Vol 18, No 3 (2020)

Based on an axiological analysis of the bylinas about Dunay Ivanovich and Mikhailo Potyk, the article reveals a number of epic motifs which are interpreted as a semantic unity of the hero’s motivation, his deed, and its consequences. The article brings to light how the epic singer renders the spiritual laws connecting the motivation for a certain act with its consequences (i.e., the hero’s punishment and his subsequent penance or perdition); and formulates cognitive ethical meanings belonging to each of the bylina’s motifs. For each motif, the author identifies the following components: the hero’s particular moral weakness or passion which captures him, evoking thus sympathy — or the socalled “compassion” — in the listeners; the moment when the hero is overcome by his sin; the moment of the crime; and the punishment as a natural consequence of the hero’s deeds. Also, the difference between axiological coordinates of every act — before and after its commission, in the evaluation of either the hero or the listener — is determined in the present paper. The motifs of the mentioned bylinas are classified here on the basis of their type and their involvement into parallel structures with similar motifs, or by the presence — or absence — of their antithetical counterparts. The result of the present study is a denial of the widespread theory according to which Russian bylinas should be described as “meaningless”, as having controversial diachronous semantics, as damaged — in terms of the content — during their existence in this or that social milieu (peasant, skomorokh, minstrel or Cossack one), as presupposing allegedly “extraneous”and “recent” Christian concepts and ideologemes.

The article studies the phenomenon of “foolishness-for-Christ” depicted in the works of Russian writers of the 19 century, e. g. A. Pushkin’s Boris Godunov, O. Somov’s A Fool-for-Christ, A. Ostrovsky’s Kozma Zakharyich Minin, Sukhoruk, L. Tolstoy’s Childhood. The novelty of the research is presented primarily in the use of an axiological method for analysis of works of fiction as well as in interpretation of characters in terms of theology which proves that a “God’s fool” is shown as a person of an inverse perspective. The characters cannot be considered as part of the joking culture and the game, their life is never divided into night and day time, inner or outerdomains. They exist in the realm of “foolishness-in-Christ” that proves that while living in this world they belong to a different one and obey another law. In the studied literary works all the “holy fool” characters are marked by deep spiritual involvement and apparent conciliarism. They treat people with childlike sincerity and unselfishness personifying, thus, the Christian ideal of the writers. In these literary works “foolishness-for-Christ” displaying traits of national mentality is presented as the avatar of Christian faith manifested in a complete denial of worldly life and values, the first of which is “the wisdom of the world” (1 Kor. 3:18–19).

The repeated usage of the aphorism “Win yourself and you will conquer the world” in the works of F. M. Dostoevsky emphasized his words. Using different linguistic means the Russian writer compiled the message of a moral character striving for conveying it to his contemporaries, now with irony by putting it into mouth of Foma Fomich and Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky (the characters of the novels The Village of Stepanchikovo and its inhabitants and Demons respectively), now as an admonition by including it directly and indirectly into The Life of a Great Sinner and the novels Demons, The Brothers Karamazov and The Raw Youth. The dictum “Win yourself and you will conquer the world” echoes also on some pages of A Writer’s Diary, where an ethical and philosophical feature of Dostoevsky’s journalistic style manifests itself to the maximum. Modern researcher B. N. Tikhomirov has put forward a hypothesis that the saying “Win yourself and you will conquer the world” is based on quotations from the New Testament. The writer distilled this sententia from the writings of Saint Tikhon. The author of this article wondering who this aphorism belongs to and where it derives from, supposed and proved that it comes from the 57th sermon of St. Augustine or from the treatise On the imitation of Christ (Imitatio Christi) attributed to the Augustinian monk Thomas of Kemp. A copy of this treatise was kept in the library of Dostoevsky. After analyzing the hypothesis of B. N. Tikhomirov and her own assumption, the researcher has made both a philological analysis and the content one. As a result, she came to the conclusion that both these assumptions are possible and do not contradict each other. Given the fact that Saint Tikhon was well familiar with the writings of Saint Augustine, both these sources complement each other in the study of the aphorism? Win yourself and you will conquer the world”.

