Volume 18, 2020 year

Spiritual texts implicitly contain rules and recommendations for the construction of speech communication. These rules are derived from direct references to the language-speech-word, or indicate speech actions or language actions. The texts of the Psalter, the book of Proverbs of Solomon, and the Holy Gospel are selected for this article. The author identified direct or hidden references to the terms language-speech-word-mouth that express judgments about the content or evaluation of these words in the life of a person. All these terms are used in the sense of “an instrument of communication, an instrument of organizing human contacts.” And they all receive a fundamentally dual moral and ethical assessment: language-speech-word can either “praise God” and be “words of good,” carry “joy in the response of the mouth,” or become an instrument of evil (“slander”), deception (“flattery”), suffering and destruction (“flood verbs”). Compared with oral pre-literate speech in folklore at a new stage of civilization development, these terms have acquired new meanings in written and printed literature: the term language obtains the meaning of “people” (in the Psalter), the term word becomes of overriding importance for European culture as the Word of God (the Holy Gospel), and the term mouth is metaphorically used most frequently in the Proverbs of Solomon. The revealed position in regard to the primacy of moral and ethical requirements for the speaker in the preparation of speech, when “pure heart” is mentioned first (“create a pure heart in me, oh God”), about righteousness and wisdom (in “Parables”), about the qualities of a person (see the Beatitudes), and only then it is about actions “of the tongue and mouth.” The duality of assessments of language-speech-word also speaks of the dual nature of man, who either “praises God with his mouth” or receives “judgment” for idle and false words. The analysis of judgments about language-speech-word-mouth in spiritual texts allows us to form recommendations and instructions for language acts and actions of a modern person who must preserve moral and cultural traditions and creatively apply the newly revealed rules in their own speech acts.

Keywords: Psalter, Proverbs of Solomon, The Holy Gospel, word, language, speech, mouth, rules of communication

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Medieval Arabic literature is rich in love stories about Bedouin poets who lived in pre-Islamic and Islamic times. By the end of the 9 century AD, these tales have formed an independent genre that followed certain aesthetic principles and norms. One of these stories — the romance of Qays ibn Ḏarīḥ and his beloved Lubnā — is unique, for it has a number of unusual features, including two versions of an ending — tragic and happy. This article attempts to trace the process of the story formation to clarify the reason for the existence of two ending versions and discuss its other peculiarities. The study has revealed that the romance of Qays and Lubnā has a pre-Islamic prototype — the tale of ‘Abdallāh Ibn al-‘Ağlān and Hind. Traces of this version survived in the romance of Qays and Lubnā, which is rooted in the oral tradition: it combines the elements of the old primitive unhappy lovers canon (a marriage, then a divorce under family pressure, separation, suffering and death) and the new model — the ‘Udrī love story that appeared after the rise of Islam as a reaction to new aesthetic values that cultivated chaste love. As the political disagreements emerged in Islam and the role of Šī‘a Islam increased, a number of new details and a happy end were added to the story (very likely in 8 century AD), reflecting the philosophical contradictions between Sunnī and Šī‘a Islam. These points have determined the uniqueness of the story about Qays ibn Ḏarīḥ and Lubnā among other ‘Udrī love stories.

Keywords: Qays ibn Darīḥ, Lubnā, oral tradition, the ‘Udrī love storу, pre-Islamic love story, early Muslim literature, pre-Islamic Arabic literature

