Volume 20, 2022 year

This article focuses on the silence of a fairy tale hero, i. e. a deliberate withholding from speaking that is a metonymic manifestation of a symbolic death. The aim of the study was to determine the meanings of silence that are representative of this type of narration and to indicate their probable mythical and ritual connotations. Research materials included mainly Polish and Eastern Slavic tales of a sister whose silence constitutes a precondition for bringing her brothers, previously turned into birds, back into human form. The analysis showed the use of a semantic component essential to silence required to keep a secret and impossibility of revealing the truth. If a spell can be a result of a parental curse, then suspending communication becomes a form of maintaining bonds with the brothers killed by words. It can also be interpreted as a reflection of the speech behaviour of the parents, who violate the basic folk ethics of the word. The analysed narratives preserved the magical functions of silence as the assurance of the effectiveness of objects made in complete silence (in the given example — shirts made for the spellbound brothers). Nevertheless, in other variants of plot type 451, the silence of the heroine is the most significant precondition for her own existential transformation, with numerous narratives describing the multi-stage nature of the rite of passage (a marriageable girl → a married woman → a newly delivered mother → a mother). In this indirect way the fairy tale reveals the limits of female communicative behaviour in folk culture. In order to present the essence of the liminality of the given story’s heroine, the “stasis” category was used, which helped to correlate her (and any other fairy tale protagonist) basic existential experience with a temporal dimension of human existence construed as regular consecutive time passages and pauses, moments of inactivity (stasis).

Keywords: silence, muteness, fairy tale, brothers turned into birds, a mother’s curse, a father’s curse, initiation, rite of passage, symbolic death, liminality, stasis

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The article attempts to identify the significant components of the chronotopical continuum of the poem “The Gypsies” based on the interpretation of the chronotope as a phenomenon of M. Bakhtin’s historical poetics. Bessarabia, represented by the poet in various aspects (the territory of the “long battle,” the country of “Russian glory,” the habitat of the “infant” people, the keeper of the poetic traditions steeped in the name of Ovid, the place of A. Pushkin’s own involuntary stay) acts as the dominant real-geographical, historical epoch-making and actually poetic chronotope of the poem. The examined space-time continuum of the work includes the distinctive topoi and loci that determine both the nomadic life of the gypsy camp in general and the individual fates of the characters in particular. The plot-forming role of Aleko’s “wanderings” is described as a process of searching, gaining and, as a result, a loss of himself. The hero’s rejection of civilization predetermined his moral death: his personality turned out to be unable to survive in the natural world outside the cultural and moral forms. Ultimately, the complexly structured constitutive Bessarabian continuum was dominated by the author's chronotope with his pessimistic idea of inevitable fate, which, in turn, was conditioned by the romantic model of the world, which was established in the philosophical and artistic consciousness of the Pushkin era.

Keywords: Pushkin, “The Gypsies”, Bakhtin, continuum, chronotope, topos, locus, Bessarabia, tabor, Aleko, fate

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One of the “key” works of Gogol's heritage is analyzed ― the first prose work that appeared in print, the short novel (‘povest’) “Bisavryuk, or The Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala” (1830). Gogol’s literary debut in prose is a key work in the sense that it opens the door to understanding the writer’s subsequent work. Based on numerous facts, it is established that since his very first steps in literature, Gogol played the role of a conscious spiritual mentor and preacher. His first prose work (Gogol began as the author of the poems “Italy” and “Gantz Kuchelgarten”) is a sort of literary ekphrasis, which is centered around the theme of spiritual discipline. The short novel (‘povest’) is “theology in images,” and the clergyman, a representative of the common man’s milieu, a rural deacon (church reader, psalm reader), on whose behalf the story is narrated, becomes the author’s alter ego. For the first time, an analytical comparison of two editions of “Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala” was undertaken: the original journal version on one side and the subsequent one included in the “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” collection (the first edition of the short novel (‘povest’) was called “Bisavryuk, or Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala”; in the second, Gogol dropped the beginning of the title, leaving only the second part, “Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala”). The comparison shows that the first edition is more frank in expressing the religious views of the author than the second one. In the second edition, Gogol tempered the excessive edification and categorical nature of the original version. It is emphasized that as early as in this short novel (‘povest’), Gogol separates himself from superstitions and “childish prejudices” inherent in popular consciousness and focuses his talent on exposing those phenomena that have survived in the public, folk life from the pagan era. As a faithful ethnographer, a deep connoisseur of folk psychology and folklore, in the first short novel (‘povest’), contrary to the widespread interpretations of his work in radical criticism, the writer already appears not only as an original writer of everyday life, but also an astute thinker and theologian, like his predecessor, St. Tikhon of Zadonsk. From the first “Little Russian” short novel (‘povest’) one can guess many features of the future creator of “Dead Souls”, “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends”, and “Reflections on the Divine Liturgy”.

