The Promethean Aspects in the Worldview of Jurgis Baltrušaitis and Giovanni Papini

Abstract

The object of the paper is Prometheism in Baltrušaitis’s and Papini’s epistolary leg­acy (letters in Italian that Baltrušaitis wrote to Papini, 153 of which are stored in the Manuscripts Department of the National Library of Russia and in Papini’s archive in Fiesole, Italy) and in the creative work of both authors that was published at the end of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century in the Russian and Italian periodical press and in collections of poetry and prose. Baltrušaitis and Papini had a common viewpoint on creative work: it was Prometheism. Its ideological grounds, however, were different: philosophical conceptions of Solovyov’s “Godman” and Nietzsche’s “superhuman”. Baltrušaitis’s Promethean viewpoint is based on the philosophy of Solovyov, according to which “God-man” is a synthesis of humanity and divinity, whereas Papini’s Promethean viewpoint refers to Nietzsche’s idea of the “superhuman” as an absolute category, a man who became God. Connections between Baltrušaitis’s and Papini’s Prometheism, political attitudes of both authors, and the differences in these attitudes were determined by diverse philosophical fundamentals of Russian and Italian Prometheism.