Theosophy and literature

According to some literary and religious studies scholars, modern Theosophy had a certain influence on contemporary literature, particularly in forms of genre fiction such as fantasy and science fiction. Researchers claim that Theosophy has significantly influenced the Irish literary renaissance of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, notably in such figures as W. B. Yeats and G. W. Russell.

Classic writers and Theosophists

Dostoevsky In November 1881, Helena Blavatsky, editor in chief of The Theosophist, started publishing her translation into English of "The Grand Inquisitor" from Book V, chapter five of Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov. In a small commentary which preceded the beginning of the publication, she explained that "the great Russian novelist" Dostoevsky died a few months ago, making the "celebrated" novel The Brothers Karamazov his last work. She described the passage as a "satire" on modern theology in general and on the Roman Catholic Church in particular. As described by Blavatsky, "The Grand Inquisitor" imagines the Second Coming of Christ occurring in Spain during the time of the Inquisition. Christ is at once arrested as a heretic by the Grand Inquisitor. The legend, or "poem", is created by the character Ivan Karamazov, a materialist and an atheist, who tells it to his younger brother Alyosha, an immature Christian mystic." According to Brendan French, a researcher in esotericism, "it is highly significant" that [exactly 8 years after her publication of "The Grand Inquisitor"] Blavatsky declared Dostoevsky to be "a theosophical writer." In her article about the approach of a new era in both society and literature, called "The Tidal Wave", she wrote:

"[The root of evil lies, therefore, in a moral, not in a physical cause.] If asked what is it then that will help, we answer boldly:—Theosophical literature; hastening to add that under this term, neither books concerning adepts and phenomena, nor the Theosophical Society publications are meant... What the European world now needs is a dozen writers such as Dostoyevsky, the Russian author... It is writers of this kind that are needed in our day of reawakening; not authors writing for wealth or fame, but fearless apostles of the living Word of Truth, moral healers of the pustulous sores of our century... To write novels with a moral sense in them deep enough to stir Society, requires a literary talent and a born Theosophist as was Dostoyevsky."

Tolstoy

When Leo Tolstoy was working on his book The Thoughts of Wise People for Every Day, he used a magazine of the Theosophical Society of Germany Theosophischer Wegweiser. He extracted eight aphorisms of the Indian sage Ramakrishna, eight from The Voice of the Silence by Blavatsky, and one of fellow Theosophist Franz Hartmann, from the issues of 1902 and 1903, and translated them into Russian. Tolstoy had in his library the English edition of The Voice of the Silence, which had been presented to him by its author. In November 1889, Blavatsky published her own English translation of Tolstoy's fairy tale "How A Devil's Imp Redeemed His Loaf, or The First Distiller", which was accompanied by a small preface about the features of translation from Russian. Calling Tolstoy "the greatest novelist and mystic of Russia of to-day," she wrote that all his best works had already been translated, but that the attentive Russian reader would not find the "popular national spirit" that permeates all original stories and fairy tales, in any of these translations. Despite the fact that they are full of "popular mysticism", and some of them are "charming", they are the most difficult to translate into a foreign language. She concluded: "No foreign translator, however able, unless born and bred in Russia and acquainted with Russian peasant life, will be able to do them justice, or even to convey to the reader their full meaning, owing to their absolutely national idiomatic language." In September 1890, Blavatsky published philosopher Raphael von Koeber's article "Leo Tolstoi and his Unecclesiastical Christianity" in her magazine Lucifer. Prof. von Koeber briefly described the merits of Tolstoy as a great master of artistic language, but the main focus of the article was Tolstoy's search for answers to religious and philosophical questions. The author concluded that Tolstoy's "philosophy of life" is identical in its foundation to that of Theosophy. Theosophist Charles Johnston, president of the New York branch of the Irish Literary Society,Johnston travelled to Russia and met with Tolstoy. In March 1899 Johnston published "How Count Tolstoy Writes?" in the American magazine The Arena. In November 1904, Rudolf Steiner gave a lecture in Berlin entitled "Theosophy and Tolstoy", where he discussed the novels War and Peace, Anna Karenina, the novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich, and the philosophical book On Life (1886–87).

Yeats

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