Difference between revisions of "Pavel Florensky"

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He wrote on art, language, organic chemistry, mysticism, Kant, sculpture, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Aegean culture, arithmetic, idealism, iconography, electromagnetism, microscopy, carbolic acid, asbestos, Pythagorean numbers, Aleksandr Blok, ecclesiology, and a wide variety of other topics. After the revolution he was one of the few intellectuals with conservative views to be permitted to remain professionally active in the country, at least for a time. His training in science made him useful in the early years of the Soviet Union, when he applied his expertise as an electrical engineer to various public-works projects. In Soviet history, until recently the achievement for which Florensky was perhaps best remembered officially in his own country was his invention in 1927 of a noncoagulating machine oil. [http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft8h4nb55x&chunk.id=d0e2864&toc.depth=1&toc.id=d0e2463&brand=ucpress]
 
He wrote on art, language, organic chemistry, mysticism, Kant, sculpture, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Aegean culture, arithmetic, idealism, iconography, electromagnetism, microscopy, carbolic acid, asbestos, Pythagorean numbers, Aleksandr Blok, ecclesiology, and a wide variety of other topics. After the revolution he was one of the few intellectuals with conservative views to be permitted to remain professionally active in the country, at least for a time. His training in science made him useful in the early years of the Soviet Union, when he applied his expertise as an electrical engineer to various public-works projects. In Soviet history, until recently the achievement for which Florensky was perhaps best remembered officially in his own country was his invention in 1927 of a noncoagulating machine oil. [http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft8h4nb55x&chunk.id=d0e2864&toc.depth=1&toc.id=d0e2463&brand=ucpress]
  
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[[Image:Pavel_Florensky,_1926.jpg|thumb|258px|Pavel Florensky, 1926.]]
 
Pavel Florensky was a true polymath: trained in mathematics and philosophy at Moscow University, he rejected a scholarship in advanced mathematics in order to study theology at the Moscow Theological Academy. He was also an expert linguist, scientist and art historian. A victim of the Soviet government’s animosity towards religion, he was condemned to a Siberian labor camp in 1933 where he continued his work under increasingly difficult circumstances. He was executed in 1937. [http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/B/bo3536714.html]
 
Pavel Florensky was a true polymath: trained in mathematics and philosophy at Moscow University, he rejected a scholarship in advanced mathematics in order to study theology at the Moscow Theological Academy. He was also an expert linguist, scientist and art historian. A victim of the Soviet government’s animosity towards religion, he was condemned to a Siberian labor camp in 1933 where he continued his work under increasingly difficult circumstances. He was executed in 1937. [http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/B/bo3536714.html]
  

Revision as of 12:01, 9 August 2017


Mikhail Nesterov, Философы [Philosophers], 1917. Florensky and Sergei Bulgakov, painting.
Born January 22, 1882(1882-01-22)
near Yevlakh, Elisabethpol Governorate, Russian Empire (today Azerbaijan)
Died December 8, 1937(1937-12-08) (aged 55)
Leningrad, Soviet Union (today St. Petersburg)

Pavel Florensky (Священник Павел Флоренский, 1882–1937) was a Russian theologian, priest, mathematician, scientist, inventor, and philosopher.

He wrote on art, language, organic chemistry, mysticism, Kant, sculpture, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Aegean culture, arithmetic, idealism, iconography, electromagnetism, microscopy, carbolic acid, asbestos, Pythagorean numbers, Aleksandr Blok, ecclesiology, and a wide variety of other topics. After the revolution he was one of the few intellectuals with conservative views to be permitted to remain professionally active in the country, at least for a time. His training in science made him useful in the early years of the Soviet Union, when he applied his expertise as an electrical engineer to various public-works projects. In Soviet history, until recently the achievement for which Florensky was perhaps best remembered officially in his own country was his invention in 1927 of a noncoagulating machine oil. [1]

Pavel Florensky, 1926.

