The Dutch Connection: Johanna van der Meulen’s Contribution to Russian Symbolism
Journal Title: Studia Litterarum - Year 2017, Vol 2, Issue 3
Abstract
The Symbolist Ėllis’ (Lev Kobylinskij) writings during his Moscow period emphasize the split, the division and dichotomy between material reality and celestial vision. His works written in exile in Locarno-Monti in Switzerland are devoted to resolving these antitheses by building bridges on all levels: between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, between culture and religion, between worldly and otherworldly, ultimately between East and West. From being a poet and critic he became a translator and culturologist: “Dr. Leo Kobilinski-Ellis.” The Dutch medium Johanna van der Meulen — whom he had met in 1911 in Rudolf Steiner’s Theosophical, soon Anthroposophical colony — played a crucial role in this fundamental metamorphosis. With her he lived in a thirty-five-year-long creative symbiosis that proved extremely beneficial to the two of them. Van der Meulen developed a mystical doctrine of her own, “Cosmosophy”, based on a Gnostic world view, strongly influenced by Russian religious philosophy. As she had finished her work in four parts Dr. Kobilinski-Ellis published his summary and interpretation of her teachings, in which he defines the core of Cosmosophy as a synthesis of the “Johannian” element in the meditative wisdom of the Eastern Church and the “Petrine” component in the energetic faith of Catholicism.
Authors and Affiliations
M. Ljunggren
Keywords
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- EP ID EP26171
- DOI 10.22455/2500-4247-2017-2-3-190-203
- Views 322
- Downloads 16
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