Transcultural Studies, 4 (2008), 119-127.

E. A. TAKHO-GODI

ALEXEI LOSEV’S PHILOSOPHICAL

NOVEL THE WOMAN THINKER AND
THE PROBLEM OF THE ETERNAL FEMININE

Alexei Fedorovich Losev is one of the last representatives of the Russian

philosophical school of the Silver age. He was born in 1893. As a student at
Moscow University he attended meetings of the Vl. Solov’ëv Religious-
Philosophical Society where he met N. A. Berdiaev, S. N. Bulgakov,
V. Ivanov, I. A. Il’in, E. N. Trubetskoi, Father P. Florenskii, S. L. Frank and
other outstanding representatives of Russian philosophical thought. After the
revolution, Losev was not exiled in 1922, unlike most of his elder contempo-
raries, since he published his own works only in the late 1920s. But the publi-
cation of his book The Dialectics of Myth in 1930 was followed by his arrest
and imprisonment in a labor camp, and then by a prohibition to write on philo-
sophical questions and almost twenty years of forced silence.1 In his time in
the philosophical “underground” Losev worked on translations, classical my-
thology, studies in mathematics and literary works.2 He started writing his
philosophical prose as far back as the spring of l932 when, as a convict, he
was building the channel linking the Baltic and White seas. It is there that he
created the stories I was 19 years old . . . , The Theatre-Goer, Correspondence
in a Room and the novella Tchaikovsky’s Trio.3 I shall focus on a single ex-
ample of Losev’s prose, namely his novel The Woman Thinker, which was
finished in December, 1933, soon after he was released from the forced labor
camp.4 Without performing a complete analysis of the novel, I shall attempt to

1. About A. F. Losev see Aza Takho-Godi, Losev, 2nd ed. (Moscow: Molodaia Gvardija,
2007); Aleksej Fedorovich Losev: Iz tvorcheskogo naslediia. Sovremenniki o myslitele, A. A.
Takho-Godi, V. P. Troitzkij, eds. (Moscow: Russkii Mir, 2007).
2. About Losev’s fiction see Elena Takho-Godi, A. F. Losev: Ot pisem k prose: Ot Pushkina
do Pasternaka (Moscow: Dialog-MGU, 1999); A. A. Takho-Godi, E. A. Takho-Godi, V. P.
Troitzkij, A. F. Losev – filosof i pisatel’ (Moscow: Nauka, 2003); Edith W. Clowes, “Image and
Concept Losev’s ‘Great Synthesis of Higher Knowledge’ and the Tragedy of Philosophy,” in
Edith W. Clowes, ed., Fiction’s Overcoat: Russian Literary Culture and the Question of Phi-
losophy (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell Univ. Press, 2004), pp. 211–34; Elena Takho-Godi,
Khudozhestvennyj mir prozy A. F. Loseva (Moscow: Bol’shaia Rossiiskaja entziklopediia, 2007).
3. We quote Losev’s fiction in our text from the book: A. F. Losev, Ia soslan v XX vek . . .
vols. 1-2 (Moscow: Vremia, 2002).
4. The novel The Woman Thinker and Losev’s letters to M. V. Yudina were published for the
first time in the magazine Moskva in 1993.
120 Transcultural Studies

