The sacrifice of chosenness: On the origins of Mikhail Lifshitz’s views

Abstract

This essay does not constitute a formal scholarly study, but rather reflects the subjective perception of the author. It analyzes the aesthetic views of the Soviet philosopher M.A. Lifshitz (1905–1983), who entered the history of philosophy through his development of the foundations of Marxist-Leninist aesthetics and his sharp critique of all so-called “modernist” art. The article identifies the origins of the Soviet philosopher’s views, which cannot be explained solely by an adherence to Marxism. The essay’s conclusions are summarized in three assertions. First, Lifshitz’s critique of modernism is a concealed critique of art as a whole, a denial of this sphere of activity as one that contradicts the metaphysical interest in the general and the universal. Second, the theoretical source of Lifshitz’s views was M. Nordau’s book Degeneration, in which the author, drawing on C. Lombroso’s teachings on the connection between genius and clinical madness, declared all art contemporary to him to be the result of physical and intellectual degeneration. Third, for both Nordau and Lifshitz, the deep ideological denial of art fundamentally shared a common historical, cultural, and psychological foundation. The meaning of the latter assertion is unfolded in the essay and constitutes its primary goal. This psychological subtext is linked to the traumatic experience of the assimilation of European Jewry and subsequent attempts to overcome isolation. In the finale of the article, the author turns to the unique poetic intuitions of M. Tsvetaeva, utilizing the logical law of contraposition to explicate the profoundly unconscious and culturally determined hatred toward any genuine artistic creativity as a rejection of the burden of chosenness. Ultimately, this conceptual approach reveals how the desperate pursuit of cultural “normalcy” and philistine standards manifests as a destructive mechanism that suppresses any original artistic expression.