From the point of view of historical poetics, the genre model of Gogol’s Dead Souls can be connected to variations of a picaresque novel (Aleman, Grimmelshausen, Sorel, Lesage, Narezhny, etc.). The author demonstrates the proximity of Dead Souls to picaresque novels presuming the possibility of change and transformation of the protagonist.

The facts of Gogol's appeal to the models of classical forms of myth and ritual are interesting not only by themselves but also in the aspect of their relationship with the arsenal of Christian mythology. The fundamental point here is that in light of the historical interpretation of the myth and the Revelation by F. W. J. Schelling, the mythology since its initial stage organically developed to Christianity, to the truths of Revelation (as the historical movement “flowed” into them).

The symbolic complex of the story Vij, interlacing with Eros and Thanatos, allows parallels to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice since in the case of the story Vij and in the case of myth, the motive of prohibition on sight also holds. The philosopher (i.e. the poet in the archaic and romantic notion) Homa Brut comes into contact with the world of death not of his own free will, besides, the panicle Eurydice died because of him. Orpheus partakes of the Dionysian sacraments. A visit to Orpheus of hell equated him, in Christian understanding, with Christ. In Gogol's story Vij, Dionysus and Christ have implicitly come together.

The motive of the story Vij for blindness is related to Oedipus's self-blindness motive. Mythological Erinnes, persecuted by Oedipus, are old women, which correlates with one of the chthonic incarnations of the plaque, thereby drawing closer to the goddesses of revenge, punishment, and remorse of conscience. The fact of the final recognition of Oedipus as “holy” is reflected in the potential Christian semantics of the image of Homa as a martyr and passion-bearer.

As the winner of the witch, the deliverer of people from her misfortunes and the passion bearer Homa is a Christian ascetic. Against the background of Christian parallels, the second stay of Homa on the farm becomes as if his “second coming”, symbolically comparable to the expected second coming of Christ, who is coming all the time.

The terrible glance of Vij and pannochka certainly reminds of the slaying glance of Medusa Gorgon, which forced all living things to petrify.

There is pathos of fighting tyranny in ridding the farm from the witch by Homa. Although Homa defends himself first of all in the beating scene, the general social meaning of his action is obvious. The power of the pannochka (she is the daughter of a wealthy sotnik), who for some reason considers himself pious, is not only socio-political but, in the main, existential-anthropological, this domination over man as a species, over man as such.

The motives of ancient Greek and in general pagan mythology are closely intertwined in Gogol's story with Christian motives, which formed the unique spiritual and aesthetic synthesis of the story Vij.

Gogol’s art (first of all, his works Dead Souls and Selected Passages from the Correspondence with the Friends) is considered in the aspect of the problem of a “philosophy of an economy” formulated by S. Bulgakov. Gogol’s views also are correlated with its development in the art of I. Goncharov (Oblomov) and L. Tolstoy (first of all, his late works).

Abstract

In the present paper, Gogol’s story Vij is considered in the context of the metaplot about Medea (see Euripides and Seneca). The connection between the metaplot for Gogol and the Renaissance context is shown. For the sake of comparison, Akhmatova’s version of the Medea myth is also involved.

This paper is based on three major premises derived from philosophy of history, historical poetics, and theory of intertextuality, which are seen as interconnected. Taras Bulba and Khadzhi Murat inherit different forms of epic writing from archaic ones (e.g. epic poems) to heroic ones (e.g. sagas, bylinas, chivalric romance, etc.). Some variations and distant derivatives of these multiple forms (e.g. tales about bogatyrs, Orlando Furioso by Ariosto, Alonso Quijano by Cervantes, ballad, historical novella, etc.) are related to some extent to the given texts by Gogol and L. Tolstoy.

Аполлон Григорьев и Бахтин затрагивали достаточно разные вопросы творчества Достоевского, но корреляция между их работами очевидна на уровне их металогики, их философии, их культур-философских оснований. Григорьев, вместе с Достоевским, находился у истоков почвенничества, хотя отзывы Григорьева о творчестве Достоевского эпизодичны и довольно инвективны. Григорьев, в основном, отказывал Достоевскому в том, что его искусство соответствует «правде жизни». Но и первый вариант книги Бахтина о Достоевском не был апологетическим.

Григорьев и Бахтин реализуют свою философию через эстетику (философию искусства). Искус-ство, согласно Григорьеву, имеет истоки в самой жизни, а жизнь через искусство реализует себя и сама себя понимает; поэтому критик – также «художник». Бахтин также исходит из принципа корреляции искусства и жизни, выводя отсюда свое понятие «творческий хронотоп». У Григорьева, Бахтина, Достоевского дело идет об онтологии искусства, как и об искусстве онтологии. Искусство онтологии подразумевает самую широкую эстетизацию жизни: ее вдвижение в горизонт искусства. Данная установка – предмодернистская и модернистская.

