Orphan Mysticism

Download or read book Nietzsche's Orphans written by Rebecca Mitchell and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-05 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A prevailing belief among Russia’s cultural elite in the early twentieth century was that the music of composers such as Sergei Rachmaninoff, Aleksandr Scriabin, and Nikolai Medtner could forge a shared identity for the Russian people across social and economic divides. In this illuminating study of competing artistic and ideological visions at the close of Russia’s “Silver Age,” author Rebecca Mitchell interweaves cultural history, music, and philosophy to explore how “Nietzsche’s orphans” strove to find in music a means to overcome the disunity of modern life in the final tumultuous years before World War I and the Communist Revolution.