“You are unknown without them and without me.” preface to the first publication of the complete editions of the “Wreath of sonnets” and “Tertsin” by L. P. Karsavin

The name of Lev Karsavin returned to Russian culture in 1989, and the difficult path of his works to the Russian reader continues today. A unique cycle from the “Wreath of Sonnets”, “Tertsin” and “Commentaries” to them was recorded in the final stage of his life, this triptych combined the main provisions of the original metaphysics and the mystical insights of an Orthodox thinker. The manuscripts were saved from oblivion by divine will and dedication of a few friends, but it took seven decades for Russian researchers and lovers of Russian religious philosophy to finally have the opportunity to appreciate this corpus in the complete form in which the author himself completed it. The article traces how, due to the impossibility of verifying copies with the original manuscripts, gaps and errors arose in publications. The integrity and completeness of the texts restored now open up new opportunities for a deeper understanding of Karsavin’s work. It is not enough to confine oneself to the statement that it is determined by the provisions on the meaning of the All-unity (Trinity and dual-unity) and the dialectic of the coincidence of two apparently opposite ideas - kenosis and communion. These quatrains and tercets are imbued with the author’s desire to convey his vivid feeling of the author’s deeply intimate, heartfelt touch of the all-transcending perfection of God, and any abstract conclusion is connected with the specific facts of the story of his love for an earthly woman by multiple hidden threads. It was this love that awakened the passion of thought in Karsavin, and he kept this love until the last minutes of his life, until the end, which overtook him in the isolation ward of the Abez camp hospital.