Гуманитарные и юридические исследования (Jun 2022)
The idea of predestination in the Russian language picture of the world (based on dictionaries and texts of the XVIII–XIX centuries)
Abstract
The purpose of the article is to identify the specifics of the mythological idea of fate and its expression in the concept and in the meanings of words that verbalize it (based on the material of explanatory and encyclopedic dictionaries and in the works of Russian literature of the XVIII–XIX centuries). The paper reveals that the dominant of the synonymic series representing the idea of fate is the lexeme fate. The analysis of the content of this nomination in meanings and images, representing it in the naive picture of the world of the Russian person is the subject of the work. Based on the collected material, the author demonstrates the semantics of impersonal-fatalistic perception of the idea of fate both on the material of literary texts and in the content of definitions of certain personal nouns in the normative dictionaries of the XVIII-XIX centuries. The author demonstrates that the semantic component ‘fatal inevitability’ could be realized in the pragmatic part of the meaning of a certain personal name included in the lexical and semantic group ‘fate’, could be implemented in the value of a personal name or as component ‘deprivation‘ that is characteristic of lexemes a blind man, the madman, or as component ‘acquisition’, which is typical for the words sleepwalker, whimsical, sloth (the result of exposure to a compelling, unknown force, with his representative or executor, a her will). The author further shows the verbalization in the public consciousness of the Russian people of the time studied of everyday ideas about fate as a blind case that gives a person good, which express the belief in the existence of an individualized deity of fate that helps a person. This understanding of predestination is expressed in a number of contexts in the literature of the XVIII-XIX centuries, as well as in dictionary interpretations of such lexemes as happiness, lucky, happy, in the normative dictionaries of this time, perhaps they are based on the oldest Russian ideas about a miracle. In General, the analysis allows the author to conclude that the idea of fate is ethnospecific and ambivalent in the Russian public consciousness of the XVIII – XIX centuries.
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