Zinaida Gippius and the Mystical Anarchism of the Silver Age in Russia

 

M.S Compton (all rights reserved)

 

Zinaida Gippius was a gifted poet, novelist, essayist, and critic whose works had a remarkable impact upon the spiritual and cultural life of St. Petersburg and Paris, especially during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Her husband, Dmitri Merezhkovsky, was the author of a large number of spiritual-religious writings and literary criticism. Through their religious-philosophical movement, they organized meetings and debates which brought together representatives of the Orthodox clergy and the intelligensia.  This meeting of clerical and lay minds was something fairly novel in Russian Orthodox cultural life.  Both of the Merezhkovskys initially believed that the Revolution was the prelude to the Kingdom of God on earth and would usher in the era of freedom, love, and aesthetic beauty.

 Gippius longed for the dawn of the Golden Age. Literature was, for her, a means of embodying the unity of the transcendental and the phenomenal.  She believed that the tragedy of human existence was alienation from true spiritual life; and once remarked that: “people of our time fall into despair and perish—sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously—because it is impossible for man to live without God. And we have lost God and do not [know how] to find Him.” (Zinaida Gippius, “Kritika liubvi” in Literaturnyi dnevnik, 1899-1907; quoted in, “Alternate Beliefs” in, Joan D. Grossman, in Russian Literature in Modern Times, Vol. 3, ed.: Boris Gasparov, et al. Berkeley: University of CA. Press. 1995, p. 113)  The characters in her stories demonstrate the trials of the soul in its attempt to free itself from the superficiality of the modern era. The Sophianic elements which so dominated the early Symbolist school represented by Soloviev and his followers finds a resonance in the figure of Divine Holy Wisdom as the 3rd hypostasis of her theology, which she believed would be revealed in the coming Third Era of the Holy Spirit. During the Third Testament, the anti-theses of the world would be resolved (male/female; individualism/society; slavery/freedom; sexuality/asceticism, etc).  This new revelation of the Trinity would redeem the world and spiritualize Christianity, which would henceforth be experienced not in a temple, but as a new consciousness of God in the soul. Gippius believed that only in the religion of the Third Testament would there be an end to the external power of the state, and an era of religious universal dawn. Kris Groberg maintains that as early as 1899, Gippius began formulating a theology which would “restore the feminine aspect to the divine.”  (K. Groberg, “The Feminine Occult Sophia in the Religious Renaissance: A Bibliographical essay,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 26, Nos. 1-3 (l992), p. 220)

These ideas are expressed in much of Gippius’ critical writing, as well as, in a more subtle way, in her novels and poetry, which we will examine in due course. In keeping with her agenda of collapsing polarities in order to facilitate the coming of the Kingdom, Gippius tends to identify her sexuality as neither heterosexual or homosexual, but rather as an androgyne, recalling the androgynous images of Sophia in Gnostic literature, with which she was most likely familiar. It was her hope that  the most exalted, idealized form of androgyny would unite the polarities of male and female, as well as body and spirit.           (Footnote: In one of her diaries she ruminates, “Each time someone is insulted and dissatisfied within me; with women, my femininity is active, with men—my masculinity! In my thoughts, my desires, in my spirit—I am more a man; in my body—I am more a woman. Yet they are so fused together that I know nothing..” Pachmuss, Temira. Between Paris and St. Petersburg: Selected Diaries of Zinaida Hippius University of Ill. Press.1975 p. 77; See also her: Zinaida Hippius: An Intellectual Profile. Southern Illinois University Press; 1st edition, 1971; as well as: Presto, Jennifer, “The Androgynous Gaze of Zinaida Gippius,” Russian Literature XLVIII, 2000, pp 87-107; See also:  Matich, Olga. Erotic Utopia: The Decadent Imagination in Russia’s Fin de Siecle. University of Wisconsin Press. 2005, pp 96-97; as well as her: Paradox in the Religious Poetry of Zinaida Gippius W Fink, Pub. 1972)

In honor of the Divine Sophia-Spirit, she wrote some liturgical prayers for the “Church of Sophia of Divine Wisdom” which we will examine in a later section. Her faith in the sacredness of love, included, for Gippius, its physical expression; however, her utopian notions of the coming NewAge and desire for reconciliation of opposites eschewed the normative paradigm of marriage as well as procreation. She even chastened Blok (who she considered her disciple) when she heard of his impending marriage to Liubov Mendeleeva, warning him that a physical relationship could well create a dissonance between his mystical ideal in “Poems to a Beautiful Lady,” and the mediocrity of domestic life.  Although she remained married to Dmitri until his death, she always maintained her own room and study. In her play, ‘The Green Ring’ the heroine, Sophia Finotchka, refuses to accept sex as a biological function, seeing it instead as a part of a new revolutionary consciousness. (Z. Gippius, The Green Ring, S.S. Koteliansky, trans. London: C.W.Daniel, 1920) Gippius’ most dominant theme reflecting her thoughts on sexual love led her to conclude that in the future there would be no sexual act at all. She did not find it difficult to harmonize her sexual and her spiritual lives; she envisioned her role as heralding the new religious consciousness which would ultimately undermine the traditional gender binary so characteristic of the Old Order.  In one of her diaries, she wrote:

“Sometimes it seems to me that there must be people who resemble me, who are neither satisfied with the existing forms of passion nor with the forms of life; that is, there must be people who want to go forward, who desire God not only in those phenomena which already exist, but also in those that will take place.” (Diaries, p. 84)

Although the androgynous being is found in archetypal literature of various eras, the apocalyptic notions that accompany it in Gippius’ life and work portend the catastrophes which were lying in Russia’s future. It is as if Gippius herself anticipated a global catastrophe, which in the last stage would return humans to their prefallen state. Before we explore this imagined New Era, let us investigate some of the background influences which were the theatre upon which the Religious-Philosophical Society emerged.

