The Russian intelligentsia at the beginning of the 20th century is characterized by a steady need for unity with the world. This need takes on an intertextual character, flowing into the interaction of ideas and cultural codes leading to the attainment of the status of Homo Cosmicus. One of these codes is a feast. The purpose of the author of the article is to reconstruct the lifecreation of the Russian intelligentsia at the beginning of the 20th century through the prism of an ancient feast. It seems that in the conditions of intense spiritual searches, in the struggle to find wholeness and completeness of human life, turning to antiquity became a truly metaphysical idea, where the feast was a significant cultural constant. In the process of moving to the highest point of spiritual development, the antique feast metaphorically reflects the cosmos of being, just as the violation of the order of the feast reflects the violation of the order of being. This is what happens in Russian reality in the first half of the 20th century, where against the backdrop of tragic historical events, the Platonic “feastˮ turns into the vulgar “feastˮ of Petronius. After the revolution of 1917 the intelligentsia, with its own aspirations, found itself at a feast alien to itself, where it could not find a place, and the “hangover” became too heavy and turned into a real drama. Methodological approaches to the problem under study are based on the theoretical basis of modern scientific knowledge, which includes concepts and methods of philosophy (N. A. Berdyaev, P. A. Florensky, D. S. Merezhkovsky, V. V. Rozanov, Vl. S. Solovyov), cultural studies (I. A. Edoshina, M. S. Kagan, Yu. M. Lotman, N. O. Osipova), art history (I. A. Azizyan, A. Payman, A. A. Rusakova, D. V. Sarabyanov), intelligentsia studies (V. S. Memetov, S. M. Usmanov).
Kaleidoscopic Portrayal of Early Twentieth-Century British India: A Study of Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable
