into outer space. After his "white on white" series of 1918, Malevich did not paint again for nearly a decade, producing instead a series of sketches for what he called an "idealized architecture": future dwelling places for humanity bearing the name planity, from the Russian word for "airplane." Malevich's only serious rival for dominance of the artistic avant-garde in the 1920's, Vladimir Tatlin, was ostensibly far more down to earth with his doctrine of utilitarian "constructivism" and his demand for a new living art of "real materials in real space." But he too reflected this Promethean urge to move out and master that space. Increasingly, his three-dimensional constructions acquired an upward, winged thrust that seems to be tugging at the wires connecting them to earth. Tatlin spent most of the last thirty years of his life designing a bizarre new glider that looked like a giant insect and was called a Letatlin-a fusion of the Russian word "to fly" and his own name.44
The first thirty years of the twentieth century in Russia was a period in which traditional terms of reference seemed largely irrelevant. As Leo Shestov, the philosopher and future Russian popularizer of Kierkegaard, proclaimed in his Apotheosis of Groundlessness in 1905: "Only one assertion has or can have objective reality: that nothing on earth is impossible."45 Men believed in an earthly "world without end," to cite the title of a Futurist anthology of 1912.46 Followers of Fedorov continued to believe that the resurrection of the dead was now scientifically possible; Mechnikov argued that life could be prolonged indefinitely by a diet centered on yoghurt; and a strange novel of 1933, Youth Restored, by the most popular writer of the 1920's, Michael Zoshchenko, offered a final Promethean reprise on the Faust legend by portraying an old professor who believes that he can restore his youth merely through the exercise of his will.47
Beyond the five dimensions of Malevich's art lay the seven dimensions offered by the philosopher, psychologist, and Oriental traveler P. D. Uspensky. Beginning with his Fourth Dimension of 1909, he provided new vistas for self-transformation: a completely internal "fourth way" which lies beyond the three past ways to godliness of the fakir, the monk, and the yogi. He offered-in the words of two of his later book titles-"a key to the enigmas of the world" and "a new model for the universe."48 He insisted that man was capable of a higher inner knowledge that would take him into "six-dimensional space." There are three dimensions in time, which are a continuation of the three dimensions of space, and which lead in turn to a "seventh dimension" of the pure imagination.49
In St. Petersburg, Prometheanism found its most extreme-and historically important-expression in the movement known as "God-building" (Bogostroitel'stvo). St. Petersburg intellectuals were, predictably, more con-
cerned with social questions than their Moscow counterparts; and, amidst the agitation of the first decade of the new century, a group of Marxist intellectuals struck upon the Promethean idea of simply transferring to the urban proletariat the attributes of God. "God-building" developed partly in reaction to "God-seeking," an earlier movement of St. Petersburg intellectuals who followed Merezhkovsky in turning from aesthetic to religious questions. Their return to philosophic idealism (and in many cases Orthodox Christianity) was celebrated in a variety of publications from the periodicals New Road (1903-4) and Questions of Life (1905-6) to the famous symposium of 1909, Landmarks (Vekhi), which offered an impressive philosophic challenge to the positivist and Marxist categories which had long dominated the philosophic thinking of the urban intelligentsia. A musical landmark in this return to religious mysticism was the primarily choral opera The Tale of the Invisible City of Kitezh, which was finished amidst the revolutionary turmoil of 1905-6 and first produced early in 1907 by the last survivor of the "mighty handful," Rimsky-Korsakov.
God-building developed somewhat later than God-seeking, and sought to harness the religious anguish of the intellectuals not to traditional faith but to the coming revolution. During the dark days of reaction that followed the failure of the Revolution of 1905, a group of intellectuals sought to supplement Marx with a more inclusive and inspiring vision of the coming revolution. Led by Maxim Gorky, the rough-hewn writer and future high priest of Soviet literature, and Anatol Lunacharsky, the widely traveled critic who became the first commissar of education in the new Soviet state, the God-builders considered themselves to be merely elaborating the famous Marxist statement that philosophers should change rather than merely explain the world. Traditional religion was always linked with intellectual confusion and social conservatism, and the "God-seekers" were only rebuilding the tower of Babel rather than moving on to the New Jerusalem.60 Nevertheless, religious conviction had been the greatest force for change in history, Lunacharsky contended, and Marxists should, therefore, conceive of physical labor as their form of devotion, the proletariat as their congregation of true believers, and the spirit of the collective as God. Gorky concluded his long Confession of 1908 with a prayer to "the almighty, immortal people!"
Thou art my God and the creator of all gods, which thou hast fashioned from the beauties of the spirit in the toil and struggle of thy search-
ings!
And there shall be no other gods in the world but thee, for thou art the one God that creates miracles!
Thus do I believe and confess!51
Some contemporary critics referred to Gorky's position as "demotheism" or "people-worship,"52 and there are many resemblances to the more extreme forms of populism. But Gorky spoke in the more universal language of the silver age. He referred to all men, not merely Russians; to the conquest of death, not merely of hunger. In the final sentence of the Confession, Gorky holds out the image of "the fusion of all peoples for the sake of the great task of universal God-creation."53
An anonymous Marxist pamphlet published in 1906 and subsequently reissued by the Soviet regime bluntly declared that man is destined to "take possession of the universe and extend his species into distant cosmic regions, taking over the whole solar system. Human beings will be immortal."54
Death is only a temporary setback, Lunacharsky affirmed as early as 1903:
Man moves toward the radiant sun; he stumbles and falls into the grave. But … in the ringing clatter of the grave-diggers' spades he hears creative labor, the great technology of man whose beginning and symbol is fire. Mankind will carry out his plans . . . realize his desired ideal.55
His Faust and the City declares that the idea of an immortal God is only an anticipatory "vision of what the might of men shall be,"56 and ends ecstatically with the people crying over the dead body of Faust "he lives in us!. .. Our sovereign city roused in might."57
After the Revolution, Lunacharsky turned to an undertaking that had attracted many past Russian artists: the composition of a trilogy which would provide a new redemptive message for mankind. Like Gogol's Dead Souls, Dostoevsky's Brothers, and Musorgsky's Khovanshchina, Luna-charsky's trilogy was never finished. In keeping with the spirit of the silver age, the first part, Vasilisa the Wise, was fantastic in form and cosmic in pretensions. The second part, "a dramatic poem," Mitra the Saviour, was never published, and the final part, The Last Hero, was apparently never written. The last lines we have of the trilogy is the paean at the end of the mythological Vasilisa to the coming of "man's divinity on earth."58 Such talk was clearly dangerous in a society bent on camouflaging its own myths and absolutes with scientific terminology.