Still Running Off at the Keyboard

MICKIEWICZ'S INFLUENCE ON SOLOVIEV

It seems clear that Adam Mickiewicz influenced John Paul II. How much of Mickiewicz's occultism was part of that influence could only be determined by comparing the ideology of the two.

Another favorite philosopher of our former Pontiff was also influenced by Adam Mickiewicz. Elizabeth Meyendorff's translation of D. Stremooukhoff's VLADIMIR SOLOVIEV AND HIS MESSIANIC WORK, Nordland Publishing Company, Inc., 1980, in a chapter titled "The Mystical Experience and Influences" explains:

In the spring of 1875, Soloviev asks the University to grant him a year-long commission abroad. He wants to study the Hindu, gnostic and medieval philosophies....The nephew of the philosopher, who is also one of his biographers terms this voyace "theosophic."...

On the trip to Warsaw, he reads the work of Mickiewicz which seems to have captivated him. It is likely that this trip marks the origin for his Polish sympathies, which will play a certain role in the later development of his thought. Yet this must not be exaggerated, and it seems to be problematic that Polish messianism had a significant influence on the development of his thought. (p. 47)

Soloviev is convinced, and it is from the Slavophiles that he gains this conviction, that Russia has a mission, that it must devote itself to a holy task....Yet the politics which rule over the contemporary life of the people, the politics of public interest, are pagan. Here Soloviev shares ideas with A. Mickiewicz, who also said that "the Gospel received by individuals has not entered the political life of the people." (p. 191)

In 1888...Soloviev will say that twice the Church received a social body--in the empire of Constantine the Great and in that of Charlemagne. After these two temporary incarnations, it awaits its third and final incarnation. An entire world full of powers and desires, but without a clear consciousness of its destiny, knocks on the door of universal history. What is your answer? people of the Word, Soloviev cries out, thus synthesizing Mickiewicz and Dostoevskii. And he answers in an enthusiastic response: "Your answer, O people of the word, is free and universal theocracy....

The role of the Slavs, as Soloviev sees it, is not only that of the development of the messianic seed of Russian Slavophilism, it is also to continue, at least idealistically, the Polish messianism which had blossomed in the beginning of the nineteenth century under the influence of German philosophy and mysticism. (p. 195)

In THE OCCULT ESTABLISHMENT, James Webb has much to say about Soloviev's visionary experiences, the second of which took place in London at the British Museum, while Soloviev was studying the classics of Western occultism, particularly the Kabbalah. In this vision of a beautiful woman who revealed herself as "Sophia" appeared to Soloviev. Webb writes:

In response to the vision, Soloviev abandoned his Jacob Boehme and his Eliphas Levi, and rushed off to Egypt where he received a mysterious order to go to Thebes. (p. 152)

He went out into the desert looking for a tribe of Bedouins which were thought to have preserved certain Cabalistic secrets, certain Masonic traditions inherited from King Solomon. The Bedouins thought he was the devil and abandoned him in the desert for the night according to Webb. The next morning

the Russian awoke surrounded by the smell of roses, and Sophia appeared to him again. At this point Soloviev was completely absorbed by occult tradition. He appears to have believed that the legendary Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus did in fact contain all secrets, and that he could discover its custodians....

Basing his ideas upon those of the occult traditions he had so diligently studied, Soloviev next began to elaborate a philosophy of an "integral life," which must first be accepted by a small brotherhood, then by all Russia....His obsession with the name "Sophia" and with various women of that name, whom he saw as partial embodiments of his divine conception, is interesting and not a little erotic. The poet Andrei Bely saw many of Soloviev's manuscripts covered with curious writing signed with the letter "S," which seemed to Bely to read like love letters. (p. 152-153)

Antinomianism arises in Soloviev's work as well:

...after 1881 he began to regard the Orthodox clergy as tainted by their ancient perscution of the Old Believers. He made several attempts to approach Rome, but all were failures. His followers were to continue Soloviev's concern with the ecumenical role of Orthodoxy. For a large number of the intelligentsia this meant subscribing, for a time, to the doctrine of "Slavophilism"--the vision of Russia's messianic mission in Europe--a belief owing not a little to the mysticism of the Polish Messianists. (p. 153)

Webb also indicates that the religious philosophers were influenced by Soloviev. He writes:

Even the religious philosophers proper--although they naturally did not go so far in heterodoxy as the Symbolist poets and the mystics of the New Religious Consciousness--could not escape an exoticism in which a few saw some artificiality. The group of which the center was Pavel Alexandrovic Florensky (1882-1952)--Rozanov thought him a saint--was composed of Orthodox priests drawn from the ranks of the intelligentsia. Heavily influenced by Soloviev, they tried to see the world as the organic whole. Florensky himself is described as having a taste for folklore and occultism. He praised the "integral" life of the people and believed that everything was related by mysterious bonds. Such assertions that nature is an organic being are common in the traditions of Western occultism. And if Russia had produced similar conclusions out of her inherited philosophy, the example of Soloviev, and the mysticism of the Symbolists, it is only natural to find that occultism of a Western pattern also penetrated both intelligentsia and fashionable society. (p. 159)

That description of the world as an "organic whole" or "organic being" sounds strikingly like the ideas of those who worship Gaia.

George Weigel indicates that Florensky was another writer who interested Karol Wojtyla, (WITNESS TO HOPE, p. 568-69) as was Nicholas Berdyaev, of whom Webb writes "Nicholas Berdyaev used to frequent a Tolstoyan colony in Kharkov...where all sorts of progressive thinkers gather...(ibid. and THE OCCULT ESTABLISHMENT, p. 158)

The man whom John Paul cited on several occasions was steeped in occultism. He was also a promoter of unity between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. It may be that this was the only aspect of Soloviev's philosophy that captivated John Paul II. Or perhaps not. Some of the Pope's references to Soloviev:

From Zenit: "John Paul II presented Vladimir Soloviev, one of the greatest 19th-century Russian philosophers, as a pioneer and example of dialogue between Eastern and Western Christians.

The Pope referred to the philosopher in a message addressed to Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, archbishop major of Lviv of the Ukrainians, so that he could read it at a congress being held in that city on the subject "Vladimir Soloviev, Russia and the Universal Church."

In a book review by James Likoudis: "In his fine Preface, Dr. Scott Hahn notes that Pope John Paul II has introduced Soloviev to contemporaries in his encyclical "Fides et Ratio" ('Faith and Reason') as an illustrious Christian thinker and declaring his work 'prophetic'."

In CROSSING THE THRESHHOLD OF HOPE: "The theology of the Fathers, especially in the East, broke away more and more from Plato and from philosophers in general. Philosophy itself, in the Fathers, ends up in theology (as in the case, for example, in modern times, of Vladimir Soloviev)."

Another Zenit article: "Soloviev failed to unite the two in his lifetime (1853-1900), but his efforts did not go unnoticed. John Paul II recently hailed him as «a pioneer and example of dialogue between Eastern and Western Christians."