German philosopher, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1908. Eucken was an idealist philosopher who saw that man has an inner spiritual life, which soars beyond everyday life and the physical world. In his work Eucken transformed idealism into a quest toward elevated spiritual level. Eucken’s fame was short-lived and today Eucken’s writings are more or less forgotten. Besides philosophical studies, he also published works in religion. Eucken’s award was in tune with the partly incomplete will of Alfred Nobel, in which he had intended the literary award to recognize “excellence in works of an idealistic tendency”.
“Naturalism cannot give to literature an inner independence or allow it an initiative of its own; for if literature is only a hand of life on the dial of time, it can only imitate and register events as they happen. By means of impressive descriptions it may help the time to understand its own desires better; but since creative power is denied to it, it cannot contribute to the inner liberation and elevation of man.” (from Eucken’s Nobel lecture, 1909)
Rudolf Christoph Eucken was born in Aurich, in the province of East Friesland. His childhood was shadowed his poor health and the death of his father, Ammo Becker Eucken, who worked in the postal service. Also Eucken’s only sibling, his younger brother, died. Eucken’s mother, the former Ida Maria Gittermann, was a deeply religious woman; her father was a clergyman. To support the family, she took lodgers, and was able to provide her son a good education. At the gymnasium at Aurich, Euchen became under the influence of the theologian and philosopher Wilhelm Reuter. Eucken studied philosophy, philology, and history at the universities of Göttingen and Berlin, where he was attracted to the ideas of F.A. Trendelenburg, especially his ethical concerns and historical treatment of philosophy. Hermann Lotze’s philosophical classes and rationalist teachings left Eucken dissatisfied, but he absorbed Adolf Trendelenburg’s idealism and his views about interconnections between philosophy, history, and religion. Eucken took his doctor’s degree at Göttingen. His dissertation dealt with the language of Aristotle.
After graduation Eucken worked as a high school teacher for five years. He published two pamphlets on Aristotle and in 1872 appeared Die Methode der aristotelischen Forschung, dealing with Aristotelian logic. In 1871 Eucken was appointed professor of philosophy at the University of Basle. From 1874 on Eucken held the chair of philosophy at Jena, succeeding Kuno Fischer. He remained there until his retirement in 1920. However, academic philosophers viewed with suspicion Eucken’s ponderous style, his careless use of philosophical terms, and the lack of clear definitions. Eucken’s own system of philosophical thought, which he called ethical activism, was rejected by the British philosopher Bernard Bosanquet, who defended the Older Idealism against personalist heresies. “There is in Eucken’s immense literary output,” he wrote in the Quaterly Review in 1914, “no really precise and serious contribution to philosophical science. Free cognition has been submerged by moralist rhetoric.” Philosophy was for Eucken a question of the whole of life, it did not have mundane basis, but he welcomed the achievements of modern science. He contrasted naturalism’s constricted view of human nature with spiritual existence. Like Nietzsche, he distrusted abstract intellectualism. He was not a system builder in the spirit of Hegel and his followers, or an empiricist, reducing human experience to sensations and impressions. Eucken emphasized actual human experience as it is “lived.” This Lebensphilosophie (philosophy of life) was a part of currents which anticipated some central ideas of phenomenology.
After receiving the Nobel prize Eucken enjoyed a remarkable international popularity, and received invitations to lecture at several universities. Especially The Problem of Human Life as Viewed by the Great Thinkers (1890) was widely read in its time. In 1911 Eucken delivered a series of lectured in England and in 1912-13 he spent six months as an exchange professor at Harvard University in the United States, where he met among others Andrew Carnegie and Theodore Roosevelt. He also spoke at Smith College, the Lowell Institute at Boston, and Columbia University. During World War I Eucken wrote the pamphlet Wir “barbaren”; anekdoten und begebenheiten aus dem weltkriege (1915) and patriotically argued that Germany should not be blamed for the hostilities. Eucken married in 1882 Irene Passow; they had a daughter and two sons. Eucken died on September 15, 1926 at Jena.
