The founder of modern Russian philosophy, Vladimir Solovyov (1853-1900) is widely considered its greatest practitioner. Together with Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, he is one of the towering intellectual figures in late-nineteenth-century Russia, and his diverse writings influenced much of the non-Marxist tradition of twentieth-century Russian thought. Philosopher, journalist, poet, and playwright, Solovyov was also a mystic who claimed to have had three visions of Divine Sophia.

This personification of wisdom with golden hair and a radiant aura echoes both the eternal feminine and the world soul. Rooted in Christian and Jewish mysticism, Eastern Orthodox iconography, Greek philosophy, and European romanticism, the Sophiology that suffuses Solovyov's philosophical and artistic works is both intellectually sophisticated and profoundly inspiring. Judith Deutsch Kornblatt brings together key texts from Solovyov's writings about Sophia: poetry, fiction, drama, and philosophy, all extensively annotated and some available in English for the first time (with assistance from the translators Boris Jakim and Laury Magnus).

In the comprehensive introductory essay that encompasses the book's first half, Kornblatt establishes the historical, philosophical, religious, and literary context of Solovyov's Sophiology, emphasizing its connection to contemporaneous religious and philosophical thought as well as other social and cultural trends in Europe and the United States for example, Solovyov's reactions to his changing world ran parallel to and sometimes intersected with those of Darwin, Nietzsche, and William James. Sophiology is once again finding enthusiasts both in Russia and among seekers around the world.

The definitive introduction to Solovyov's wisdom and its profound impact on Russian thought and culture, Divine Sophia makes Solovyov's mystical visions and literary "re-visions" of Sophia accessible to scholars and lay readers alike. Solovyov's wisdom writings captivated several generations of poets and philosophers during the pre- and postrevolutionary periods in Russia and abroad. In particular, his Sophiology had a profound influence on such major figures of Russia's Silver Age as Alexander Blok, Andrei Belyi, Pavel Florensky, and Sergei Bulgakov."

Nell Grendon never thought about communing with the dead when she was growing up in Little Wolf, Wisconsin; she was more concerned with slumber parties, boys, and the Lord's Prayer Ring she won (dishonestly) in a Methodist Bible Bee. But when a chance visit to the eccentric but charming Wocanaga Spiritualist Camp brings the adult Nell face-to-face with the elderly medium Grace Waverly, she cannot resist the temptation to learn more about spirit mediumship. Nell intends to fake her intuitive talents, but soon she spontaneously channels Angella Wing, an actress from the 1920s once known as the "Woman of a Thousand Voices." Nell attempts to conceal her occult interests from skeptical friends, including George, a handsome jazz musician who rents an apartment in her historic home, and Polly, a childhood friend with buried anguish of her own. But soon Angella's mischievous presence begins to make Nell's life more and more difficult, eventually attracting shadows of Nell's past. As she tries to free herself from Angella's influence, Nell is forced into an investigation of a mysterious death at the very heart of her childhood--and the revelation of surprisingly dark secrets.

Thinking Orthodox in Modern Russia illuminates the significant role of Russian Orthodox thought in shaping the discourse of educated society during the imperial and early Soviet periods. Bringing together an array of scholars, this book demonstrates that Orthodox reflections on spiritual, philosophical, and aesthetic issues of the day informed much of Russia's intellectual and cultural climate. Volume editors Patrick Lally Michelson and Judith Deutsch Kornblatt provide a historical overview of Russian Orthodox thought and a critical essay on the current state of scholarship about religious thought in modern Russia. The contributors explore a wide range of topics, including Orthodox claims to a unique religious Enlightenment, contests over authority within the Russian Church, tensions between faith and reason in academic Orthodoxy, the relationship between sacraments and the self, the religious foundations of philosophical and legal categories, and the effect of Orthodox categories in the formation of Russian literature.

Both wild and familiar, alien and self, the Russian Cossacks came to represent in nineteenth-century literature their nation's seemingly endless frontier, strongly influencing the self-image of the Russian people. "The Cossack Hero in Russian Literature" is the first book to study the development of the Cossack hero and to identify him as part of Russian cultural mythology. Judith Kornblatt explores the power of the myth as a literary image, providing new and challenging readings of nineteenth- and twentieth-century works by Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoi, Khlebnikov, Babel, Tsvetaeva, Sholokhov, and a host of lesser-known writers, all of whom were attracted to the Cossack. By comparing the Cossack with the American cowboy, she reveals what is both unique and universal about the Russian self-image.
Grappling with the phenomenon of myth-formation, Kornblatt places the Cossack hero in historical and sociopolitical context, chronicling the growth of the Cossack myth of unbounded wholeness and life, its gradually increasing influence on the Russian national consciousness during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and its eventual demise under the strictures of Stalinist socialist realism. Kornblatt's eclectic methodology draws upon Barthes, White, Turner, and other Western theorists as well as such leading Russian critics and philosophers of language as Bakhtin, Lotman, and Uspensky.