Folk confessor of the caves of Gethsemane Skete: the image of the Monk Barnabas of Gethsemane in the prose of I. S. Shmelev

Abstract

The main goal of the study is to evaluate the image of the Monk Barnabas of Gethsemane in the work of Ivan Sergeyevich Shmelev, as well as the significance of the writer’s personal relationship with elder Barnabas. The work uses the comparative historical method and the method of philological analysis. To achieve this goal, an analysis is made of the biography and works of I. S. Shmelyov, in which the image of the Monk Barnabas of Gethsemane is found, in particular, in the novels The Story of a Love, The Summer of the Lord, The Heavenly Ways, The Pilgrimage (Bogomoliye), the short story A Visit to Elder Barnabas, and others. The most important results of the study show that I. S. Shmelev creates images of the righteous, relying on the aesthetic tradition of Orthodoxy- he depicts saints and the righteous in a radiant and favourable light. An important aesthetic device is the image of a person through the eyes of a child, soon to cross the “angelic” age, who (due to his spiritual purity), looking at people, perceives not only their appearance, but their state of mind: light or dark.