Вестник Православного Свято-Тихоновского гуманитарного университета: Серия I. Богословие, философия (Dec 2024)
“The holy fool” V. V. Rozanov and the mediaeval holy fool: religious connotations of literary style and behaviour
Abstract
The article concerns the image of V.V. Rozanov as a " holy fool" in the critical and memoir literature of his contemporaries – V.P. Burenin, S.N. Trubetskoy, A.S. Glinka-Volzhsky, A.A. Izmailov, E.F. Gollerbach. An attempt has been made to determine the meaning of such a naming, the connection of the concept of a "holy fool" in the XIX–XX centuries with the image of the "blessed obscenity". The main functions of the classical medieval holy full are defined based on the scientific literature. Among such functions: nudity, illness, contradiction, word and gesture, spectacle, provocation, self-abasement, aggression, wandering, androgyny, holy fool and king, strange death. Some of these functions are analyzed in the article. Fragments of critical essays and memoirs of contemporaries about Rozanov, in which he was called a "holy fool", are examined for reflections of these foolishness functions. For example, the literary polemic initiated by V.P. Burenin in connection with V.V. Rozanov's article "About one alarm of Mr. L.N. Tolstoy" is analyzed in the context of the relations between the holy fool and the tsar. The definition of Rozanov's literary style, given in the article by A.S. Glinka-Volzhsky, is considered as a reflection of several holy fool functions at once. In addition, the everyday habits of the philosopher are indicated, which caused associations among his contemporaries with the "holy fool" and gave reason to call V.V. Rozanov so. Critics and memoirists of the Silver Age saw the reflection of the features of the medieval holy fool in the everyday behavior and literary style of V. V. Rozanov, and have been created, largely by Rozanov's suggestion, his image of a "holy fool" in the culture of his time. The presence of this image in the secular context of modernist art confirms both the special significance of the Christian feat of foolishness in the Russian Middle Ages, and the rootedness of the image of the "holy fool" in the national cultural memory. While remaining a sign of style or the basis of the author's position, "foolishness", nevertheless, inevitably refers to a certain type of religious life, religious experience, the possibility of which has not been disappeared in the secularized and aestheticized modern context.
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