Volume 21, 2023 year

The article is devoted to the problem of interrelation between spiritual and secular principles in the history of Russian literature, which is topical for modern Russian literary studies and which is revealed on the example of studying pilgrimage literature, including Siberian authors. The practice of pilgrimage journeys to the Holy Land and their descriptions became common among Siberians only in the late 19th century in connection with the opening of the Palestine Society and its regional branches in Russia. However, at the level of images and motifs, pilgrimage travel appears in Siberian travel prose much earlier and enriches its traditional genres — missionary and bishop’s journals and diaries. This thesis is proven in the article using the example of the travel diaries of Bishop Gerasim of Astrakhan and Enotayevsk (1809–1880), in his youth Irkutsk priest Georgii Dobroserdov. First published in the late 1870s, his diaries were written in the 1830s–40s, during the heyday of the genre of the pilgrimage literary journey in the works of D. V. Dashkov, A. N. Muravyov, A. S. Norov and others. Dobroserdov’s diaries are not only close to these works chronologically, but are also similar stylistically: they combine the image of a Christian pilgrim with that of a sensitive sentimental traveller. At the same time, both sentimental and pilgrimage beginnings are forms of artistic generalisation deliberately introduced by the author in texts of a different genre nature — a missionary journal and a diary of a private journey, which originally had no pilgrimage purposes. The sentimental poetics gives the diaries their artistry, and the realisation of the pilgrimage plot gives them the status of a work of spiritual literature. The ideological and stylistic proximity between the works of secular writers and representatives of the clergy, such as A. N. Muravyev and Bishop Gerasim, representatives of central Russia and Siberia, testifies to the unity of the pre-revolutionary historical and literary process.

Keywords: Christian tradition, secular and spiritual literature, pilgrimage literature, context, Siberia, Orthodox clergy, Bishop Gerasim, Dobroserdov

Text (russian)

References

The article deals with Turgenev’s novel “A Nest of Gentry” and features of the artistic interpretation of tragic collisions in it. It is traditionally believed that the structure of the conflict in the writer’s novels is determined by a principle that goes back to ancient tragedy and that it was fully realized in “A Nest of Gentry.” The conviction in the tragic nature of the writer’s novels is also reinforced by the philosophical foundation of Turgenev, who gravitated toward a tragic understanding of being. The sharp transition from happiness to unhappiness, accompanied by the suffering of the characters and the inevitable state of “tragic balance” in this situation, extended, as is commonly believed, both to the private and to the socio-historical spheres of the novel. As a result, “A Nest of Gentry” has a reputation as a work that testifies to the death of Russian nobility, the unproductiveness of the old ideals of the Lavretsky generation and the dubiousness of the new truth that the hero finds in the ethics of Lisa Kalitina. The author of the article proposes to look at the tragic moods of “A Nest of Gentry” in a different way: through the prism of the perception of the novel by the first readers and critics, as well as in the light of the plot-compositional and ideological role played by the minor character Mikhalevich in it. Particular attention is paid to the XXV chapter of the novel, when Mikhalevich suddenly and, from the plot-compositional point of view, somewhat unmotivated (artificially) appears in front of Lavretsky and tells him that he remained the same (i.e., devoted to the ideals of youth), and acquired a new meaning life through faith in God. As a result, the paper proposes a different interpretation of the social program of the nobility proposed by Turgenev in the novel, and “A Nest of Gentry” is regarded as a text in which the tragic processes inherent in both ordinary life and national history are reflected by the writer in terms of possible rehabilitation and reconciliation, elegiac and dramatic. Turgenev offers his way out of the tragically uncompromising dead ends of social and national life, his social program, which would allow the nobility to change, but not lose their identity.

