The revelation of personality in Vyacheslav Ivanov’s conception of "communion theatre"

Abstract

This study explores the revelation of personality in Vyacheslav Ivanov’s conception of ‘communion theatre’. The Russian poet’s philosophical writings expose an internal antinomy in his understanding of the status of personality in his project of a theatre of the future. On the one hand, Ivanov requires that the borders of personality be completely dissolved and personality itself eliminated in the process of being other than oneself; on the other hand, he stipulates the ontological significance of personality within sobornost’ (the state of collective unity). In the communion theater, personality is revealed, when the I establishes itself through being other than itself. The author suggests that the transformation of personality should be viewed as one of the main objectives within Ivanov’s communion theater. During the collective performance, personality reveals itself as a facet of the unity of the personal and the super-personal. In the communion theater, a human being re-establishes his or her own integrity as part of the ecstatic experience of meeting the Thou and becoming part of the collective body of the chorus. The viewers undergo a transformation as they are moving towards communion, or collective unity. This movement is the movement of an internal phenomenon of personality. Such transformation only results from an experience of internal unity of the human spirit, soul and body.