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Alexei F. Losev’s Mythology of Music as a Development of the Hermeneutics and Sociology of Music

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Abstract

Alexei Losev’s doctrine of myth is closely related to his interest in onomatodoxy [imyaslavie], a religious and philosophical school of thought that was developed by the early twentieth century, while being rooted in the Eastern Orthodox thought of Byzantium, namely in the fourteenth-century doctrine of energy (knowledge of the essence of God through its energy), formulated by St. Gregory Palamas. Losev understands myth not as a fiction but as a substantial reality and corporeality; it is the essence of a person represented in a word, a picture, or a sculpture. Thus, Losev regards philosophy, mythology, and aesthetics as a single whole. Artistic form, according to Losev, has a personal being and lives through and changes the course of history. For Losev music is not an exception here. This chapter investigates a lesser-known aspect of Losev’s work, namely his philosophy of music, which he developed in both scholarly and literary works.

Research for this chapter was carried out by Elena Takho-Godi at the A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature, the Russian Academy of Sciences, with financial support of the Russian Science Foundation (RSF, the project № 17-18-01432-П).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For Losev’s biography, see [Aza] Takho-Godi 2007; Borchert 2005, 573–576; Lesourd 2010, 506–510; Dennes 2010.

  2. 2.

    Losev 2002a. Hereafter the volume and the page numbers of this edition will be given in brackets in the body of the text.

  3. 3.

    For details on Losev’s prose, see Clowes 2004; [Elena] Takho-Godi 2007b; Takho-Godi 2008a, 131–139; Rimondi 2019.

  4. 4.

    His papers “The History of the Theories of Style: the Central Issues” and “Theories of Artistic Style” were first published in 1994. See Losev 2019.

  5. 5.

    The recent supplemented edition with extended bibliography on the problem of symbolism appeared in 2014 (Losev 2014). See also Obolevitch 2011, 569.

  6. 6.

    On the banning of the book by the Soviet authorities, see A. Takho-Godi’s foreword to Losev 2009.

  7. 7.

    As a gesture toward an official recognition of this role, in 2000, by state decree, the building where Alexei F. Losev lived in Moscow was turned into the Losev House, a museum and scholarly library that focus on the history of Russian philosophy and culture. Today, the Losev House is a study and research center, which keeps the museum dust from settling on books, manuscripts, and other artifacts. To commemorate Alexei F. Losev’s contributions to the Russian intellectual tradition, in 2006 his monument was erected near the House.

  8. 8.

    For a list of Losev’s works, as well as papers about him published in the time period from 1916 to 2013, see Losev 2013c.

  9. 9.

    For Losev’s views on music, see Haardt 1994; Cholopow 1994; Bristiger 1996; Uzelaz 2007, 228–261; Zenkin 2018a.

  10. 10.

    Two works focus specially on Wagner. The first one, which belongs to the end of the 1910s, is entitled Filosofskii kommentarii k dramam Rikharda Vagnera [Philosophical Commentary on Richard Wagner’s Dramas] (Losev 2015, 741–808). The second one appears much later (Losev 1968). See also Zenkin 2018b.

  11. 11.

    Concerning the connections between “Music Myth” and Hoffmann’s texts, see Gamaiunov 1993.

  12. 12.

    Here, as well as in Losev’s article on The Snow Maiden, the influence of Wagner’sOpera and Drama is evident: music is regarded as the natural element, the feminine womb, giving birth to “structural formations, condensed in images and words” (Losev 1995, 604).

  13. 13.

    Scriabin’ssolipsism plainly reveals its artistic origin: the creator of the artistic world is a creator of the Universe as well.

  14. 14.

    As he says through his mouthpiece Vershinin, all the abstract talk about philosophy or music is but “an analysis of the Russian revolution” (I, 392).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia

    Elena A. Takho-Godi

  2. P.I. Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory, Moscow, Russia

    Konstantin V. Zenkin

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  1. North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

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  2. University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

    Michael N. Forster  & Lina Steiner  & 

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Takho-Godi, E.A., Zenkin, K.V. (2021). Alexei F. Losev’s Mythology of Music as a Development of the Hermeneutics and Sociology of Music. In: Bykova, M.F., Forster, M.N., Steiner, L. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Russian Thought. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62982-3_31

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