In his presentation of selected essays on beauty, love, and ethics by Vladimir Sergeevich Soloviev, Vladimir Wozniuk continues his admirable translation project of bringing to the West a large body of major writings by Russia’s most important religious philosopher and highly talented nineteenth-century poet. Wozniuk’s most recent offering represents his second book in this mode: his first, a translation of some of Soloviev’s major statements on political morality, moral and religious philosophy, theology, and aesthetics, titled Politics, Law, and Morality (Yale University Press, 2000), manifested a similar innovative conceptualization and organization. The Heart of Reality contains an informative introduction by the translator, eight selections by Soloviev on matters of aesthetics (especially art and literature), three appendices, detailed notes, a general index, and an index of biblical references. Most of the essays appear in English translation for the first time; they include ‘Three Addresses in Memory of Dostoevsky,’ ‘Beauty in Nature,’ the well-known ‘The Meaning of Love,’ and ‘The Fate of Pushkin.’

As is the case with respect to Russian religious philosophy and Russian Orthodox theology, Soloviev’s works are being rapidly translated into the Western languages, and Wozniuk’s effort contributes to the body of the Russian thinker’s works available in English. Because of the narrower focus on aesthetics in Wozniuk’s current book of Soloviev translations, it reads as more unified than the first, although this does not detract from the success of the earlier collection. As Wozniuk points out in his introduction, ‘a reappraisal [of Soloviev’s writings on aesthetics] is now in order, if not from a formal philosophical perspective, then from the points of view of both literary criticism and universal Christian thought—especially with regard to the sphere of incarnational theology in the latter’ (xii). Because each of the eight essays featured in this book reinforces many themes of the remaining ones, in their aggregate they allow the reader to construct an accurate picture of Soloviev as an erudite philosopher of art.

One of the strengths of The Heart of Reality remains Wozniuk’s introduction, which contextualizes Soloviev’s writings on aesthetics for the general reader by summarizing the overarching characteristics of Soloviev’s ambitious philosophical, religious, and social project: his commitment to the process he termed ‘all-unity,’ linked with his aim of elaborating ‘a single, indivisible integration point for all of human knowledge and experience’ (xi); his ideal of a future religious art rooted in Judaeo-Christian ethics and morality; and his views on the moral interconnectedness between art / the artist and society at large. Wozniuk frames the Russian thinker’s view both of lived life and created art as symbolizing an undeveloped Christian ideal, the spark of the Divine existing in eternal time in the mind of God. The translator rightly underscores in particular the necessity of bearing in mind Soloviev’s synthetic, integral world view for a proper understanding of the latter’s writings: ‘…evaluations of Soloviev that fail to recognize the centrality of incarnational Christianity in his thought, of the manifold implications of the appearance of the fully God-man (bogochelovek) Christ for the transformation of the world into a perfect and just reflection of the divine will, end up missing the point of his endeavors entirely’ (xi). Soloviev’s ‘inseparable trinitarian view of beauty, truth, and the good’ (xii) is all-pervasive in these essays, but not as part of a secular moral system; instead, the philosopher-poet elaborates a moral and aesthetic system that relies on a higher Christian understanding of morality set in the tradition of the Gospels and the Nicene Creed.

Wozniuk’s translations of the Russian essays are carefully crafted, paying attention to the nuances of the original and manifesting an awareness of the pitfalls of decoding the linguistic structures of one language and representing them in another. He manifests a sensitivity as well to the problems of rendering poetic text in a language not its original. As a result of this attention to detail and awareness of the issues involved in translation, both the poetic and non-poetic aspects of the translation emerge as elegant and readable. While I would not agree with Wozniuk’s suggestion, offered ‘half-jokingly’ (xvii), that the dearth of Russian philosophers is linked with difficulties that Russian grammar presents for philosophical discourse – for educated native speakers communicating in Russian with each other on philosophical or other matters, the grammar of their own language presents no more of a stumbling block than that of any other language to its native interlocutors – I acknowledge the monstrously long sentences characteristic of Soloviev’s writing in the original, and the difficulties of translating them into idiomatic English.

I have no major criticisms of Wozniuk’s book, except for a minor, though important concern that applies to both of his collections of Soloviev translations. Embedded in the essays of The Heart of Reality are quotations from various foreign languages, some of which appear in their original form. For example, a brief quotation from Goethe is printed in the original German (p. 34), while extended quotations of poetry by Tiutchev and Fet (pp. 46–49) are rendered in English translation in the text proper, and in English transliteration, rather than in the original Cyrillic, in the notes. The point begs to be made: Russian is, after all, the original language of Soloviev, the author of the essays under consideration, as well as of Tiutchev and Fet. English transliteration at best is awkward and unsatisfying to read, and, moreover, is not fully representative of the beauty of the Russian. A collection articulating matters of aesthetics should consider the meta-aesthetic question of the presentation of poetry in the original language of its expression.

Wozniuk’s translation of Soloviev’s essays on beauty, love, and ethics makes a noteworthy contribution to the body of available English translations of Russian religious philosophy and aesthetics. I highly recommend it not only for graduate and undergraduate libraries, but also for undergraduate courses in the humanities on Russian and Western intellectual history. In order better to understand itself as well as Russia, the West needs to know and fully appreciate Soloviev’s place in the history of world religious philosophy and belles-lettres.