Pavel Florensky

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Mikhail Nesterov, Философы [Philosophers], 1917. Florensky and Sergei Bulgakov, painting.
Born January 22, 1882(1882-01-22)
near Yevlakh, Elisabethpol Governorate, Russian Empire (today Azerbaijan)
Died December 8, 1937(1937-12-08) (aged 55)
Leningrad, Soviet Union (today St. Petersburg)
With daughter, 1926.

Pavel Florensky (Священник Павел Флоренский, 1882–1937) was a Russian theologian, priest, mathematician, scientist, inventor, and philosopher.

He wrote on art, language, organic chemistry, mysticism, Kant, sculpture, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Aegean culture, arithmetic, idealism, iconography, electromagnetism, microscopy, carbolic acid, asbestos, Pythagorean numbers, Aleksandr Blok, ecclesiology, and a wide variety of other topics. After the revolution he was one of the few intellectuals with conservative views to be permitted to remain professionally active in the country, at least for a time. His training in science made him useful in the early years of the Soviet Union, when he applied his expertise as an electrical engineer to various public-works projects. In Soviet history, until recently the achievement for which Florensky was perhaps best remembered officially in his own country was his invention in 1927 of a noncoagulating machine oil. [1]

Works[edit]

Books[edit]

Mnimosti v geometri, 1922, PDF; 1985, JPGs.
in Russian
in Italian
  • La colonna e il fondamento della verità, Rusconi, 1974, PDF.
  • La prospettiva rovesciata e altri scritti, ed. Nicoletta Misler, Rome: Casa de Libro, 1983.
  • Stratificazioni. Scritti sull’arte e la tecnica, Diabasis, 2008.
in German
  • Die Ikonostase: Urbild und Grenzerlebnis im revolutionären Rußland, trans. and intro Ulrich Werner, Stuttgart: Urachhaus, 1988, PDF, ARG. Translation of the 1922 version.
in Romanian
in English

Selected articles and lectures[edit]

  • "Poiasnenie k oblozhke", in Mnimosti v geometrii [Мнимости в геометрии], Moscow: Pomore [Поморье], 1922, pp 58-65; Munich: Otto Sagner, 1985; repr. in Florensky, U vodorazdelov mysli Т.1. Stati po inkusstvu, ed. N.A. Struve, Paris: YMCA Press, 1985, pp 369-379. (Russian)
    • "Spiegazione della copertina", in Florenskij, La prospettiva rovesciata e altri scritti, ed. Nicoletta Misler, Rome: Casa de Libro, 1983, pp 136-143. (Italian)
    • "Explanation of the Cover", trans. Avril Pyman, Leonardo 22:2 (1989), pp 239-244. (English)
    • "Explanation of the Cover", trans. Wendy Salmond, in Beyond Vision: Essays on the Perception of Art, ed. Nicoletta Misler, Reaktion Books, 2002, pp 183-196, n297-298. (English)
  • "Obratnaia perspektiva", Trudy po znakovym sistemam 3 (1967), pp 381-416; repr. in Florensky, U vodorazdelov mysli Т.1. Stati po inkusstvu, ed. N.A. Struve, Paris: YMCA Press, 1985, pp 117-187. (Russian). Delivered as a lecture, "Reverse Perspective" was not published at the time, even though Florensky himself prepared the text, dictating it, in part, to Aleksandra Rozanova, daughter of his friend, the writer Vasilii Rozanov. The printed proofs are preserved in Manuscript Section, RGL, f. 218, op. 1304, d.12. (Russian)
    • "La prospettiva rovesciata", in Florenskij, La prospettiva rovesciata e altri scritti, ed. Nicoletta Misler, Rome: Casa de Libro, 1983, pp 73-135. (Italian)
    • "Die umgekehrte Perspektive", in Sikojev, 1989, pp. 7-79. (German)
    • "La perspective inversee", in Lhoest, 1992, pp. 67-120. (French)
    • "Gyakuenkinh", in Kuwano, 1998, pp. 11-111. (Japanese)
    • "Reverse Perspective", trans. Wendy Salmond, in Beyond Vision: Essays on the Perception of Art, ed. Nicoletta Misler, Reaktion Books, 2002, pp 197-272, n299-306. (English)
  • "Ikonostas", Bogoslovskie trudy, 9 (1972), pp 88-148. (Russian)

Bibliography[edit]

  • Ierodiakon Andronik (Trubacev), "Osnovnye certy licnosti, zizn' i tvorcestvo svjascennika Pavla Florenskogo", Zhurnal Moskovskoj Patriarchii 4 (1982), p 13. (Russian)

Literature[edit]

Books[edit]

  • Robert Slesinski, Pavel Florensky: A Metaphysics of Love, New York: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1984. (English)
  • K.G. Isupova (ed.), P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra, St. Petersburg: Русский Христианский Гуманитарный Институт, 1996, 752 pp. (Russian)
  • Milan Zust, À la recherche de la vérité vivante. L’expérience religieuse de Pavel A. Florenskij (1882-1937), Rome, Lipa, 2002, 394 pp. Review: Lanne (CMR 2004). (French)
  • Avril Pyman, Pavel Florensky: A Quiet Genius: The Tragic and Extraordinary Life of Russia s Unknown Da Vinci, New York: Continuum, 2010, 304 pp. [4]. Reviews: Karlson (VN 2010), Michelson (CSP 2011). (English)
    • Pavel Florensky, un geniu tăcut, trans. Geoffrey Hosking, Bucharest: Renasterea, 2014, 492 pp. (Romanian)

Book chapters, papers, articles, blog posts[edit]

Theses[edit]

  • Elizabeth Cooper English, "Arkhitektura i mnimosti": The origins of Soviet avant-garde rationalist architecture in the Russian mystical -philosophical and mathematical intellectual tradition, University of Pennsylvania, 2000. PhD dissertation. [6] (English)

Links[edit]