Article

Name: The metaphysical world in the consciousness of the characters of a novel «The Psalm» by F. Gorenstein

Authors: A. I. Pantuhina

Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russian Federation

In the section Study of literature

Abstract: The paper considers the effect of the metaphysical, divine world on the historical context and a representation of a human within this context based on «The Psalm», a novel by F. Gorenstein. The transcendental world is not described in the novel, but there is certain evidence of its ontological status. First, it is the divine messenger Dan – the Antichrist who is sent to Russia to correct the false course of the 20th-century history. Furthermore, Dan’s and narrator’s rhetoric correlates the conflicts and characters portrayed in the novel with the Biblical ones; it is also an indication of the metaphysical world. Another evidence is the characters’ interaction with the metaphysical world through feeling and understanding of the divine in the form of irrational (in an altered state of consciousness – subsumed by Eros, fear or crying) and rational (through text and reflections) knowledge. The feeling of the metaphysical world is depicted in situations of irrational perception of the higher world as an awareness of own sinfulness, in the ecstatic situations of crying, fear, eros inherent to women, children and men who chose the false way of existence: Maria, Annushka, Vera, Ivolgin, Vasya. The understanding of the metaphysical foundations of being through the Biblical text is represented in the story of Andrew, Dan’s son, and is further confirmed by feeling, intuition. The combination of feeling and understanding belongs to two characters in the novel – Pelagia and Dan, connected with metaphysical being: Dan is an envoy, and Pelagia is a prophetess. The generational criterion in the interpretation of character images is important as a reflection of the historical drift: the change of paradigm in public consciousness in the second half of the twentieth century, the return of people to the search for oversocial values. The younger generation in the novel is, on the one hand, the children of the sinners, victims of social ideas (Maria, Vera, Ivolgin), on the other hand, the children of Jews who knew the Old Testament (Vasya and Andrew are Dan’s children, Saveliy is a Jew, the Ivolgin’s son). However, their sense of kin is incomplete or distorted by the superiority of the national. The children do not atone the guilt of their ancestors (mothers, fathers and grandfathers). They are punished for their sins. The way to God for those characters is not Dan’s influence; it is an independent way that connected Andrew, Saveliy with Dan and Pelageya. Thus, the situation of contact with the metaphysical world, as well as the creation of a righteous family in the plot of the novel (Pelageya, her son from Dan, Andrew), confirms the immanence of the divine in a man and indicates that the historical process may take the path of redemption following the disasters (executions) of the 20th century that are seen as an aftermath of demiurgic activity of the humanity.

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