Russian Mystical Literature

The Russian artist Mikhail Vasilyevich Nesterov (1862–1942) sought to portray "the Russian Christ" through Sergius of Radonezh, a Russian Orthodox saint and ascetic. Nesterov's painting "The Vision to the Youth" is an example. 

Alice C. Linsley

Russia has produced numerous significant mystical writers. Among them are Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852), Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818-1883), and Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940). 

The best-known writer of this genre is Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) who bended Russian mysticism with psychological insights in his novels The Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot, and the story Bobok.

What is Russian mystical literature? Russian mysticism blends Russian Orthodox spirituality, Slavic folk beliefs and narratives, asceticism, and apocalyptic themes. The literature tends to be tragic, ironic, and philosophical. It includes an element of existentialism as it explores the "Russian soul". The early works were 19th-century gothic tales. 

Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) was a pioneer in Russian mystical literature who combined dark folkloric tales with the supernatural. His notable works include Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, a tale of devils and witches, Viy (a Russian horror story), and The Portrait.

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818-1883) explored the supernatural in stories like Bezhin Meadow, which involves rural folklore, house sprites, and forest demons.

Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) was famous for The Master and Margarita, considered one of the most significant Russian mystical novels. It features the devil's antics in 1930s Moscow and deals with spiritual themes of good and evil. Bulgakov is widely considered the most famous Russian literary author to weave profound mysticism, the supernatural, and satire into his work.

Nathan Cofnas and the Value of Academic Blogs

 

Tributes to Arday left outside university building.

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

Jason Arday's fraudulent doctoral thesis has been exposed by an American academic blogger, Nathan Cofnas. Cofnas ran Arday's work through plagiarism detection software and discovered that "many passages are lifted with minimal editing, sometimes retaining copy-editing mistakes from the original source".

Arday, age 41, was found dead in South London nine days after resigning from his post at Cambridge. Evidence of his plagiarism has been made public and can be verified by using the same method employed by Cofnas.

Arday's defenders claim that he committed suicide after enduring abuse and harassment. However, even the Guardian admits that "the abuse and harassment Arday has outlined would be some of the most extreme any academic has been subjected to in the UK."

The word "extreme" certainly applies to Arday's narratives about his childhood struggles, his athletic prowess, and his academic achievements.

The media is focusing on Arday, but as an academic blogger, I prefer to focus on the important service provided by Nathan Cofnas who is paying the price for exposing Arday's plagiarism. Cofnas said he was being investigated by Cambridge for his criticism of Arday's work. He left Cambridge and took a position at Ghent University in Belgium. In March 2026 Ghent philosophers who disdained Cofnas' empirical research in the philosophy of biological science, demanded his removal. Rector Petra De Sutter initially declined to dismiss him. However, after Arday’s suicide, Ghent launched a disciplinary investigation, and Cofnas was suspended.

 

I am glad to see that hundreds of academics are supporting Cofnas in an open letter published at Inside Higher Ed. I am thrilled also that Cofnas uses a blog to share his research. Academic blogs deserve greater attention from the public. They do not post flashy journalistic pieces that bait your click. They offer serious research and valuable reflections. Reading Cofnas' Substack posts requires attention to details and an open mind. How rigorous is he in his evolutionary assessment of racial differences? Is it fair to label him a racist and suggest racism as his motive for exposing Arday? 

One hopes that the day will never come when academic bloggers will be silenced in the West as they have been by totalitarian regimes.

Related reading: Nathan Cofnas' The Great Awoking: The Lecture They Didn't Want You to Hear; Nathan Cofnas | Substack; Jason Arday, Academia and the Uncomfortable Truth; Ethics Forum; Philosophers' Corner; Just Genesis, Biblical Anthropology

Conrad Potter Aiken, Poet Laureate

 

Conrad Potter Aiken (1889 –1973) was an American writer and poet, honored with a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. He was the United States Poet Laureate from 1950 to 1952. He was born in Savannah, Georgia which is also where he died in 1973.

His father, William Ford Aiken, was a physician from New York City. His mother, Anna Aiken, was the daughter of the Unitarian preacher William James Potter of New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Tragedy befell Conrad when he was 2 years old. His father, Will Aiken, killed his wife Anna and himself on 27 February 1901. Conrad's younger sister and two brothers were adopted by Frederick Winslow Taylor, the inventor of "scientific management", but Conrad went to live with his aunt Grace Aiken Tillinghast who lived in Cambridge with her husband, a Harvard librarian.