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The article explores changes in the use of the categories of victim and sacrifice in political literary artefacts in the second half of the 16th century: namely, the correspondence between Ivan the Terrible and Andrey Kurbsky and Kurbsky’s History of the Grand Prince of Moscow. The study shows that the writers of this time used the literary topoi of victim in a fundamentally different way to earlier authors in medieval Russia. The article defines the main means of poetics and rhetoric in the works of Ivan the Terrible and Andrey Kurbsky. The methods for updating the topos of victim for both authors are similar. Each of them desacralizes a high Christian idea and uses it and a topos for subjective and, as a rule, ideological purposes. Such changes are possible due to the mixing of earthly (profane) and heavenly (sacred) logic when dealing with the categories of victim and sacrifice, which is typical for this time. If, for Kurbsky, the people killed by the tsar are new martyrs, then for Ivan the Terrible, they are justly punished traitors. The tsar believes that subjects should be ready to sacrifice their lives for him. Kurbsky does not deny the necessity of willingness to sacrifice, but he consistently proves that the tsar’s personality does not correspond to Christian ideas about the ideal monarch, so he convinces the reader of the possibility of confronting the tsar. At the same time, both authors characterize themselves as a person affected by the actions of the other and use the literary topoi of victim.

Keywords: victim, sacrifice, topoi of victim, correspondence between Ivan the Terrible and Andrey Kurbsky, History of the Grand Prince of Moscow, second half of the 16th century

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The article follows up the origin of the myth of the funeral of Gogol in the state of lethargy. The ideological roots of this myth, which still obscures the real history of the last days of Gogol’s life and the very content of his spiritual heritage, are studied. A wide range of problems related to the practice of professional treatment in the first half of the 19th century, including the phenomenon of mercantilism and lack of professionalism of some physicians of that time, the problem of frequent nondistincion of apparent death and lethargic state by the medicine of that time, as well as the question of the relationship between the physiological component of the disease and spiritual means of healing used by Gogol, are touched upon in the article. Attention is drawn to the unsuccessfulness of the writer’s long treatment in numerous European and domestic medical bodies. The identities of several reputable doctors who treated the writer are confirmed. The apocryphalness of some information reported in the memoirs about Gogol of the head physician A. T. Tarasenkov is noted. The distortion of Gogol’s image in these memoirs is explained by the pragmatic approach of the doctor in standing up for the corporate interests of the medical caste. The content of the last days of Gogol is put in the context of the writer’s ideas about the providential value of the ailments, regarded bu the writer as a kind of “road signs”, encouraging everyone to search for the right path, and the artist, in addition, to improve his writing. The study of biased opinions about Gogol as a religious fanatic, whose behavior before his ktydeath supposedly caused his premature death, allows us to conclude that the biographical myth has a deliberate and constructed character.

Keywords: Gogol, lethargy, fiction, biographical myth, criticism of sources, social ideology, spiritual heritage

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The Russian émigré community paid particular attention to Nikolai Gogol (possibly comparable only with Aleksandr Pushkin and Fedor Dostoevsky). Themes and issues in Russian émigrés’ studies of Gogol are highly diverse, although they predominantly focus on Gogol’s poetics and religious views. Gogol and Dostoevsky, Gogol and Christian attitude to the laughter, Gogol’s theater aesthetics, Gogol’s progress as an author, rhythm in Gogol’s prose, problem of the man in Gogol— these are the issues in Gogol’s poetics have initially been posed by the literary critics in the Russian émigré community and subsequently developed by Russian scholars. Thanks to the works by Konstantin Mochulsky, Vasily Zenkovsky, Georgy Florovsky, Dmytro Chyzhevsky and Semyon Frank, it became possible to rebuff some deeply enrooted erroneous concepts of Gogol’s personality. Gogol studies conducted in the Russian émigré community are an essential part of contemporary literary criticism. Despite limited sources, works by Russian émigré authors marked a new and essential stage in Gogol studies.

