Volume 22, 2024 year

The category of mistake (ἁμαρτία) is one of the most significant categories in Aristotle’s “Poetics.” The Greek philosopher turned to the category of mistake when characterizing a tragic hero, myth, the tragic and the comic, when discussing criticism and ways to respond to it. In Aristotle’s interpretation, a mistake is the result of deliberate actions, but not vicious in their intent. In the Christian era, the lexemes of the ἁμαρτία group were assigned the meaning of moral guilt. As a result, Aristotle’s mistake began to be interpreted as tragic guilt. Later, European literary criticism refused to use the category of mistake. It offered a dual understanding of the cause of the tragic hero’s suffering: either as tragic guilt, or as a result of external influence, i.e., the intervention of fate. The interpretation of the category of mistake in Russian critical thought of the first half of the 19th century was complex and contradictory. In the translation of chapter 25 of Poetics, A. G. Glagolev preserved the unity of Aristotle’s terminology and accurately conveyed the content of the category of mistake. However, he did not turn to arguments about the tragic and comic, which presented the greatest difficulties for European theorists. Unlike contemporary theorists of German Romanticism, N. F. Ostolopov saw the cause of the tragic hero’s suffering in his mistake, rather than in the influence of fate. However, he considered error a vicious action, which contradicted Aristotle’s idea. N. I. Grech, N. F. Merzlyakov, A. I. Galich and V. G. Belinsky did not use the category of mistake. Following the German romantics, they understood the cause of the tragic hero’s suffering as the result of an innocent man’s collision with fate. S. P. Shevyrev was the first in Russian critical thought to turn to the category of mistake. Having accurately conveyed the concept of Aristotle, he wrote about mistake in the context of reasoning about comedy rather than comedy. In his translation of Poetics, under the influence of Lessing’s concept, B. I. Ordynsky perceived the category of mistake in a moralistic sense. As a result, he could not preserve the unity of Aristotle’s categorical apparatus and interpreted the tragic hero’s mistake as a sin. Chernyshevsky pointed out that Aristotle’s interpretations of the sources of the tragic in European criticism were inadequate, but he also refused to use the category of mistake. His work paved the way for a return to the rigorous consistency of Aristotle’s categorical apparatus in the subsequent period.

Keywords: Aristotle, Poetics, terminology, mistake, tragedy, comedy, criticism, tragic guilt, fate, translation, interpretation

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The article offers an analysis of one of the most significant monuments of the Peter the Great era — the didactic “Testament of the father to the Son” by I. T. Pososhkov, known for his active work and his impressive written legacy. The spiritual instruction created by Ivan Pososhkov is noteworthy not only for “turning to the future” (at the time of the creation of the “Testament,” Pososhkov’s son was only seven years old), but also for the deeply personal nature of direct communication with the addressee of the instruction, in which the blood father seemed to play the role of a spiritual father. The use of the Gospel word by I. Pososhkov is examined through direct and inaccurate quoting, paraphrase of fragments of Holy Scripture, contamination of various readings, and relevant commentary. In contrast to the liturgical tradition of reproducing biblical quotations “by ear,” characteristic of monastic book tradition, Ivan Pososhkov demonstrates his extensive reading experience and encyclopedic knowledge in his work, consistent with his time and social position. The use of the Gospel word allows the author of the “Testament” to refer to a thought that is important for him several times, illustrating and supporting it with quotes or storylines from the scripture. Pososhkov is well-read, but not bookish, and the Gospel is not perceived as a “rule”: it becomes a word of revelation and love. The very treatment of the Gospel text was Pososhkov’s expression of freedom and creativity.

Keywords: Gospel text, quotation, tradition, teaching, testament, Ivan Pososhkov, Peter’s time

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According to the later confession of the creator of the polyphonic novel theory Michael Bakhtin, he was able to fulfill only part of the task when he substantiated the polyphonic “horizontal” of voices in the world of Dostoevsky. He was not allowed to create the “vertical” (inseparable from the “existence of God”). An attempt to supplement what Bakhtin was unable to do requires a restoration of the scientific and religious-philosophical context in which the concept of “polyphony” can be ontologically related to the concept of Orthodox conciliarity, as well as other important phenomena of Russian culture. In modern Dostoevsky studies, the prevailing tendency is that the hierarchy and the concept of the polyphonic novel contradict each other. However, the article substantiates the existence of a context of understanding in which this linear logic is annulled. The “dialogue of agreement” between hierarchy and polyphony does not comprise either the recognition of the relative “truth” of the latter concept for an adequate scientific description of Dostoevsky’s world (the absolutization of this principle leads to a relativism unacceptable to Dostoevsky), or a rejection of polyphony in favor of hierarchy (this leads to a religious “legalism” that levels the personality, if another consciousness, the consciousness of the hero, is only the bearer of one or another “idea” for its affirmation). It seems that the recognition of the conciliar basis of polyphony is capable of truly “reconciling” the various interpretation principles, which, with other approaches, lead to the loss of the personhood of Dostoevsky’s heroes, and therefore to the reduction of the meanings of his works. The presence of Orthodox conciliarity in Dostoevsky’s polyphony is expressed not in the “equal” significance of the positions of the heroes’ ideological attitudes for the novel’s whole, but in the fact that the human person depicted by the author himself, due to the Christocentrism of Dostoevsky’s world, is hierarchically more significant than the ideological position that the person expresses. These theses are illustrated by the interpretation of Dostoevsky’s works.

Keywords: Dostoevsky, Bakhtin, polyphony, heterophony, conciliarity, sobornost, personality, idea, ideology, dialogue, monologism, Christocentrism, Russian song, axiology, hierarchy

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The article offers a comparative examination of A. S. Pushkin’s sonnet “Madona” and the description of the cell of elder Zosima in F. M. Dostoevsky’s novel “The Brothers Karamazov” as vivid examples of visual representation of the idea of “universal responsiveness” in the works of both authors. They are united by verbal and figurative images that visually embody it. In this case, it is Pushkin’s ekphrastic image of the “Russian Madonna,” which bears the mark of ethno-confessional cultural synthesis. Pushkin’s sonnet contains an intermedial contamination of two artistic traditions — poetic and pictorial. The former is associated with sonnets by Dante and Petrarch, as well as Orthodox prayers; the latter – with Raphael’s painting “The Bridgewater Madonna” and the icon of the Mother of God of Kazan. In Dostoevsky, a similar example of a visual embodiment of the idea of “universal responsiveness” is the description of Zosima’s cell, in which the Orthodox image of the Mother of God neighbors the Catholic image of Mater Dolorosa. From an axiological point of view, the attribute of Catholic iconography purposefully introduced by the writer into the interior of the cell is fundamentally significant. It is absent in the cell of the Optina elder Amvrosy, reproduced by Dostoevsky with great, but not literal, accuracy in order to portray the elder Zosima as the embodiment of the image of the “Russian all-man” who understands everything and everyone and accommodates everything. His iconostasis represents the entire history of Christian culture: the period before the schism in Russia (the image of the Mother of God), ancient Orthodoxy (icons of saints and martyrs), Catholicism (Catholic ivory cross and engravings) and modernity (portraits of bishops). The religious and cultural syncretism of Zosima’s religious feeling, which in cultural terms was in many ways close to Dostoevsky himself, is apparent.

Keywords: Pushkin, Dostoevsky, visual poetics, Madona, Mother of God, icon, painting, text, sonnet

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