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Title of the article: Russian literature in the context of the Medieval Hesychast tradition (on the material of the story of N.S. Leskov «At the world's end»)
Author(s): BEDINA N. N.
Section: Philology and Literary Criticism
Year: 2015
Issue: № 1, (35)
Pages: 74-82
Index UDK: 821.161+821.161.1+244
Index BBK: 84(4Рос)+86.37
Abstract: Movement of the Hesychasts, practitioners of «noetic prayer in silence», had its roots in Gregory from Sinai in the middle of the XIV century. This theological school disseminated from Crete to Athos, then spread through the Eastern Christian world. The practice of the Hesychasts was connected with the theological teachings of St. Gregory Palamas devoted to emphasized Holy light and the Divine energies. In science, there are opinions that the Hesychast tradition in Russia was realized in the prayer of monastic practice of St. Sergius from Radonezh and his disciples, who determined the paradigm of Russian spiritual culture. Nevertheless, the tradition from the beginning had the features of some exclusivity and opposition within the Orthodox doctrine. Due to various reasons these traits were inherited by the Russian culture of the XIX - XX centuries: from religious-philosophical tradition and literature to the revolutionary practice of the «monks-revolutionaries» (S. L. Frank). Christian sympathy to «a little man» which runs through the whole of Russian literature, connected with ideas of Hesychast mystics and anthropology, is realized in the topic of the knowledge of God in the works of N. S. Leskov. The image of a man «on the edge of the world», by Leskov, through one touch of «the edges of the Christ's robe» - only the edge of the Light of Christ's Love (A. A. Novikova-Stroganova), but a man «a little falling into heresy», became one of the pictures of the Russian spiritual ideal. The ideal came from the context of St. Gregory's teachings of the Tof the Lord and the Light of the Mount Fabor.
Keywords: HESYCHASM, TRANSFIGURATION, DIALOGUE, IMAGE, ST. GREGORY PALAMAS, N. S. LESKOV
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