Vestnik Permskogo universiteta: Rossijskaâ i zarubežnaâ filologiâ (Sep 2018)
THE CONCEPT’S FATE IN LITERATURE: PUSHKIN’S “PROPHET” IN DIALOGUE WITH RUSSIAN CULTURE
Abstract
PROPHET is one of significant concepts of Russian culture. Its core (inner form) is characterized by tense contradictoriness. That is caused by differences between its associative fields, which are connected with the Christian roots of the concept, on the one hand, and the morphemic structure of the word ‘prorok’ (prophet), on the other hand. In the 18th century, the concept acquires a new ‘antique-enlightenment’ layer, which remains relevant through the beginning of the 19th century, including the period of early Pushkin’s poetry. At the same time, in G. R. Derzhavin’s and I. I. Dmitriev’s poetry the meanings of the ‘core layer’ of the concept are not neglected. At the beginning of the 19th century, in poetry of the Decembrists another associative field of the concept – the Decembrist, or the civic-minded, political one – is formed. In his poem The Prophet, Alexander Pushkin sets out a personal dialogue with the ‘prophet canon’ of Russian literature, basing upon and revolting against the Decembrists’ images. Using such elements of the Decembrist field of the concept PROPHET as implied autobiographical character of ‘I’, civic-mindedness of the image of prophet and Old Testament reminiscences in the text, he goes back to the core meanings of the concept – both to those that figured in tradition (e.g. in Derzhavin’s works) and to those that had not. For the first time in Russian poetry, it is not the vocation or the mission of the poet-prophet that is in the center of the plot, but the torturous process of his physical-and-spiritual transfiguration – the transfiguration clearly based upon the New Testament idea of man’s Theosis. Depicting the poet’s profoundly personal choice, the synergetic act of the divine calling, the martyrdom of his spiritual and physical transfiguration, Pushkin’s Prophet conciliates the two bidirectional meanings inherent in the core of the national concept. The poet’s vocation, as is revealed in the poem, does not consist in denouncing faults and vices, but primarily includes acts of purifying people and exhorting them to the Eternity through God-inspired poetry.
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