The Religious-Philosophical Society and the Movement Toward Revolution

The second half of the 19th century had witnessed a crisis in the Russian Church. Diocesan administration suffered from bribery and other wrongdoings; the parish clergy was impoverished and disparaged; seminaries were in pedagogical disarray; and it was increasingly unable to command the loyalty of the population. (Gregory Freeze, “Revolt from Below: A Priest’s Manifesto on the Crisis in Russian Orthodoxy (1858-59)” in Russian Orthodoxy Under the Old Regime, ed. by R.L. Nichols and T.G. Stavrou. Minn.: 1978)  What had so alarmed Soloviev was that the Church in Russia was deprived of any “center of unity outside the national state” and thus had “inevitably come to be subservient to the secular power.” (V. Soloviev: The Russian Church and the Papacy (an abridgement of Russia and the Universal Church,) Trans. by Herbert Rees, San Diego: Catholic Answers. 2001, p. 91.) In addition, the Orthodox Church had, up to this point, never found a common language with the educated because its conservative outlook made it pronouncedly anti-intellectual.

A spiritual vacuum was thus created, especially in the eyes of those who cared for social and political justice, which was infused with secular ideologies and speculative mysticism imported from the West. Leaders of the intelligensia in earlier decades had been predominately inspired by Western atheism and positivism.  But much of the work produced by the early Symbolist school was steeped in the atmosphere of mysticism and radical messianism. They were the ‘God-seekers.’ In addition, the Russian intelligensia was, by the end of the 19th century, not only pre-occupied with its own intellectual development “but at least as much and preferably much more concerned with that of society at large,” and by the 1890’s “to be an intelligent meant as much as to be a revolutionary.” (Pipes, Richard. Russia Under the Old Regime, NY: Charles Scribner. 1974 p. 252-253) In 1899, Gippius discussed with her husband the failure of the Russian Orthodox Church to meet the needs of the current state of the Russian soul and the evolving nature of the religious consciousness growing in Russia. Her diaries record the moment when it came to her, in October of that year: “The existing Church can satisfy neither us nor the people close to us in the Zeitgeist because of the way it is constructed.” (Selected Diaries, p. 101)

Dmitri Merezhkovsky wrote an article after the revolution of 1905 called “Revolution and Religion,” first published in Russkaia mysl in 1907, which outlines the proposal initiated by himself and Gippius, at the Religious-Philosophical Meetings. These first meetings were generated not with the view to disengage the Orthodox Church, but to include it in their dialogue. (Dmitri Merezhkovsky, “Revolution and Religion” in, Bernice Rosenthal & Martha Bohachevsky-Chomiak, ed. A Revolution of Spirit: Crisis of Value in Russia, 1890-1924. Translated by Marian Schwartz. N.Y.: Fordham University Press, 1990, pp. 189-221.)  The early meetings (before it was called a “Society”) took place over the course of two years in the hall of the Geographic Society. “For the first time,” Merezhkovsky wrote, “the Russian Church…met face to face with society, with culture, with the world, for contact that…was not external and forced, but internal and free. For the first time, questions were posed to the Church with keenness of consciousness and a degree of vital torment that had never been posed before.” (ibid.pp. 216-217) The forum provided an excellent opportunity for the Russian intelligensia and the Orthodox clergy and hierarchy to openly discuss ideas. Some church intellectuals even proposed a new church council.(See Rosenthal, above. See also, James Cunningham, A Vanquished Hope: The Movement for Church Renewal in Russia. Crestwood, NY: SVSP. 198, esp. pp.58-59)

Eventually the dialogue attempted at the “Meetings” failed to achieve a reconciliation between the intellectuals and the official Church. They were closed in 1903 (a year after Tolstoy was excommunicated from the Orthodox Church) by order of Pobedonostesev, the super-procurator of the Holy Synod (reputedly nicknamed the “Grand Inquisitor”) who, by that time, had became the symbol of Russian monarchical absolutism. Although the forum was later replaced by the Religious-Philosophical Society, (which included an agenda that was often too secular for Gippius’ taste, although she continued to take an active part in it) Gippius felt that a wound had been created which might never heal; that is, a rupture between the traditional Orthodox Church and the intelligentsia.

Dmitri Merezhkovsky’s frustration over the demise of the meetings is reflected in his ‘Revolution and Religion’: “…and union would have taken place, the children would have returned to their mother, even if the questions would not have been answered, if only the questions would have been heard.” (p 217)  Finally the only way forward, (or so it appeared to the Merezhkovskys) was: “…a revolution, not a religious reformation, not a new understanding, but a new revelation; not the continuation of the Second, but the beginning of the Third Testament…a striving toward the Christ who will be.” (Merezhkovsky ,Revolution and Religion, p. 217, in Rosenthal, A Revolution)

What the Church had seen, in those meetings, he said, were only laity “who had to be directed toward faith. But we…believed no less than the monks and priests. For us, faith was wonder…”   (p. 218) And thus, having gone through historical Christianity, the Merezhkovskys began their journey into the revelation of the “Third hypostasis, the Holy Spirit, Holy Flesh.” (p 218) They rejected autocracy in all of its forms, “be it the Russian tzardom or the Roman papacy, the Ceasar who becomes the archpriest or the archpriest who becomes Caesar.” (p 218)  The overthrow of the autocracy in 1905 had great religious significance for the Merezhkovskys. The monarchy was a symbol, not only of the Old Order, but Divine Oneness, (which it imitated)-- the King in heaven. But “the revelation of Divine Oneness is not the ultimate religious revelation of Godmanhood; the revelation of the Trinity is higher than the revelation of the Oneness.” (p 189) Merezhkovsky refers to Soloviev, who sensed that all of historical Christianity was only a path to the religion of the Trinity. (p 212)