Keywords: Nikolai Gogol, biography, creativity, author's intention, interpretations, romanticism, folklorism, ethnography, realism, historicism, style, pseudonym, narrator's image, literary mask, alter ego, teaching, preaching, folk orthodoxy, spiritual heritage

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The article is devoted to studying the travel prose of the Orthodox clergy in the 19th century as a phenomenon of the Siberian regional literature and one of the classical versions of the “Siberian text.” The boundaries of the “Siberian text” in Russian literature are defined by the characteristics of regional identity, which is reflected in this text and is shaped by the Siberian geographical space. The hypothesis of the importance of the river image — as the most obvious space-time coordinate — in Siberian literature is put forward. The specifics of the representation of this image in the works of the clergy are examined on the example of “Travel Notes” by Nil (Isakovich), Archbishop of Irkutsk (1838–1853). The notes recount missionary journey along the Lena and other rivers in its basin in the summer of 1843. Archbishop Nil constructs the image of the river as a multi-faceted model of human interaction with space — in the context of a Christian worldview, as well as personal and cultural memory. This model is revealed in historical, emotional-psychological, mythopoetic and ontological terms in relation to the categories of chaos and cosmos, border and transition, existential solitude and spiritual transformation. The author's intention is aimed at overcoming the prehistoric pagan essence of the river in the traveler's mind through its aestheticization, conceptualization and sacralization as a space of meeting with the Creator. This correlates with the genre strategy of the Christian pilgrimage. The image of the river recreates a dynamic image of all of Siberia — ancient, steeped in primeval chaos, pagan and mythological in its essence, but open to Christian transfiguration and rebirth. The significance of Archbishop Nil's travel notes, and clergy travelogues in general, in the history of Russian literature is determined by the fact that the Siberian space is reflected in their writings in its spiritual dimension. This approach, in turn, makes it possible to present the process of Siberian exploration in its ontological and axiological essence — as an incorporation into the Russian national consciousness, Christian in its basis.

Keywords: Siberian text, geopoetics, Archbishop Nil Isakovich, river image, church literature, paganism, antiquity, Christianity, travelogue

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The article provides the first detailed commentary on Nekrasov’s poem “Death”. Nekrasov’s first poetry collection “Dreams and Sounds” has barely been studied. Meanwhile, it entirely reflects the spiritual formation of the seventeen-year-old poet, his devotion to the ideals of Orthodoxy and youthful determination to lead a truly spiritual life. Religious poems in “Dreams and Sounds” (they comprise more than half of the poems in the collection) reveal unexpected spiritual experience in the young man. He confidently introduces the teachings of the Holy Fathers, elements of church preaching, etc. into his verses. In his poem “Death” he speaks of the “transition” of the human soul from the earthly world to the heavenly one and especially emphasizes the question of a moment of death that is favorable from the Christian point of view. The poem is a poetic realization of a well-known agraphon, a phrase attributed to Christ: “In what I find, in that I judge”. Nekrasov could hear this expression in church at a sermon, or in the family. But the immediate impetus for the creation of this poem was probably the reading of Shakespeare’s play “Hamlet” in N. Polevoy’s translation. “Hamlet”, who also knows the agraph “In what I find, in that I judge”, in the scene of Claudia’s prayer juxtaposes two states in which a person can be caught by death: a state of sin and being immersed in prayer. The young Nekrasov should have been struck by the skill with which Shakespeare transformed a familiar expression into a “pearl of creation”, which probably prompted him to write one of the best poems in “Dreams and Sounds”.

