The Self Can Become Spirit: Andrei Bely on Rudolf Steiner's Teaching on the Consciousness Soul

The Russian symbolist writer and cultural philosopher Andrei Bely (1880–1934), a personal student of Rudolf Steiner, was one of the most important figures who promoted the development of anthroposophy in Russia. After anthroposophy was banned by the Soviets in 1924, Bely continued his anthroposophical work underground. His extensive writings on Steiner's philosophical and anthroposophical work shaped the further development of anthroposophy in Russian underground culture until its comeback in the Russian Federation.
Bely's greatest work on anthroposophy is a literary-cultural study in two huge volumes, written in 1926-31 in the Soviet underground. The work deals with Steiner's teachings on the soul and cultural epochs, applying them to European cultural history since ancient times. The focus is on the concept of the “consciousness soul,” which gives the work its title. Bely's translation of the anthroposophical term reflects his specific understanding of this concept: “The History of the Becoming of the Self-Conscious Soul.” In 2020, I published the manuscript together with Russian colleagues in a text-critical, annotated edition in the archive series of the Russian Academy of Sciences “Literaturnoe nasledstvo.”
Bely explains the concept with the help of an analysis that combines Steiner's philosophical writings with his anthropology and Christology, and compares it with the theory of knowledge and science, especially that of (neo-)Kantianism. Bely sees the originality of Steiner's term in the fact that, on an epistemological basis, it describes a form of knowledge as self-creation that can transform the human ego into a spiritual substance for eternity.
The paper will highlight the innovative content of this concept in Bely's interpretation and critically evaluate it against the background of its historical and philosophical contexts.