The phenomenology of time in the poetic philosophy of A.I. Vvedensky

Abstract

For non-classical ontology, one of the major problems is time. It is through thinking about time and its relation to the essence of man, thought, or being that Kierkegaard, Bergson, and Heidegger attempted to construct a different ontology. The theme of time was also one of the main themes for the Russian poet and philosopher A. I. Vvedensky. The authors of the article suggest that on the basis of his poems and reflections conventionally united under the title "The Gray Notebook" the principles of a special phenomenology of time can be formulated; this work posits time as a quasi-ontological phenomenon that acts when we perceive and order reality through it, but it disappears when we try to observe and grasp it. Time cannot be a sequence or a counting measure. Thinking about time is a specific experience in which not only time itself disappears, but also the habitual reality measured and ordered by it, and something else opens up – a world outside of sequence and relation, outside of stable and limited relations and views. In this new world, the meditator himself dissolves and disappears crossing the border between time and eternity, the immanent and the transcendent, the human and the divine. Thus, Vvedensky's phenomenology of  time is not a theoretical study but a practical turn, a change in the way of existence and, ultimately, an experience of salvation and freedom.