Pavel Florensky was a true polymath: trained in mathematics and philosophy at Moscow University, he rejected a scholarship in advanced mathematics in order to study theology at the Moscow Theological Academy. He was also an expert linguist, scientist and art historian. A victim of the Soviet government’s animosity towards religion, he was condemned to a Siberian labor camp in 1933 where he continued his work under increasingly difficult circumstances. He was executed in 1937. [2]

Works

Books

Mnimosti v geometri, 1922, PDF; 1985, JPGs.
in Russian
in Italian
  • La colonna e il fondamento della verità, Rusconi, 1974, PDF.
  • La prospettiva rovesciata e altri scritti, ed. Nicoletta Misler, Rome: Casa de Libro, 1983.
  • Stratificazioni. Scritti sull’arte e la tecnica, Diabasis, 2008.
in Romanian
in English
in German
  • Die Ikonostase: Urbild und Grenzerlebnis im revolutionären Rußland, trans. and intro Ulrich Werner, Stuttgart: Urachhaus, 1988, PDF, ARG. Translation of the 1922 version.

Selected articles and lectures

  • "Poiasnenie k oblozhke", in Mnimosti v geometrii [Мнимости в геометрии], Moscow: Pomore [Поморье], 1922, pp 58-65; Munich: Otto Sagner, 1985; repr. in Florensky, U vodorazdelov mysli Т.1. Stati po inkusstvu, ed. N.A. Struve, Paris: YMCA Press, 1985, pp 369-379. (Russian)
    • "Spiegazione della copertina", in Florenskij, La prospettiva rovesciata e altri scritti, ed. Nicoletta Misler, Rome: Casa de Libro, 1983, pp 136-143. (Italian)
    • "Explanation of the Cover", trans. Avril Pyman, Leonardo 22:2 (1989), pp 239-244. (English)
    • "Explanation of the Cover", trans. Wendy Salmond, in Beyond Vision: Essays on the Perception of Art, ed. Nicoletta Misler, Reaktion Books, 2002, pp 183-196, n297-298. (English)
  • "Obratnaia perspektiva", Trudy po znakovym sistemam 3 (1967), pp 381-416; repr. in Florensky, U vodorazdelov mysli Т.1. Stati po inkusstvu, ed. N.A. Struve, Paris: YMCA Press, 1985, pp 117-187. (Russian). Delivered as a lecture, "Reverse Perspective" was not published at the time, even though Florensky himself prepared the text, dictating it, in part, to Aleksandra Rozanova, daughter of his friend, the writer Vasilii Rozanov. The printed proofs are preserved in Manuscript Section, RGL, f. 218, op. 1304, d.12.
    • "La prospettiva rovesciata", in Florenskij, La prospettiva rovesciata e altri scritti, ed. Nicoletta Misler, Rome: Casa de Libro, 1983, pp 73-135. (Italian)
    • "Die umgekehrte Perspektive", in Sikojev, 1989, pp. 7-79. (German)
    • "La perspective inversee", in Lhoest, 1992, pp. 67-120. (French)
    • "Gyakuenkinh", in Kuwano, 1998, pp. 11-111. (Japanese)
    • "Reverse Perspective", trans. Wendy Salmond, in Beyond Vision: Essays on the Perception of Art, ed. Nicoletta Misler, Reaktion Books, 2002, pp 197-272, n299-306. (English)
  • "Ikonostas", Bogoslovskie trudy, 9 (1972), pp 88-148.

Literature

Books

Book chapters, papers, articles, blog posts

Bibliography

  • IERODIAKON ANDRONIK (TRUBACEV), "Osnovnye certy licnosti, zizn' i tvorcestvo svjascennika Pavla Florenskogo", turnal Moskovskoj Patriarchii [The Patriarch of Moscow], 4 (1982), S. 13.

Theses

  • Elizabeth Cooper English, "Arkhitektura i mnimosti": The origins of Soviet avant-garde rationalist architecture in the Russian mystical -philosophical and mathematical intellectual tradition, University of Pennsylvania, 2000. [7]

Links

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