Les Poemes Philosophique (Volume 1): The Voices of Existentialism

Following his five-volume Sculptum Est Prosa treatise, Ivan Kireevskii begins his new series entitled Les Poemes Philosophique. In this volume he wanders between solitude and solitude often chasing phantoms through an empty world, condemned to an everlasting chase, placed in the uncertainty and multiplicity called existentialism. He appears to leap from problem to problem with the ardor and agility of a flame consuming and illuminating each in turn, flashing up and burning to temporary extinction, but never appeased. The first reading demands patience, derived from the confidence that with a second reading much, or all, will appear in quite a different light. It is a heavy, chilly breath that emanates from his words, yet there is a darkly glimmering light that surrounds them. Can life and the world be beautiful in spite of all the suffering, cruelty, and terrors of existence? Jean-Paul Sartre, considered by many to be the "father of existentialism" said, "... in anxiety man becomes aware of his freedom, knows himself responsible for his own being..." So, what exactly is existentialism? Perhaps there is no direct or straightforward answer to this question. That which gathers itself into the term 'existentialism' is neither systematic nor uniform. The term 'existentialism' is itself scattered and hence rejects and sometimes abandons even itself. Yet there also exists a certain philosophical togetherness lying at the heart of it. To this togetherness belong questioning freedom and its spheres, thinking the meaning and implications of death and finitude. Our existence, as we know it, is no longer transparent and understandable by reason. It is no longer bound together into a tight, coherent structure. What has emerged is an image of man himself that bears a new, stark, more nearly naked, and more questionable aspectstripping down, of this being. It is through Kireevskii's poems that we come face to face with the 'mystery' of Being. Here we will attempt to grasp the face of the ungraspable. As you enter this poet's world, you must let Being be...let his words belong to "the language of the wind which heralds a