Russian, Stalinist and Soviet re-readings of Kierkegaard: Lev Shestov and Piama Gaidenko

Canadian Slavonic Papers, Mar-Jun 2002 by Anna Makolkin

This statement deserves an analytical pause. Unlike Shestov, Gaidenko leaves the realm of patriotic myth and the heroic paradigm of the national, placing the Danish existentialist higher than his Russian double, Dostoevsky. It is a clear indication of an independent judgement that is in conflict with the rising nationalism of the 1970s-particularly the Russian chauvinism and dogmatism of Soviet scholarship. The second chapter of Gaidenko's book deals with aesthetism as a worldview in Kant, Schiller, Schlegel, Holderlin, and Novalis. Without mentioning Kierkegaard in this chapter, the author introduces the notion of irony as a modality and byproduct of aestheticism. This helps her to establish the classificatory principle of the Aesthetic, placing Kierkegaard within the system of European romantic aestheticism. Gaidenko acknowledges that Dostoevsky's "Danish double" has much in common with Schelling, Schiller and Kant. For Gaidenko, the aesthetic is the unifying principle, "the nerve of the romantic worldview," be it ironic, tragic, active/heroic, or passive/didactic. Here, the author adds a new dimension to the characterization of the Romantics and their attitude to the world:

Romantics accept every point of view, precisely because they do not carry any real responsibility for anything-their infinite "I," reflecting beauty, and the finite "I," living in the daily bourgeois world, are completely isolated; the concept of play as the highest form of existence of the individual provides the ontological basis.35

For the rest of the Romantics the playful attitude is a desire to exist in the real-with the imaginary world legitimizing the realization of the "I" and expanding the Romantic self. For Kierkegaard, it is the awareness of Play itself that is of utmost importance for the full expression of the ironic self and the extension of the Romantic identity. Gaidenko argues that "the stand of the ironist is thus the aesthetic one, placing the emphasis not on the fact that all myths are "real," but on the fact that they all are [exist]."36 This way, Gaidenko creates a semiotic universal paradigm, based on primary oppositions, where the philosophical positions of the Romantics and the Kierkegaardian stand complement each other:

Romantics

The existential goal is

* to believe

* to play

* to die heroically

Kierkegaard

The existential goal is

* to analyze

* to ironize

* to die in despair

The Soviet post-Stalinist philosopher manages to distinguish between the complex worldview of Kierkegaard and his romantic contemporaries, placing the Danish existentialist ahead of his century, into the post-postmodern time of Confusion and Despair, which he anticipated thanks to his neo-Platonic reconsideration of irony. Due to the innovative usage of irony the Kierkegaardian approach to Being moves him closer to Michael Foucault and Derrida, and away from Nieztsche and Schopenhauer.37

VI. KIERKEGAARD AND DOSTOEVSKY

If Romantics had a clear understanding of the heroic individual, conquering existential obstacles, Kierkegaard pictures the unheroic despair of a tormented human being, "who falls apart into a thousand parts, being likened to the legion of the expelled devils, when he loses the most precious, the most sacred for men-the unifying power of the individuality, his only real "I."38 Here, quoting from Either/Or, Gaidenko fails to notice the remarkable image of the devils, missing the opportunity to invoke Dostoevsky. However, the passage that she does quote, provides precisely the classificatory solution that she seeks. Gaidenko attempts to identify the Kierkegaardian existential philosophy within the locked Romantic paradigm, obviously attributing far greater importance to him than to the rest of the Romantics. Her discovery of the ironic Self in Kierkegaard is most significant. His human being in despair, victimized by one's own devils, possessed by tormenting desires and incapable of Faith, is the remarkable precursor of the post-Freudian man. Kierkegaard, in Gaidenko's view, moves much further than Schlegel, Novalis and Hoffmann, with their escapist aestheticism of the fantastic. He accepts the despair of the Real, seeing no escape, except in irony and melancholy-that "hysteria of spirit," which Freud would later define as "modern nervousness." In contrast to Freud, who would prescribe indulgence and unrestrained libido, Kierkegaard meekly accepts suffering, with the stoicism of a faithful believer. His remedy lies in irony and play, and this makes him akin to the future modernists, leaving the Romantics behind. Longing and melancholy-these inescapable parts of a Romantic identity so much condemned by Kierkegaard-were, ironically, his lifetime companions. He would seek escape in Faith, but this is something that Gaidenko, a member of an officially atheistic state, cannot dwell upon.