The kalokagathia phenomenon in the Russian verbal culture of 1790-1830s. Article 1

The concept kalokagathia (Greek kalos - beautiful, agathos - kind) is inextricably linked with the ancient culture. It unites the aesthetic and ethical merits of the person and determines the evolution of philosophical and aesthetic thought. The article attempts to examine the process of formation of this concept in Russian literature and culture to reveal its national content. The atmosphere of the transitional epoch actualized the interest of Russian social and aesthetic consciousness in the problem of educating the new personality. The image of the "spiritual knight", stated in Mason I.V. Lopukhin's treatise of the same name and embodied in N.M. Karamzin's novel A Knight of Our Time, became a reference point in the development of the anthropological universal "hero of our time." The history of Russian literature interest in the image of Cervantes' Don Quixote, Zhukovsky's translation of Florian's adaptation of this novel and his ballad knights are important stages in the search for the concept and image of a "positively beautiful person". Early poetry of Zhukovsky (the poems "Virtue", "Hero", "The Man", "Rural Cemetery"), based on the Masonic theory of self-improvement and Karamzin's concept of a "sensitive person", introduced this image and its anthropology in the sphere of aesthetic reflection. The image system of Zhukovsky's poems of 1814-1825s, considered as the aesthetic manifesto of the "Columbus of Russian romanticism in poetry", shows the tendency to the synthesizing of the "good" and the "beautiful". The ideas of the "moral good of poetry" Zhukovsky referred to in the article of the same name in his journal VestnikEvropy ("Herald of Europe") as early as 1809 obtained poetic expression. Symbolization of the concepts "mysterious visitor", "familiar genius flying by", "ineffable", "Muse", "genius of pure beauty", "Lalla-Rookh" expands image reflection and forms a special philosophy of the author's consciousness, anchored in the poetic aphorism "poetry and life are one". Kalokagathia gains its national identity associated with the concept of scope and elevation of the soul in Zhukovsky's poetic experiments. In his ballads, "little dramas", poetic stories, dramatic poem "Camoes" this spiritual process is accompanied with a struggle between the good and the evil, with a fight with the fate, with suffering and redemption. The well-known poet's expression "There are a lot of beautiful things in the world other than happiness . . . ", which, according to Tyutchev, "is a whole religion, a revelation", makes significant corrections in the Russian kalokagathia. Zhukovsky's tradition and its development in the poetry of Pushkin and Lermontov, in Gogol's prose are the objects of study in the next article.

Keywords

Authors

References