Volume 17, 2019 year

In this article the author investigates the interpretation of the plot of Pilat’s trial in early Latin literature. The author presents new data from the historic works of St. Ambrose, St. Eusevus Ieronimus, Rufin Aquilean that remained untranslated before. The goal of the article is to investigate the attitude of early Christians towards the role of Pontius Pilatus in the trial of Christ. It aims to compare the interpretation of Pilate’s trial found in the Latin literature of the 1—5 centuries with that one in the writings of Athanasius of Alexandria and Ephraim the Syrian belonging to patristic literature. The author comes to conclusion that Pontius Pilate was not perceived by early Christians as a metaphor of the persecutor, in spite of all the persecutions executed by Romans at the dawn of Christianity. He almost was not blamed for the execution of Christ. Christians did not oppose themselves to the Roman authorities and did not accuse it of the crucifixion of Christ. The author considers that for Tertullian or Lactantius Pilate was rather a wise pagan opposed to a mad crowd thirsty for blood. The author emphasizes the fact that the theme of Pilat’s trial is significant in the speculations of Latin authors on power and humiliation. St. Jerome, as other authors, writes that Pilate “involuntarily made a cruel decision”. Through an appeal to the Old Testament prophecies St. Hieronymus tries to give not only a symbolic, but also religious significance to the washing of Pilate’s hands and to bind it with the detestation of the evil and possible forgiveness. The Latin Church Fathers and church writers mostly sympathized with the procurator of Judea, seeing in him a sacrifice of circumstances, although they condemned him for his weakness.

Keywords: Pontius Pilate, latin patristics, the problem of guilt, early Christianity, image, interpretation

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The article is devoted to the type of a fairy tale plot about three kingdoms (gold, silver and copper) popular in the Russian folk tradition and known in two versions: in one of them the kingdoms are situated under the ground, and in another one they are located on the mountain. The appearance of the second version is related to the very first Russian fairy tale published in 1782 and entitled “The Tale of the Golden Mount, or The Wonderful Adventures of Idan, Prince of the East” which is full of a specific oriental flavor. Later, the text was russianized and published in various cheap popular editions of numerous copies during 150 years (the end of the 18th — the beginning of the 20th century). A book fairy tale still existed in the oral tradition: its versions used to be recorded in various corners of Russia and are included in many collections of Russian folk tales, published in the last quarter of the 19th century, in the first half of the 20th century and even in the early 21st century. These texts still conserve certain details (such as the abduction of hero’s mother, the presence of four locuses, the enemy’s name, the conversion of the kingdoms into an egg etc) associated specifically with popular sources, which are not always easily recognizable because they are being lost or transformed in the course of long life of the oral tradition of the folk tale.

Keywords: Russian folk tales, cheap popular literature (luboс), plot type, version, three kingdoms, gold kingdom, silver kingdom, copper kingdom

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The publication is devoted to one of their current areas of modern domestic literature — imagology. The purpose of the research is to study the image of Florence. In this respect, particular attention was drawn to the memoirs and articles of F. I. Buslaev, a famous Russian philologist and art historian. He visited Florence four times, in 1840, 1841, 1864 and 1874. During his first visit the traveler saw the city as a fairy tale, during the second one — as a dream, difficult to dispel, for the third time he considered it as a place where the connection of time took place, and finally, for the fourth time — as a museum, as a treasury of the world art. The study of the memoirs and articles of the scholar showed that his attention was attracted by the secondary motifs of the universal Florentine myth such as a circle, a dream, the past, a family. The peculiarity of the perception of this locus by Buslayev is determined by the fact that he analyzed it not only as a traveler, but also as a researcher. In the article, the mythological, comparative historical and typological methods became the main ones in studying the image of Florence.

Keywords: F. I. Buslaev, Florence, local text, universal myth, personal myth, image, Dante

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The genre of tragedy was described in Aristotle’s Poetics, which had a formative influence on the subsequent European theory of literature. Interest in antiquity and its influence on modern European culture was manifested throughout Dostoevsky’s work. He read ancient authors and and thought about classical education a lot. Belinsky also pointed out the combination of the tragic and the comic in the writer's works. The first attempts to describe the development of the ancient theory of tragedy in Dostoevsky’s novels date back to the beginning of the 20th century. The writer adopted the concept of Aristotle. He construes tragedy as representation of a catastrophic event with terrible consequences. Dostoevsky himself, following Aristotle, understands the tragic hero as an ordinary person whose sufferings cause compassion from the audience and spiritual purification — catharsis. Even though the causes of the final catastrophe and the suffering of a hero in the works of Dostoevsky are more complicated than in the Greek tragedy, he uses traditional terms defined by Aristotle in “Poetics”.

