“The chastity of non-personal inspiration”. To the problem of method in the work of S.S. Averintsev

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to determine the role of tradition in the work of S. Averintsev. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that the work of the author is considered as a trinity, which includes scientific research, translations and poetry of Averintsev. The article hypothesizes that Averintsev’s worldview is based on the philosophy of omniscience, the scientific transcription of which was the Russian school of historical poetics and, more broadly, the Romantic hermeneutics of culture. Central to Averintsev’s method is the concept of tradition, which allows the researcher to consider cultural phenomena that chronologically belong to different eras and styles within the framework of a single and unified semantic horizon – the “big time” of culture. The article substantiates the thesis that the dialogue with cultural tradition presupposes the procedure of self-removal, which he called “the chastity of non-personal inspiration”. Self-removal, as listening to tradition, is the main hermeneutic setting of his creative consciousness and forms the basis of his poetic, translation and scientific method. The method of interpreting cultural tradition is examined in spiritual poems, translations from German-language poetry, and an example from his work “Ancient Greek literature and Near Eastern writings”.