Although the government repressed the revolution of 1905, it did make a concession to the popular movement and agreed to limit the autocracy of the tzar. A new constitution was drawn up but unfortunately the first two Dumas proved incapable of co-operation with the government and were dissolved, and the revolutionary parties continued their fierce struggle against the government. After the revolution of 1905, the mood became increasingly apocalyptical. (For more on the relationship between the dawning socialism and the spirituality of the era, see Bernice Rosenthal,  “Marxism and Spirituality: The Debate in Early Twentieth Century Russia,” in, Marxism and Spirituality: An International Anthology. B. B. Page. Bergin and Garvey Pub. 1993. ) The reason that Gippius had insisted that “autocracy is from the Anti-Christ!” (Diaries, p. 140) was because it represented to her, and to many of the Symbolists (often referred to as “Decadents”), the greatest evil. It became little more than a papal autocracy in which the sovereign high-priest usurped the place of Christ. It thus created the kingdom of man without God, not the Kingdom of the God-man. Merezhkovsky wrote, “the Russian decadents were the first to free themselves from the yoke of double censorship…Artists…like Briusov, Sologub, Z. Gippius, are…heirs of great Russian poetry…But their art is more than art; it is a religious trial. Their verses are diaries of the most persistent and dangerous quest.” (pp 213-214)  Gippius co-authored a volume of articles in 1907 called LeTsar et la Revolution which denied the possibility of a theocratic society based on the existing conditions.

In their Journal Novy put’, (1903) this theme is emphatically stated: “The time has come to reveal the hidden Christian truth of the earth…social salvation in Christ and the religious mission of secular power.” (quoted in, V.V. Zenkovsky. A History of Russian Philosophy. Trans. by George L. Kline. N.Y.: Columbia University Press. 1959, pp. 758- 759) It must, however, be a “consecrated sociality” in opposition to the existing secular order. (ibid) The pulse of a new era was approaching, and the God-seekers, it seemed, were on the crest of its wave.

The Third Kingdom

 

Nikaloi Lossy, himself one of the preeminent Russian neo-idealists of his day, outlines his understanding of  the Merezhkovskys ‘Mystery of Three’ in his History of Russian Philosophy:

 

“[T]he mystery of One, of God the father, is the mystery of the Divine Self, of personality; the mystery of the Two is the relation of the Self and the not-Self; the not-self excludes me, kills me or is killed by me, except in one point—sex: in sex there is the entrance of one being into another, ‘of another body into mine and of mine into another.’ Hence the birth of a new being; in the Trinity, it is the birth of the Son. Thus the mystery of the Second Person is sex. The mystery of Three is the mystery of the Holy Spirit, the unity of the Three Persons in the Spirit; thus, it is the mystery of Society, the image of the Kingdom of God.” (N.O. Lossky, History of Russian Philosophy. London: Allen & Unwin.1952, p. 338)

 

The Merezhkovskys taught that the flesh should be sanctified and were vehemently opposed to the long tradition of asceticism in Orthodox Russia. They claimed that the Holy Spirit was feminine and dwelt in the Holy Mother, who was the symbolic union of divine spirit and the earthly body. (See Bernice Rosenthal, Dmitri Sergeevich Merezhkovsky and the Silver Age: the Development of a Revolutionary Mentality. The Hague : Martinus Nijhoff, 1975; and K. Groberg, “Feminine Occult, above; and also her, “Russia’s Sophia Cult”. Explorations, 15, # 1, 1996) Articulated by Gippius, the theology becomes more eschatological. Similar to Joachim of Fiore, the history of humanity is divided into three phases, representing the realms of God the Father, or Creator, which is the realm of the Old Testament; the Son, Jesus Christ, which is the realm of the New Testament; and the present era, which is the realm of the Holy Spirit, Wisdom. The era of the Second Testament is revealed in love. This era of the Third Testament would reveal this love as inner freedom.  According to Olga Matich, Joachim’s teachings became part of utopian Russian thought through George Sand, who fused mystical anarchism with radical social revolution. (O. Matich. “The Merezhkovsky’s Third Testament and the Russian Utopian Tradition” in Russian Culture in Modern Times, Vol. 2 Christianity and the Eastern Slavs. Ed by R.P. Hughes, et al. Berkeley: Univ of CA Press, 1994, pp. 158-171)

 

A strong feature of Gippius’ artistic temperament was her determination to serve the world in which she found herself, and it is to this end that she and her husband began the church revival she was to name ‘The Cause.’   She wanted to participate in the creation of a new human being, wherein both spirit and flesh would actually be transformed: “when life and religion (or the flesh and the spirit) are actually merged, become one whole, then our feeling of obligation toward the flesh will by necessity touch upon religion, since it will be by that time merged with our own anticipation of freedom.” (from,The Bread of Life, quoted in Diaries, p. 7)

 

The core of her ‘Cause’ was a three-person entity, which she perceived as mirroring the Trinitarian entity in the Divine world.  It consisted of herself, her husband of 52 years, Dmitry, and the dearest platonic love of her life (who was a homosexual), Dmity Filosofov, who lived with the Merezhkovskys for many years. Part of her Cause was devoted to the deep sense of duty she had, i.e., to awaken the Russian people to the awareness of the highest values in human life of freedom and equality.  She agreed with Vladimir Soloviev that real love and freedom can transform the soul into the immortal God-man; and that true love is emancipating. Yet from this concept of love, Gippius developed her own philosophy.  The love between two individuals, in her view, was never deep enough to mimic divine love and bridge the human personality to the collective ‘we.’ She maintained that human love should not culminate in one’s beloved.  It is generally believed by Silver Age scholars that Gippius herself never consummated her marriage with her husband; indeed, for many years, she wore a single braid, which in Russian culture, is a symbol of virginity or celibacy.

