Where do you sail? Were it not for Elena,
   What Troya alone for you, Achaeans.
   O. Mandelshtam. «Kamen» («The Stone»)

My first theoretical scheme of expressionism, as an exlusive synthesis of all achievments of four currents of russian futurism, appeared to be very narrow for us.

Expressionism which is under the badge of maximum expression will not only by synthesis, but Europeanism and transcendentism.

We, expressionists, wishing to reach the maximum of expression:

firstly, we stake on synthesis: synthesis of all achievements poetry, painting, theatre, music etc. We synthesizen in poetry all achievements the four currents of russian futurism (imaginism, rhythmism, cubism and euphonism), in painting – the achievements of futurism Bochchoni and Russolo, cubism of Picasso, Braque, Derain, Tatlin, Puni, rondoism of Johann Brendveys, neoprimitivism of Shevchenko, luchism (rayonism) of Larionov, divisionism of Evreinov, simultanizm (successif) Delaunay, synchronism of Morgan Russell, suprematism of Malevich and Picabia, imagism of Wyndham Lewis and tsvetodinamos (color expression), in theatre – the aspirations of Craig (and Hevesy), Meyerhold, Evreinov, Miklashevsky, Komissarzhevsky, Volkonsky, V. Ivanov, Reinhardt, Delsarte, de Bouhélier, Claudel, Fuks, Rolland, Kerzhentsev, Tairov, Marinetti, in music – the achievements of neoclassics Taneev, Glasunov, Vasilenko and Rachmaninoff, impressionists Debussy, Ravel, Delage, Roger-Ducasse, modernists Strauss, Reger, Schoenberg, Scriabin, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and  Gnesin and futurists – Roslavetz and Lurie. We are still the limit of technicism.

secondly, we are europeanists. Of cause, we wanted to be and we became europeans. If the expressionism will be synthetism it will be europeism. Expressionism – this is a new Europe. In 10–15 years all Balmonts and Brusovs will die out, as handozaures of Eocene Cenozoic Era. They will die out, and reasoning quite objectively someone would have to replace them according the elementary biology laws. Someone has to be the new young Europe. And we, expressionists, affirm there is no anybody now except us, who can more correct understand the very historical process. Expressionism was born under the badge of pan-futurism and Renaissance XX century and at the same time the expressionism gave birth to pan-futurism and Renaissance XX century. A grandiose geological catastrophe occurred in our consciousness, terrible slide of all ancient philosophical and scientific beddings (in comparison with the Messina disaster – this is a trifle), and my thought waves like a seismograph hand. If a little book of resolutions and decisions the III All-Russian congress professional alliances or the order №1042 22 May of 20 the Chief management communications about reconstruction of locomotive economy made a whole historical epoch, than my propaganda leaflet «Renaissance of XX century» opens the new historical epoch.

thirdly, we are transcendencists, we are numenist.

We want to cognize the noumenon (yes, were it not for Elena, what Troya alone for us). Expressionism is a transcendental naturalism. Before our appearance the poetry was phenomenalistic. But the main – our cognition is not a phrase but really it is technical achievement. Of course, we needs the noumenon not for our career. Here «thing-in-itself» of Kant exists, atma «Vedanta» of Hindus, Idea of Plato and «World will» Schopenhauer.

Does not exist «phenomenon», «Maya», «world of shadows» and «my representation».

The being of a man is three-dimensional (by Minskiy opinion – four-dimensional). But, may be, in fact there are not three or four but 20 or 30 dimensions. We have not any idea about the one- or two-dimentional being.

A man has 5 or 6 senses (the sixth will be colour ear of A. Rimbaud, or light scent of Baudelaire, or taste hearing of Huysmans). But may be one needs not 5 or 6, but yet 20 or 30 senses to cognize things to the end. We do not imagine how to exist completely without eyesight or motor feeling.

It would seem, never and for nothing a person does not penetrate in transcendental even a single step.

But all the same it is necessary to cognize the thing in itʼs original, not as subjective image.

We have the feeling of the end, the feeling of the last depths.