Keywords: Nekrasov, “Dreams and Sounds”, Shakespeare, “Hamlet”, Boratynsky, Benedictov, agraphon, the moment of death, religiosity, Holy Fathers of the Church

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The article offers an analysis of V. F. Odoevsky's short novel (povest’) “The Unspent House” (1840) in the context of its reflection of the “religious feeling” that was characteristic of writer-encyclopedist V. F. Odoevsky throughout his life. In the “The Unspent House”, which combines the traditions of a romantic short novel (povest’) with elements of fiction, ancient Russian legend, hagiographical texts, apocrypha, spiritual verse, “religious feeling” is manifested not only in the syncretic poetics of the work, where the gospel text sounds most clearly, but also at the level of understanding Christianity as a nationwide “religious feeling” with the most diverse connotations, but with the general meaning of forgiveness, mercy and love. The spiritual poems, whose publication V. F. Odoevsky later actively participated in, were the likely sources of the short novel (povest’). Works of medieval literature (“The Walk of the Virgin in Torment”, “The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn”) may have been the sources of the “legend”; parallels are also found with hagiographic literature. The “religious feeling” of V. F. Odoevsky, as stated in the article, intended to unite different layers of the Russian Christian culture. It asserted “joyful Christianity,” which was characteristic of book culture and oral folk art, and based on the belief in the power of mercy, compassion for sinners and the ultimate salvation of the soul.

Keywords: V. F. Odoevsky, short novel (povest’), legend, life, apocrypha, spiritual verse, gospel text, idea

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The article raises the question of two editions of V. F. Odoevsky’s novel “Russian Nights”. In the 1860s, the writer wanted to republish it and made a number of amendments and additions to the novel. Odoevsky did not complete this work, and for the first time after the 1844 edition “Russian Nights” were published only in 1913. The publisher S. A. Tsvetkov was guided by the principle of following the “last will of the author” and included Odoevsky’s later changes in the text of the novel. This principle has become defining for the publishers of “Russian Nights” in the Literary Monuments series. This version of the novel is still being republished. At one time P. N. Sakulin sharply criticized this approach and pointed out the differences between Odoevsky worldview in the 1830s and 1860s. This difference is clearly reflected in the amendments proposed by the author. This article supplements and expands the argument of the researcher. The 1844 Preface to the Works and the draft of the Preface from the 1860s are compared, and later notes and insertions are analyzed in the context of the novel. The study shows that in the later years of his life Odoevsky departs from his earlier mysticism and romantic style. Later changes give “Russian Nights” a tendentiousness, destroy the unity of the author’s position. They should not be included in the main text of the novel. The standardization of the author’s spelling and punctuation, which is characteristic of Soviet re-editions of the classics, also violates the poetic space of the novel. It is important to note that the writer created the novel precisely as an aesthetic creation, and the slightest nuances of the author's score are vital to it. When republishing “Russian Nights”, it is advisable to be guided by the “historical principle” (“editio princeps”).

Keywords: V. F. Odoevsky, “Russian Nights”, textual criticism, history of the text, edition, aesthetics, worldview

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In the article, the concept of love, embodied in F. M. Dostoevsky’s novel “The Idiot,” is considered from the point of view of three religious and philosophical types of love identified by V. S. Solovyov, namely, ascending love (amor ascendens), descending love (amor descendens) and balanced love (amor aequalis). This approach allows not only to conceptualize the forms of manifestation of love in “The Idiot” in the context of V. S. Solovyov’s thoughts, but also to identify the readers’ tradition of adequate perception of Dostoevsky's work, associated with the mental and spiritual atmosphere of the era. Seeing the meanings of the novel through the “eyes” of V. S. Solovyov allows to outline the national value code of reading. Each type of love designated by the philosopher in Dostoevsky's novel corresponds to descending love (amor descendens), embodied in parental love (Lizaveta Prokofievna and Ardalion Alexandrovich), sacrificial love (Nastasya Filippovna Barashkina) and Christian love (Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin). The manifestations of selfless children's love (Swiss children) and passionate love (Parfyon Rogozhin) became forms of embodiment of ascending love (amor ascendens). The forms of embodiment of balanced love (amor aequalis) include “brotherly” love (Epanchiny sisters: Aglaya, Adelaide, Anastasia). However, the love of God is the highest form of love in hierarchy (which includes all others), the effective power of which begins with faith: therefore, it is no coincidence that the episode with the painting by Hans Holbein the Younger “Dead Christ in the Tomb” becomes the meaning-generating theoanthropic center of “The Idiot.”

