"Vers la Flamme" and Scriabin's Russia

Scriabin is a composer whose music I have always liked on a superficial level, but have never quite understood. I feel this way particularly about his later music. Scriabin’s late works, to me at least, have a very distinctive sound. The music is almost too static. I can never sense any real form, and the music, while beautiful, only makes the simplest movements. Vers la Flamme is a good example of this. It’s a one-movement, six-minute piece. And throughout those six minutes, there’s some sort of movement in that it’s different at the end than it is at the beginning, but I’ve never quite understood what Scriabin was trying to say.

In attempting to more fully understand what Scriabin was trying to express in Vers la Flamme, I looked into Scriabin’s religious beliefs. I knew beforehand that he was devoted to Theosophy, a sort of mystic religion popular in Russia during his life. I figured that Scriabin probably subscribed to some of these mystic beliefs, and Vers la Flamme was probably somehow tied to these beliefs. And boy, was I right!

Theosophy was often used by its followers to move toward a state of inner enlightenment, which is achieved by spiritual devotion. But Theosophists believe not so much in a God as in a one underlying Truth. This Truth is causeless and timeless, and enlightenment is discovered in this Truth. Theosophy also teaches that there are seven planes of being, or Cosmic planes of existence. (I know, it keeps getting better and better!) New states of enlightenment can manifest on each of these planes. The seventh plane is the physical plane, that plane which includes the five senses. It represents the everyday, physical state. The second plane is the highest plane that humans can reach, as the first plane is divine and, according to Theosophy, not reached by human beings. The second plane, called Anupadaka, is home of the divine spark of a human being. After learning all of this, Vers la Flamme starts to sound an awful lot like a movement to a new level of enlightenment in the Truth (with a capital T), or a new plane, home of a divine spark.

But wait! It gets better! Popular culture in Russia at the time was crazy. In late nineteenth century Russia, doomsday was the topic of the moment. Eschatology was everywhere. (Sound familiar?) Vladimir Solovyov, a great Russian philosopher of the late nineteenth century, had predicted the nearness of the “end of human history.” The Symbolist poets of the time were all writing about the Apocalypse. Dmitri Merezhkovsky wrote a well-known poem, “Children of Darkness,” which contains the following lines:

We are on the edge of the abyss,

Children of darkness awaiting the sun,

We see the light, and like shadows,

We die in its rays.

These lines remind me of Vers la Flamme. The piece begins darkly and ends in ecstasy. It is as if the hero of the piece is lifted to new heights and dies in the rays of the sun. This concept of ecstatic death, of seeing “the light” and dying “in its rays,” is enlightenment. It’s the apocalypse. It is a personal apocalypse, but all-encompassing, based on Scriabin’s beliefs of the self being a fully-contained world. It is also a joyful apocalypse, a “universal dissolution in Ecstasy.” It *is* nineteenth-century Russia. And it is perfect.