Russian Symbolism in Search of Transcendental Liquescence

Book excerpt: The book examines Russian symbolist texts and turns the focus from their traditional historic-cultural interpretations to analyze the symbolist cognitive aesthetics—aesthetics that govern links between poetry, art, and cinema and the sensory-emotional imagery they evoke. This aesthetics inextricably map mystical transcendence to a spiritual world—a realibus ad realiora—through fluid transmutation. Anastasia Kostetskaya presents an innovative cross-disciplinary analysis of iconicity—a relationship of resemblance between the artistic form and its meaning, the possibilities of which symbolist artists explored to create sublime emotional experiences for the reader or viewer. She challenges the strictly dualistic and hierarchical terms of traditional symbolist concepts. This study demonstrates that this counterdualistic tendency cognitively extends from liquescence—a perception of fluid continuity between people and water. This analysis of interconnected symbolist media shows how symbolists rely on blending in their attempts to engender emotional flux through the pliable form. Fusing cognitivist and historic-cultural approaches in fluidly connected art modes, this book represents chronological, conceptual, and aesthetic continuity from poetry by Konstantin Bal'mont (1867–1942), paintings by Viktor Borisov-Musatov (1870–1905), and cinematography by Evgenii Bauer (1865–1917).