Eucken used to revise his major works, Grundbegriffe der Gegenwart (1878, rev. ed. Geistige Strömungen der Gegenwart in 1908), Die Lebensanschauungen der grosser Denker (1890, The Problem of Human Life as Viewed by the Great Thinkers), and others, and update them over a period of several decades. Some of his works ran into more than a dozen editions. Eucken developed his philosophy of history in an essay entitled ‘Philosophie der Geschichte’ (1907). The Main Currents of Modern Thought was an attempt to stimulate a new sense of spiritual life - defined as “a self-contained life, itself giving rise to reality, a life which our human activity is far from penetrating, but towards which it strives as a great goal.” “Wir Menschen sind keineswegs von Haus aus Persönlichkeit, sondern tragen in uns in die Anlage dazu, ob sie Wirklichkeit wird, darüber entscheidet unsere eigene Lebensarbeit.”
In Socialism: an Analysis (1921) Eucken attacked Socialism for its naturalistic view of human beings and their place in the world. Philosophically Socialism was far from Eucken’s emphasis on eternal spiritual values behind everyday life. Eucken saw that Socialism represented the political expression of naturalism. It limits human freedom and downplays spiritual values. While individual is conditioned by physical processes, the soul is something that could not be explained only by reference to natural processes. He maintained that an individual is a mixture of nature and spirit and that one must work to overcome nonspiritual nature by actively striving after the spiritual life. This pursuit requires especially efforts of the will and intuition. Eucken regarded Christianity as the highest religion - it was not the opium of the people, like Marx said - but he did not consider the orthodox religion and its concepts the right vehicle in the search for meaning in one’s own life. Jesus was not God but “merely an incomparable individuality which cannot be directly imitated”. To achieve spiritual autonomy, one must adopt a higher form of religious faith. Eucken - like Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) - saw life as the historical totality of human experience.
For further reading: Rudolf Eucken’s Philosophy of Life by W.R. Boyce Gibson (1907); Eucken and Bergson by E. Hermann (1912); An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken’s Philosophy by W. Tudor Jones (1912); Rudolf Eucken: His Life and Influence by Meyrick Booth (1913); Rudolph Eucken: His Life, Work and Travels - by Himself by R. Eucken (1922); Eucken und seine Philosophie by E. Becher (1927); Ein Nachruf auf Rudolf Eucken by M. Wundt (1927); Spekulativer und Phänomenologischer Personalismus. Einflüsse J. G. Fichtes und Rudolf Euckens auf Max Schelers Philosophie der Person by Reinhold J. Haskamp (1966); ‘Rudolf Eucken’ by G. Wilhelm, in Die Literatur-Nobelpreisträger (1983); Nobel Prize Winners, ed. by Tyler Wasson (1987); Biographical Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Philosophers, ed. by Sturat Brown et al (1996) - For firther information: Eucken, Rudolf Christoph - Britannica on Eucken - Nobel e-museum
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The “prodigal son” of Russian poetry, whose self-destructive life style and peasant origins marked his work throughout his relatively short career. Esenin died at the age of 30, tired of life and tired of poetry. His suicide in Leningrad triggered a wave of imitative suicides. Esenin became a myth and legend, and he is still one of the most beloved poets in his country.
“There are poets… who have their hour, Aseev, poor Klyuev - liquidated - Sel’vinsky - even Esenin. They fulfill an urgent need of the day, their gifts are of crucial importance to the development of poetry in their country, and then they are no more.” (Boris Pasternak in ‘Conversations with Akhmatova and Pasternak’ by Isiah Berlin, 1980)
Sergei Aleksandrovich Esenin (also transliterated Sergey Yesenin) was born in Konstantinovo (now Yesenino), into a peasant family of Old Believers, who were in Russia considered religious dissidents. Esenin was raised by his maternal grandparents. Already in his childhood, he started to compose verse. From 1904 to 1909, he attended the village school, and then the Spas-Klepiki church boarding school. During this period he started to write poetry seriously. Upon the advice of his teacher, he moved to Moscow to pursue his writing career. Esenin worked for a year in Sytin’s printing house. He joined a group of peasant and proletarian poets, the “Surikov” circle, and occasionally he also attended lectures at Shaniavskii University. In 1913-15 he lived with Anna Izriadnova; they had one son. In 1917 he married Zinaida Raikh; they had one daughter and one son.