 

Thus the core had to be, not a holy syzygy of two, but a mystical unity of three. The Cause itself would transform the “unsolved riddle of sex” by which “all were poisoned” and replace it with Christ, through a Eucharistic priesthood of three. (Diaries, p. 104) The only form of unity which affirms the personal ‘one’ is the unity of Three in One. She wrote in her Diaries, “I wanted only one thing, namely that the three of us should unite, become bound by the Cause….we spoke well together—and it almost became clear to all three of us that we were one in the Cause, all three of us.” ( p 105-106)  Therefore in 1901, they performed their first Liturgy together in the Merezhkovsky’s home, a practice they would continue for the next 17 years.  On that first occasion, they exchanged kisses and crosses, and she wrote in her diary that the first step along the path had been made, “a step from which there is no return, and a path along which to stop would mean perdition; and each of us now depends upon the others. And this multiplication of ‘I’—this trebling of ‘I’ is an insufferable terror for a weak heart, and for our responsibility to our future Church.” (Diaries, p. 111)

 

This private Liturgy became, for Gippius, the vital “inward deed” which would impart “motion and strength to our outward deed” which, she explained, would take the form of “an open, official society…a people of religion and philosophy for free discussion of questions concerning the Church and culture.” (Diaries, p. 119) Gippius’ principle aim was not to separate herself and her Cause from the official Russian Church and form a sect; it was to expand on the goodness that she saw in the Church and make it more available to the modern soul.  “The matter is this,” she wrote, “people seek God in order to satisfy that which already exists, whereas I seek God in the name of what does not yet exist.” (p 80)  If this was sinful (and Gippius suffered moments of grave doubt over her Cause for many years), it was nonetheless a passion to which she gave her entire life.  In one of her diaries she reflected: “No, there is no sin in me because of my love, for in this feeling I loved God. I was prepared to do anything to save this love…and I believed in the power of truth.” (Diaries, p. 76) Even in her old age, she wrote that she never regretted the energy she had devoted to her work. (see pp. 279-311, In, “Replying to Manukhina’s Commentaries”, Diaries)

 

The “outer work” which grew from the Cause was the Religious and Philosophical Meetings in 1901, as well as the journal Novy put’ (New Path), which they founded in 1902, to publish works of current Symbolist thinkers, writers, and poets. When the Religious-Philosophical Society replaced the Meetings designed to bring together the Orthodox clergy and laity, Gippius became more interested in Novy put’, which published Blok, Bely and numerous other Symbolists, as well as her own literary, philosophical, social and critical work. Several idealists who had emerged from the Marxist ranks, including Sergius Bulgakov and Nikolai Berdyaev, became involved in the Society and hopeful expectations began to grow (often eschatological) as the Revolution in 1905 grew nearer.

 

In Gippius’ understanding, the Revolution of 1905 had failed because it had affirmed the concept of the individual at the expense of universal sociality. Gippius defined the complex interrelationship of religion, politics, and social life as “religious sociality”. (See Pachmuss, Zinaida…Intellectual Profile, pp. 168-172)  The purpose of the historical process is to make the whole world embody the Kingdom of God. Earth is not only a preparation for heaven; what is being born is a new, righteous earth. Gippius wrote that the creative task of Christianity is to perfect the earth to make it a reflection of true social justice and equality, and to the extent that this had not already been done, the Church is to be blamed. (In, “The First Meetings”, in the newspaper, “Latest News”, Feb 1931, quoted in N.O.Lossky, above, p. 340)  She became even more convinced that ‘historical’ Christianity (at least as it was embodied in the Russian Orthodox Church) cannot lead to God-humanity--it cannot reach the ‘pan-humanity’ of Soloviev’s dream-- because it was not universal.  But neither did the Roman Church embody this ideal.  Only a future religion of the Holy Spirit would be able to attain the heavenly and earthly aspects for which it was destined.

 

 The trials Russia was undergoing would be the catalyst to prepare for this New Age. It was the purifying fire that would lead to the utopia of the Third Testament: “We shall be resurrected together, beyond the mysterious border, together…” (In Diaries, p. 197) What had to be united (indeed, what the purpose of life was) was two worlds—this world and the next. In The Choice, she asserted that the Kingdom of God was very close; it was within, if we could only probe deep enough to find it. The principle aim of the earnest soul was to seek for a way to unite these two realities. The concept of a new religious consciousness as the Foundation of the Kingdom of God on earth forms the entire basis of her philosophy. In this,  the kingdom of the “Third Humanity,” the Holy Spirit is the Eternal “Womanhood, Motherhood [which would]…reconcile and synthesize the Father and the Son, heaven and earth.” (quoted in, Intellect and ideas in action; selected correspondence of Zinaida Hippius. Compiled and edited by Temira Pachmuss. Munchen, W. Fink,1973.p. 28)

 

 Interpreting the original Ruach as the feminine Spirit, she and her husband wrote confidently about the Mother-Spirit. The Third Covenant would be the Kingdom of the Mother-Wisdom, whom we should pray to as the “warm Protectress of the cold world.” (Merezhkovsky in “Jesus the Unknown” 1932, quoted in N.O. Lossky, p. 338) Gippius’ own prayers (for which she was accused of heresy by some of her own contemporaries) reflect her passionate devotion to the Cause and demonstrates her deep search for the ideal faith. Incorporated into the Liturgy which was performed in her home, she nonetheless never abandoned many of the traditional Orthodox prayers, and used them together in the prayer-book she wrote for the inner circle of the Cause.