Keywords: Gogol, Russian Emigration, religious outlook, biography, poetics, interpretation, comic, terrible, rhythmic organization of the text, motif, intertext, album prose

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The article examines the concept of literature as a unit of the linguistic image of the world of two great writers, which is associated with each of the authors’ comprehension and figurative interpretation of the literary process and journalistic activity in the 19th century. Using the letters of Turgenev and Dostoevsky during their conspicuous interaction (1860—1867) the author researches the linguistic methods of concept representation, its semantic volume, identifies a set of semantic features, explores the use of various evaluative vocabulary as a means of explication of this concept, establishes stimulus words in the correspondence. Turgenev perceives the sphere of literature as something true, superior and even miraculous, Dostoevsky proposes both a positive and a negative assessment of the events occurring in the literary process. The analysis of the two writers’ correspondence made it possible to disclose the attitude of correspondents to various literary spheres, to reveal the specific features of the concept of literature in the conceptual sphere of Turgenev and Dostoevsky. Accordingly, it was determined that the language units of the concept of literature as perceived by the Russian intelligentsia contain emotive components, and that the epistolary texts contain elements of intimization and frequent use of authors’ specific language techniques, comparisons and metaphorical images. The notions of literature and the literary process are conceptualized in writers’ letters as an animate acting force, an environment that is capable of action. The figurative language means used by writers in the correspondence endow the concepts with a specific image and sensual meaning. The concept of literature reveals the features of their work, the literary process and journalistic activities, which were an essential part of themselves and their lives for both Turgenev and Dostoevsky.

Keywords: Ivan Turgenev, Fedor Dostoevsky, concept, sphere of concepts, epistolary text, letters, correspondence, dialogue, idiolect, literature, fiction, rhetoric, lexeme, metaphor

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The article reflects on the results and prospects of studying the gospel text in the works of F. M. Dostoevsky at the present stage, identifies the main directions and methodological problems of their analysis and interpretation in the framework of ethnopoetics as a new scientific direction in literary studies of the late XX — early XXI century. Its principles are rooted in historical poetics, which aimed to define the role and boundaries of the Christian tradition in Russian literature. As a result, the scientific discourse included new poetical categories of conciliarity (“sobornost”) and paschality, and the understanding of Christian realism as an artistic method was established. Its aesthetic principles were mastered by Russian literature in the XIX century. Revealed in the gospel, Christian realism appeared in Dostoevsky’s work as “realism in the highest sense.” The main result of studying Russian literature from the point of view of ethnopoetics is to identify the gospel text itself. It has not yet been singled out in the early 1990s, but today its key outlines are already well-described, above all — in the works of Dostoevsky. The regularities of the development of modern Russian studies of Dostoevsky in this regard can be traced using the example of the terminological thesaurus formed in the process of studying the gospel text in the works of the author of the Great Five Novels. There is a fundamentally significant combination of literary, philosophical, and theological categories. Nevertheless, the problem of distinguishing philological and religious-philosophical discourses in modern literary studies in general and in studies of Dostoevsky in particular remains relevant: on the one hand, a number of works remain inclined towards pure theology; on the other hand, scientists are paying increasingly greater attention to the analysis of the functions and ways of creative transformation of Christian tradition in Russian literature.

Keywords: Russian literature, The Gospel text, Dostoevsky, terminological thesaurus, ethnopoetics, aspects of learning

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The article is devoted to the review of the gospel epigraph to the novel Demons from the point of view of the ancient tradition. The parable of the Gadarene demoniac, which correlates with the title and the figurative and semantic content of the novel, actualizes the concept of devilry, the nominative field of which includes the lexeme demon. In addition to historical and literary content, this lexeme has a deep historical and philosophical meaning that goes back to the demon of Socrates described by Plato. The mythological δαίμων and the Socratic τὸ δαιμόνιον possess generally positive semantics, but in the Christian tradition, which replaced antiquity, the nomination demon began to denote an evil demonic force that seeks to take over a person’s soul. The Russian lexeme bes, as well as the words derived from it — Russian besnovaty and besnovanie (demoniac and possession by demons), is synonymous with demon, which is of a Greek origin. Demonic possession, which manifests itself outwardly in the loss of reason, is equated with spiritual illness. For such States, Plato uses the words μαίνομαι and μανία, the root of which is present in the words mania and maniac, denoting obsession with a certain idea. In both ancient Greek and Russian, this root has a negative connotation. Thus, demonic possession, described in the gospel as a spiritual illness, goes back to the ancient concepts of δαιμονίζομαι and μαίνομαι. This perspective allows us to reveal additional layers of meaning in the gospel epigraph and, as a result, in the novel itself.

