentsia long after his death. The radical and pro-aristocratic thoughts of Leontiev, combined with unconditional devotion to God, found little understanding and echo, so that Leontiev remained largely unknown outside his small following for a long time.

It was only towards the end of the 20th century that Slavic and religious studies began to rediscover the Russian religious philosopher and to value his philosophy as an interesting counterpoint in the political-philosophical current of that time.

Translation of the works into German

Due to the fact that Leontiev is largely unknown outside of Russia, there have been comparatively few translations of his works to date. In addition to the essay “The Average European” published in 2001, there are translations of two essays in the collection “Eastern Christianity. Documents ”and“ Four Letters from Mount Athos ”in“ Orient und Occident ”, both published around 1930.

Works (selection)

  • Egyptian pigeon (1881)
  • Notes of a Hermit (1887)
  • Autobiography (1935)
  • Byzantism and Slavism (1875)
  • The Average European (1913)
  • The Stream of Time (1869)
  • The Bulavin workshop (1852)
  • The Memories of Odysseus Polichroniades (1873)
  • The linden shoots (1861)
  • Marriage for love (1852)
  • Oriental novels (1876)
  • Orient, Russia and Slavdom (1885)
  • Of general love (1882)
  • On fear of God and love for humanity (1882)

See also

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Leontjew, Konstantin Nikolajewitsch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Лео́нтьев, Константи́н Никола́евич (Russian); Leont'ev, Konstantin Nikolaevič (scientific transliteration)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian religious philosopher and writer
DATE OF BIRTH January 25, 1831
PLACE OF BIRTH Kudinowo, Kaluga Governorate
DATE OF DEATH November 24, 1891
Place of death Trinity Monastery of Sergiev Posad