RELATED TO SELF-IMMOLATION IN THE RUSSIAN LITERATURE
OF THE 19TH – FIRST THIRD OF THE 20TH CENTURY
result
of literary and theological discussions about unique phenomenon which continued from the
mid of the 17 century to the first half of 19 century – self-immolations, mass suicides of the part
of an old believers, motivated by the hope for salvation from the Antichrist and his servants.
A real literary, fictional and narrative set of motifs began in the Russian historical and ethnographic
novel of the 19–20 cc. Narration of the self-immolation in Merezhkovsky's novel became
the most extensive, detailed and critical in Russian prose. The set of tropes related to selfimmolation
as a system of metaphors is formed at the beginning of the 20 century under the influence
of several factors. The most obvious tradition of images of the passion as fire and even fire
death of the soul, rising through the poetry of Russian classicism and romanticism to ancient and
biblical examples, as well as the Russian love's magic. The similarity of life and of combustion, of
love and fire, of poetry and fire occupied an important place in the poetic rhetoric of Pushkin .
However, since the early 1900s, this metaphor received neo-mythological justification in the essays
and philosophical lyrics of V. Ivanov as the part of the neo-Dionysian rite which was fused
from the aesthetics of Nietzsche and from the ideas of V. Solovyov about theurgical mission of
the poet-priest. So the set of metaphors of self-immolation, realized mainly in the lyrical works
and modernist metatexts, is formed from different sources: the tradition of the rhetoric image of
passion and creativity, mythopoetic image of the Phoenix, and the Russian Old Believers' «baptism
of fire», reinterpreted by Russian modernists as rite of sacrifice. Lyrical tropes of selfimmolation
are universal. Epic motifs, on the contrary, are used in a satirical, realistic and even
naturalistic narrative mode in the certain historical period and in the natural environment. Selfimmolation
as a story is localized on the northern periphery of the Russian space, as a rule, it is in
accordance with historical context, takes place in the era of Peter I. It is characterized by recurring
system of characters (officer, guide, the elder and his disciple) and motives (conflict of the authorities
and Old-Believers, persistence of the both sides of a conflict, nakedness, madness).
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RELATED TO SELF-IMMOLATION IN THE RUSSIAN LITERATURE
OF THE 19TH – FIRST THIRD OF THE 20TH CENTURY // Сюжетология и сюжетография. 2017. № 2. Pp. 57–72.