Keywords: I. S. Turgenev, Russian novel, A Nest of Gentry, tragic poetics, tragic collision, tragic conflict, tragic conception of national history, Lavretsky, Mikhalevich, biblical text

Text (russian)

References

The medical theme in Dostoevsky’s work attracted the attention of critics already during his literary debut. Readers were shocked by the anthropological discoveries in the novel “Poor People,” impressed by the medical aspects of St. Petersburg novels and novels of the 1840s. Dostoevsky had extensive medical knowledge, knew the symptoms of various diseases, jokingly treated his heroes. Already in his first novel, the idea of restoring man in man, creating genius in Makar Devushkin, was expressed. The rebirth of the writer’s beliefs in penal servitude led to the evolution of his views, expressed in the political lyrics of 1854–1856, the Siberian Notebook, epistolary heritage. The Easter idea became a key one in Dostoevsky’s ideology and creativity, from “Notes from the Dead House” to “The Brothers Karamazov” and “The Writer’s Diary”. Its expression in poetics is peculiar. In Holy Scripture and Tradition, the dead sometimes rise again. The religious truth is immutable: Christ is risen, the soul is immortal, after the time has passed, the dead will rise again. In Dostoevsky’s novels, death is not a miracle. Doctors don’t resurrect the dead. Christ resurrects. The author and the deceased heroes of the novels are resurrected. This is the paradoxical effect: the dead resurrect the living. Dostoevsky’s “full realism” does not imply posthumous miracles. In Dostoevsky’s novels, the same model of creativity operates, as, for example, in the novel “The Brothers Karamazov”. Brother Markel died, but Zosima was confirmed in the service of Christ; in the chapter “The Corrupting Spirit” the elder rested, but Alyosha Karamazov rose and rose in the “Cana of Galilee;” Ilyusha Snegirev did not rise, but Alyosha and the boys found the truth and meaning of their future existence. The paradoxical poetics of the novel exhaustively characterizes Dostoevsky’s Christian realism.

Keywords: Dostoevsky, medicine, illness, death, Easter, resurrection, scripture, legend, full realism, Christian realism, novel

Text (russian)

References

The “chronotope” category introduced into literary criticism by M. M. Bakhtin is one of the most studied in recent times. It is believed that he is considered the founder of the term, but the authorship of the concept belongs to A. A. Ukhtomsky, who used it when developing the doctrine of the dominant at the beginning of the 20th century. Thanks to the works of Bakhtin, “chronotope” has become a common term. For the first time publications about the poetics of the chronotope in the works of Russian and foreign literature appeared in the 1980s–90s. Especially significant is the study of the chronotope as a category of ethnopoetics. Works in which the chronotope is presented as an image of the national picture of the world have been published the late 1980s. Bakhtin’s research on Dostoevsky’s poetics opened up new frontiers for studying the writer’s works from the viewpoint of spatio-temporal structure. In “A Writer’s Diary” of 1873, a complex chronotopic hierarchy appears. So, the first chapters contain conditionally real and fantasy chronotopes, which, in turn, entail more local ones: Chinese, Herzenian, symbolic, St. Petersburg, etc. Dostoevsky creates an artistic chronotope that exists in the space of utterance, of speech. The chronotope of “A Writer’s Diary” differs from real time-space. They are not identical. The poetics of the chronotope is complicated by the fact that the “Diary” is part of a time-based publication. In (“Grazhdanin”) “The Citizen,” Dostoevsky’s column was the ideological core of the weekly. Thematically, not only the chapters of “A Writer’s Diary” but also all the articles in the issue were connected, so Dostoevsky needed to conceptually stipulate the subject of the rubric and the issue as a whole.

Keywords: Dostoevsky, A Writer’s Diary, Grazhdanin, The Citizen weekly, chronotope, Bakhtin, Ukhtomsky, time, space

Text (russian)

References

For the first time, the article analyzes the structural, semantic, pragmatic aspects of the poetics of the title “The Vicissitude of Fate” by I. A. Goncharov. The title is an explicitly integral part of the framework text. In addition, the expression “vicissitude of fate” is structured and implicit, since it is included in the main content of the work. The phrase “vicissitude of fate” is endowed with stable semantic features, which were reflected in the works of other 19th-century writers: I. I. Lazhechnikov, N. V. Gogol, A. N. Ostrovsky, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, V. M. Garshin, D. N. Mamina-Sibiryak, A. P. Chekhov. The plot twists and turns that determine the development of the plot of I. A. Goncharov’s work are comparable to dramaturgical literature. However, Leonty Khabarov’s destiny is determined not by the ancient Greek fate, but by God’s providence. The motif of fate, which is the leitmotif of I. A. Goncharov’s “Vicissitude of Fate,” allows us to interpret the image of Leonty Khabarov in comparison with the Young Man from the Old Russian “Tale of Woe-Wickedness.” Unlike the Young Man from The Tale of Woe and Wickedness, who can and must find salvation for his soul only outside the walls of the monastery, Leonty Khabarov finds blissful salvation in worldly life thanks to the miraculous intervention of the Mother of God, to whom he prayed in the Kazan Cathedral of St. Petersburg. The final plot twists and turns that led Leonty Khabarov from misfortune to a happy, thriving, prosperous life are due to the Miracle motif. Khabarov’s first name is Leonty, and the motif of fate creates an association between the “small” epic prose of I. A. Goncharov — “The Vicissitude of Fate” — and the novel “The Cliff.” The writer uses the artistic technique of autocitation, which is found in many of his works.

