Article

Name: Philosophy and Poetics of the four elements in the story «Carriage» by Nikolai Gogol: absence and its sense

Authors: Tretyakov Evgeniy Olegovich

Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russian Federation

In the section Study of literature

Abstract: The short story «Carriage» by Nikolai Gogol is devoted to a person’s asserting himself as man in the abstract space of social interactions. Absurd social guidelines intersect with the Word as the primary unrealized potency. This eventually leads to a deformation of reality. Undoubtedly, this «cosmogony in reverse» updates with particular urgency the philosophy and poetics of the elements of the universe, and «the nuclear-free» existence of the four-element hemisphere becomes the basis of the story. Paradoxically, the earth loses its firmness and solidity, – its categorial attributes, – and turns into mud; smoke is generated by emptiness rather than by fire; respiration occurs in the absence of air; water pours, but there is no current. The elements that in their interaction embody the very arrangement of existence are deprived of their fundamental, essential attributes, and thereby reveal the fictitiousness as the substantial basis of human life and the existence of the world as a whole. The embodiment of all this is a carriage that does not go anywhere.

Keywords: nikolai gogol, «carriage», four elements, mud, «smoke without fire», «respiration without air», «airless space», «pouring water», word-logos, social absurdity

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