Reception of the Biblical Text in the Russian Classical Literature: The Problem of the Russian Classics’ Perception by Contemporary Readers

Abstract

The study examines the Russian classical literature from the position of the Orthodox Christian worldview; it notes the primary role of literature in Russia as a mean of preserving both the Biblical text and the foundations of the Eastern Christian Church. Attention is also paid to a different, false interpretation of the Russian classics’ texts, introduced into literary studies and into people’s consciousness in the 20th century, in the era of the denial of religion and open struggle against it at the state level. The research is based on the texts of such classics as Pushkin, Lermontov, Dostoevsky and Pasternak. The purpose of the study is, firstly, to illustrate by the example of the selected authors the thesis that the Russian classical literature is all-Biblical in its best manifestations, it is full of the Christian archetypes, abounds in direct quotations from the Holy Scriptures; secondly, to make an attempt to trace how, according to the epoch, Biblical motives can be often found in the texts of these writers, and there can be drawn the conclusion
about the special providential significance of the national written language. Thus, the following conclusion is drawn in the study: only through the prism of the Christian teaching it is possible to fully comprehend the content of the Russian literature’s texts.