Keywords: I. A. Goncharov, title, historical and literary context, structure, semantics, pragmatics, genre, dramatic vicissitudes, The Tale of Woe and Woe, the motif of fate, God’s Providence, autocitation

Text (russian)

References

The article examines the main genre features of the story “Truly He Is Risen” by I. N. Potapenko, which determine its belonging to the corpus of Easter literature: the relationship of the time of action, which takes place between Lent and Easter, with the ideological content implying a change in the vector of the hero’s spiritual development; the motifs of the miracle of the resurrection of the soul, spiritual unity, sobornost’, Easter joy, forgiveness, reconciliation; a special type of heroes whose images are based on the “righteous” — “sinner” archetypes, and which is also found at the coloristic level; holiday chronotope, childhood memories, Easter attributes, happy ending. The edification and didacticism of the narrative are aimed at educating the reader’s soul, he is reminded of the importance of faith in Christ and His Holy Resurrection, love for God and neighbor, hope for God’s mercy, repentance, patience, humility for the salvation of the soul, as well as prayer, church service and fasting as means for the spiritual rebirth of a person.

Keywords: I. N. Potapenko, Easter short story, Truly He Is Risen, genre, righteous, sinner, resurrection, holiday chronotope, Easter

Text (russian)

References

The article explores the mythological nature of A. Blok’s cycle “On the Kulikovo Field.” It is indicated that the historical myth underlying “Zadonchina,” “The Tale of the Battle of Kulikovo,” and “Tales of the Battle of Mamaev” is ignored by the author. Blok is also far from the imperial, state myth, in the center of which is Dmitry Donskoy and Sergius of Radonezh. In the 19th century, it was he who compiled the content of textbooks and numerous books for the people. The author of the article draws attention to the kenotic signs of the Russian space (steppe), to the symbolism of the Mother of God, and of color and to the motif of “forebodings.” An important semantic moment is the repetition of history. In the aspect of axiology “On the Kulikovo Field” is a myth about “eternal” Russia, kenotic Russia. It is argued that the cycle “On the Kulikovo Field” is a historical introduction to the macrocycles “Poems about Russia” and “Motherland”, in which Blok’s version of the myth of the “holy Rus'” — RUSSIA — will be implemented.

Keywords: A. Blok, On the Kulikovo Field, cycle, myth, historical myth, steppe, Rus, Mother of God

Text (russian)