 

 The prayer-book opens with the main prayer recited by all members of the circle: “Oh Lord, unify, gather, and return Thy people  unto one single, sacred, ecumenical universal Church, The Kingdom on Earth.”  The prayer invoking Divine Sophia is a very poignant one:

 

“Lord Jesus Christ! Grant us they new, genuine, universal Church. The Church of St. John, the Church of Sophia of the Divine Wisdom, the Church of the Trinity in One, Indivisible and yet Individual! Grant us the spiritual and physical strength to proceed toward the new church, without growing weary, without exhausting ourselves on our way! Grant us the opportunity to see it with our own eyes while still living on earth! Grant us the unity of everyone who loves his neighbor in this new Church….Transfigure, oh Lord, Thy Church into Thy Kingdom on earth and teach us, who are insignificant and unworthy, to serve thy new revelation, Thy Mystery, which reconciles everybody and everything on Earth.” (in Between Paris, p. 31)

Temira Pachmuss has said that the prayers of Gippius “give ample evidence of her indefatigable religious fervor in the search for a true Christian faith.” (in, Intellect and ideas in action; selected correspondence of Zinaida Hippius. Compiled and edited by Temira Pachmuss. Munchen, W. Fink,1973.p. 14) Gippius argued that through the physical incarnation of Christ, human flesh had been sanctified, and thus the body is the place where the power of the human person is affirmed.  The paradox of sexuality was resolved in the person of Christ, and love for all people becomes holy and radiant through love for Him. By 1905, Gippius was seeking to distance herself from other Symbolists who were considered “decadent” and wrote that decadence was only an atrophied individualism, and Decadent Symbolists were “outside the flow of history, humanity, the struggle between the ‘we’ and the ‘I’.  (in Ronald Peterson, Russian Symbolism: an Anthology of Critical and Theoretical Writings. Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1986. p 75.) Sexuality, for Gippius, was holy, as Christ was holy. Her desire to see an androgynous Christ reflects her need to forge a middle path between two opposite poles, and thus the paradigm of indeterminate gender often occurs in her essays as well as her poems and stories.

The Art of Zinaida Gippius

 

Although Gippius wrote many critical essays on religion, politics and literature, her philosophy of life can be most vividly seen—as in Hildegaard—in her artwork. Her novels, short stories, and poetry reveal her spiritual and metaphysical realities and supply the reader with a higher form of cognition, which seeks to bridge the gap between the old order and a dawning, mystical consciousness. Her short story, The Eternal Woman, casts the Archetypal Feminine as an enigmatic figure in man’s eyes. She embodies mystery to the young man in the story: “It isn’t necessary to understand a woman entirely…if she goes away, you must let her go…”  Even his mother was “one of those creatures who are given to the world but whom it is not given for others to understand…” (Selected Works, pp 164-65) Her story, Fate, treats a similar theme. It is the story of the psychological complexities of a woman, a countess, who is both very young and very old, embodying the archetype of maiden-mother-crone. Like the divine “all-unity” of Sophia, somehow, in her, “that which could not be united—was being united; furthermore, that which should not have been united—was forming one integral whole.” (Selected Works, p. 87) She instilled fear in men because she was incomprehensible; she had “superhuman fetters” because she had been granted the gift of knowing her entire future. Thus her will to know became fused with Fate and when she made that decision, she “lived through every moment” of her future, since she held all of her destiny in her hand. (p. 99) Like the message of the Goddess who appeared to philosopher Boethius as he awaited execution, Gippius seems to imply that, at some level, fate and free will have become the same thing. She (the countess) assures the reader: ‘Yes, we do have free will. And I took it and used it up all at once…I changed my fate by freely desiring to know.” (p101). Thus, the countess becomes the mysterious Fortuna; she is divinely awesome to the man, who finds her attractive but terrifying. Perhaps most striking, he found out that he “could not lie to her.” (p 105)

 

The poetic art of Gippius is influenced, not only by the Bible and the figure of Sophia in the Wisdom of Solomon, but also by the mystical teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg; St. Ephrem, who also addressed the Holy Spirit as Mother; and the homilies of Andrew of Crete (which she would have known from Orthodox church services.) (Pachmuss, Intellectual, pl52) Gippius’ poems are viewed by some as the best part of her literary output. Blok once wrote: “but the poems, Zinaida Nikolaevna’s poems!…I feel that one should abstain from them; but in the early morning her poems go wailing piercingly through my head.” (Avril Pyman, A History of Russian Symbolism. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994, p. 38) The paradigmatic figure of Sophia as androgyne has a long philosophical history from Plato and the Gnostic myths to Soloviev. As we have seen, Gippius’ preoccupation with the androgynous figure reflected her desire for a reconciliation of opposites, which is most vividly demonstrated in her metaphorical poem Electricity;

 

Two wires are wound together

With their loose endings bare.

One yes, one no—not soldered,

Not melted, but spliced there.

And their dark interlacing

Is narrow, dead, and yet

They wait for resurrection

And are expecting it.

End will touch end—the right

Yes-no this yes-no waking…

Those spliced—a fusion making,

And their death will be—Light.          (in Modern Russian Poetry, an Anthology, ed. by V. Markov & M Sparks. N.Y.: Bobbs-Merrill Co. 1966, p. 65)

 

Although her poetry is seldom impersonal, here her need to explore the fusion of opposites is treated with a kind of detached serenity. She seems to imply that the androgynous being represents the primordial state of Eden, which is full of Light, and therefore united to God; as well as a post-apocalyptic society where human beings are restored to their pre-fallen state. This idea was more than a philosophy; Gippius understood her own sexuality to reflect the androgyny that she sought to understand. In her diary, (Contes d’Amour) Gippius once wrote, “I do not desire exclusive femininity, just as I do not desire exclusive masculinity…they are so fused together that I know nothing…” (Between Paris, p. 77)  Jennifer Presto has suggested that through her gender indeterminacy—seen, for example, through her frequent habit of cross-dressing in public, alternating with her appearances as femme fatale—she purposefully makes a spectacle of her body, thus deflecting attention from her sexuality. (J. Presto, “Reading Zinaida Gippius: Over Her Dead Body” in, Slavic and East European Journal 43: 4 (Winter 1999); See also her: Beyond the Flesh: Alexander Blok, Zinaida Gippius and the Symbolist Sublimation of Sex. University of Wisconsin Press, 2008.) In her diaries she declared that she wanted to write, not just as a woman, but as a human being.