Keywords: F. M. Dostoevsky, “The Idiot”, V. S. Solovyov, love, descending, ascending, balanced, traditional orthography

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The problem of biblical citation posed in this article relates to a well-known field of research in Dostoevsky studies, in which there are outstanding achievements. A peculiar approach to the proposed topic is offered within the framework of this paper. The subject of the study is the epigraph to the novel “The Brothers Karamazov”. The first special feature of the interpretation of its biblical intertextuality is connected with the clarification of the multidimensional function of Dostoevsky’s introduction to the said novel. The three key “hermeneutic” motifs of “The Grand Inquisitor”, namely, Mistery, Miracle and Authority, are revealed in the author’s preface. They allow to see the complexity of the “prophecy,” a premonition that concerns the future of the novel, its main character and the reader's reception. The semanticization of time within the limits of “pre-” and “post-” determines the interpretation of the biblical intertextuality of the epigraph, the idea of which in its first discursive appearance is integrated with the author’s preface, rather than with the novel in its entirety. The “pre-word” and “post-word” in the epigraph also act as metatextual motifs, due to the fact that not only certain passages from the New Testament are parallelized in the biblical intertextual space, but they are also linked with the Old Testament. The second characteristic feature of understanding the epigraph’s biblical citation is the unification of different components of the created intertextual space. The main object of study is the motif of word; a wide range of its semantics is examined, i.e., in the context of adoring praise and glorification, in the light of successive mutual transformations of auditory and visual elements of communication, perception of the world and shifts of subjects, in the perspective of the chronotopic systematicity of prophecy, in the projection of the word on the time axis as the first and repeated word (in the “pre” and “post” positions). The aspects of initiation, mediation and continuation of the word, as well as the problem of changing the status of primacy and secondariness, are emphasized in the interpretation of time. As a result, the biblical intertextuality in the epigraph, together with the author’s preface, lead to the ontologization of time both in the personal plot (a person’s inner growth) and in the metaphysical (faith-related) meaning, and, not least, in Dostoevsky’s conceptualization of textual self-reflexivity in the Bible.

Keywords: Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, epigraph, biblical intertextuality, Old and New Testament parallelisms, the Gospel of John, The Book of Isaiah, temporal ontologization of the word, chronotope, prophecies, verbality, visuality, "pre-word", "post-word"

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The article discusses the concept of sin in Sins, a short novel (povest') by I. N. Potapenko in the context of the patristic teaching on sinful passions and virtues. According to the Church Fathers, sin is the cause of all human misfortunes and evil, and the origin of sorrow and death. Exploring the phenomenon of sin, the writer examines various types of human vices, trying to understand the sources of the origin of sin, ways to overcome it and the possibility of salvation in the world. The work is written in the form of an adult’s memories of childhood. Through the prism of children’s perception, the attitudes of different types of people to faith, awareness of their own sinfulness, the desire for repentance and salvation of the soul are revealed. The short story presents the main sinful passions (gluttony, fornication, avarice, anger, sadness, despondency, vanity, pride) and the main sources of sin (human self, egoism, pride). The work has an edifying character. The tragic fate of some characters is a clear example of the destructive effect of sins. There is a clear link between a vicious life and incurable diseases, death without repentance, suicide. Through preaching the gospel truths, I. N. Potapenko tried to convey the idea that despite the ubiquity of sin, it is possible to be saved in the world. This requires faith in God, repentance, humility, following the commandments, and leading a virtuous Christian life.

Keywords: I. N. Potapenko, sin, sinful passions, virtues, Church Fathers, salvation of the soul, Orthodoxy

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The article analyzes the features of the artistic embodiment of the image of childhood in the short stories by Fedor Sologub, a Russian writer of the late XIX — early XX century. In his works, the author turned to the theme of the tragedy of human earthly existence and the image of a suffering child. The theme of childhood in Sologub’s creative quest is integrated in the context of the leading artistic and aesthetic trends, trends, styles of the turn-of-the-century period – symbolism, naturalism, decadence. In his short stories, which address children's images and destinies, Fyodor Sologub assigns a dominant role to symbols. The writer’s works about childhood contain numerous symbolic images that acquire unexpected forms and semantic content. The author delves into the world of children's consciousness, which is turned towards transcendental, supersensible knowledge. In this regard, Sologub’s short stories are saturated with images of death and motifs of a child’s altered consciousness. The essential features of Fyodor Sologub’s ideas of childhood are determined by the specifics of his philosophical beliefs. The writer’s creative path and his worldview are inextricably linked with the philosophical views of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. The author’s desire to embody the cult of beauty, death and madness in his works of fiction about children was the result of his fascination with the ideas of German philosophers. The theme of the child hero’s departure from the hardships of earthly reality into the world of dreams, art, beauty, madness, death was prioritized in the writer’s work. The saturation of texts with landscape and color images, which are often juxtaposed, contrasted, was an important setting of the artistic world of Sologub’s short stories about childhood. Color symbolism is extremely significant in the works of the writer, revealing the theme of childhood. The ambiguity and semantic saturation of color imagery endows the short stories about childhood with uniqueness and individuality. The principle of duality, the idea of the supra-world nature of the child-hero, the borderline of his inner worldview was expressed in the writer's prose devoted to the theme of childhood. The image of a child appearing in the short stories fully reflects the author’s belief in the mystery, uniqueness, and incomprehensibility of the inner world of a little person. The writer felt close to the theme of suffering and humiliation of a child, which first emerged and was fully shaped in the Russian literature of the XIX century.

