Dornach Opening Remarks
Thank you for coming, thank Johannes and his colleagues.
Our intention, my hope, was to share with you the treasures of this place for Russian thought, literature and art. To share news of books, manuscripts, art works, places previously overlooked and forgotten. What could be a better time than the 100th anniversary of the arrival of Andrei Bely. Asya Turgeneva, Natasha Pozzo-Turgeneva, Aleksandr Pozzo, Margarita Voloshina-Sabashnikova, Emil Medtner to this place?
And it was a Tower of Babel, with German and Russian, and the need and urgency for people to understand one another and the words of Dr. Steiner. So there were interpreters, attempts at translation and above all good will.
The idea to organize a meeting of invited guests to the Goetheanum came about last June when Johannes Nilo and I discussed the fate of the books and archival materials that I had seen a year previously.
Our hope was to make known to a wider, albeit select audience what is here and should not be forgotten.
First the books: The Library at the Goetheanum holds numerous books with the names of Asya Turgeneva, Natasha and Aleksandr Pozzo. Many stem from the time when Andrei Bely was in in Berlin from 1921-1923 where over a short two year period he published 23 works.
A second set of books, one time in the possession of Asya Turgeneva, made their way to Freiburg into the hands of Swetlana Geier, the renowned translator of Dostoevsky, but also of two volumes of memoirs by Bely, the first of Aleksandr Blok and the second of Rudolf Steiner. Three years ago, this so-called Andrej Belyj Reisebibliothek, was passed on to me by the family who recalled that Swetlana Mikhailovna spoke fondly of a “young” American scholar who would care for them.
A third part of that library and the private collection of Asya came into the hands of Valentina Rykova who in turn passed them onto the Andrej Belyj Museum-Apartment in Moscow.
Taken together the collections paint a picture of Bely’s singular role in Russian literature and embodiment of Steiner’s Spiritual Science. (cf. The Medtner book used by Bely with his own handwritten marginalia).
Some thirty years after Frederic Kozlik’s book, it is perhaps time to re-examine that relationship.
Then there were the boxes, actually folders with archival materials. It was logical to begin with those of Asya. There were others, Margarita Voloshina and Natasha Pozzo. Each held some interest and might yield even more. But the major surprise was found among the papers of Aleksandr Pozzo, for here was found a significant eighty page mostly one sided correspondence between Andrej Bely and Natasha Pozzo. The largest portion covers the time left silent in Bely’s own memoirs, published and unpublished, and sheds significant new light on the relationship. There is also Natasha’s four page reply-found here because Bely returned that letter to her.
Finally there is Asya’s legacy: her apartment, her works still not fully catalogued or appreciated or described.
So there is much here, and we look forward to hearing from each of you and offering an opportunity to learn just a bit more about the modest beginnings Johannes, his colleagues, and I have made.
We look forward to your thoughts, comments and collaboration in the months and years to come.
A word of thanks to Johannes Nilo without whose vision and commitment to the Russian contribution none of this would have been made possible.