 

However, many of her poems reflect a gender inspecific speaker, and in much of it she seeks to merge faith and erotic longing, the act of praying with the act of addressing the Beloved, as is common in many of the medieval women mystics. Gippius believed that suffering was necessary in order to grasp in full the purpose and meaning of existence; for, with Christ as a model, it would bring about the mystical coordination of spirit and body.  She once wrote to the Swedish artist, Greta Gerell:

 

“Even if our country is the hereafter, we must remain [here] for the sake of the love of those who love us. And for the sake of suffering. Often I think of that ultimate moment when the Angel of the apocalypse will say, ‘The last enemy—Death—is vanquished.” (in Intellectual Profile, p.50)

 

That which transcends suffering is represented by the heavens. To Gippius, “heaven is like…the face of a living human being.” (Selected Works, p. 34) Unlike earth, which humans have to work (and therefore taint), the heavens were “pure and very broad.” (p 35) In her short story, Heavenly Words, the heavens are “spacious and uncluttered by anything.” (p 36) The character telling the story in the first person reflects much of the personal philosophy of Gippius, including her Cause, and her deep desire to transcend the known.  In the story, the heavens are like a personified entity, and the sun was its eye. But most people pay no attention to the sky. “Why shouldn’t I live simply, like everyone else, looking no further than my feet?” (p. 40) The protagonist, (a man), finds little joy in his marriage, but great happiness in nature:

 

“It seemed to me that I was reaching for and touching the heights of beauty, from which vulgarity is as remote as I was from those base, vulgar people with their coarse, ‘normal’ love or their coarse, ugly earth. New paths, new forms of beauty, of love, of life…I was approaching them, I would sense them, I could feel them!”

 

When this glimmer of true beauty appeared in his life, the sky began to laugh. Later, when he fell in love with someone else, the sky pitied him, perhaps reflecting the “consciousness of my powerlessness.” (p. 57) And here Gippius speaks about her Cause; it is a personal record of her own history, where nature reflects the Eternal. When an eclipse occurred, it appeared as if all life was practicing dying. And this blind suffering of all the earth reflected the protagonist’s own sickness. For “whoever sees and does not accept [this dying] –for him there is no forgiveness.” (p. 60)  He then realizes that his little life of passion is just an eclipse—that which remains is bigger: it is the Cause. It is a sophianic Cause, which beckons the soul to the “voice of the Eternal.” (p. 24) The only embrace the protagonist shares is with someone of the same sex; and that is because they want nothing from each other: for “heaven warmed us with its embrace—for the salvation, not of us alone, but of God’s Cause.” (p 69) Like Gippius herself, the man finds himself in a three-way relationship, in which he seeks to explore, not sexuality, but aspects of his “alter-ego.” Finally, at the end of his life, he realizes (after those whom he loved has died) that “the Cause is growing without me.” (p 75)

 

In a similar story, (A Scarlet Sword) the principle three characters are again devoted to a Cause—not at all connected to human feeling, but to a larger cause, in which they will use their “intellects and abilities” to advance to a higher purpose. And here Gippius momentarily questions her own strength for such a venture: “How am I to believe, to the very end, that the walls of our temple will be tangible, made of stone and earth? How am I to believe that the Great Mother… will stand in it?” (p. 22) “But”, she proclaims courageously through the main character, “as long as there are three of us, we are strong.” (p. 22)

The salient features of her philosophy can also be seen in her novels. Victor Chernov has said that, in ‘The Devil’s Doll,’ (Chortova kukla, 1911) Gippius seeks to “blend religion with life, to make life sacred”and thus to integrate the holiness of Christian thinking into Christian living. (Chernov, Russkaya Mysl’ 1911, quoted in Pachmuss, Intellectual Profile, p. 55) Like Dostoevsky’s ‘The Devils’, the novel demonstrates that the eternal and deep roots of real revolution must be religions in nature, or else man is certain to become a monstrosity. In another of her novels, The Twilight of the Spirit, the principle character states that “love must be infinite…It must be an open window, a light in one’s consciousness.” (ibid, p 54)  Gippius dreams of a future age when heaven and earth will merge into one Kingdom and the Word is incarnate in everyone as the embodiment of truth. She thus continues the themes of Soloviev and enriches them with her own metaphysical understanding.

Good literature, for Gippius, does more than examine the depth of human feeling. Pachmuss notes: “Literature, she claimed, should treat God and immortality as its main theme.” (Intellect and Ideas in Action, selected correspondence of Zinaida Hippius. Compiled, edited, annotated, and with an introd. and index by Temira Pachmuss Munich, 1972, p. 17) She used the New Road (Novy Put) to express the universal themes in religion, the beauty and wisdom of the feminine Mother Spirit, the mystical elements in art. Art must become the source which generates a new harmony between love and death, the miraculous and the noumena. “Each concrete phenomenon was for her impregnated with Divinity.” (ibid, p. 18) This is why she resented the Decadence in the symbolist movement. Their form of beauty was alien to Gippius; it lacked an ethical responsibility to humankind and its ultimate destiny. It denied the transcendental world, and was therefore, of no interest to her. She believed that often their poetry was no more than “technical tricks, often resembling acrostics.” (Intellect, p. 19) She said: “I was not interested in Decadence, but in the problem of individualism and in everything related to this problem.” (in Russkaya Literatura I, Moscow, 1914, quoted in ibid, p. 20)

She asserted that Christianity granted the individual the opportunity for the highest kind of freedom: “The fundamental principle of Christianity is a free enthrallment, that is, a free love.” (La Renaissance, Paris, quoted in ibid, p. 21) In seeking to transcend the boundary of the “two”, she sought a mystical union without selfishness, inequality or alienation. In her Love and Beauty, she claimed that the inherent contradictions of spirit and flesh would only disappear in a new love—one without childbearing, or attachment, (because it was not free.) (Intellect and Ideas, p 23) She considered legal marriage to be the death of the individual and the destruction of the human personality, and she believed that in the future there would be no sex at all.