Keywords: iFyodor Sologub, image of childhood, image of a child, Russian symbolism, decadence, stories, motif

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Easter motifs permeate all of Kuprin's work and reflect the trends characteristic of the development of the Easter genre in Russian literature as a whole. Early short stories point to the crisis of the genre: “Bonze” contradicts the Easter canon; irony appears in the short stories “By order”, “My passport”, “Family style”, “Grass.” They contain mandatory elements of the genre: are timed to Easter, possess a special festive mood, tenderness and emotion, and display a spiritual renewal of the characters. In some of the short stories written in 1911–1916 (“Easter Eggs”, “Holy Lies”, “Daddy”) a comic component appears: satire intensifies, and irony turns into sarcasm. Traditional Easter plots seem banal, and therefore fake and feigned, resembling a parody of the genre. In exile, the writer again turns to the Easter genre: he writes “Moscow Easter” and “Easter Bells.” The author himself craves the enlightenment and transformation that Easter brings, creativity becomes salvation, bringing light and joy to the writer who is longing far from his homeland. Memories of childhood or youth become the basis of most Easter story plots. After all, a naive and sincere belief in miracles persists in children for a long time, they very keenly experience the joy that this holiday brings with it, while adults eventually lose this childish faith in miracles, and their life-drained, hardened souls become cold and still. Memories can be different, they are not always joyful or happy, but it is the experience of these memories, the immersion in the past that creates a special festive mood and promotes spiritual purification and transformation.

Keywords: Kuprin, genre, motif, plot, Easter short story, genre crisis, irony, satire

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Based on the material of the short novels (povest’) “The Ethereal Tract,” “Epiphany Locks,” “The City of Gradov,” “The Innermost Man,” “Yamskaya Sloboda,” the article presents the concept of the short novel (‘povest’) genre in the 1920s works by A. Platonov. The structural possibilities of this traditional genre of Russian literature allowed the writer to reflect the contemporary reality with all its tragic contradictions. The genre of the short novel (‘povest’) will have reached its peak by the 1930s, when the writer’s principal works were written (“The Pit,” “For the Future,” “Juvenile Sea,” “Bread and Reading,” “Jan”). Many of the techniques that the writer used in the short novels (‘povest’) of the 1920s were embodied in the works of Platonov later on. The article briefly presents the history of the study of the genre of the short novel (‘povest’) in Russian criticism and in modern research. Special attention is paid to the genre-forming factors and genre features of Platonov's short novel (‘povest’), among which one can distinguish: ideological and philosophical content (“volume of content”), type of narrative, plot-compositional structure, the concept of artistic time and space, the genre concept of man, the poetics of the finale. The authors refute the opinion of researchers, which states that Platonov's short novels (‘povest’) can be described in the language of a short story or a novella and that, in general, his short novels (‘povest’) can be called novelistic. The parabolic plot of the “departure-return”, the epic distance, the type of narration, as well as the genre concept of a person (“a person is a plot”) do not allow Platonov's short novel (‘povest’) to be reduced to a novella or grow into a novel. Platonov's short novel (‘povest’) has its own artistic concept, which is rooted in the traditional Russian short novel (‘povest’) genre, which is the “heir” of the Old Russian genre tradition, rather than the European novel. The short novel (‘povest’) of A. Platonov answered the demands of the time, and testified to the writer's understanding of its structural and substantive capabilities.

