Correspondence Across a Room

by Mikhail Gershenzon, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Lisa Sergio (Translator)

The twelve letters that constitute this volume were exchanged by two of Russia's leading intellectuals, who, in the summer of 1920, weakened by the privations of the Civil War, were admitted to a municipal rest home outside Moscow. At the Sanatorium for Scientific and Literary Workers, they found themselves installed in opposite corners of the same room.

Day-long conversations having drawn them away from their literary tasks, the two then decided to converse in writing. Correspondence, the result, examines the condition and future of Western culture-whose values, according to the historian Gershenzon, have deteriorated into a deadly burden upon mankind, into mankind's ultimate prison. For the poet Ivanov, it is not the disavowal of a cultural heritage but the struggle to recover man's own unity with God that alone guarantees his true, his spiritual freedom.

63 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1920

About the author

Mikhail Osipovich Gershenzon (Михаил Гершензон) was a Russian scholar, essayist and editor. He studied history, philosophy, and political science at Moscow University, graduating in 1894.

Reviews

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

"You better than anyone should know that every expression of truth is perforce symbolic, simply a gesture, a sound that brings us to attention and prompts us to turn to look in the direction from which it came."

[Juan Quiroga · Rating 3 out of 5]

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[Constantin C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

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[Ale · Rating 4 out of 5]

El mejor intercambio de ideas, pensamientos tan diferentes. Y el hecho de que estuvieron en la misma habitación lo hace especial.