answer a single question of principal importance for its interpretation: why it

raises the problem of the eternal feminine and how Losev resolves it.
Before turning to the main topic of this article I shall say a few words about
the plot of the novel and the biographical circumstances that gave rise to it.
The main subject of the novel is the meeting of the philosopher and writer
Vershinin with the remarkable female pianist Radina, the history of his rela-
tionships with Radina’s three “husbands” – Pupochka, Bakhianchik and
Beethovenchik – and her faithful friends Telegin and Vorob’ëv. There is no
doubt that in many aspects Vershinin is the alter ego of the author himself.
The figure of the female pianist or singer appears often in Losev’s novels and
stories. Most probably, the appearance of this figure was influenced by
Losev’s acquaintance with the famous singer A. V. Nezhdanova, to whom
Losev dedicated one of his first articles Two world-outlooks in 1916. It is pos-
sible that in the forced labor camp at the channel linking the Baltic and White
seas Losev met Amata, the daughter of the well-known expert in classical
philology F. F. Zelinsky: like A. F. Losev, in the 1930s she was a prisoner at
Medvezh’ia Gora where she worked as a camp pianist.5 But there is no doubt
that the outstanding pianist Maria Veniaminovna Yudina was the prototype for
Radina in Losev’s novel The Woman Thinker.
Losev met M. V. Yudina on the eve of his arrest. Yudina had long been in-
terested in philosophy and religion. Her spiritual aspirations brought her in
1927 to Father P. Florenskii and in the first half of April 1930 to Losev. Their
second meeting took place in late 1933 when Losev was released from the la-
bor camp. In his letter to Yudina of February 16, 1934, Losev admitted that
she interested him as a “woman,” moreover, a woman “in substance – as a
source and bosom of miraculous revelations, an incorruptible and powerful
beauty, a charming might of a genius, talent and inspiration” (II, p.146). “I felt
in your playing,” explained Losev, “my own realm of thinking, hidden –
maybe unclear even to yourself – philosophical realizations, the fascinating
depth and breadth of perspicacity which I had discovered only in the most im-
portant philosophers” (II, p. l46). Losev’s attitude to Yudina was not run-of-
the-mill sexual attraction. He sincerely meant what he said when he addressed
the following words to her: “I am too young and imperfect to be an elder and
guide, but I am too much a philosopher to be a mere admirer and not to under-
stand your delicate weaknesses” (II, p. 150). He dreamed of their joint service
“to our great common inner cause” (II, p. 150) – the true Orthodox Church.
When The Woman Thinker was finished Losev handed over his novel to
Yudina for reading. The pianist perceived the novel as a lampoon directed
against her and permanently broke off relations with its author. Yudina was
particularly angered by the everyday scenes, such as Radina’s hysterics in the
communal kitchen during a scandal with her neighbors when it becomes clear
that not only does she “play the piano,” but also “sleep with three bumpkins”

5. See Takho-Godi, Takho-Godi, and Troitzkij, A. F. Losev – filosof i pisatel’.

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Alexei Losov’s Philosophical Novel The Woman Thinker and the Problem of the Eternal Feminine 121

(II, p. 23), i.e., with Pupochka, Bakhianchik and Beethovenchik. According to

A. M. Kuznetsov, the publisher and custodian of Yudina’s archives, these
three persons are “barely masked figures” of the members of the Nevel circle
of M. M. Bakhtin (Yudina belonged to this circle as well): M. M. Bakhtin is
Bakhianchik, L. V. Pumpiansky is Pupa and V. N. Voloshinov is Beetho-
venckik.6 In spite of certain doubts this hypothesis is very interesting. Of
course, Losev could know Yudina’s milieu, but, as we know, he never met
Bakhtin and the members of his circle are never mentioned in his works and
letters. A. M. Kuznetsov supposes that the portrayals of Radina’s “‘everyday
behavior’ have nothing to do with the famous Russian pianist.” Moreover, he
cannot admit as plausible that the “writer, philosopher and musician guided by
certain ‘personal feelings’ could degenerate into a vulgar caricature of this
genuine ‘woman-thinker’ (if we reject the intended irony of the title).”7
Indeed, if Losev had wanted to create a lampoon on Yudina, most probably
he would not have been astonished by her negative reaction: and yet, accord-
ing to the letters he wrote to Yudina in 1934, her reaction to the novel proved
to be completely unexpected. “You still do not know,” he wrote to Yudina,
“that Radina’s vices reflect those of an important Russian writer, one of the
founders and pillars of symbolism and not you (if it comes to that); moreover,
this writer is famous in the whole world and greater than you! [. . .] From my
work you monstrously ascribed to yourself all the negative and did not accept
all that really refers only-to you” (II, pp.143-146). Who was meant by the
writer? D. Merezhkovsky or A. Blok, or Andrei Belyi, or, maybe his beloved
poet V. Ivanov? His personal acquaintance with A. Belyi and V. Ivanov could
provide Losev with the material revealing their everyday life, and V. Ivanov’s
emigration in Rome could create the idea that he was known “in the whole
world.” Was this the reason why reminiscences from Ivanov’s poem Poets of
the Spirit appear on the first page of The Woman Thinker? While characteriz-
ing her musical talent, Vershinin writes in his sketch of Radina: “She slides
over each thing right up its last everyday depth and, whatever her estimation
of things in their naked rationality, she knows always that they are followed
by an endlessly extended perspective, that each thing recedes into a mysteri-
ous haze, that our life is only a splash of languorous foam above the pale
mystery of the boundless seas of existence” (II, p. 12). If this fragment repre-
sents a general account of what was, from Losev’s view-point, Ivanov’s main
idea of the “native and universal,” the last sentence is a prosaic exposition of
Ivanov’s poetic words: “We are splashes of glowing foam / Above the pale-
ness of the seas.”8

