Goethe in Russian Modernism: the Polemics of A. Belyj and E. Medtner

Two polemical books, "Reflections on Goethe. Book I: Analysis of Rudolf Steiner’s views in connection with the issues of criticism, symbolism and occultism" (1914) written by Emilij Medtner and "Rudolf Steiner and Goethe in the Contemporary Worldview" (1917) by Andrei Belyj, had been treated in a biographical frame. Researchers analyzed them as a part of personal conflict between the authors and, more broadly, as a trigger of ideological division inside the publishing house "Musaget". However, these texts provide rich material both for the history of Goethe’s cultural reception in Russia and for the intellectual history of Russian and European modernism in the beginning of 20th century. While Belyj’s book was provided with the commentary by Irina Lagutina, the present study focuses on E. Medtner’s "Reflections on Goethe". Taking a wide range of sources into account, I reconstruct three contexts of this book, which turned Goethe into the emblem of modern culture, science, philosophy and occultism. Firstly, Medtner’s main reason for writing a huge text on Goethe was an argument with Bely about anthroposophy, that was founded by R. Steiner in 1913 after his break with the theosophical organization. Notably, in the beginning of his career Steiner was a specialist in the so-called Goethe-Philologie. He worked for several years in the Weimar archives in order to prepare a commentary on Goethe’s scientific works. Medtner, who praised German culture, also considered himself a Goethe-scholar and decided to destroy Steiner's interpretation of Goethe. Due to this fact, Russian contemporaries, for example M. Zhirmunsky and S. P. Bobrov, perceived Medtner’s book only as an ideological statement against occultism. In the first chapter, I revise the history of its publication in order to show that there were more reasons behind the decision to write a book on Goethe. In the appendix II I comment on Medtner's sketches, dedicated to Steiner’s lectures on the question of races. These materials allow to highlight Medtner's ambiguous attitude towards anthroposophy. The second chapter aims to clarify how German literature about Goethe influenced Medtner's ideas. Due to his peculiar aptitude for self-education, Medtner filled his "Reflections on Goethe" with various sources: from modern books (e. g. by Simmel and Chamberlain) and philosophical articles published in the journal "Logos" to some antiquarian German texts that included descriptions of Goethe. With this literature he tried to strengthen his argumentation. In particular, he declared that Goethe was a Kantian. To clarify this statement, I consider a range of texts by neo-Kantians, who analyzed relations of Kant and Goethe with special attention to the role of Schiller as a medium between them. Another important ideological aim for Medtner was to establish continuity between modern science and Goethe's scientific works, such as "Metamorphosis of Plants" and "Theory of Colors". Such aspiration was determined by several reasons. One of them, namely disappointment with positivist science, was connected with the texts by German psychologists (H. Helmholtz, E. du Bois-Reymond), who tried to reintegrate scientific potential of Goethe's research. The latter context concerns the connection between Goethe and physiognomy. An analysis of Goethe’s portraits, with which Medtner ended his book, can be compared with a more general idea of analyzing culture or history using physiognomy. In this chapter I comment on Medtner's interest towards psychology and show how visual materials in the monographs about Goethe's appearance used physiognomic techniques of recognizing emotions and national character through the facial expression. In a supplement I provide a list of sources for "Reflections on Goethe".