The special features of the transformation of Vyacheslav Ivanov’s mystical anthropologyin the 1930th: the article “Anima” in the light of the dionysian-mysterial metatext

The article «Anima» is the most important Ivanov’s work during the period of emigration, representing his religious and mystical views to the European reader. It presents a kind of symbolic and phenomenological description of the dynamic structure of religious and mystical consciousness. In our article, we have three goals: 1) to establish a conceptual relationship between the early (article «Ty esi») and the late («Anima») version of Ivanov’s mystical anthropology, 2) to describe the transformations of Ivanov’s mystical anthropology in the 1930th, 3) to establish the specifics of Ivanov’s mystical-religious worldview. The research material is Ivanov’s religious and philosophical works, his epistolary and scientific works. In the course of the research, we used comparative, hermeneutical, contextual, and motivic-thematic analysis methods. First, we define the place of the article «Anima» in the Ivanov’s work during the period of emigration, then we describe the structure of the Dionysian-mysterial plot, which acts as a generative model of Ivanov’s mystical anthropology. The Dionysian-mysterial plot is devined as such a dialectically organized mythological narrative, which is based on the orphic mythologeme of the tearing of Dionysus by Titans and his resurrection. Then we characterize the plot of «Ty esi» as an expanded symbolic narrative representing Ivanov’s mystical anthropology. This narrative presents a dramatic story of the relationship between Psyche-Anima (feminine, irrational principle), Eros-Animus (masculine, rational) and the Self, the superpersonal principle, the divine center of personality. The main content of the study is the analysis of the content of the article «Anima», in the process of which we record the transformations of Ivanov’s religious and mystical thought. One of the most significant innovations in the «Anima» is the comparison of the plot of «Ty esi» with Dostoevsky's «basic myth», which is understood as a transformation of one of his lines – the mysterial one. Dostoevsky’s «basic myth» is an archetypal plot about how demonic-type heroes, false Animuses (Raskolnikov, Rogozin, Stavrogin, Versilov, Ivan Karamazov) are rejected by female characters personifying Psyche, a wanderer who is waiting for her heavenly Bridegroom, i.e. a transformed hero. Another fundamentally important innovation of the «Anima» is the introduction of Friedrich Nietzsche’s fate into the context of Ivanov’s mystical anthropology. She is identified with the mysterial line of the plot «Ty esi», which explains the nature of the madness of the Basel philosopher by the betrayal of his Anima.