THE LOCUS OF KOMAROVSKY SKETE MONASTERY IN PAVEL MELNIKOV-PECHERSKY'S DILOGY IN THE WOODS AND ON THE HILLS

Abstract

The article is devoted to studying Komarovsky skete monastery, the oldest Nizhny Novgorod Old Believer skete monasteries, in Pavel Melnikov-Pechersky's dilogy “In the woods” and “On the hills”. This dilogy is an artistic refl ection of Pavel Melnikov-Pechersky’s experience of studying historical reality. In this article Komarovsky skete monastery is considered as the category of artistic space. Komarovsky skete monastery is a distinctly dominating spatial image in the dilogy. In modern literary criticism the concept of “locus” is oft en used to identify spatial images. The text of the dilogy allows considering Komarovsky skete monastery as locus, since it has some essential characteristics of this concept: identity with the real world object, cultural importance for a certain society, discretisation and anthropological conditionality. The article analyses the text on the basis of locus defi ning characteristics applicable to a spatial image of Komarovsky skete monastery.

Keywords

• Pavel  Melnikov-Pechersky
• Russian Old Belief
• Komarovsky Skete Monastery
• locus
• artistic space
• spatial image