References

The article analyzes the story “Angelochek” (“The Little Angel”), which has an important place in the creativе work of Leonid Andreev, and is included in the school curriculum, where its plot is considered within the framework of the established literary approach to the Christmas story. Most of the researchers note the changes that occurred to the boy after his meeting with the angel, and believe that the Christmas miracle did happen, positively affecting Sashka’s life. The authors of this work propose a different approach to the story: binary oppositions (living-inanimate, truth-lie, real-fake, friend-alien, man-beast, earth-sky, etc.) are revealed, reflecting the ambivalence of the writer’s view of the problem; onomastic units, which, being part of symbolic and autobiographical contexts, make it possible to clarify the intent of the work, are considered. The plot of the story is autobiographical (the angel, once removed by the future writer from the Christmas tree and placed on the stove, melts), but the main character is now a boy from a poor family who goes to celebrate the holiday to the rich patrons, the Svechnikovs. The space of the Svechnikov house is ambivalent: for the father it is a symbol of lost paradise, and for the son it is the habitat of devils, because the Christmas symbols filling the house are fake. Acquisition of humanity through the rebirth of the soul is the most significant theme of the story, realized through the “man-beast” opposition. Sashka’s family is inscribed in the zoomorphic code of the text of the story. Possessing the angel creates a feeling of “human happiness,” which results in the elimination of the animal element in the boy’s image. However, the memory of his father, who is part of the anti-house, brings Sashka’s animal appearance back. The “iving-inanimate” opposition sets the parameters of Sashka’s fate, for whom “non-life” is the only possible way out of the cycle of meaningless existence. The hope for the rebirth of the boy’s soul is illusory (the opposition is “real-fake”). By the end of the story, the motifs of gravity and immersion in the abyss are intensified: the personification of salvation — a melted angel with dragonfly wings — falls to the floor at the end of Christmas. A cockroach that is unable to fly now becomes the symbol of substitution. The illusory nature of hopes is confirmed by the chronotope of the story. Christmas breaks the cycle of existence and introduces the boy to the circle of eternity, but the striking of the clock brings the heroes back to earth and accelerates their biological time. The image of the “frozen water carrier” in the story’s finale is a symbol of the return of cyclicity to the child’s life and a sign that the revival did not take place.

Keywords: Leonid Andreev, Angelochek, The Little Angel, Christmas story, binary oppositions, zoomorphism, onomasticon, chronotope

Text (russian)

References

In the first third of the 20th century there were disputes in Soviet literature about the new and old way of life, about the “new” man born by the revolution, about the “living,” “rationalistic,” “harmonic” man. Writers were intensively searching for their “hero of our time.” One of the “versions of the topic” (E. Rozhentseva) was the theme of the “little man” who was “placed” in new historical conditions. The image of a “little man” prepared the appearance of a new “great man” of the Soviet era (M. Gorky). The article considers the image of the “little man” in A. Platonov’s short novel (povest’) “Yamskaya Sloboda” (1927). Following the tradition of Russian classical literature in depicting this type of hero — the “Petersburg short novels” by A. S. Pushkin and N. V. Gogol, the works of F. M. Dostoevsky — Platonov unfolds the action against the background of the First World War and two revolutions. The writer, on the one hand, emphasizes the connection of his hero with the “little people” of Russian literature of the 19th century, on the other — endows him with new features. Platonov’s hero is not only a “little man,” but also an “extra person,” a fool, in addition, Filat possesses a Christian virtue — meekness of character. The writer interprets the image of the “new” person in his own way: he actualizes the “old/new” opposition, filled with a biblical context. Filat is the first in a row of Platonov’s “spiritual poor,” he is a hero of feelings, instincts, and a kind heart. This is the same “intimate person” of Platonov, whom the revolution forces to transform, to on a modest revolt — leaving the Yamskaya Sloboda. In the short novel, Platonov, like Pushkin and Gogol in their time, raises the issue of the relationship between the state power and the common man. For the writer, the people are not an abstract concept, not a faceless mass: the personalization of each individual “statesman” is the writer’s utopian dream. However, Platonov understood how difficult the process of a transformation of an ordinary person into a “new one” was. Showing the first attempts of the hero’s “self-standing,” plunging into the fate of the “little man” of the 20th century, revealing his “innermost” and at the same time untimely, A. Platonov tried to formulate his own idea of national happiness and — like his hero — wondered if it was in the revolution.

Keywords: Platonov, Yamskaya Sloboda, short novel, povest’, little man, extra man, fool, secret man, old man, new man, great man, revolution, riot, Easter chronotope, Easter plot

Text (russian)

