Lev Shestov: Philosopher of the Sleepless Night

217 Pages·2020·8.042 MB·English

by  Matthew Beaumont

Lev Shestov
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Lev Shestov
Philosopher of the
Sleepless Night
Matthew Beaumont
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First published in Great Britain 2021
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Cover image: Portrait of Lev Shestov (© Heritage Image Partnership Ltd /
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for Camilla, who came like a thief in the night
Watchman, what of the night?
(Isa. 21: 11)
Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is.
For the Son of Man is as a man taking a far journey, who left his house, and
gave authority to his servants, and to every man his work, and commanded
the porter to watch.
Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh,
at even, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning:
Lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping.
And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch.
(Mark 13: 33–37)
Contents
List of figures viii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction: Staying woke and staying awake 1
1 Athens and Jerusalem: Lev Shestov in Gethsemane 11
2 Philosophy and anti-philosophy: Shestov’s interventions 27
3 Angels of history and death: Shestov’s constellations 53
4 Garden and wasteland: The art of Gethsemane 81
5 Sleep and the sleepless: The night of Gethsemane 113
Conclusion: Auschwitz and the end of the world 139
Notes 155
Bibliography 183
Index 194
Figures
1.1 In the Garden of Gethsemane (engraving), English School
(nineteenth century) 19
1.2 The Dead Christ, 1521 (tempera on panel), Holbein the Younger,
Hans (1497/8–1543) (after) 23
3.1 Angelus Novus, 1920 (Indian ink, colour chalk & brown wash
on paper), Klee, Paul (1879–1940) 75
4.1 Agony in the Garden, c.1460 (tempera on panel), Mantegna,
Andrea (1431–1506) 93
4.2 The Agony in the Garden, c.1465 (tempera on panel), Bellini,
Giovanni (c.1430–1516) 94
4.3 Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, c.1590s (oil on canvas),
Greco, El (Domenico Theotocopuli) (1541–1614) 95
4.4 Christ on the Mount of Olives, 1819 (oil on wood), Goya y Lucientes,
Francisco Jose de (1746–1828) 96
4.5 The Agony in the Garden of Olives, 1889 (oil on canvas), Gauguin,
Paul (1848–1903) 98
4.6 The Olive Trees, 1889 (oil on canvas), Gogh, Vincent van (1853–90) 100
4.7 Gethsemane, 1945 (oil on canvas), Rothko, Mark (1903–70) 102
Acknowledgements
For encouragement of various kinds, I’d like to thank Bruce Baugh, Tim
Beasley-Murray, Steve Edwards, Linda Freedman, Leo Hollis, Josephine
McDonagh, Andy Murray, Charlotte Robertson, Alberto Toscano, Michael
Weingrad and Sarah Young. I am extremely grateful to the anonymous referees
commissioned by Bloomsbury Academic for their generous and constructive
comments. At Bloomsbury, in addition to the support of Lucy Russell, I have
benefitted greatly from the commitment, above all, of Lisa Goodrum, whom I
also sincerely thank. I am an interloper, in disciplinary terms, when it comes
to the study of Lev Shestov’s thought, so I’d here like to register my respect
for the scholarship of those specialists in this and adjacent fields that I cite
in this book, and in particular for Ramona Fotiade’s tireless promotion of his
intellectual importance.
I want to express my gratitude to Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher
Rothko for permission to reproduce an image of Mark Rothko’s painting
Gethsemane (1945) in Chapter 4; also to Henry Weinfield for permission to
quote from his translation of Nerval’s ‘Christ at Gethsemane’ and Faber and
Faber Ltd. for permission to quote from T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. Finally,
my thanks to the Chambers Fund in the Department of English at UCL for
providing generous financial assistance in the reproduction of images.