WINTER AS A SYMBOL OF THE DEATH OF THE SOUL IN THE CYCLE "WINTER SONNETS" BY V. IVANOV

This article discusses the cycle of V.I. Ivanov's "Winter Sonnets", which the author wrote in a difficult time for him. From the first to the last (12th) sonnet, the lyric tries to preserve his soul. We examined the specifics of the poet's lyrics, the image of winter as a symbol of death and came to the conclusion that these sonnets represent a lyric cycle, since it has “author's contexts” (“graveyard of snowdrifts”, winter is a symbol of death, an orphan, a widow), a certain author's intention of combining poems, which is to show how the lyric hero overcomes difficulties, tries to save his soul when there is a blizzard, winter and snowdrifts around. All poems follow a certain order, showing the path of the lyric hero. The fifth sonnet stands out from this row, as it makes a reference to the past of the lyric hero. According to the typology of cyclical texts by M. Darwin, this cycle is connected, since it has a common title and has a certain sequence, which was set by the author himself.

The Doctrine of Eustratius of Constantinople on the Posthumous State of the Soul: the Controversy with Hypnopsychites and Thnetopsychites

Данная статья посвящена малоизученному в отечественной патрологической науке греческому церковному писателю второй половины VI века пресвитеру евстратию Константинопольскому и его учению о душе в посмертном состоянии. в статье приводятся основные святоотеческие представления о душе, возникшие в первые века христианства и повлиявшие на богословские взгляды евстратия. на основе анализа его богословско-полемического трактата «о состоянии душ после смерти» (De statu animarum post mortem) в данной статье изложены представления евстратия о душе в посмертном состоянии - о её жизни и сохранении способности совершать действия, об её равноангельном состоянии и способности душ святых совершать явления в этом мире. также на основе существующих современных научных публикаций предпринимается попытка идентификации оппонентов евстратия, состоявших из двух групп, - фнитопсихитов, утверждавших о смерти души, и гипнопсихитов, учивших о её сне в посмертном состоянии. This article is devoted to the poorly studied (in Russian patrological circles) Greek church writer of the second half of the VI century, presbyter Eustratius of Constantinople and his doctrine of the soul in the postmortem state. The article presents the main patristic ideas about the soul that arose in the first centuries of Christianity and influenced the theological views of Eustratius. Based on the analysis of his theological-polemic treatise «De statu animarum post mortem» («Οn the state of souls after death»), this article presents the main views of Eustratius on the soul in the postmortem state - on its life and preservation of the ability to perform actions, on its equal state to angels and on the ability of the souls of saints to make apparitions in this world. On the basis of existing scientific publications there is also an attempt to identify opponents of the Eustratius, which consisted of two groups - thnetopsychites, claiming the death of the soul, and hypnopsychites who taught about her dream in the posthumous state.

Spiritualization of Power and Service in Late Gogol: Motive Sources

In his report at the Lotman Readings at the Russian State University for the Humanities (2019), M. Velizhev showed that the testament that opens Gogol’s Vybrannye mesta iz perepiski s druz’yami [Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends, 1847] bears signs of a notarial will. This reflects the counter spiritualization of the power and service in Correpondence, so its motivation that can clarify the logic of Gogol’s artistic evolution. All power positions in Gogol’s book are sacred, being created by the “government foresight” inspired by heaven. Consequently, Lord signifies Himself in the authority ladder. Therefore, the semantic elevation of love to God follows the same hierarchy of the civil service – to the monarch who transfers it to God. This makes the service hierarchy the main target of the human enemy who invades the world in the form of a doppelganger-official, eroding the meanings of administrative positions and replacing the “divine service” ladder with an antipode doublet. Gogol’s equations of “sacra” and service caused his movement to St. Petersburg (1828), equally alien to the traditional culture of both Little Russia and Russia. In this alienness, Gogol, who preserved the folklore worldview, saw the same daemonic trickery as in Dykanka. It appears as a general hoax in the finale of Nevsky Prospekt, and gets apocalyptic proportions in the first edition of The Portrait. However, in the capital of the empire, which includes the church in itself, Gogol tied the religious principle to the imperial one, which split the meaning of the Petersburg power into “heavenly” and daemonic. The consistent implementation of these meanings forms the plot of The Inspector General – with the visits of Khlestakov and the real inspector. In letters to S.T. Aksakov (1844), to N.F. (1849) Gogol endowed the devil with Khlestakov’s characteristics on the one hand, and on the other, explained the gossip about Khlestakov – “inspector” as the devil’s trick. Khlestakov’s chimericity is noted by Khlestakov’s servant Osip (“a general, only the other way round) and Shpekin (“He’s neither one thing nor another. The devil knows what he is”). Khlestakov not only confirms it, introducing himself as the author of “another ‘Yuri Miloslavsky’”, but in drunken boast endows a demonic background (“I am everywhere, everywhere!”). The Governor translates it from the subtext into the text, congratulating his wife, “. . . to marry into a family of such a devil.” The capital he personifies is also illusory, being a “black hole” in Osip’s praises. The real auditor presents Petersburg as a source of just imperious punishment, which the “silent scene” endows with the symbols of the Last Judgment, since in the Governor’s appeal to the public (“You are laughing at yourself, oh you!”) the bureaucratic vices can be interpreted as panhuman. In Razvyazka “Revizora” [The Resolution of The Government Inspector. 1846], the state is shown equal to the human soul, where officials are “passions”; Inspector is conscience “at death’s door”; Khlestakov is a “secular conscience” with which a person conforms every day. A person equal to the world carries within himself the potentials of all vices, and the death of the soul marks the death of the world. In Correspondence Gogol endowed himself with such a universal “I” creating the potential for spiritual crisis. The inexplicable divergence of Russian reality with the ideal appeared to him as the death of his soul, and with it – of the great world equal to it.

Mutability and Mortality in The Faerie Queene

Spenser’s Mutabilitie Cantos engage the subjects of sin and death from start to finish—from the introduction of Mutability herself through the end of her pageant—but Spenser’s Mutability is neither a simple mirror of the Fall nor a metonymic encoding of it. The Cantos open with a staged construction of Mutabilility’s figure, and her story draws on numerous renderings of change, including the Bible, Ovid, Lucretius, and Boethius, without merely repeating any one. Related passages on sin and death in The Faerie Queene, books I and II, have particularly relevant, significant ties to the subjects of time and mortality in the Cantos, as well as to questions of narrative and figuration. Mutability’s pageant explicitly engages with mortalism, the death of the soul, or the individual soul, along with the body, a concern that makes sense as an offshoot of Spenser’s engagement with materialism elsewhere in his epic. (This is another preview of Milton as well.)