“The true disciples of this Wisdom still remain in peace and in the sacred darkness of their secrecy”. N.A. Golovin’s “Note” about his trip to Europe in 1830

The “Note” by Nikolai Aleksandrovich Golovin (1779–1831) about his trip to Europe in 1830, fragments of which are published for the first time in this article, is a remarkable monument of the "intellectual travelogue" genre. Its author, a prominent figure in Russian Freemasonry of the first third of the 19th century, made a 2.5-month trip to Germany to communicate with prominent representatives of the German academic world, philosophers and theologians, and to assess the spiritual and moral state of the German society. The “Note” contains several semantic layers that carry valuable historical information. It tells about the everyday features of life in Russia, Poland and Germany, the difficulties that the traveler faced, the religious and family customs of the townspeople, and scientific life in such cities as Breslau, Dresden, Leipzig, Frankfurt am Main. The real purpose of Golovin's trip, in our opinion, was to establish contacts with like-minded Russian Masons in Germany. This part of the notes is written in an allegorical style, full of hints and abbreviations, which was undoubtedly caused by the difficulties of continuing Masonic work in Russia after the official ban on Freemasonry in the Empire in 1822. Golovin's notes contain interesting religious and philosophical reflections of their author, assessments of the worldview position of Golovin's interlocutors, although his attempts to find like-minded people were apparently unsuccessful. The conservatively minded traveler makes critical remarks in his text about both the situation in Europe and the mentality of his compatriots, assessing what was happening from the religious and mystical point of view characteristic of Russian Masons. The publication of the source is preceded by an introduction, which tells about the biography of N.A. Golovin and the context in which his notes were created.