 

In her metaphysics of love, androgyny marks the perfect individual and God was the Supreme (bisexual) Being, both Father and Mother. Christ contains a harmoniously blended image of both, and from him, it extends into the world, i.e., this androgynous state “underlies the whole structure of the universe.” (ibid, p. 25) Sex must be “made holy through a new, all-illuminating holiness.” (in, The Eternal Jew, Novy Put, 1903, quoted in ibid, p. 26) In groups of three which replicate the Trinity, she believed that we would cease to be only separate individuals. “We shall become three persons who are harmonious in our thinking…awaiting the future together.” (Love and Beauty, quoted in ibid, p. 29) In her novel, the Twilight of the Spirit, her character, Shadrov, proclaims a yearning to meet a person sent to him by Christ, as a sign “from the Third” who would finally penetrate the “chaos of life.” (Pachmuss, Between Paris, p. 10) She once wrote in her diary, “Schematically, partly symbolically, the essence of my Weltanschauung can be presented as an all-embracing triangle in the structure of the world and as an uninterrupted merging of the Three Principles, indivisible and yet separate from one another. They are always three, yet always constitute One Whole.’ (in, Between Paris, p. 17)

 

These ideas are reflected in her plays, only one of which was ever staged, The Green Ring. It was written in 1913 and played for audiences in both Russia and Paris, after the emigration of many Russians following the Revolution. Gippius once said, “The secret of The Green Ring is the joy of sociality.” (Zelyonoe Kol’tso, 1916, in, Intellectual Profile, p. 189) The play reflects Gippius’ attempt to reconcile an uncertain and revolutionary Russia with the expectations of the new religious consciousness; but it also echoes her pervading theme of a higher social order which transcends sexuality. The revolutionary and sexual preoccupations of the young circle of students engage in debate about the ‘problems’ of sex, family, society, and even suicide (voiced by one young woman who is contemplating it.) Because of war, what was once a carefree lifestyle animated by freedom has become an “emptiness” and a “fatal boredom.” This young student, Sophia Finotchka, says, “It is hard to go on living.” She feels “all alone in the world”; a world which is “surrounded with unhappiness and horror and ugliness, and everything is chaotic.” Others agree that the older generation “have spoilt everything in life”; and what can one do “against the old order of things?”

 

One youth, Serge, complains of the older generation and the absurdity of their lives, and yet he feels that “we must have mercy” with their parents’ generation. When he initiates the discussion of love and marriage, another member of the group replies that “love, marriage, the family…is terribly important…but somehow just now it isn’t very important. I mean there is no time for all that now.” One student, Roussya, articulates the crux of the matter: “If you love terribly you want everybody to love according to you, and only love those whom you love, and that they should always be with you. There should be [then] no freedom at all….It is a sin to love so terribly. Not good.”  The students in the play are seeking to create human relationships based on freedom and social bonding, rather than traditional family ties.  They come to the conclusion that the conflict between the older and younger generation will eventually disappear, and “the people of the future…will win.” Sophia finds the solution to her loneliness in joining the Green Ring, and is dissuaded from her suicidal thoughts by others in the group who care about her. Together with them, she pledges to work toward a utopian future which will see the formation of a new, spiritual societal bond. Already she feels changed: “Yes! Together! I feel now as if I had three souls….” And they all rejoice: “how free, how happy, how safe we shall all be!…What meetings of the Green Ring we will have…”  (All above quotes from the play are taken from The Green Ring: A Play in Four Acts, Translated by S.S. Koteliansky. London: Graham House 1920; available online: http://www.archive.org/details/greenringplayinf00gippuoft)

 

Their unity of aspiration ends the play on a joyful note, despite the brooding mood with which it opens. One critic commented on the play: “the soul of the author flies somewhere!…The play is permeated with a new spirit, far from any undisguised and haughty rejection of love and life.” (G. Chulkov, Nashi sputniki, Moscow; quoted in Intellectual Life, p. 191)  Indeed, Gippius beautifully articulates her vision of a spiritual revolution (far different from the one she was seeing in the streets), in which both sex and death are replaced by a new religious consciousness which throws off the repressive forces of the past. The triangular relationship was for her, a harmonious unity or fusion, a tripling of love which, viewed through the prism of Slavopile sobornost, evoked the Third Testament. The play reflects her own work in the instigation of The Green Lamp, demonstrating her need for a more dynamic form of community life, with its expanding creative possibilities. After leaving Russia with the émigré movement, she devoted her energies to the political cause of defeating Bolshevism, and rescue Russia’s cultural traditions, by hosting a salon called The Green Lamp which, she hoped, would foster a new generation of Russian writers. It was here that she published her new book of lyrical poetry, called Radiances.

 

It has been said that, in her poetry, Gippius made an outstanding contribution to the reinvention of Russian verse form, and also challenged the traditional notions of gender and sexuality. (Catherine Ciepiela, “The Women of Russian Montparnasse, Paris, 1920-1940” in, A History of Women’s Writing in Russia, ed. by A.M. Barrker and J. Gheith. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 19??, pp. 117-129) Her poem, The Eternal Feminine, is based on a series of mystical associations where the androgynous persona clearly identifies with the Eternal Feminine.  In other words, unlike the Eternal Feminine in the voice of her male colleagues, Gippius seeks the Divine Sophia, not in some fantasy of femininity in the world, but rather in herself:

 

“With what word am I to touch her white garments?

With what new revelation, pour out her essence?

Oh, all your earthly names are known to me:

 Solveig, Theresa, Maria…

They all are One, are you.

I love and pray….Yet insufficient

Are my love and prayers to you.

Yours, male and female from inmost depths,

I want to abide in myself,

So that my heart might answer you—

My heart—in itself alone,

So that the Gentle One might see

Her own pure image in it…

There will be other paths,

It’s time for a new kind of love.

Solveig, Therese, Maria,

 Bride, Mother, Sister!

