Yuri Mamleev

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Yuri Mamleev
Born(1931-12-11)11 December 1931
Moscow, USSR
Died25 October 2015(2015-10-25) (aged 83)
Moscow, Russia
GenreMetaphysical realism
Notable worksThe Sublimes (1966)

The Fate of the Existence

Eternal Russia

Yuri Vitalyevich Mamleev, also Mamleyev or Mamleiev (Russian: Юрий Витальевич Мамлеев, 11 December 1931 – 25 October 2015), was a prominent Russian novelist who began writing in the 1960s and won the Pushkin Prize in 2000.[1] He is considered the founder of metaphysical realism as a literary genre.[2] His best known work, The Sublimes (Russian: Шатуны), was a samizdat novel published in 1966 and translated into English in 2014 by Marian Schwartz.[3]

Mamleev was also well known as the founder of the Yuzhinsky Circle, an occultist, underground literary salon based out of his shared apartment on Yuzhinsky Lane in central Moscow. The illegal literary salon attracted many non-conformist and anti-Soviet artists, writers, intellectuals, and poets, including the future philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, Yevgeny Golovin, and Geydar Dzhemal.[4] He was deeply interested in Hindu and Buddhist doctrines and went on to lecture at Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales in Paris and Moscow State University.[5] Following Mamleev's immigration to the United States, Golovin took over leadership of the group.

In 1974, Mamleev left the USSR and emigrated to the United States where he taught at Cornell University until the fall of the Soviet Union. Post-dissolution, he returned to Moscow where he continued to live and write until his death in 2015.

Writings[edit]

Mamleev was strongly influenced by Dostoyevsky's themes and portrayals, such as those of death and evil.[6][7] Psychopathology was also prevalent in Mamleev's works. The writer Sergey Mikhalkov commented that his characters' lives resembled a "history of illness of some schizophrenic" and his monstrous creations are an "absurd, devil's hallucination".[8] His works were extremely popular in the non-conformist circles in Moscow.

In Mamleev's metaphysical realist worldview, social reality, a falsehood of material illusions from which humans must break free, is contrasted with metaphysical reality, which truly defines both the world and human nature. With the creation of the Yuzhinsky Circle, he attempted to assemble a group of thinkers who were building 'metaphysical selfhood' and a gnostic-spiritual awakening'.[5]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Publications, Europa Europa (2004). International Who's Who in Poetry 2005. Taylor & Francis. p. 1020. ISBN 978-1-85743-269-5.
  2. ^ Radaeva, Ella (2021-02-26). "Expressionist Motives in the Work of Yuri Mamleev". Proceedings of the conference on current problems of our time: The relationship of man and society (CPT 2020). Vol. 531. Atlantis Press. pp. 11–14. doi:10.2991/assehr.k.210225.003. ISBN 978-94-6239-342-4. S2CID 233963213.
  3. ^ "Yuri Mamleyev". B O D Y. 2014-03-29. Retrieved 2022-03-03.
  4. ^ Shekhovtsov, Anton (2008-11-14). "The Palingenetic Thrust of Russian Neo‐Eurasianism: Ideas of Rebirth in Aleksandr Dugin's Worldview1". Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions. 9 (4): 491–506. doi:10.1080/14690760802436142. ISSN 1469-0764. S2CID 144301027.
  5. ^ a b Siniscalco, Luca (February 2019). "The Most Dangerous Philosopher in the World". Retrieved 1 June 2022.
  6. ^ Tigounstova, Inna (2004). "A New Russian Rafflesia from Baudelaire's Garden: Yuri Mamleev's Literary Origins and the Poetics of the Ugly". Ulbandus Review. 8: 47–61. ISSN 0163-450X. JSTOR 25748139.
  7. ^ Tihomirov, Boris (2021). "DOSTOEVSKY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY". Umjetnost riječi. Retrieved 1 June 2022.
  8. ^ Tigounstova, Inna (2004). "A New Russian Rafflesia from Baudelaire's Garden: Yuri Mamleev's Literary Origins and the Poetics of the Ugly". Ulbandus Review. 8: 47–61. ISSN 0163-450X. JSTOR 25748139.

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