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On the Riddle of “The Russian Sphinx”
Marian Broda
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2016.07.006
University of Lodz, Lodz, Poland
The aim of this article is to analyze one of the most recognized in the Russian intellectual-cultural tradition and Russians’ social self-consciousness ways of identification of the nature of Russianness and Russia—and comprehend it in the category of the “Russian Sphinx”. The Russian thinkers and writers discussing the nature of Russia often return to the motif of Sphinx. Opposed to its ancient Greek archetype-counterpart, “the Russian Sphinx” does not have to resort to intricate questions—he is a riddle himself. As I show and explain, the livelihood and dissemination of the Russia-Sphinx motif in the homeland of Dostoyevski are not incidental. This motif is a synthetic medium of many archetypal contents, which accurately articulate a set of traditional intuitions and imaginations held by the Russians and concerning the alleged essence, nature, or depth of “Russianness”. To conclude, I demonstrate the need to make the people comprehending Russia in a similar way aware that the accompanying, the particular—in its basic framework a priori assumed by them—image of the Russian reality is de facto a correlate of their subjective cognitive intention.
Russia, Sphinx, Oedipus, riddle, tradition, post-Kantian perspective
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