References

Among the most significant ideological, thematic and figuratively expressive dominants in Ivan Elagin’s lyrics are the following: the pitch-black horrors of World War II, the tragic loss of the motherland, the unbearable longing for it, with the traditional Russian “window with a large cross in the middle” seeming a capacious symbol of it to the poet, Shakespeare’s idea of the world as a “Hall of the Universe” under “The constellation of the Axe.” However, the most universal and concentrated expression of the poet’s artistic world is certainly the star motif, presented with exceptional abundance and variety in his lyrics. It fully manifested himself in the poet's very first collection “On the Way from there” (1953). The poem “Stars”, which occupies a central place in it, conceptually concentrated both the ideological and artistic constants of Elagin’s idiostyle. The poet masterfully combines in it the epic unfolding of the event plan with the associative principle of movement of the lyrical theme, which accompanies, or even organizes, the poetic discourse. In the end, the despairing lyrical subject acknowledges the catastrophic absence of the sky above his head, and consequently, the One who manifested in the world with a Christmas star. The existence of the Almighty Himself is also questioned: how could He allow Hell to open up on earth? These and related motifs are also supported in many other “starry” poems by Ivan Elagin in this collection: “Gorjat za oknami naprotiv...”, “Kak ruki — vlastiteli klavish...”, “Ljubeznaja serdcu osen’!..», «Tam nebo priblizilos’ k samoj zemle...”, “Golosa s Luny”, “Dnevnyh luchej osennee lit’e...”, “Tam zhe zvezdy barahtalis’ v ozere...”, “Sverkajut restorannye hleva...”, “Konchaetsja noch’ snegovaja...” and many others. In the end, the author comes to the conclusion: the starry sky motif, traditional for Russian poetry, acquires specific style-forming properties in Ivan Elagin’s work, inseparable from the motifs of nostalgia, abandonment, a sense of universal catastrophe and even in a certain sense of God-fighting.

Keywords: Ivan Elagin, stars, dominant motif, lyroepic poem, semantic diversity, nostalgia

Text (russian)

References

The article analyzes the monumental avant-garde work by A. M. Remizov based on materials from the archive of his wife, Serafima Pavlovna Remizova-Dovgello († 1943). Her initials form the title of the new book, entitled “S. P. R.-D.” (1945). Her manuscript has been preserved in Remizov’s archive at Vladimir Dahl State Museum of the History of Russian Literature and is currently published at the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkinskiy Dom) of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In this work, various documents belonging to S. P. (her diaries, memoirs, letters, dream notes, business papers, etc.) are interspersed by Remizov’s own texts: his extensive comments on S. P.'s notes, memoirs, essays, excerpts from unpublished works.In the book, through the conventional outline of the biography of S. P. (in her youth, she was a member of the revolutionary movement, a follower of the traditions of the populists) Remizov examines and judges not only the bygone era of the Silver Age, but the Russian Revolution of 1917. The era of the Silver Age represented by its leaders (Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Zinaida Gippius, Alexander Blok, Andrey Bely) is characterized by him as an era of decadence, is subjected to harsh criticism for the departure of its masters from the moral, and above all, the Orthodox traditions of Russian literature.In his assessment of the revolution of 1917, Remizov emphasizes its anti-Christian character. According to the writer, Russia, having stepped on the revolutionary path, has moved away from its historical path — the path of its natural development, which is inseparably linked with Christian values.

Keywords: Alexey Remizov, S. P. R.-D., avant-garde, revolution, historiosophy

Text (russian)

References

The phenomenon of silence in the creative heritage of O. F. Bergholz has not been studied to date. The category of silence is considered in the article as a nonverbal communicative act, a nonverbal form of spiritual experience and a behavioral strategy. In the center of attention is the poem “Except” (“Reached mute despair…”), written by Bergholz after a trip to the construction site of the Volga-Don Canal. The text mentions the icon of the Savior “Good Silence,” thanks to which the category of silence acquires axiological characteristics: forced silence is a strategic means and is realized as salvation from lies (good silence). At the same time, the lexeme silence rhyming with despair in a socio-political context means that the cowardly silencing of the people’s suffering deserves censure. In the poem “Except” with an allusion to Tyutchev’s “Silentium!” and in direct reference to true knowledge (“He knew”), the limitations of the verbal capabilities of language are noted (“no consonance/what he saw cannot be conveyed”). In the poem “February Diary,” silence is actualized as “the identity of speaker, the listener and the topic,” the expressiveness of silence as highest point of communication is emphasized, its conventionality is noted. In the poem “No, not from our meager books…,” the semantics of silence goes back to the author’s religious memory: in the final scene, the chain of generations closes in Christian silence/reconciliation. Silence as a special communicative behavior acquires a ritual character in a number of other texts: the heroine’s meeting with her father in the story “Day Stars” (chapter “The Secret of the Earth”) is saturated with silentium vocabulary; the call to silence on the eve of mortal battles in the poem “The hand pulls to the heart of the Motherland…” determines the normative behavior of a person in a borderline situation. Silence as conscious and effective resistance to the actions of the authorities (an act of disagreement) is manifested in the diary discourse of the poetess and the late cycle “Anna Akhmatova.” An extensive semantic palette of silence is revealed on the basis of Bergholz’s poetic, prose and diary texts.

