Vyacheslav Ivanov on Pushkin's The Gypsies: The Antinomy of Individualism and Freedom

This article discusses the foundation of ideas for Vyacheslav Ivanov's interpretation of Pushkin's poem. In The Gypsies, Ivanov sees a conflict between personal freedom and sobornost' as revealed by Pushkin, a conflict whose resolution marks the poet's turn toward religious metaphysics. Ivanov's conception of sobornost' as the result of seeking the supra-personal in the personal echoes Pushkin's overcoming of Byronism. Ivanov also sees in the poetics of The Gypsies and in the figure of Ovid an understanding of the poet's special mission similar to his own, one that creates an image of the universe as an internally harmonic, open-ended, chaotic, and living system. In 1924, the motifs central to this article allow Ivanov to turn it into a protest against and challenge to Bolshevik attempts at demonic mastery of the elements of history and people.