В генезисе понятия «органическая критика» отозвались уроки Канта как автора трех философ-ских «Критик». Идеи Канта были значимы также для Достоевского и Бахтина. Григорьева могло за-интересовать философское измерение, приданное Кантом понятию «критика». Поэтому «органиче-ская критика» относится преимущественно к философии, поднимая объемный перечень вопросов, превышающих собственно эстетические.

Согласно Бахтину, полифония Достоевского заключается в том, что автор выступает «медиумом», «пропускающим» через себя различные идеи («голоса» персонажей, различные «точки зрения» и т. п.) Автор-медиум «проводит» «через себя» и «из себя» массу различных идей без сущностного отвержения какой-либо из них. «Автор-медиум» пытается говорить от лица жизни, но также и даже «вместо жизни», что ведет к логической и смысловой подмене «мира» – «картиной мира». Отвер-жение сущностное вовсе не означает отсутствия у автора отвержения формального, т. е. просто констатированного. Однако сущностное неотвержение означает гораздо больше, чем то или иное формальное отвержение. Жизнь, историческое бытие в таком случае оказывается для Достоевского практически «хаосом».

В развитие идей Бахтина следует, что при внедрении в свой художественный мир карнавального начала Достоевский утверждает «связку» чувствительность / физиологизм. Ее истоки – в сентимен-тализме XVIII в. Данная «связка» находит религиозную проекцию в феномене юродства. Поэтому итоговой бахтинской трактовкой Достоевского (1963) движет пафос «оправдания» писателя, полно-та художественного мира которого в главном реализована через религиозно трактованную Досто-евским «картину мира» (все-таки «картину мира», но не сам «мир»).

Apollon Grigoriev and Bakhtin touched upon quite different issues of Dostoevsky’s work but the correlation between their works is obvious at the level of their metalogic, their philosophy, and their cultural-philosophical foundations. Grigoriev, together with Dostoevsky, was at the origins of “pochvennichestvo” (a grassroots movement), although Grigoriev’s comments on Dostoevsky’s work are episodic and rather injective. Grigoriev basically denied Dostoevsky that his art corresponded to the “truth of life”. But even the first version of Bakhtin’s book about Dostoevsky was not apologetic.

Grigoriev and Bakhtin realize their philosophy through aesthetics (philosophy of art). Art, according to Grigoriev, has its origins in life itself, and life through art realizes itself and understands itself; therefore the critic is also an “artist”. Bakhtin also proceeds from the principle of correlation between art and life, deriving from this his concept of “creative chronotope”. Grigoriev, Bakhtin, and Dostoevsky deal with the ontology of art as well as the art of ontology. The art of ontology implies the broadest aestheticization of life: its movement into the horizon of art. This attitude is pre-modern and modern.

In the genesis of the concept of “organic criticism”, the lessons of Kant as the author of three philosophical “Critics” could be echoed. Kant’s ideas were also significant for Dostoevsky and Bakhtin. Grigoriev might have been interested in the philosophical dimension that Kant gave to the concept of “criticism”. Therefore, “organic criticism” refers primarily to philosophy, raising a voluminous list of issues that exceed the aesthetic ones themselves.

According to Bakhtin, Dostoevsky’s polyphony consists in the fact that the author acts as a “medium”, “passing” various ideas through himself (“voices” of characters, different “points of view”, etc.). The author- medium “conducts” “through himself” and “out of myself” a lot of different ideas without the essential rejection of any of them. The “author-medium” tries to speak on behalf of life but also even “instead of life”, which leads to a logical and semantic substitution of “the world” – “an image of the world”. Essential rejection does not at all mean that the author has no formal rejection, i.e. just stated. Essential non-rejection, however, means much more than any formal rejection. Life, historical being in this case turns out to be practically “chaos” for Dostoevsky.

In the development of Bakhtin’s ideas, it follows that, when introducing carnivalization into his artistic world, Dostoevsky affirms a “link” of sensitivity / physiology. The origins of this “link” are in the sentimentalism of the 18th century. This “link” finds a religious projection in the phenomenon of “yurodstvo” (foolishness). Therefore, Bakhtin’s final interpretation of Dostoevsky (1963) is driven by the pathos of the “justification” of the writer, whose integrity of the artistic world is mainly realized through the religious “image of the world” (aft er all, the “image of the world” and not the “world” itself).