Keywords: Bergholz, Good Silence icon, mute despair, poem Excerpt, nonverbal communicative act, spiritual experience, behavioral strategy

Text (russian)

References

The 1987 winner of the Nobel Prize Joseph Brodsky has always correlated his work with the traditions of neoclassicism. There are many examples of intertextuality in his poems, as he actively enters into a dialogue with his predecessors, which is one of the reasons for the inner freedom of the poet’s unique creative personality. Another important component of Brodsky’s stylistics is his interaction with the ironic poetics of postmodernism, which sensed the literature of any era as its own, and the work with the “culture of the finished word” (A. V. Mikhailov). In the cycle of Christmas poems by J. A. Brodsky, we identified two complementary traditions closely related to the gospel story: the adaptation of the miracle to the modern urban environment and immersion in the historical biblical chronotope with modernizing notes. In each of the parts of the cycle, various genre forms, poetic dimensions and poetic techniques are used to create a completely unique invective and hymnography in the second half of the 20th century.

Keywords: J. Brodsky, Christmas songs, dialogism, intertextuality, postmodern irony, chronotope, urban studies, gospel story

Text (russian)

References

The genre of the Easter story, which developed in the second half of the 19th century, was revived in the post-Soviet period, at the end of the 20th — beginning of the 21th century. The article presents the results of observations of the postmodern story by M. A. Kucherskaya “Kukusha” (“The Cuckoo”) and shows how the canon of the Easter story manifests itself in modern Russian prose. In addition to some traditional components (for example, ideological content — with an emphasis on the disclosure of human values and works of mercy; the transformation of the main character’s life — in the story, along with this, there is a change in the inner state of the heroine) the Easter canon also manifested itself through the motive of the main character’s search for her own identity in the story of the Coachman. This motif is expressed in two ways: both through the Christian symbol (the cross) and with the help of the folklore image of the cuckoo, conveying the syncretism of folklore and religion preserved in certain layers of modern society, when Christian and pagan faith coexist in the inner world of people. Comparison of the story “Kukusha” (“The Cuckoo”) with two other modern works in this genre: “The Easter Story with a Breakdown” by B. P. Ekimov (2002) and the story “Once Upon an Easter” by A. B. Torik (2023) — allowed us to summarize the above observations, concluding that, having revived, the Easter canon thus expanded at the beginning of the 21th century, accommodating the existential status of a person in a state of crisis.

Keywords: Maya Kucherskaya, Kukusha, The Сuckoo, postmodernism, Easter canon, Easter, cross, Easter sacrifice of Christ, Ghent altarpiece by van Eyck, Dostoevsky, poor religion, search for identity

Text (russian)

References

The article provides an overview of scientific sources regarding mountain literature related to the Russian Altai. Descriptions of alpine land- scapes written by travelers of the 19th century included realities of the area, analogies with foreign geographical objects (the Swiss Alps, the Lebanese Range, the Caucasus), with a different kind of artistic discourse, i.e., painting, with a different type of world order, i.e., terra incognita. In 19th century journalism the motif of spiritual transformation and miracle appeared (Altai = Athos), turning out to be especially in demand in Orthodox literature at the turn of the 20th century. Soviet literature desacralized the Altai cult of the mountains and the Master of Altai, previously represented mainly in ethnographic literature. Since the 1960s, there has been a growing trend of neo-mythologization of the Altai mountains. The paper reveals the semantics of the mountain mythologem in the context of the Altaic text of Russian culture on the example of V. N. Tokmakov’s novel “Dance of the Little Kings.” The neo-romantic world of the work is divided into two realities: fictitious (the capital) and real (Altai as an earthly projection of the otherworldly White Mountain). The significance of the Mountain in the novel is built on universal mythological motifs associ- ated with this mythologem (the locus of the battle between Good and Evil, the global flood, hidden treasures, a labyrinth-cave as an anti-mountain, initiation, an analogy with a tree, a man, a book, etc.). The author managed to create an original image of the mountain using a unique combination of these motifs, their historical-geographical and fantastical content.

