Mysticism and Anti Mysticism: Rainer Maria Rilke and Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoi in the interpretation of F. A. Stepun

Abstract

The paper deals with F. A. Stepun’s articles “The tragedy of mystical consciousness”, which came out in the journal “Logos” between 1911 and 1912, “The religious tragedy of Lev Tolstoy”, published in the Munich journal “Mosty” in 1961 and a year later in the anthology “Vstrechi”, and “The religious sense of the revolution”, published in 1929 in Paris. In his time the article about Rilke was a rather new and innovative investigation about the German poet as a mystical thinker. His mysticism is seen by Stepun as a synthesis of transcendent mysticism, which was typical for late antique thinkers, like, for instance, Plotin, and the immanent mysticism of the famous medieval mystic Meister Eckhardt. In opposition to Rilke Tolstoy’s moralism was treated by Stepun as antimysticism. However, considering the metaphoric of light that is used by Rilke and by Tolstoy, also the latter one can be seen as a mystic. For the poet Rilke light and darkness are expressions of the divine, whereas for Tolstoy only the light is connected to God. In his thinking mysticism is a way to knowledge of truth and the right way of life. Rilke’s mysticism was closer to Stepun’s own thinking than the moralism of Tolstoy, but looking at the article “The religious sense of the revolution”, where Stepun saws in the renewing of spiritual virtues the only way to overcome the horror of revolution and totalitarianism, one can ask, which spiritual virtues he meant: the free and openly mystical virtues of Rilke or at least Tolstoy’s moralism. This question stays open.