After Peabody Grammar School and Middlesex Academy, Conrad entered Harvard in 1907. He planned his career as a poet. At Harvard, he became friends with T.S. Eliot. Together they edited The Harvard Advocate. For mutual criticism, they exchanged their works in progress until 1916.

Conrad was a versatile writer. He produced poetry, short stories, novels, literary criticism, a play, and an autobiography. F.C. Bonnell's Conrad Aiken, a Bibliography (1902-1978) lists 64 "books and pamphlets" produced by Aiken, as well as 93 "contributions to books" and 761 "contributions to periodicals."

Joseph Conrad's VICTORY

 

Joseph Conrad

3 December 1857 - 3 August 1924

Joseph Conrad was an English novelist and short-story writer of Polish descent. He is regarded as one of the greatest English novelists, especially in light of the fact that English was not his first language. He learned English at age 21.

Conrad's writings are highly descriptive, provocative, and full of adventure, drawing on his many years at sea. He knew seamanship well, having risen from apprentice to ship captain. 

His novel Victory is a study of contrasts between isolation and connection; between good and evil, and between greed and self-sacrifice. It brims, a simmering pot, that comes gradually to a head. When I read it, I was breathless at the last page. 

In 1915, Jack London wrote, "Whatever you do, read Conrad's latest -- Victory. Read it, if you have to pawn your watch to buy it. Conrad has exceeded himself. I am glad that I am alive, if, for no other reason, because of the joy of reading this book."

The journalist Joan Didion wrote, "I often reread Victory, which is maybe my favorite book in the world… The story is told thirdhand. It’s not a story the narrator even heard from someone who experienced it. The narrator seems to have heard it from people he runs into around the Malacca Strait. So there’s this fantastic distancing of the narrative, except that when you’re in the middle of it, it remains very immediate. It’s incredibly skillful. I have never started a novel — I mean except the first, when I was starting a novel just to start a novel — I’ve never written one without rereading Victory. It opens up the possibilities of a novel. It makes it seem worth doing." (The Paris Review, 2006)

Remembering Luci Shaw

 

Luci Shaw (1928-2025)

The poet Luci Shaw has died. She was 96 years old and still writing and publishing. Her last book - An Incremental Life - was published in April 2025.

Luci was born in London, England, and lived in Canada, Australia, and the U.S.A. She graduated with High Honors from Wheaton College in 1953. She and her first husband Harold Shaw founded Harold Shaw Publishers. Harold died in February 1986. Since 1988, Luci was a Writer in Residence at Regent College, Vancouver, Canada. 

Luci lectured in North America and abroad on topics such as art and spirituality, the Christian imagination, poetry-writing, and journal-writing as an aid to artistic and spiritual growth.

Luci resided in Bellingham, Wahington with her husband John Hoyte. They are members of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.

A charter member of the Chrysostom Society of Writers, Shaw is author of fourteen volumes of poetry. The Society support s writers through travel expenses for meetings or conferences with a focus on faith-informed writing.

I knew Luci from my time in Wheaton, Illinois. We worshipped at the same church and were in the same Bible study group. Luci and Harold were pillars of Bathany Chapel, a fellowship of the Plymouth Brethren. A very conservative Christian group, the Plymouth Brethren do not permit women to speak in the gathered assembly. I had the impression that this was a frustration to Luci who expressed herself through her poetry. She eventually found a more tolerant fellowship among the Episcopalians.

In my years of friendship with Luci, I found her always to be thoughtful, gracious, and hospitable. I was a terrible writer in those days, but she encouraged me and gave me some direction. May her memory be eternal before the Lord, the Lover of Mankind.

Related reading: Luci Shaw's Book "Harvesting Fog"; Luci Shaw's Genesis for Children

The Boy and the Wind

 

The Boy and the Wind

By Jonah Rapson (Grade 9)



A boy in the wilderness,

Trying to find his way home,

In the midst of his loneliness,

Heard the wind saying, “You are not alone.”

A feeling awoke in the child,

One he had not known or felt before.

That he, out in the wild,

Was being cared for.

As the comfort of the wind came to him,

His heart began to lead the way.

Although the path ahead was dim,

He could walk on that path all day.

The wind was the guide for his heart,

And as the child started on his way home,

He learned that until their way part,

He was lost, but he was not alone.

Writing requires guts

 

Novelist Fannie Hurst said, “Writing is a chore. It cracks your bones and eats you, and yet it dominates you. You hate it while you love it.”

Related reading: Learn to Write by Writing; Pen-Pecked Dreamers; Writers on Writing