Keywords: Dostoevsky, Aristotle, “Poetics”, tragedy, tragic hero, myth

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The article for the first time studies the gospel basis of the images of Marthenka and Vera in I. A. Goncharov’s novel “The Precipice”. Just as Pushkin highlighted an ideal image of Tatyana Larina comparing it to that one of her sister Olga, Goncharov emphasizes the personality of Vera by contrasting her with Martha. The main theme of the novel is a spiritual order of Russia that is on the brink of a “precipice” (i. e. atheism). The meaning of the name of one of the protagonists — Vera, that is Faith, — plays an important semantic role in the novel, symbolizing a possibility of the salvation of Russia, overcoming of the historical “precipices” based on faith in God. The sisters’ images point to two different paths to Holiness: the path of Martha and the path of Mary, described in the gospel. Marthenka hides under the shadow of someone else’s authority and experience, avoiding thus temptation and mistakes. Vera shows herself independent, makes a mistake, but being a strong person finally finds strength to come into repentance and spiritual “resurrection”, repeating the destiny of the grandmother and showing the signs of spiritual similarity with her. Women’s images, hidden, but deeply and consistently correlated with their Evangelical basis, are in “The Precipice” only a private manifestation of systemic changes in the poetics of the late Goncharov, more openly than before, demonstrating the connection not only with the Holy Scripture, but also with the teaching of the Holy Fathers of the Church about the so-called “spiritual warfare”. The article for the first time reveals the novelist’s attempt, without going beyond realism, to show the struggle in the human soul between the “demons” and the Holy spirit. In Goncharov’s early literary texts there are also Evangelical reminiscences. But in his last novel, the writer manifests himself not only as an expert, but also as a great interpreter of the gospel, which showed the spiritual and psychological reasons of women’s mistakes that is related to the destiny of the Evangelical Mary. The projection on the Evangelical images and the realistic representation of a spiritual battle significantly change the existing ideas about the depth of Goncharov’s spiritual search and the problems of the novel “The Precipice”.

Keywords: Holy Spirit, Evangelical images, archetype, Martha, Mary, Goncharov, “The Precipice”, Pushkin, spiritual struggle

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The article offers the analysis of the first book of the “Brotherly songs” by Nikolai Klyuev (1912) with regard to the reflection of Gospel in it. Being highly appreciated immediately after its publication, the book of songs became an expression of the ideology of one of the important religious trends in Russian thought of the beginning of the 20th century — “Calvary Christians” (the subtitle of the book explicitly refers us to it). An appeal to an efficient love and voluntary self-sacrifice in the name of the Kingdom of God on earth becomes the main idea of the “Brotherly songs”. The crucifixion of the Christians following the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the Passions and the Transfiguration of the adepts of Jesus constitute the main images of the book of songs, which comprised a variety of oral, literary and iconographic traditions. The Gospel motifs in the text of the book of songs represent a unifying basis of the idea and the artistic world of the book.

Keywords: Gospel, Calvary Christians, iconography, quotation, image, motif, leitmotif

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The article presents the first experience of describing the poetic creativity of Alexander Konstantinovich Gorsky (1886—1943), philosopher, poet and aesthete, made through the lens of the thinker’s core religious and aesthetic idea of the liturgical poetry. The study was conducted on the basis of the publication of Gorsky’s writings, where for the first time after his death his poetic heritage was collected, as well as on the material of the philosopher’s personal archive. The connection of Gorsky’s poetic creativity with the main ideas of N. F. Fedorov, V. S. Solovyov, S. N. Bulgakov, N. A. Berdyaev such as the justification of history, “active apocalypticism”, apocatastasis, “extra-religious liturgy”, the meaning of creativity and the meaning of love is shown. The aesthetic system of Gorsky, his views on the development of artistic creativity, the concept of the movement of art from tragedy through mystery to liturgy, the concept of Centro-image are also exposed to analysis in the article. The features of Gorsky’s poetic interpretation of themes, ideas, images of the New Testament are shown.

