Eschatological Aspects of Orthodox Poetics. The Novel F. M. Dostoevsky ‘Demons’

Abstract

Orthodox poetics is a set of means to express the Orthodox creed in the imagery of a literary work. Its foundations lie in the «Word of Law and Grace» (the XIth century), but it received its highest development in the works of the Orthodox writers of the XIXth century, among whom a special place belongs to F. M. Dostoevsky. The artistic means he found allow him to describe the processes taking place in the spiritual world of man and society. In the writer’s works, the question of personal salvation is inextricably linked with the question of the historical fate of Russia. The novel «Demons» (1872) is a striking example: an immediate occasion for writing it was the crime committed by the revolutionary group headed by Nechaev. Dostoevsky considers the deepening apostasy of the Russian intelligentsia to be the main reason for it, being a consequence of pride, egoism and hedonism. The writer shows how the desire to satiate passions destroys the image of God in man. After that, the resulting spiritual emptiness is filled with evil, and man gradually acquires the features of the antichrist, whose appearance is predicted by the Holy Scriptures. First of all, this applies to the images of Stavrogin and Peter Verkhovensky - in each of them there are features attributed to the antichrist: pride, anger, inability to love, etc., but in none of them they are completely fulfilled. Thus Dostoevsky warns us that if the destruction of the Russian society spiritual consciousness is not timely stopped, these traits can be embodied in one person.