Vasilii Rozanov and the Creation

This book provides the first detailed study in English of the religious philosophy of Vasilii Rozanov, one of the most influential and controversial thinkers of Russia's Silver Age. It examines his subversion of traditional Russian Orthodoxy, including his reverence for the Creation, his focus on the family, and his worship of sex.Rozanov is one of the towering figures of Russian culture, a major influence on thinkers and writers such as Bakhtin, Maiakovskii, and Mandel'shtam, as well as many European writers. He critiqued Orthodox theology, and wrote extensively on philosophy, literature, and politics, and helped reform marriage and divorce laws.His enormous contribution to Russian thought has been largely neglected, and much of his work has been misunderstood. Ure addresses this by examining the basis of Rozanov's religious philosophy, the Creation of the Earth and the Book of Genesis.

One of early 20th-Century Russia's most important and original thinkers, Vasilii Rozanov has undergone a revival in Russia since the fall of communism and his impact continues to resonate amongst Russian intellectuals of all persuasions. Adam Ure's meticulously researched new book is the first substantive work in English on Rozanov. Its hugely impressive merit is that, unlike previous scholarship which has tended to treat the writer in purely literary mode, or in his philosophical context, it offers a holistic interpretation capable of unifying Rozanov's philosophical, political, theological and aesthetic activities within a single system: that of his theory of Creation. It is this that allows Ure convincingly to account for Rozanov's influence on Russian intellectual discourse more broadly, and on literary modernism in Russia and elsewhere. Rejecting conventional assumptions regarding Rozanov's associations with apocalypticism, Ure lays emphasis on this unique figure's abiding commitment to the vitality and dynamism of the human spirit. This enables him to restore Rozanov to his rightful place of prominence in the rich canon of Russian heretical thought. Ure's achievement will be of compelling interest to scholars and students of European literature, religious philosophy and intellectual history alike., Adam Ure offers a much-needed and exceptionally well-grounded insight into the dogmatic thrust of this fragmentary, apparently contradictory and much-misrepresented author's thought. As his title suggests, Ure shows us a man passionately opposed to the modern world's trend towards 'virtual reality' and dedicated, through the sustained creative effort of his writing, to propagating the 'true coinage' of the personal and material creation at the expense of what he sees as loveless and abstract Christian-Platonic idealism which looks forward only to the end of this life and of the tragedy of the historical process., Vasilii Rozanov and the Creation gives us the most thorough English-language study to date of the penetrating, sometimes quirky, and always provocative thought of one of Russia's most original thinkers and finest writers. Rozanov's effort to rethink Russian Orthodoxy even today has considerable value, particularly his emphasis on the Creation rather than the Apocalypse. Adam Ure has placed Rozanov's major themes of ancient Egyptian culture, Judaism, the New Testament, and the Orthodox Church in a carefully and informatively constructed theological context. His discussion of Rozanov's views on sex, family, and the body with their sustained focus on creation highlights a unique strand in Russian thought. Rozanov's worries about Russian identity resonate strongly in contemporary Russia. Ure's book makes a timely contribution to that debate., [T]he most comprehensive [study] in English to date … There is no doubt that this book makes a significant addition to existing scholarship. Apart from its comprehensiveness and its central thesis — which is not one that I have encountered in this form before — its outstanding merit is the degree to which it situates Rozanov within his contemporary culture and also draws him into dialogue with an historically and geographically extensive range of artists and thinkers, including those post-dating Rozanov himself. There is unlikely to be a reader who doesn’t take anything new from this treasure house.

Adam Ure completed his PhD at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, in 2009, on the religious philosophy of Vasilii Rozanov.