The Petersburg text and the Petersburg myth of Russian literature in historiosophical works of Maximilian Voloshin

In Mikhail Voloshin's historiosophical works created during the First World War, the Revolution and the Civil War, the spatial triad “Kitezh - Petersburg - Petrograd” clearly stands out. This triad vividly expresses histo-riosophical views of the poet, marks Russia's historical way. The themes and images connected with St. Petersburg are dominant in the triad. Comprehending the imperial period of Russian history, Voloshin refers to themes that are traditional for Russian literature and characteristic of the Petersburg text. The article discusses the main features of the Petersburg text and the Petersburg myth, and also reveals what continuation and historiosophical significance the established literary tradition of portraying St. Petersburg received in Voloshin's works about war and revolution. The author comes to the conclusion that Voloshin, portraying St. Petersburg as a dark, demonic, ghostly city and his Creator as an antichrist and insane Demiurge, is close to the Old Believers' version of the Petersburg text. In line with the same Old Believers' tradition, reference to the image of Kitezh is also natural. Voloshin understands Kitezh as a spiritual category (not a real historical space), as the ideal image that exists in God's plan and which Russia should follow at the end of time in order to accomplish the ultimate goal of the historical process. As a spiritual category Kitezh is opposed to the ghostly and demonic Petersburg, which is the creation of the insane Demiurge, and then the evil, raging Petrograd. According to the author of the article, the antithesis “Kitezh - Petersburg/Petrograd” clearly represents the motif of dark captivity of matter and the light languishing in a dungeon; this is a recurrent motif for Voloshin's works of those years. The opposition of the Face and the mask afflicting it is characteristic of the myth about Sophia (wisdom). Thus, a sophiological plot about the Soul of the World, languishing in captivity, appears. The legend about Kitezh is read in the Sophia key. The opposition of the captivity of matter and the Soul of the World is superimposed on the antithesis “Kitezh - Petersburg/Petrograd”, which is classical for Russian literature. Obviously, Voloshin, portraying the dark side of St. Petersburg, relies not only on Pushkin's “The Bronze Horseman”, but also on other texts of the 19th century. The fogs, haze, artificial and deliberate spirit of St. Petersburg, ghostly “manic” ideas that infect people become a “common place” in Gogol's Petersburg Stories, in Dostoevsky's and Bely's novels, and in other works of Russian literature. It is impossible to establish genetic succession with specific texts because classical works of the Russian literature, in which traditional images of St. Petersburg and its creator were shaped, are introduced as a general background perceived as “one text”.

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