Lyrical Rite of Self-Immolation in Russian Symbolist Theurgy
Choral antic lyrics was linked with the rituals of sacrifice to Dionysus, Apollo and other deities. In the early twentieth century in Russian modernist lyric poetry the crisis of excessive individualism leads to the self-negation of the «ego» of the poet and of the lyrical hero in favor of the group identity performed by a symbolic way of self-immolation and to the increasing significance of the choral and role-playing lyric genres. The set of metaphors of self-immolation realized mainly in the lyrical works and modernist metatexts originated in different sources: the ethics of Russian intelligentia, the tradition of the poetical rhetoric of passion and creativity as fire's sacrifice, the suggestion of mythopoetic image of the Phoenix, under the influence of modern and romantic German thinkers, musicians, poets and especially under the impression of «baptism of fire» by Russian Old Believers, their mass suicides motivated by the hope for salvation from the Antichrist and his servants, also reinterpreted by Russian modernists as a sacrifice. Since the early 1900s, this metaphor received neo-mythological justification in the essays and philosophical lyrics of V. Ivanov as the part of the neo-Dionysian rite which was fused from the aesthetics of Nietzsche and from the conception of Russian thinker V. Solovyov of the so-called «theurgical» imperative mission of poet as priest. The ritual aspects of theurgy must be implemented in an updated antique «mystery», rite for the elite. Russian symbolists’ attempts to create a mystery on the stage and in their communities was unsuccessful. Ivanov’s poetry constructed a lyrical «dyad» of Dionysus poet substituting an impossible mystery as identity of the roles of priest and sacrificial victim, author and lyric character. It was especially important for his love lyrics and rite lyrics recreating various types of ritual. The antic choral lyrics of the dithyrambses plays a special role in Ivanov's lyrics. The symbolism of the metaphorical burning of the lyrical character in the poetry of A. Blok was a symbolical sacrifice of «ego» to the Eternal Feminine or a result of a self-destructive passion. Themes and metaphors of total or partial self-immolation are significant in 1910s in the lyrics of modernist and vanguard poets such as A. Belyi, N. Burliuk, R. Ivnev, P. Karpov, N. Klyuev, V. Khlebnikov, To the end of 1910's the metaphor of the poet's life as self-immolation becomes a «locus communis» of the symbolist aesthetics and critics. During the Russian revolution and civil war the significance of this sacrifice pattern was increased.