Keywords: A. Platonov, 1920s, poetics, genre, genre features, short novel, povest', novella, novelistic short novel, novellisticheskaya povest', novel, parable

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The purpose of this article is to study the transformation of plots and motifs of visual art in “The Pyramid” (1994), the last novel by L. Leonov. The authors take a closer look at various types of ekphrasis: mimetic, unattributed and zero type. The theoretical framework for the analysis of the novel’s narrative space in ekphrastic terms includes the works of L.G. Geller, N.V. Braginskaya, J. Heffernan and other Russian and foreign philologists. Based on the idea of the dialogical nature of the concept of “ekphrasis,” the authors of the article consider the ekphrasis of the “The Pyramid” in a broad sense, as a means of concentrating the artistic, visual and philosophical context, inherent in the very nature of interaction between different types of art. The hermeneutic method is used achieve the set objectives, allowing to reconstruct the meanings of the ekphrastic fragments of the novel in the context of the phenomena of the global and Russian culture. Along with the alternation of dialogues and monologues of the implicit author and characters, direct and modified pictorial allusions are Leonov’s leading methods of text generation. Inheriting the traditions of Russian classical literature that tends to inexpressible, the writer integrates images of spatial arts, architecture, and painting into the text of the literary work. The narrative principles of “The Pyramid” are largely determined by the correlation of the author’s reflexive thought with precedent phenomena, the symbolic content of paintings by P. Brueghel, I. Repin, V. Perov, A. Durer’s engravings, temple frescoes, Russian icon painting. This allusive series is contingent on Leonov’s aesthetic preferences. It is on this basis that the ekphrastic code of the work is formed. It expresses the semantic and poetic harmony of the visual and verbal principles of the author’s thinking.

Keywords: Leonov’s poetics, the novel “The Pyramid”, ekphrasis, ekphrastic code, symbolic and philosophical thinking, allusion, verbal and figurative synthesis

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The article is devoted to the study of the archetypal plot basis of V. P. Astafyev's short story “The Faraway and Nearby Tale.” The reconstruction of the figurative and semantic paradigms of a fairy tale in the work allows to see that the reference to folklore contexts is not merely declared here as a metaphor for the spiritual and psychological states experienced by the character, but determines the logic of his development and the events that occur to him. The initiation archetype with its key plot-forming elements is interpreted in the mythologized paradigm of the short story as the boy's journey to the “world of the dead,” which resulted in his acquisition of a radically new worldview. Instead of a perception based on duality, antitheses and the fears they generated, the character gets a sense of a deep ambivalent “unity of opposites” of different existential spheres and worlds: the real and the otherworldly, the living and the dead, the homeland and the foreign land. The motif complexes associated with this journey are reflected at different levels of the narrative’s artistic organization principles: in the system of chronotopes that perform a world-modeling function, at the level of the figurative and symbolic subtext, and in the contexts of its spiritual and moral problems. At the same time, the visual logic of Astafyev's “fairy tale” reveals modifications and inversions of universal mythopoetic schemes, including those in the structure of the initiation plot itself, which, unlike a folk tale, acquires a prolonged and duplicated character. In this context, archetypal models enter into dialogical relations with their own event-actualized plot of the story, and exist in the system of the author's consciousness in figurative and semantic mutual projections with the cultural space as a whole.

Keywords: V. P. Astafyev, “The Last Tribute”, “The faraway and nearby tale”, folklore tradition, fairy tale, archetype, plot, initiation, myth, symbol, context

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The article is devoted to the study of the role of the icon motif in “Standing”, a short novel ('povest') by Archpriest Nikolai Agafonov. The authors analyze the features of the work that allow to categorize it as Orthodox fiction: the spiritual evolution of the characters, the search for the Creator, the appeal to the Church, the moral crisis and overcoming this crisis. In addition, portrayal of the miracle is analyzed along with a wide range of reactions of the characters who witnessed the incident. The Kuibyshev miracle is considered in the historical, cultural and literary contexts: the characteristics of the era are investigated, a connection is established between “Standing” by Nikolai Agafonov and other works of art dedicated to this event. There is also an undeniable ideological and artistic similarity between the description of Zoya’s standing in this work, and Byzantine and Old Russian legends about the punishment of an iconoclast or blasphemer by a miraculous icon. As a result of the study, the authors conclude that the icon motive in the work is closely related to the motives of physical and spiritual healing, the salvation of the human soul, and its connection with the Creator. A motivational prayer / standing complex emerges in the short novel, and standing itself is viewed as a sincere, albeit wordless prayer addressed to God and capable of initiating a person's inner transformation. In this sense, the incident that happened to the girl is perceived not so much as a punishment for the sin of blasphemy, but primarily as a call of the Savior to repentance, addressed both to Zoya and to numerous witnesses of the incident. The figurative system of the short novel includes characters who are ready to accept this call and embark on the path of spiritual evolution, as well as persons incapable of revising their own materialistic worldview.

Keywords: Orthodox fiction, missionary prose, Archpriest Nikolai Agafonov, short novel, povest, motif, icon

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