Esenin’s first verse were published in the Moscow journal Mirok in 1914. He moved in 1915 to Petrograd, where he began to achieve fame in the literary salons. Among his acquaintances were Aleksandr Blok, Sergei Gorodetskii and the peasant poet Nikolai Kliuev, with whom he formed a close friendship. In his first collection of poems, Radunitsa (1916), Esenin wrote about traditional village life and the folk culture, the “wooden Russia” of his childhood, and his pantheistic belief in Nature. The title of the collection referred to a folk funeral ritual, the “Commemoration of the Dead”. “They say I’ll become an illustrious / Poet of Russia soon,” Esenin predicted in 1917. In his early poems Esenin viewed the Russian countryside melancholically or romantically, and adopted the role of peasant prophet and spiritual leader. Esenin also composed poems with religious themes - his Christ was a defender of the poor and discriminated. The Soviet politician and literature theorist Leo Trotsky claimed that Esenin smelled of medievalism. On the other hand, Ilya Ehrenburg tells in his memoirs People, Years, Life (1960-65), that Maxim Gorky was deeply moved and cried when Esenin read him his poems.
In 1916-17 Esenin was in military service in Tsarskoe Selo but deserted from the army after the 1917 February Revolution. He returned to Moscow in 1918. Esenin was a founding member of the Imaginist movement, which shocked conservative critics with avant-garde poetry and playful blasphemy. He issued several volumes of verse, and contributed to a number of Imaginist collections. The Imaginist poet Anatolii Mariengof (1897-1962) became his friend; they shared the same apartment and wrote poems at the same table. Their life Mariengof chronicled in his memoir, Roman bez vra’ia (1927). Mariengof’s only son, Kirill, committed suicide by hanging, like Esenin, in 1940.
Esenin hoped that the Revolution would lead to a better future for the peasantry, a new age, of which he crystallized his visions in Inoniya (1918). Later, in ‘The Stern October Has Deceived Me’, Esenin revealed his disappointment with the Bolsheviks. By the 1920 Esenin realized that he was “the last poet of the village”. The long poetic drama Pugachyov (1922) was influenced the spirit of the time and glorified the 18th-century rebellious peasant leader. Confessions of a Hooligan (1921) revealed another side of Esenin’s personality - provocative, vulgar, wounded, anguished. ‘The Black Man’ is considered Esenin’s most ruthless analysis of his failures and alcoholic hallucinations.
After divorce in 1921, Esenin married in 1922 the famous American dancer Isadora Duncan (1877-1927), who had opened a ballet school in Moscow. He followed her on tour to western Europe and the United States in 1922-23. Mariengof has later written in an essay, that Isadora herself did not fascinate Esenin, but her fame. When he watched her devouring cold roast mutton, Esenin lost completely his own appetite. Their journey abroad was a disaster for Esenin, who wished that his poetry would be well-received. “Only abroad,” wrote Esenin, “did I understand how great are the merits of the Russian Revolution which has saved the world from a horrible spirit of philistinism.” From America Esenin did not find anything good but the fox-trot dance. In 1923 he returned to Russia, suffering from depression and hallucinations. According to Mariengof, during the journey Esenin became an alcoholic, and his determination to end his life turned manic: he threw himself in front of a local train, tried to jump from a window of a 5 store building, and hurt himself with a kitchen knife. In the cycle ‘Liubov’ khuligana’ (1923) he took distance to his earlier anarchism, and relied on the healing power of love. Some of his most celebrated lyrics - addressed to his family and village - belong to this period. In these works Esenin’s major theme was hopelessness. He used straightforward language, without the ornaments of his imaginist lyrics.
