Bible text in Psalm by F. Gorenstein

In the article about F. Gorenstein's novel Psalm (1975) ways of the address of the author to the Bible text are analyzed as a) the Bible reality enters the novel's world (the Bible character will introduce the historical reality of the Soviet Russia of the 1930-60s; characters are correlated to the families of the Bible characters); b) the narrative discourse is used as a basis of poetics of narration (mythologizing parable narration) about real events when destinies of specific characters serve as manifestation of the destiny of the nation; two ways of projection of the Bible text on a narration about historical reality are shown; c) the Bible text enters the text of the novel not only for reflection of the characters addressing to the Sacred text, but also as an element defining plot situations; d) the Bible text is the author's frame text (epigraphs, names of characters, rhetorical fragments). The main subject citing the Bible is the author-storyteller accompanying the title by a subtitle appealing to the Old Testament: "Psalm. Novel-Reflection about Four Executions of the Lord." The double genre index is accented by the primacy of rhetorical discourse over narration; the author's appeal to the Bible when depicting life on Earth does not only illustrate the judgments stated in the Bible by examples of human destinies (parables), but also proves the true character of the primordial Bible text distorted in the history of the Jewish people and the peoples who followed the Testament, but failed to execute it. The Bible text is treated as a special text, on the one hand, preserving the facts of the real history perceived as continuous, on the other hand, preserving the myth of the Testament, of the Laws of existence the Creator revealed to the prophets. The Bible text is created by people (who wrote down the revelations of God given to the Chosen Prophets), but stores unconditional knowledge of the past and future, therefore, it is used as a criterion of testing the present, trial over the human history. In the novel the most Ancient Prophets (Amos) who did not leave texts, but their word is transferred by tradition, and Great Prophets (Moses who translated the Law, Isaiah and Second Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, predicted Messiah and anti-Messiah) are mainly quoted; there are quotes of Ezra, Nehemiah, Elias; Minor Prophets are quoted in several cases. In the article the author's idea of the novel is proved: a need to return to the original text of the Bible (to the Tanakh, the Old Testament) which is not altered by interpreters, to restore the maternal basis of the Christianity which arose, in Gorenstein's logic, not as rejecting, but returning to the Law.

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