(in Russian Women Writers Vol. 2, ed by Christine Tomei. NY: Garland Pub. Co. 1999, p.698-99)

 

The three figures, the Virgin Mary, Therese of Lisieux, and Solveig, from Ibsen’s play, Peer Gynt, all personify Gippius’ image of the principle of Divine Wisdom as a woman whose love is eternally faithful, selfless, and non-sexual, i.e., the Trinitarian and androgynous incarnation of Bride/Mother/Sister.  Alternately, as Jenifer Presto notes, Gippius compares her soul to the forces of nature, thus participating in the tradition of  those who have seen the Eternal Feminine as World Soul. (Beyond the Flesh, 2008, p. 205)  But her male contemporaries—Soloviev, Blok, Bely, Ivanov—all sought the beauty and wisdom of the Eternal Feminine in an earthly female beloved. Yet, such a concept of the Divine Feminine is itself inherently flawed because it provides no escape from the female character, which most often is a male projection.  Unless philosophers can abandon the eternal feminine image for an androgynous ideal of virgin-motherhood, as did Gippius, there is the danger of being engulfed in the element of sexual polarities. The disastrous attempts of the Symbolists to infuse Soloviev’s teachings into their life and art reveal how easy it is for the Eternal Feminine to coexist with malice toward real women. Gippius strongly reacted to the tendency of her contemporary male poets to identify woman in all of her corporeality with the Eternal Feminine, and this is reflected in many of the conversations she had with Blok. (Beyond the Flesh, chapter7, pp.190-217)

 

It is interesting to note that, in most of Gippius’ poetry, she adopted the male persona, because for her, drawing attention to her gender was a first step in negotiating a space within the culture which would allow her to speak as an individual. She thus helped to push back the boundaries of literary convention and extend the possibilities available to the female poetic voice, and align that voice with her transformative vision. Olga Matich has noted that Zinaida Gippius was a visionary symbolist who, through the metamorphosis of her own suffering, hoped to become an instrument or catalyst in earth’s very transformation.  (O. Matich. Paradox in the Religious Poetry of Zinaida Gippius. Munchen: Wilhelm Fink. 1982, p. 50)  Gippius views acceptance of suffering as necessary because we are creatures of freedom. In a letter she once wrote: “God permits suffering not because he wants conversion—he does not want to use these means—no, [but] because he is the God of freedom…[human] suffering saddens him; even more—he suffers with us—but he never….takes back his gifts; he has made us free.” (Letter to Greta Gerell Oct. 20, 1936, in Pachmuss, Intellectural Profile, pp 70-71)

 

The historical crisis which Russia underwent between 1905-1917 left many of those who tried to hold onto the vision of an apocalyptical New World in stark solitude, as many private lives and literary alliances became unraveled during emigration. Their faith in the imminent re-establishment of an earthly paradise and the Sophianic dream were left in tatters, as much of the Symbolist community gradually gave way to the larger demands of life itself. There are times when Gippius must have keenly felt her impotence to transcend the known world with its huge suffering and its complex human relationships, and when she must have realized that her Cause was not a mission that she would see unfold in her own lifetime. In 1914, feeling the impending storm, she wrote the prophetic lines:

 

“A strange alarm weighs on my heart,

Delirium of premonitions.

I look ahead and the road is dark

And perhaps there is no road….

 

Oh, my incomprehensible alarm!

It is more exhausting day by day,

And I know that the grief on the threshold now

All that grief is not only for me.”  (in, Zoblin, p155)

 

After her husband died (whom she had not been separated from, it was said, a single day for 52 years) Gippius began her own slow decline, often losing contact with a world which could longer could hold her:

 

“To go, if only to the threshold.

Ages and ages….no more strength.” (in Zoblin, p. 190)

 

The azure which was one of the Symbolist’s most striking metaphors for the ineffable Divine Sophia still called to her, but seemed beyond her grasp:

 

“I devour the sea with my eyes

Riveted on land, on the shore…

I stand above a precipice—above the skies—

And cannot fly away toward the azure…..”

 

Yet, taking her inspiration from the Book of Revelation, for the poem A White Garment, she proclaims:

 

“And so I relinquish my audacious soul

To the Creator of my suffering

The Lord said; “I shall send

A white garment—to him who prevails.”

 

It has been said of Gippius that she was close kin with Jacob: both spent a long night wrestling with their angels. (Avril Pyman A History of Russian Symbolism. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994, p. 47)  Temira Pachmuss (Intellectual Profile, p. 71) characterized Gippius as “a lonely, mystical soul dreaming about a distant land, and the possibility of being absorbed in the Beginning of All.”  As she faced toward that part of her inevitable destiny, she wrote: “Thus slowly drooping and growing colde , Do we draw closer to our beginnings.”  (in, V. Zlobin, A Difficult Soul, p. 188)

 

When her sister, Anna, died suddenly in 1942, she recorded in her diary: “Since that day in November when Asya died, every hour I feel more and more cut off from the flesh of the world… from Mother.” (in Zoblin, p. 180) She began to undertake the spiritual journey—the central motif of which is often conjured during transitional moments of crisis—of Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio, called The Last Circle. Her soul was perhaps seeking reunion with Beatrice-Sophia. And although the poem lyrically describes her journey through hell and purgatory, at the gate of heaven, it ends. “And what saints they encountered—I do not know. I must await a new revelation. But now I am silent…” (Intellectual Profile, p. 304)

 

 Her secretary, Vladimir Zloblin, who lived with the Merezhkovskys for a number of years, was with her at her death, and describes her leave-taking in this way:

 

“Suddenly her lifeless, unseeing eyes were lit up by something, by a kind of radiance…She could say neither a word nor move, but she spoke with her eyes. In her glance there shone a boundless tenderness, boundless gratitude…her face became wonderfully beautiful…Two tears flowed down her cheeks…” (Zloblin, pp 190-91)

 

Indeed, although we will never pierce that veil, it was perhaps only at this moment when she was embraced by that Beloved whom she sought for her entire life:

 

“Like a departing mother kisses her dear, beloved child at night,

So, with a kiss, Time stepped back,

Carrying the present and the past away with it.”      

                                                               (The Last Circle, in Intellectual Profile, p. 301)