Reception of Gregory Skovoroda's Heritage in Sergey Stratanovsky's Poetry

The aim of the article is to identify the ideological, philosophical and axiological reasons for Sergey Stratanovsky's address to the personality and creativity of Gregory Skovoroda. The material for the article is Stratanovsky's poems "God" (1968-1972), "Dispute" (1979), "Dialogue between Gregory Skovoroda and the Pisa Monkey" (1979), "Hasidism" ("Baalshevtov, your students . . .", 1982) and "Gregory Skovoroda . . .". The article uses methods of interpreting the text with the involvement of external contexts (historical-philosophical, literary-aesthetic) and methods of immanent, comparative- historical and comparative-typological analysis. Stratanovsky's "God" presents an unequivocal interpretation of the divine essence as emptiness. In the later poem "Dispute", the poet departs from the unequivocal interpretation of the divine, constructs an interconfessional dialogue, confronts contrasting positions. In the poem "Dialogue between Gregory Skovoroda and the Pisa Monkey", Skovoroda's dialogue "Grateful Erodius" is interpreted ironically, reminiscences from other works of the philosopher are obvious. The main ideas of Skovoroda's philosophy are embodied in the poem: interiorism, the sinfulness of the flesh, "rejection of secular opinions", "reading in moderation" and "reading in favor of the soul", true wisdom and spirituality. In the poem "Gregory Skovoroda . . .", the heritage of the philosopher is compared with Hasidism, to which Stratanovsky also appeals in the poems "Dispute" and "Hasidism". If Hassidism is a faith-based teaching, religion, then Skovoroda's teaching is a complex philosophical system which absorbed the rich experience of the previous eras. The evolution of Stratanovsky's views on the nature of man, of God and of truth, is embodied in the collection The Darkness of the Day (2000). The true and the divine change nature and become scary for knowledge, the life and creative way of the poet are presented as the only way to search for truth, the price of which is suffering, pain and death. The appeal to the personality and creativity of Skovoroda in Stratanovsky's poetry is due to the syncretism of their ideas about the world. The search for truth as a way of life of Gregory Skovoroda (and Hasidim), faith in God, essence and existence, hidden behind the real form of sacral content, the divine and created nature of objects and phenomena contribute to the appeal to Skovoroda's personality and heritage. A comparison with Hasidism is emphasized as the depth and comprehensive nature of the philosophical doctrine of the Ukrainian philosopher. All concepts have an equal basis for truth claims, which means disbelief in the possibility of a breakthrough to a transcendental reality in a situation of epistemological impasse.

Keywords

Authors

References