Keywords: Dostoevsky, Plato, the demoniac, frenzy, the parable of the Gadarene demoniac

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The article is devoted to the revealing of the seasons semantics in Tolstoy’s novel “Resurrection”. Having examined the events happening to the characters of Tolstoy’s novel during 15 years of their life we came to the conclusion that in the “Resurrection” the depicted seasons are associated with reconstruction of humanity’s steady movement towards God. The description of spring at the beginning of the novel is a parable-like prologue that affirms the idea of mankind’s future spiritual resurrection. In spring, 29 year-old Nekhlyudov decided to redeem himself in front of Maslova. When the main character recollected the spring of his youth, he realized social ill-being and the need to find the lost harmony with the world thus, he abdicated from his right to the land ownership. Student Nekhlyudov saw in summer nature a source of inspiration; in summer, escorting prisoners to hard labor, the character understood the roots of social evil, and prisoner Maslova returned to her original pure self. The spiritual spring of Nekhlyudov takes place in a calendar spring, and his spiritual resurrection happened in autumn; Maslova’s spiritual spring coincides with a calendar summer. The character comes to the adoption of Christianity in fall reading the Gospel. In the finale of the novel, early winter “rushes” the earth’s renewal; Nekhlyudov’s enlightenment is predetermined by changes in nature and by the indisputable rightness of God’s Word which had been revealed to him. In the “Resurrection”, the seasons become the markers of being and gain the ontological significance. Spring symbolizes future moral enlightenment of the mankind; summer is a symbol of life; fall “strengthens” Nekhlyudov’s religious searches, “convincing” him to build life according to God’s covenants; winter is a cleansing preparatory period that precedes the spiritual resurrection of people. The epic character by Tosltoy emerges due to the correlation of natural calendar with the semantics of seasons developed in Old Russian literature. The novel “Resurrection” is an artistic work of Christian realism that continues the tradition of Old Russian literature.

Keywords: L. N. Tolstoy, seasons, enlightenment, resurrection, existential time, ontological semantics, Old Russian literature, Christian Realism

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L. N. Tolstoy does not make any direct statements about the great French Revolution, although a probe into the writer’s attitude to this historical event allows us to understand his interpretation of phenomena contemporary to him. In this sense, the analysis of the early drafts of the novel War and Peace (1864) conducted in this article is of great interest. In these drafts, French politicians of the Directory period are called ‘rich upstarts’ and ‘yesterday’s bourgeois gentilhommes.’ Bonaparte himself is referred to as “a clever, cunning and evil successful bourgeois.” And in the outline of the preface to the novel Tolstoy repeats this comparison again: “funny and disgusting, like a Philistine in the nobility.” All of these formulas date back to the famous comedy by J. B. Moliere Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670). Although Napoleon Bonaparte was not a bourgeois by birth, his origins in the provincial Corsica led to a mention of him as a “bourgeois nobleman,” or parvenu in the drafts of War and Peace. This expression had a negative connotation due to the hereditary pride and prejudice of the aristocrat Tolstoy against the lower classes and his reaction to the novel by N. G. Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done? (1863). In the final text of War and Peace, influenced by the news of the civil execution and exile of Chernyshevsky, Tolstoy removed these direct characteristics, although the overall negative assessment of Napoleon remained. Later Tolstoy repeatedly used images of this comedy, but did not attach negative connotations to them. Establishing the connection between the image of Napoleon and the “bourgeois gentilhommes” in the drafts for Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace allows us to more accurately determine the writer’s political views in the mid-1860s.