Intellectualism with its method of abstracting (a transform of our sensations in the representations and ideas) completely in vain and with two forms (time and space) and twelve categories of feelings  according to Kant, gives to a person a possibility by means of the intellect with its motionless and lifeless spatial approach and scientific skills of abstract thinking to accommodate himself to environment, but in place of reality gives a motionless, artificial, schematic-abstract pseudo-reality. Transcendental cognition of things is not the  thing  itself yet. Empirical Perception (a posteriori) the qualities of things out of our trans-subjective part of Being, as color, surface, sound, taste and smell, and non-empirical (apriori) forms of our reason, bringing order in our isolated sensations, equally do not belong to things itself, but are only the result of psychic processes of knowing subject. Abstraction in its turn is only the instrument of usefull activity not of pure knowledge. Pragmatically it should be usefull to mix reality and reason, a thing and idea of a thing. But in days of the collapse of intellectualism only through Bergson’s intuition it will be seen clearly the firsthand and last reality in its initial purity, but not in abstract perversions. Intuitionism cognizes an absolute thing what it is in itself by means of primary comprehending inside of person himself, his «I» (the firsthand facts of his consciousness as the most accessible, single reality, which was not put into shape with the aid of abstractions), and already after that there are penetrations into the very essence of all objects. The perceiving is only in intuition without any abstract schemes is the very reality.

Between «I» and «not-I»  is put  an equals sign now. If intellect through abstraction cognizes the relations between things (quantitatively) intuition cognizes the thing itself (qualitativeness). Not Husserl or Cohen, but Bergson freed gnoseology of fiziologizm and psychology. Gnoseologism of Bergson first in history of philosophy is the theory of knowing, but not theory of perceiving. Bergson the first has separated time and space: henceforth time is not length, but pure continuance. Time (and all irrational flow of life) can not be measured, but only lived out. Bergsonism – this is neo-metaphysics, neo-biologism (with neo-vitalism) and hyper voluntarism. Bergsonism not only changed intellectual activity of person, but his psycho-physiological structure. When I felt in the deeply «Creative Evolution» of Bergson my life has begun to flow according to Bergson wholly, in a different way, even from the physiological point of view.
Anti-intellectualism sprang up in France not without influence of entomologist Fabre scientific  works about insects instinct and psychological school founded by the follower of Taine – Ribot and his followers – Binet and Janet who created not the logics of intellect, but the logics of feelings and in conclusion even the logics of unconscious and half-conscious psychic processes.

When, according to Bergson, noumenon is out-feeling or contemplating,  Bergsonism wholly is very close to the infinity of deep-wisdom the the greatest ancient Hindu Vedas (from Rigveda to Vedanta),  Sutras, the Upanishads and Aranyakas, to the transcendental symbolism of all Indo-Aryan. Bergsonism – this is a rebirth of Aryan perception of the world which indologists Paul Deussen and Chamberlain dreamed about.

Anti-rationalism of Bergsonism in its essence not in terminology is contiguous to alogism of chinese Taoism on the one hand and fakirism of Indian yogis, on the other – to inner experience of the occultists Blavatskaya, Besant, Papus, Leadbeater and Sedir and anthropological theosophists R. Steiner, Morgenstern and Andrey Belyj, on the third hand – to religious metaphysic of R. Eucken and mysticism of Soloviev, Berdyaev, Ern, E. Trubetskoy and Rachinsky.

New humanity, may be, during the 2 milleniums will be practicing bergsonism instead of the departed Christianity.
Henry Bergson is an expressionist. And we are the expressionists-bergsonists.

By the way, french bergsonists Ch. Péguy and M. Barrés, of course, are the expressionists.

Our transcendentism is not theoretical (as the Descartes, Spinoza, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, Fichte, Schelling, Schlegel, Hartmann one), not ethical (as eleatics, scholastics, partly kantians), but psycho-phisiological, instinctive.

Transcendental world – this is no subjective  world  of purely personal dreams or narcotic fantasies, but a new objective world of higher-order.

What seemed earlier seemed transcendental now, after expressionist Bergson, became a-trancendental.

Expressionism – these are not the young minor poets in their idiotical chase of sticking the label of new resonant «ism» at all costs to cover the shabbiness of their verses (now epidemic broke out of new «isms»). Expressionism has become already the perception of the world and the conception of the world. We saw the world in a new way.

Of course, everybody saw how apples fall from trees, but only Newton alone discovered the law of gravity.

Ippolit Sokolov
Baedeker by expressionism, 1920.