6. A. M. Kuznetzov, “Uzrenie suschestva musyki pri posredstve estestva zhenskogo i bezu-

miia artisticheskogo,” Novyj mir, no. 6 (1994), p. 228.
7. Ibid.
8. V. Ivanov, Stihotvoreniia. Poemy. Tragediia (St. Petersburg: Akademicheskii proekt,
1995), 1: 155.

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But in principle for this article it is not so important which pillar of sym-
bolism served as a prototype for the heroine of Losev’s novel. Another ques-
tion is much more important for us: why does Radina have two prototypes at
the same time – an evident “feminine” prototype and a secret “masculine”
one? This seemingly naïve question leads us to an extremely important and se-
rious problem for Russian thought of the early twentieth century, namely the
eternal feminine and its relation to androgyny.
In order to answer this question one should first of all remember that
Losev, like many of the Russian symbolists, was a spiritual disciple of
Vl. Solov’ëv and as far back as in his youth he was deeply affected by
Solov’ëv’s philosophy of love which, as we know, strongly influenced the
Russian Symbolists.
For Losev, since his youth, the problem of the meaning of life was insepa-
rable from the question of the meaning of love and the eternal “yearning [. . .]
for das Ewig Weibliches” (II, p. 450). In his early work of 1911 “Higher
Synthesis as Happiness and as Knowledge,” the future philosopher, clearly
under the influence of Vladimir Solov’ëv, formulates the central task of phi-
losophy as the construction of an integral worldview that would not only unite
all five areas of human life — religion, philosophy, science, art, and morality
— but which would also allow people to life a harmonious life free of contra-
dictions, full of wisdom and higher, spiritual happiness.9 Solov’ëv’s doctrines
of the “meaning of love” and the eternal feminine seemed to Losev as a step
towards overcoming world disharmony. In Losev’s mature philosophical
works this theme is barely touched, but this does not mean that it was alien to
him. Moreover, for Losev, as for Solov’ëv and the symbolists, the problem of
the eternal feminine proves to be indissolubly connected with the theme of
Sophia. The mythological aspect of Solov’ëv’s doctrine of the eternal femi-
nine was most meaningful for the younger generation of Symbolists10 and, to-
gether with his conception of love, exerted an “unrivalled influence on later
symbolist aesthetics”:

The path to transfiguring earthly life through mystical love, understood as

service, was the mythopoetic basis of Blok’s Poems about the Beautiful
Lady, Andrei Belyi’s Gold in Azure, and the lyric poetry of Sergei
Solov’ëv and Viacheslav Ivanov. Moreover it was the basis of various
autobiographical myths which determined not only the themes and motifs
of artistic works, but also the peculiar behavior of the poet symbolists.11

Losev’s reliance on Solov’ëv’s views becomes even more evident if we

take into account that, by unmasking those living “in the black prison of ni-

9. See A. F. Losev, Vyshschii sintez: Neizvestnyi Losev (Moscow: CheRo, 2005), pp. 13-26.
10. D. M. Magomedova, “Vladimir Solov’ëv,” in Russkaia literatura rubezha vekov (1890-e
– nachalo 1920-h godov) (Moscow: Nasledie, 2001), 1: 743-44.
11. Ibid., p. 749.