Keywords: Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, Moliere, the French revolution, Napoleon, reminiscence, image, motif

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The work is devoted to the poetics of duality in F. Abramov’s tetralogy Brothers and Sisters. The analysis of the duality models allows to imagine historical, social, political reality, the minimal structure of the human community: one and the other. At the center of the study are the key characters of the tetralogy, namely, Mikhail Pryaslin and Yegorshi Stavrov, who embody the eschatological Russian model of duality. The analysis of these characters is carried out against the background of the character structure as a whole. Within a Christian context, the Mikhail — Yegorsha twin pair is included in a broad semantic field. Yegorsha compares his sworn brother with Christ. According to the legend, the latter’s twin was apostle Thomas, whose name coincidentally means ‘a twin.’ If Mikhail is firmly associated with Christ, then Egorsha can be semantically identified with both Judas and Thomas (in all connotations). The destruction of the “country model,” the Russian schism also actualizes another version of duality: George the Victory-bearer and Yegoriy the troublebearer, which is already reflected at the level of character naming. The struggle of the “twin” heroes over a woman, ancestral land and the house, which is interpreted as a confrontation between Christ and the Antichrist, St. George and the “bad Yegorka” (changeling), is also implemented as the “Russian” version — Foma and Erema, in which the doubles lose to the circumstances. Peasant Russia is in captivity of civilization, and no one is able to protect it: the warriors die, the saints abandon the icons. This leads to the general sense of anxiety, of a life “between homes,” when the “prodigal son,” who has nowhere to go back to, becomes the modern hero.

Keywords: F. Abramov, tetralogy, Brothers and Sisters, duality, Yegoriy the Brave, Foma and Erema

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The article is devoted to the analysis of the Anacreontic Song by Théophile Gautier, translated by N. S. Gumilev, which is examined against the background of the Russian and global Anacreontic tradition. Imitation of Anacreon is rooted in antiquity: his figure became a symbol of light lyric poetry that glorified sensual pleasures. Anacreon’s own legacy is not as extensive as pseudo-Anacreontic poetry: this tradition is present in English, French, German, Italian and Russian literature. In the process of translating Odelette anacréontique by Théophile Gautier, Gumilev enters into intercultural and inter-traditional communication: his translation is a dialogue with both the French poet and the Anacreontic and pseudo-Anacreontic genre tradition. Despite the statements N. S. Gumilev proposed in his theoretical works on translation issues, which stated that it is necessary to rely on the original text during translation, and that deviations and loose retellings are unacceptable, in some cases he still departs from the original text, deliberately building the subtext of the poem that is absent in the original. Gumilev’s translation makes Gautier’s poem “more Anacreontic” than the original: Gumilev intensifies the motives of love, pleasure, sensual pleasure that are significant for pseudo-Anacreontics, introduces the image of wine as a symbol of love that was absent in the original. Gumilev’s translation solutions considered in the article represent a kind of editing of Gautier’s text that approximated it to the complex of motives traditionally associated with the work of Anacreon.

Keywords: Gumilev, translation, Gautier, Anacreon, cultural dialogue, Anacreontic lyrics

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Six New Year (eonic) poems by M. V. Isakovsky, written between 1942 and 1972, are examined in the article as a non-author's cycle with its own ‘plot’. It captured such philosophical phenomena as death, guilt, suffering, chance, etc., which revealed themselves in a sacred moment of time — the New Year. The three “battlefield” toasts reflected Isakovsky's sense of guilt before himself and the people; the desire to cast a spell on hostile forces and thus bring victory closer. The humorous post-war toast of 1948 demonstrated the return of life in the USSR to a peaceful track, which was signified by the restoration of state and family holidays, dinner parties. The official ‘newspaper’ toast “for 1958” expresses the idea of “new happiness” that emphasizes the motive of peaceful labor exploits of the Soviet people, while the poems “for 1973” can be classified as confessional. Isakovsky's New Year poems are also analyzed in the context of two traditions — Russian aeonic poetry and ritual toasts. Connections with poems by V. A. Zhukovsky, P. A. Vyazemsky, M. I. Tsvetaeva, A. T. Tvardovsky are traced. New Year poetic toast, on the one hand, became one of the many genres that contributed to the unity of the Russian people in the face of mortal danger during the war; on the other hand, it preserved a number of archaic topoi (the experience of the New Year’s transition as a sacred time; ritual magic formulas that invoke Death, Time and Fate; the biblical archetype of the chosen people, etc.).

