Obituary Genre in Legacy of V.S. Solovyov

Abstract

The features of the organization of obituaries created by V. S. Solovyov from 1883 to 1900 is considered. The specific traits of the author’s strategy in writing mourning texts are revealed. The relevance of the article is due to the importance of V. S. Solovyov for Russian culture, as well as the prospects for research that will reveal the genre and compositional specifics of obituaries as a special fact of the culture of creating post-humous texts in Russia in the second half of the 19th — early 20th centuries. The scientific novelty of this article lies in the fact that for the first time in Solovyov studies, the obituaries of the famous Russian philosopher are considered in aggregate, the author’s attitude to death and important aspects of his understanding of the place of man in the world are revealed. The relationship of these works with the rest of V. S. Solovyov and genre features of these obituaries is determined. According to Solovyov, the main qualities of a truly spiritual person are revealed: this is a person who has exceptional qualities of the heart, is not always understood by society, but who, through his deeds, embodies the main human destiny — serving Christian truth. He concludes that the obituaries of V. S. Solovyov reflect his system of views and semantically resonate with other works of the author.

Keywords

• obituary genre
• obituaries v.s. solovyov
• author’s obituary
• magazine bulletin of europe
• dialogue
• russian obituary of the 19^th-20^th centuries