Volentem ducunt : guiding the willing out of a tunnel

Abstract

In his Obratnaia perspekiva (Reverse perspective), a lecture written in October 1919, Pavel Florensky (1882-1937) notes: “The liveliness of the discussion that ensued brought home to me that the question of space was one of the fundamental ones in art and, I would go even further, in the understanding of the world in general.” Then again in a letter to his daughter Ol’ga, sent from Solovki on the 13th May 1937, the year of his assassination, he retorts: -- The secret of creativity lies in the preservation of youth. The secret of genius lies in the preservation of something infantile, an infantile intuition that endures throughout life. It is a question of a certain constitution that provides genius with an objective perception of the world, one that does not gravitate towards a centre: a kind of reverse perspective, one that is, therefore, integral and real. -- As the perception becomes drawn to gravitate towards some centre, the creativity that springs from the preservation of youthfulness becomes challenged. Innocence is lost. Genius is forfeited and perspective acquires the potential for the violation of the real. After Baudelaire, Florensky declares genius to be no more than childhood recaptured at will; “childhood equipped now with man’s physical means to express itself, and with the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience, involuntarily amassed.”