The Image of Apollo in the Philosophical Work of Akim Volynsky

Abstract

For the significant part of his creative life A.K. Volynsky turned to the image of Apollo, first, as a cultural metaphor rooted in the famous Nietzsche dyad of Apollonian/Dionysian and characterizing a certain type of culture and way of thinking. The critic sees the guarantee of the birth of a new Russia in over­coming the eternal Russian Dionysism and the affirmation of Apollo. The aca­demic interest in the figure of Apollo was inspired by Volynsky’s activities in the field of theatre and ballet criticism. Volynsky refers to the ballet itself as formalized plastic art to the “kingdom of Apollo”. In the later works of Volyn­sky, Apollo acquires a new function, personifying a historically specific civiliza­tion – Hyperborea, that he considered in the spirit of the Arctic hypothesis fash­ionable in those years, as the cradle of the Aryan civilization. This is where the Hyperboreans, not yet divided into nations, expanded into Europe and be­came the ancestors of many peoples. To establish the directions of their expan­sion, Volynsky draws on Apollo cult spread history, a god whose image has been associated with Hyperborea since ancient times; he traces the stages of trans­formation of his image on Greek land – from the “heavenly commander” to the god of purity, clarity, measure, order. In the cult of Apollo, the critic dis­covers Semitic features and the memory of the original Hyperborean mono­theism. According to Volynsky, it was the Semites who managed to preserve the features of the most ancient ancestors of European peoples – the Hyperbore­ans, as well as monism as a fundamental principle of their thinking. In the spirit of Russian cosmism, the thinker prophesies about the coming era of the “new Apollo” – a man of integral consciousness and universal rationality, who will live forever.