E. SHAKHMATOVA, Candidate of Art History The Silver Age is a phenomenon of Russian culture at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. in various fields of art-in music, painting, architecture, theater, literature... - presented a huge variety of various styles and trends, among which, perhaps, it makes no sense to identify the leading ones, since this diversity was the main difference of the era. The stressful feeling of crisis at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries filled the Silver Age with a powerful energy of overcoming, which rushed in all directions, and first of all, to the first foundations of being, to a sense of unity and harmony. If in the field of philosophy this was expressed by an appeal to the idea of unity, and in the field of art - to the search for synthesis, then at the everyday level it was manifested in overcoming the ties imposed by the Christian religion and morality on the relationship between the sexes. It is precisely the disagreement with the Christian position of the sinfulness of the physical principle that leads D. Merezhkovsky, Z. Gippius and V. Rozanov to the idea of the Third Testament. Silver Age Eros, like art, rejects conventional attitudes and turns to pre-Christian and extra-Christian traditions. The ancient roots of Silver Age erotology are obvious and have repeatedly attracted the attention of researchers, while the connection with Eastern teachings is still terra incognita for our science. THE WEST LEARNS FROM THE EAST The culture of the East, unlike the Christian religion, has never considered the bodily as sinful. Man and nature form a single continuum. The natural act of continuing life is equivalent to renewing the natural cycle. This topic was not forbidden, and philosophical thought addressed it without any embarrassment. The law of karma in Hinduism did not prohibit bliss and pleasure, sensual pleasures. The god of love, Kama, has received great attention from Indian poets and playwrights. He was depicted as sending arro ... Read more