Keywords: M. V. Isakovsky, New Year poetry, aeonic poetry, the Great Patriotic War, ceremonial toast, comparative studies, biblical expression

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The article describes and systematizes biblical plots characteristic of the Siberian text in Russian culture. The colonization of Siberia was accompanied by the Christianization of its autochthons. The influence of the church on the formation of the local literary tradition was very strong. The regional specifics of Siberia (nature, history, ethnos) influenced the selection of biblical motifs and plots in the works about this space. The comparative approach made it possible to identify and chronologically organize the following biblical themes paradigmatic for the Siberian text: apostolic / missionary, Christological initiation, exodus, the prodigal son. Biblical stories related to Siberia were inverted over time, and religious semantics were supplanted by other topics. The single core that allows to amalgamate these plots and motives is the idea of transformation (of oneself, another person, space). Hypothetically, each plot has its own period of maximum productivity, followed by a recession. The missionary plot and the plot of Christological initiation were revised in the 17th century and remained productive until the end of the 19th century. The narrative of the search for Belovodye, isomorphic to the exodus of Jews from Egypt, arose at the end of the 18th century. It was active until the end of the 20th century. The motive of the prodigal son was relevant in the middle of the 19th century in the work of the regionalists and, later, their heirs. Globalization and informatization processes and the blurring of spatial and cultural boundaries gradually make this plot irrelevant. It is possible to expand the “canonical” spectrum of biblical images, motifs, and plots for the Siberian text by engaging new material.

Keywords: motif, apostolic plot, initiation, Belovodye, exodus from Egypt, prodigal son

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Semantics and functions of images that represent Georgia’s patron saints are examined in this article as exemplified in the Georgian Rhapsody, a collection of stories by O. Nikolayeva, stories by M. Saradzhishvili (from the books Do not rush to condemn and Next to you), Exile, a short story by V. N. Lyalin, and Wonderful journey to Orthodox Georgia by O. Rozhneva. Referring to episodes from the hagiography of Georgian saints in the texts in question allow us to trace the spiritual history of Georgia since the time of adoption of Christianity. The detailed list of saints is present in the books of О. Nikolayeva and О. Rozhneva. Even though only particular periods of Georgia's history are reflected in the stories of М. Saradzhishvili and V. N. Lyalin, the country's patron saints participation in the life of their characters in Georgia’s recent past or present day is undeniable. For example, Saint Equal-to-the-Apostles Nina performs a guardian function and her appearance during the Soviet years provides spiritual support to the female character of V. N. Lyalin’s story. First and foremost, a patron in combat, Saint George the Trophy Bearer is also a patron of the family. Venerable David of Garedzha is both an example of humility and a patron of the hearth and home. With his gift of prophecy, Blessed Gabriel (Urgebadze), mentioned in the book by О. Rozhneva, also assists on the path of personal salvation. Whereas О. Rozhneva’s book is exclusively focused on depicting Orthodox Georgia and its saints, the work of О. Nikolayeva provides a more comprehensive image of Georgia, including a vast stratum of the country’s cultural characteristics. In О. Nikolayeva’s book the saints represent a significant facet of Georgia’s image.

Keywords: Georgian saints, Orthodox prose, O. Nikolaeva, M. Saradzhishvili, V. N. Lyalin, O. Rozhneva, story, legend, motif, image

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