A.F. Losev’s “The Essay on Music” – the Disappeared and Found Text

Abstract

The article examines the textual problem of “The Essay on Music” (1920) written by Alexey
Losev (1893–1988) in 1920. This early work on philosophy of music was published after author’s
death according to the manuscript missing the beginning of the essay. Helena Takho-Godi tries
to answer the question: can we restore the author design now? As the article shows, “The Essay
on Music” not only closely connected thematically with “Musical Myth” from Losev’s book
“Music as the Subject of Logic” (the concept of Sofi a, common literary reminiscences, etc.), but
represents the ending of this text, which was not included into the book “Music as the Subject of
Logic” at the time of its publication in 1927.