Don’t waken the dream that is dying,
Don’t stir the aim that has failed.
Life brought me too early to trial;
The loss, the defeat - what availed?
(from ‘Letter to my Mother’ / ‘Pismak materi’, in Strana Sovetskaia, 1925)
During his last years Esenin became increasingly depressed and alcoholic. In 1922 he wrote: “It’s prostitutes I read my poems to, / Bandits I toast in burning alcohol.” His favorite café was “Pegasus Stall”, the meeting place of Imaginist poets. Some of the verses in Moskva kabatskaia (1924, Moscow of the taverns) were written abroad, but most of these pieces dealt with his bohemian life in taverns, prostitutes, crooks, and other social outcasts seeking consolation from alcohol and day dreams. Its concluding poem, ‘I will not weep, regret or scold …’ has been praised as one of the greatest ever written in Russian. In 1924 he wrote also about the new society and revolution, and praised Lenin in Strana Sovetskaia (1925). However, as a poet of the Revolution, he never gained such fame as Maiakovskii, with whom he also quarreled.
Esenin broke with the Imaginists in 1924, and traveled in the Caucaus 1924-25. From this journey he produced the collection Persidskie motivy (1925). In 1925 he married Sof’ia Tolstaia, a granddaughter of Lev Tolstoy; the marriage was unhappy. Esenin also had a son in 1924 from a relationship with Nadezhda Vol’pin. He wrote poems during the one hour before dinner, when he was still “a human being”, as Mariengof noted. “I still feel that I remain the poet / Of the timber cottages of yore,” Esenin said in 1925.
In the late 1925 Esenin spent some time in a hospital for a nervous breakdown. He had left his wife and went to Leningrad, where he hanged himself in the Hotel d’Angleterre, on December 28, 1925. Before his death, Esenin slashed his wrists and wrote with his own blood his farewell in ‘Do svidan’ia, drug moi, do svidan’ia’: “In this life it is not new to die, / but neither it is new to be alive.” Esenin used blood because the ink bottle in the room was dry. Communist authorities, who had viewed with suspicion Esenin’s poetry and individualism - “hooliganism” - considered his work in conflict with the doctrines of the Socialist realism, and banned his books. Esenin was out of favor until after World War II. From the 1960s his works have been reprinted in several collections.
For further reading: Serge Ésénine (1895-1925): Savie et son oeuvre by Francisca de Graaff (1933); Sergej Esenin, Bilder- und Symbolwelt by C. Auras (1965); Sergej Esenin: A Biographical Sketch by Frances de Graaff (1966); Sergey Yesenin, lichnost, tvorchestvo, epokha by E. Naumov (1969); Sergei Esenin: Literaturnaja khronika 1-2 by V. Belousov (1969-70); Letters to Yesenin by Jim Harrison (1973); Sergey Esenin by C.V. Ponomareff (1978); Sergei Esenin: The Man, the Verse, the Age by Kathleen Cook (1979); Isabora and Esenin by Gordon McVay (1980); Sergei Esenin: Poet of the Crossroads by Lynn Visson (1980); Russian Imaginism 1919-1924 by Vladimir Markov (1980); Sergei Esenin: Zhizn i tvorchestvo by A.V. Kulinich (1980); Esenin: A Biography in Memoirs, Letters, and Documents, ed. by Jessie Davies (1982); The Poetic Soul of Russia: Sergei Esenin (1895-1925) by Jessie Davies (1995); Sergei Esenin: A Centenary Tribute by Gordon McVay (1998) - For further information: Encyclopedia of Soviet Writers: Sergei Esenin - Online Bilingual Library of Russian Poetry
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