Dostoevsky’s novel The Raw Youth repeatedly refers a reader to mathematics. This fact favors analysis and interpretations of the “mathematical” problem in the novel. Mathematics as an exact science is for Arkady Dolgoruky the main guarantor that his idea of becoming a “Rothschild” is achievable and true. This idea is based on “mathematics”, as it involves the calculation of income. “Mathematical validity” is authoritative for Kraft and other members of Dergachev’s circle,as well as Stebelkov, Lambert, Olya. The plot of the novel is based on “mathematical validity”. It is Katerina Nikolaevna’s fateful letter. The idiom “as simple as twice two makes four” appears six times in The Raw Youth. The debunking of this formula is a characteristic motif for Dostoevsky’s work. The motif of vulnerability of “mathematics” increases with the development of the plot. The Raw Youth’s “mathematical” idea collides with his feelings and impulsive actions. The “mathematical validity” turns out to be irrational. It basis is not logic, but conviction. The opposition to “mathematics” and rationality is “living life” in Dostoevsky’s work. It contributes to the rebirth of Arkady Dolgoruky. He evolves from Rothschild to Christ, from accumulation to self- sacrifice, from Law to Grace.

The article approaches the problem of the correlation between the lyrical persons “I”, “You”, “She” in the poem Silentium by Mandelstam. Special attention is paid to the difference between the lyrical She/It (the original muteness, the first principle of life) and the lyrical “You” (the word, the heart, Aphrodite). The composition of the poem is remarkable for its mirror symmetry, both in terms of sound organization and semantics. The main idea of the poem is a return to the “first principle of life” through the acquisition of “initial muteness” by the lyrical “I”. In this situation, poetry turns out to be both paradoxical and transparadoxical reality, since the demand for “silence!” is implemented by means of the language (word).

The article studies and compares various possibilities of Russian classical realism, it reveals and describes the features of constructing images of the world in the works of O. N. Olnem (V. N. Tsekhovskaya) and S. N. Durylin. The pictures of the world by Olnem and Durylin are limited mainly by the manor topos. Localization of the events within the manor space is the key for the presence of the same objective and spiritual realities in the analyzed works, nevertheless, distributed and correlated differently. While the “narrative levels” in Durylin’s memoirs (subject, functional, socio-historical, subjective-personal, cultural-historical, Christian ones) are value-coordinative and the Orthodox determines theoanthropic “verticality” of the estate world, in Olnem’s description all the “estate elements” are coordinate and exist in the horizon of a personal or social event, they are factographic, only psychologically and / or socially colored, and the “Christian event lasting in eternity” loses its world-organizing function and is present as a formal rhetorical tradition. The difference in the actualization by Olnem and Durylin of the value of narrative levels is expressed in the implied meanings of the name — A Quiet Corner, In the Home Corner. The writers relate the “Manor Corner” to silence. However, if for Durylin the “quiet”, “silence” is a spiritual complex that expresses the Christ-like essence of a person, for Olnem, silence is a socio-historical category, designed to mark semantically the process of disappearance of the “noble nest,” silence as a synonym for death. Thus, no matter how close the work of the writers came together in substantive content, no matter how similar and related they were, the “watershed” separating them, in the words of V. V. Rozanov, turns out to be the “attitude to faith, God”. This difference determines the existence of different “realisms” in Russian literature and, consequently, of different reading and research strategies. 

The idiom “twice two is four” along with its variations is seen in the article as a marker of the situation of an “underground man”. In literature of the twentieth century the “underground” in its ethical and philosophical aspects has expanded its meaning, becoming the context of a utopian and anti-utopian thought, absorbing the tragic experience of Russian culture after Dostoevsky. Of course, the widespread locution “as sure as twice two is four” does not always point at this variety of meanings, but it can be reached only in combination with the psychological type of the “underground man”. Thus, the image of Stalin in the novel The First Circle by Alexander Solzhenitsyn is considered as a variation of the “underground” consciousness. The problems of philosophical, history related to the evolution of this type of consciousness and actualized in this novel, remain important for modern literature. Another version of this philosophical collision is given in Victor Pelevin’s anti-utopian novel S.N.U.F.F. In both of these cases, the situation of the underground person becomes a picture of a psychological and historical catastrophe. The negative development of the analyzed arithmetic formula in Russian literature of the 20th century encourages to look for another pole of tradition outside the “main” cultural domains. One of the variants of a moral escape from the trap of the “underground consciousness” can be found in the poetry of Alexander Bashlachev. The mythopoetical plot of the song Verka, Nadka, Lyubka is an exceptional variant of the development of the “underground man” topic. A starting point of the plot is just the formula “twice two is four”. The genre shift from lyricism to allegorical epic gives the poet an opportunity to reconstruct the paskhal’nost’ (Easter ideal) of Russian culture, even if in a tragic and provocative form, close to the tradition of Russian foolishness for Christ.