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Alexei Losov’s Philosophical Novel The Woman Thinker and the Problem of the Eternal Feminine 123

hilist natural sciences,” the author of The Dialectics of Myth contrasted them
with the “intimate-romantic” love of Sophia – to the “‘pink shadow’ that Vla-
dimir Solov’ëv prayed to.”12 Losev wrote: “You are in love with an empty,
black hole that you call ‘the universe’ . . . and idolize in your places of wor-
ship. . . . And I, on the contrary, love the sky that is bright, blue, deep, and
dear to my heart, for Sophia Divine Wisdom Herself is also bright, blue and
dear to my heart.”13
In The Dialectics of Myth the dark face of relative mythology is contrasted
with the Sophia-like image of the nun, just as in Losev’s novella Meteor. This
novella was created before The Woman Thinker and in it the dark face of my-
thology is contrasted with the sublime figure of pianist Elena Doriak, this
wonderful “woman with an idea” (I, p. 283).
There is no doubt that the last definition is of principal importance for
Losev. But why is the combination of “woman” and “idea,” “woman” and
“thought” so important for him? In order to understand this one should say a
few words about Losev’s attitude to Solov’ëv’s doctrine of Sophia.
Analyzing Solovyov’s views on Sophia at the end of his life, Losev wrote
in his book Vladimir Solov’ëv and His Time: “Sophia is not simply the femi-
nine principle, but it is a well-organized amalgamation of the masculine and
feminine principles, the child of the marriage between idea and matter . . .
Comte and VI. Solov’ëv, who expound the French philosopher with enthusi-
asm, were to speak not about the feminine, but about the masculine-feminine
(androgynous) principle.”14 Losev thought that “in a logical sense the position
of VI. Solov’ëv in this issue is more consistent in his work The Meaning of
Love . . . where it is said that ‘apparently a true human being in the fullness of
his ideal person cannot be only a man or only a woman, but should be the
highest unity of both.’ Apparently, the same should be said,” wrote Losev,
“not only about human beings, but also about humanity and the universe in
general, about the cosmos where the ideal and material, i.e., the masculine and
feminine are amalgamated in one indissoluble whole.”15
From my point of view, these words explain exactly why in Losev’s prose
the ideal heroine incarnating the eternal feminine should be certainly a
“woman” and a “thinker.” It is due to the “Sophianic aspect” requiring the
amalgamation of the feminine and masculine principles, the woman’s sub-
stance and the man’s thought “in one indissoluble whole.”
That is why it is through a union with a woman, the genius pianist Radina
that the “philosopher-monk” (II, p. 149) Vershinin dreams of realizing his
“Great Synthesis” of the absolute unity of faith, knowledge and life: “I united
three great elements of life into one element, one Great Synthesis, and I united

12. A. Losev, The Dialectics of Myth, V. Marchenkov, trans. (London and New York: Rout-
ledge, 2003), p. 46.
13. Ibid., p. 137.
14. A. F. Losev, Vladimir Solov’ëv i ego vremia (Moscow: Molodaia Gvardija, 2000), p. 207.
15. Ibid., p. 208.

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them in you, Maria, in a union with you, thanks to you and your genius” (II, p.
139). Originally Vershinin accepts Radina as a hypostasis of Sophia itself. It is
not an accident that in his sketch of Radina with which the novel begins, she is
depicted as being absorbed by the universally-divine sea of the existence,
dominated by “the green and pale twilight of future and past pre-world con-
ceptions” (II, p. 12). In his work Celestial Signs (A Meditation on the Symbol-
ism of Colour) (1922) Father P. Florenskii wrote about this green aspect of
Sophia as “that spiritual aspect of being – one might say the paradisical aspect
– which does not yet involve any cognition of good and evil,” since “there is
not yet any direct aspiration either towards or away from God.”16
Here the directions – to God or from Him – are not yet determined, but they
are already given as a possibility. That is why in Vershinin’s sketch of Radina
is displayed as Pythia, a witch, a werewolf, a sorceress, a pagan priest, a ma-
gician, an executioner and at the same time as an ascetic, a hermit, a monk, a
prophet, a visionary, a witness of the Apocalypse. When staying with Radina,
Vershinin starts to feel responsible for the whole world, the whole of human-
ity. His meeting with Radina proves to him that in everyday life there is
something unknown which he did not notice before. It seems to him that there
is a “true beauty of the spirit” in Radina, “which needs no external proofs, but
attracts us, irresistibly draws us to the grey mist of prophetic predictions, to
this intimate and strange magic darkness of wisdom” (II, p. 15). And for Ver-
shinin the wisdom of a woman consists in “being a living, but fearless flesh of
the truth where the truth itself seems to be ready to move and waver” (II, p.
18).
Vershinin is ready to see in Radina the genius of the “Eternally Feminine”
incarnating the masculine feature of the pure thought. He accepts Radina’s
feminine “passivity” in her relations with her three “husbands” almost as
something normal – since “Sophia is not light, but a passive addition to it.”17
The hierarchy of Radina’s admirers – Pupochka, Bakhianchik, Beethovenchik;
Vershinin, Vorob’ëv, Telegin; three angels coming down to the earth “to listen
to Maria” (II, p. 133) in a dream of Vershinin – those are three triads – grades
of ascension from the animal organism “to the Thought, Will and Feeling,”
and from them to the “Super-Intelligence, Hyper-Noesis and a reasonable Ec-
stasis.”18 This is also the “hierarchy of feelings – from a vital-animal self-
satisfaction of organisms to the intelligent-heartfelt and ecstatic self-
affirmation of oneself and all others in one super-existential point,”19 and at
the same time the hierarchy of the “substance of knowledge,”20 as it is pre-
sented in Losev’s 1927 book, The Philosophy of the Name.