Keywords: А. К. Горский, художественное и философское творчество, оправдание истории, «активная апокалиптика», «внехрамовая литургия», софийность, Центрообраз, Новый Завет, евангельские сюжеты, мотивы, темы, цикл, миницикл, вера, предательство, покаяние, соработничество Бога и человека

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This article examines the diversity and variability of the game, as well as the allusions of Anderson and Flaubert (the novel “Mrs. Bovary”), which play a defining role in the poetics of the novel. It is established that being the forms of a secondary artistic conventionality, they led to the rejection by the author of a logocentric principle and correspondence of literature and life, as Nabokov repeatedly stated emphasizing their non-equivalence. The novel “the King, the Lady, the Jack”, the least studied from this point of view of the so-called “Russian” novels is chosen for research. As a result of the study the game is profiled and systematized, its ontological and agonistic varieties are identified, a poetological role of the game in meaning-making and plot creation is assessed as well as transitions from the real artistic world to the interim world of human semblance (the process of “necrosis” of the main characters, turns them into puppets, mannequins, wax figures in a shop window and Museum of criminology). The interaction of the game with intertextuality is established, which contributes to the creation of a new principle of spatial organization of the work — the creation of a special oneric space.

Keywords: Nabokov, Flaubert, Anderson, poetics of game, allusions, image, mirror, puppets, mannequins, wax figures

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This article studies the image of Nil Sorsky’s teaching in the works of Mark Aldanov. Some aspects of Nil Sorsky’s “Tradition” and “The Monastic Statutes of Life in a Skit” become clear in his novel “Delirium”. Aldanov is impressed by Nil Sorsky’s conception of Man, his understanding of the reasons for man’s sinfulness and his forbearing attitude toward a fallen man. The characters in the novel “Delirium” correlate their ideas about faith, freedom, and the dangers of despondency with the spiritual testament of Nil Sorsky. In the novel “Delirium” events from the end of the fifteenth century are juxtaposed to those of the twentieth century, and the medieval perception of a coming Armageddon is correlated with Aldanov’s premonition of a new atomic war. In the fifteenth century the Weltanschauung of the strigolniks played havoc with the medieval man’s harmonic conception of the world. In the midst of the Cold War Aldanov’s characters seek consolation in Sorsky’s teaching. Thanks to the inclusion of reflections on the Weltanschauung of the strigolniks in the narrative, the chronotope of the novel “Delirium” is significantly broadened, saturated with historical and cultural eventfulness. Aldanov creates heroes who overcome the tragic pathos of being due to the ethical principles of Nil Sorsky. The perception of the writings of Saint Nil for the first time in Aldanov’s works leads to the emergence of the theme of spiritual transformation. Aldanov presents the teaching of Nil Sorsky as a modern, relevant, considering it an important basis of the spiritual culture of a person who survived the cataclysms of revolutions and world wars.

Keywords: Nil Sorsky, Mark Aldanov, Russian Foreign Literature, perception, image, motif, chronotope, political novel

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The article is devoted to the peculiarities of the genre of preaching in the book of Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov) «“Unholy saints” and other stories». Both the narrator’s sermons and the fragments of the sermons of authoritative priests of the 20th—21st centuries are exposed to the study which revealed that the sermons contain traditional genre features as well as some elements of innovation: a parallel appeal to the sacred text and the events of our time, specification, the creation of psychological characteristics, emotional tension, the combination of Trinitarian formulas and the author’s assessment. In a number of chapters of the work there is a replacement of the text of the sermon with the large-scale predicatory content, a more detailed representation of episodes of everyday life, the transfer of events from the sacred to the household locus. The analysis of the phenomenon of a “silent sermon” reveals the reduction of its main genre elements, the absence of a direct reference to the sacred text, a particular attention to the personality of the preacher and the essence of his missionary vocation. Thus, the narrative is regarded as a comprehensive sermon about the meeting of man with his Creator.

Keywords: Orthodox fiction, Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov), «“Unholy saints” and other stories», sermon, sacred text, the Scripture, genre

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