Keywords: mountain anthropology, mountain literature, Siberian text, image of Altai, Gorny Altai, Caucasus, Athos, Belukha, world axis, initiation, labyrinth, Ark, Grail, Macarius, A. P. Kaigorodov

Text (russian)

References

The research is devoted to revealing the features of understanding of God and God’s world in A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s “Cancer Ward.” The heroes of the short novel travel a difficult path on which they have to think about God. At the beginning of the short novel there is a parable illustrating a legalistic understanding of God as Allah who punishes man, and at the end of the work the image of the Lamb, that is, Christ going to his death, appears, which means that the protagonist rises to the realization of Grace. A. I. Solzhenitsyn demonstrates how, having consciously separated himself from God, a person turns into an animal. The zoo visited at the end of the story by Kostoglotov is a model of the animal world that shows how people can turn into animals. An important place in the short novel is occupied by the parable about God endowing a person with extra years of life, taking them from a horse, a dog and a monkey. Images-symbols of these three animals are of great importance for understanding the characters of the key heroes of the story: Kostoglotov and Rusanov (dog), Vadim, Efrem, Roan, Doctor Dontsova and Asya (horse), Zoey (monkey). Turning away from God, man renounces his immortal soul and becomes similar to an animal immersed in incessant movement and leading a biological existence. He becomes a hostage to the cyclical model of time, which is steadily moving towards death. The symbol of this movement is a squirrel in a wheel, which Kostoglotov sees in the zoo. However, the short novel also sets a different trajectory of time: from the meat-eater through Maslenitsa and Lent to Easter, that is, to the Resurrection that awaits the immortal human soul. Aunt Stepha, cancer ward patient who believes in God, talks about this model of time. Images of plants also play an important role, serving as a reminder to a person about the happiness and harmony of God’s world. The short novel of A. I. Solzhenitsyn calls for understanding God as a merciful, Grace-giving Creator and calls for acceptance of God’s world.

Keywords: A. I. Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward, God, God’s world, Law, Grace, time, death, Resurrection, image, symbol, short novel

Text (russian)

References

Since the beginning of the 21 century, when leading villagers (Astafiev, Belov, Rasputin) began to leave one after another, and it became easier for versifiers from different ideological positions to criticize their works, there was a need to protect village prose — the leading literary trend of the second half of the twentieth century. To do this, literary critics began to resurrect ideological attitudes (that were in demand in times of crisis to stabilize national consciousness), but not always justifiably, which caused a new wave of denial. The purpose of this article is to verify the existing and identify new approaches to village prose and poetics of its leading representatives in a similar context. The understanding of the subject in the context of traditionalism and conservatism is critically rechecked. The task of studying the poetics of such leading literary masters as Astafiev, Rasputin, comes to the fore from the point of view of the implementation in their artistic method of the “pochvennichestvo” ideology, most deeply rooted in the peasant-agricultural worldview. The author’s tasks include the verification of the terminological content of pochvennichestvo, its historical genesis in the works of Dostoevsky, the coupling of the pochvennichestvo theory and literature, as well as its modifications in the “new pochvennichestvo” by Astafiev, Rasputin and other masters of village prose. First and foremost, research material included the new artistic method of symbolic realism, where the key ideologeme “earth–soil” has found implementation in the image-symbol of Mother Earth, the primary basis for this literary trend. This position is proven through the analysis of the poetics of Astafiev and Rasputin, whose new method and its key image-symbol have acquired a vivid artistic individualization. Nevertheless, as a result, the author of the article comes to the conclusion that one should not limit the artistic ideology of Astafiev or Rasputin to any one direction of philosophical thought, since the poetics of these artists is complex and multifaceted.

Keywords: Astafiev, Rasputin, pochvennichestvo, symbolic realism, poetics, traditionalism, conservatism, genesis, ideal-image, Dostoevsky, ideologeme, antipochvennichestvo, symbol, artistic method

Text (russian)

References