16. Losev cites these words by Florensky in his book The Dialectics of Myth, p. 46.
17. Ibid.
18. A. F. Losev, “Filosofiia imeni,” in Bytie: Imia: Kosmos (Moscow: Mysl’, 1993), p. 745.
19. Ibid., p. 694.
20. Ibid., p. 660.

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Alexei Losov’s Philosophical Novel The Woman Thinker and the Problem of the Eternal Feminine 125

But while for Vl. Solov’ëv the path of ascetism and monastic life does not
coincide with that of perfect love, for Losev this spiritual-physical labor is the
direct way to the God-man’s (theanthropic) love. “Everything is mediocre in
comparison with monastic life, and every feat is philistine in comparison with
it,” he exclaims in his The Dialectics of Myth.21 From this position he displays
the fate of the heroine in his novel The Woman Thinker.
While Elena, from the novella Meteor, succeeded in keeping the path of a
“nun-hermit” (I, p. 283) in her struggle against the “invisible enemy” (I, p.
307), tempting her with earthly love; Radina, on the contrary, is defeated in
this struggle. She lives in a kingdom of animal love, and her marriage “of four
persons” does not look like a real marriage, but rather as a kind of “infernal”
love about which Vl. Solov’ëv preferred to remain silent. The split within Ra-
dina, her division into two women at the same time – into a great servant of
the spirit and a whore – symbolizes the idea of the fallen Sophia.
The motif of the fallen Sophia, as scholars have noted, was not characteris-
tic for the poetry of Vladimir Solov’ëv, who represents the “descent of Sophia
into the lower world and the resulting transfiguration of this world (some-
times, on the contrary, the ascent of the hero into the higher world),” or of
“the intuition of the sophianic principle in the very phenomena of the lower
world – in nature and in love . . . of the sophianic significance of universal-
historical events in human life.”22 However, this motif was highly characteris-
tic for the symbolists who inherited the sophianic idea from Solov’ëv, most of
all for Aleksandr Blok. From the perspective of the history of literature and
aesthetics, Losev regarded symbolism as “a great and profound pan-European
movement in thought, in art, and in philosophy.”23 Losev, however, disputed
many of its religious-philosophical positions, which were based not only on
aesthetic principles but which, like romanticism before it, were a manifesta-
tion of individualist culture, which Losev rejected, as he wrote in the “Sup-
plement to The Dialectics of Myth.” However his rejection of individualism
does not preclude Losev making reference to the symbolists’ literary works.
Moreover, the image of the fallen Sophia also arises in Losev under the influ-
ence of the events of Russian history after the Bolshevik coup-d’etat of 1917
and of the historiosophical conception that held that the final transfiguration of
the world would be preceded by an epoch of complete spiritual disintegration,
atheism and social anarchy.
The ideal Radina, “incarnated” in reality after leaving the bosom of “pre-
world conceptions,” realizes her synthesis of faith, knowledge and life “in
conformity with the method of a fallen woman” (II, p. 149). It is not acciden-
tal that in her very name Radina we seem to hear echoes of some eternal joys
(in Russian “Radost’”), or a remote eternal Motherland (“Rodina”), or some-

21. Losev, The Dialectics of Myth, p. 140.

22. Magomedova, Vladimir Solov’ëv, p. 765.
23. A. Losev, Dialektika mifa. Dopolnenie k „Dialektike mifa“ (Moscow: Mysl’, 2001), p.
489.

