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Abstract
Lev Shestov (born Leib Jehuda Shvartsman in Kiev in 1866) was a product of his times and entangled cultural roots. His destiny became closely related to the Russian Diaspora in Europe (he fled Bolshevik Russia in 1920). He was also linked to the local (especially French and German) intellectual life. However, being a Jew made Shestov stand out from the purely Russian emigration, for although he connected himself first and foremost with Russian culture, he could not be integrated without reservations into the purely Russian Diaspora. On the other hand mapping him in relation to the diverse Russian‐Jewish émigré milieu in Europe is not a straightforward task because his attitude to his Jewish roots was rather ambivalent. The case of self‐identification, in varying degrees, was similarly ambiguous with many Russian Jews who left Russia after the revolution. Shestov’s activities in emigration were diverse. Apart from teaching he published regularly in the outlets of the émigré press as well as in major French literary journals and gave lectures in Germany (in particular, addressing such different audiences as the Union of Russian Jews and the Nietzschean Society). In brief, his way of coping with the experience of exile was to become a multicultural conductor of sorts. This article aims to analyse Shestov’s life path in the framework of the Russian‐Jewish Diaspora in Europe at the time in the context of both cultural and ethnic repudiation and appropriation. This in turn should shed some new light on the cultural life of this Diaspora.
Notes
1. In a large body of scholarship on Shestov there is only a handful of works that discuss the significance of his Jewishness to his cultural heritage. Amongst them there are Paperny, “Lev Shestov i russkaia kultura;” Kornblatt, “The Apotheosis of Exile;” Martin, Great Twentieth Century Jewish Philosophers; and Willeke, “The Existential Dimension in the Religious Thought of Lev Shestov.”
2. Paperny, “Lev Shestov i russkaia kultura,” 131.
3. Osorgin, “Russkoe Odinochestvo.” The article proclaimed that Russian Jews dominated the cultural life of the Russian Diaspora, thus leaving ethnic Russians marginalised and feeling spiritually lonely. It thus highlighted the divide, as seen by an ethnic Russian, between him and “his people,” on the one hand, and Russian Jews on the other.
4. Parkhomovsky, “Po druguiu storonu barrikad ili kto sozdaval Sovremennye zapiski,” 219–28, 224.
5. For example, for “The Russian‐Jewish Berlin” see the panel with this name at the Seventh World Congress of the International Council for Central and East European Studies, chaired by Verena Dohrn. The congress was held in Berlin, July 25–30, 2005. The idea of the need for this reconsideration belongs to Susanne Marten‐Finnis, with whom I have had a number of very valuable discussions on this issue.
6. Martin, “The Life and Thought of Lev Shestov,” 1.
7. Milosz, “Shestov, or the Purity of Despair,” 107.
8. Schloezer, “Un Penseur Russe Léon Chestov,” 86.
9. Paperny, “Lev Shestov i russkaia kultura,” 126.
10. Shein, Philosophy of Lev Shestov, 12.
11. Monas, “New Introduction,” viii.
12. Tabachnikova, “The Religious‐Philosophical Heritage of Lev Shestov in the Context of Contemporary Russia and the Wider World.”
13. Shestov’s letter to Sergei Bulgakov of October 26, 1938, cited in Baranova‐Shestova, Zhizn’ L’va Shestova, vol. 2, 193.
14. Shestov, Na vesakh Iova, 107–8.
15. Zakydalsky, “Lev Shestov and the Revival of Religious Thought in Russia,” 164.
16. Paperny, “Lev Shestov i russkaia kultura,” 132, 134.
17. Ibid., 136–7.
18. Ibid., 136.
19. Ibid., 137.
20. See Markish, “Religioznaia stikhiia kak formoobrazuiushchii element russko‐evreiskoi literatury,” 93–101.
21. Shteinberg, Druziia moikh rannikh let, 236.
22. Kornblatt, “The Apotheosis of Exile,” 127–36, 130.
23. Markish, “Religioznaia stikhiia kak formoobrazuiushchii element russko‐evreiskoi literatury,” 94.
24. Blagova and Emelianov, Filosofemy Dostoevskogo, 37.
25. Mirsky, History of Russian Literature, 426.
26. Zhabotinsky, “Zumer kemps un loshn koydesh (Letnie lageria i iazyk ivrit),” Der Morgn Zhurnal (New York), July 16, 1926, cited in Moskovich, “Iubileinye zapiski o V. Zhabotinskom,” 13.
27. Ibid.
28. Shestov, “Prorocheskii Dar;” idem, “Dnevnik myslei.”
29. Paperny, “Lev Shestov i russkaia kultura,” 131.
30. Ibid., 134.
31. Shteinberg, Druziia moikh rannikh let, 240.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid.
34. Ulitskaia, “Natsional’nost’ ne opredelena,” 219.
35. Shteinberg, Druziia moikh rannikh let, 259.
36. Ibid., 260.
37. See Shteinberg, Druziia moikh rannikh let, 238.
38. See, respectively, Markish, “‘Iudej i Ellin’? ‘Ni Iudej, ni Ellin’?” 207–14 ; Shteinberg, Druziia moikh rannikh let, 260.
39. Kornblatt, “The Apotheosis of Exile,” 129.
40. Shteinberg, Druziia moikh rannikh let, 255.
41. Ibid., 255–7.
42. Title of Shestov’s book
43. Shteinberg, Druziia moikh rannikh let, 259.
44. See Kornblatt, “The Apotheosis of Exile.”
45. Marina Tsvetaeva, answers to the questionnaire of the Prague journal Svoimi putiami, 1925, cited in Zverev, Povsednevnaia zhizn’ russkogo literaturnogo Parizha, 188.
46. See Baranova‐Shestova, Zhizn’ L’va Shestova, vol. 1, 339.
47. See Hetenyi, In a Maelstrom, 283.
48. See Zverev, Povsednevnaia zhizn’ russkogo literaturnogo Parizha, 312–13.
49. See Baranova‐Shestova, Zhizn’ L’va Shestova, vol. 1, 210.
50. See Pasternak, Okhrannaia Gramota, 80, cited in Baranova‐Shestova, Zhizn’ L’va Shestova, vol. 1, 21.
51. See Valevicius, Lev Shestov and His Times, 69–72.
52. Paperny, “Lev Shestov i russkaia kultura,” 130–1.
53. See Shteinberg, Druziia moikh rannikh let, 239–43.
54. Ibid., 240.
55. Ibid.
56. Gertsyk, Vospominaniia, 109–10, cited in Baranova‐Shestova, Zhizn’ L’va Shestova, vol. 1, 119.