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thing dirty and dark, disgusting and snaky, or reminding the rites of flagellant
sectarians (“Radenie”). The way of Radina is a hysteria of life, a synthesis of a
“genius and petty bourgeois nothingness.” The real Radina cannot climb the
steps of the “knowledge,” she keeps descending, becoming no longer the Vir-
gin favored by God, no more a mother or marvelous nun as he sees her in his
first dreams, but a Soviet security official “with a leather jacket and a revolver
behind” (II, p. 138). That is how at the end of the novel Vershinin sees her in
his last dream, when the hero is expelled from his cell, removed from culture
and driven out of society.
The physical death of Radina, killed by Vorob’ëv at the end of the novel
underscores the spiritual death of the heroine, her incapacity to be the bearer
of highest values – both cultural and spiritual. In addition, in many aspects
Radina’s fate proves to be similar to the fate of Vershinin: like Vershinin, the
genius woman is unnecessary to the surrounding world and that is why she is
doomed to extermination. But the difference consists in the fact that Radina is
ready to submit to her fate and Vershinin is not, although – like Radina – he
does not find the right way to transform “the entire man” into a spiritual-
corporal principle.24 He cannot succeed “in regenerating his own and the
other’s nature”25 in order to reach the “amalgamation or interaction of the di-
vine and the human.”26 His dream of “transforming the earthly life through the
mystical love-service,”27 like the dream of all Russian symbolists, proves to be
only a dream – a beautiful dream unrealizable in reality.
But thrown into prison, into a “stinking pit” (II, p. 139) of a senseless mate-
rial-animal existence, Vershinin nonetheless considers himself a victor. He
remembers that everything in human life receives a meaning “only in its
measure of sacrifice” (I, p. 552), that the vanity and emptiness of the earthly
life with its passions, music and artistic follies should not prevent us from
seeing a quite different, supreme sense behind the turmoil of everyday life.
Radina’s tragic fate permits him to feel this with a particular strength, to see
the Other in the genius woman-thinker, his own “alter ego” facing the same
eternal “antinomy of God and world” that sooner or later one should “live
through and eliminate.”28
In conclusion, the Solov’ëvian doctrine of Sophia and the meaning of love
exerted an enormous influence on Losev, indeed no less than on the earlier
symbolists, shaping both his prose and his autobiographical myth. In Losev’s
prose the temptation by love becomes a kind of acid test, a means of deter-
mining the “quality of the life path”29 of the protagonist, insofar as everything

24. V. S. Soloviev, Sobranie sochinenii, 2nd ed., 9: 234.

25. Ibid., p. 235.
26. Ibid., p. 234.
27. Magomedova, Vladimir Solov’ëv, p. 749.
28. A. F. Losev, Mirovozrenie Skriabina, in A. F. Losev, Forma: Stil’, Vyrazhenie (Moscow:
Mysl’, 1995), p. 767.
29. Soloviev, Sobranie sochinenii, p. 231.

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Alexei Losov’s Philosophical Novel The Woman Thinker and the Problem of the Eternal Feminine 127

in contemporary life is taken by the author as an argument between heaven

and the underworld, between good and evil, where one’s attitude towards love
is far from a final argument. However, true to Solov’ëv’s idea that the su-
preme theandric love is “a synthesis of male with female, spiritual with corpo-
real,” Losev also fulfilled in his own life a special form of asceticism, namely
a spiritual marriage of which, in his words, “few would be capable and most
of the contemporary crowd of scholars, philosophers, married people and
monks could even dream.”30 This complex of ideas was the origin of the novel
The Woman Thinker.

Moscow State University

30. A. F. Losev, V. M. Loseva, “Radost’ na veki”: Perepiska lagernyh vremen (Moscow:

Russkij put’, 2005), p. 32.

127