Творец и персонаж в романе Л. М. Леонова «Вор»

Проблема взаимоотношений творца и творения, автора и персонажа является одной из центральных в романе Л. М. Леонова «Вор». «Стержень» романа – размышление, формально разделенное на множество спорящих друг с другом точек зрения, о правомерности творения вступать в равный диалог с Творцом, о тех границах, которые не сможет переступить даже самый искусный автор, о правоте, которой обладает каждая из спорящих сторо

The Angelology of the Explanatory Palaea and the Problem of Theodicy

The article was submitted on 18.05.2017.The Explanatory Palaea (Rus. Tolkovaya Paleya) is now known to us in the form of over 15 texts dating back to between the 14th and the 17th centuries. It provides a full description of cosmogenesis, the creation of Adam, the structure of the human body, the interaction between soul and body, and the forms of spiritual substances. It also contains natural scientific representations of physical phenomena. Together with the explanation of ontological problems, it describes the structure of the universe, the earth, and the next world. Like the Biblical books of the Old and New Testament, the Explanatory Palaea establishes the principal worldview to be found in medieval Russian texts. The descriptions in it are accompanied by polemics and invectives against the Jews, who refused to accept the main principles of Christian doctrine, pagans, and Muslims. The aforementioned makes it possible to view the Explanatory Palaea as a historic ancient Russian manuscript, truly outstanding due to its absolutely unique worldview and its incomparable religious, philosophical, and scientific content. Of special interest is the depiction of the disruption of noumenal beings and the emergence of the binary opposition between good and evil as a result of the fall of the archistrategos of the tenth angelic order. The Genesis catastrophe results in the emergence of evil, a phenomenon originally not included in the divine conception of the creation of the world.Толковая Палея дошла до нас более чем в 15 списках XIV–XVII вв. В ней подробно описаны космогенез, сотворение Адама и устройство человеческого организма, взаимодействие души и тела, формы духовных сущностей, даны естественнонаучные трактовки физических явлений. Наряду с толкованием онтологических проблем, описаны устройство вселенной, устроение земли и топосы иного мира. Как и библейские книги Ветхого и Нового Заветов, Палея считается произведением мировоззренчески установочным и ключевым в иерархии памятников средневековой русской письменности. Описательные моменты сопровождаются в памятнике полемическими толкованиями и инвективами против иудеев, не принявших основные положения доктрины христианства, а также полемическими выпадами против язычников и магометан. Все это позволяет рассматривать Толковую Палею как памятник древнерусской мысли, который со стороны его идейно-мировоззренческого, религиозно-философского и естественнонаучного содержания имеет совершенно особое значение среди памятников письменности Древней Руси. Особый интерес представляет изображение раскола ноуменальных сущностей и появление бинарных оппозиций добра и зла в результате падения Архистратига десятого ангельского чина. Результатом бытийственной катастрофы становится появление зла как явления, не заложенного в Божественную концепцию творения мира.This article was prepared with the financial support of the Russian Humanities Foundation (RHF). Project № 16-04-00523

Imaging Evil in the First Chapters of Genesis: Texts behind the Images in Eastern Orthodox Art

Satan’s interference in the events described in the first chapters of the book of Genesis and in the life of the protoplasts is not mentioned at all in the biblical text. This happens, however, in pseudo-canonical texts. The article is a short survey on the apocryphal accounts that mention Satan and their influence on art. The main focus is put on the inclusion of the image of Satan behind Cain’s figure in a number of depictions of the scene The Murder of Abel in the Russian art of the 16th and 17th centuries. The possible links between this visual motif with several literary sources is examined, among them the Short and the Explanatory Palaea, the Tale of Bygone Years (Povest’ vremennykh let or Primary Chronicle), Russian recensions of the apocryphon The Sea of Tiberias, and of The Revelation of Pseudo-Methodius of Patara. In addition, some instances of the same visual decision in Balkan art are pointed out and their connection to Russian models is underlined

The Role of the Bible in the Formation of Philosophical Thought in Kievan Rus’ (as Exemplified by Ilarion of Kiev, Kliment Smolatič, and Kirill of Turov)

The article is an attempt to critically evaluate the manifestations of the philosophical culture sprouting in Rus’. With the baptism in the Byzantine Rite, Rus’ in the 10th century joined the family of Christian nations and defined the future direction of her own cultural development. The Middle Ages in Rus’ were eminently theocentric. Literature (which was mostly translated from the Greek in Bulgarian monasteries) had a religious character. Sacral content, assimilated in Rus’ mainly through the Old Church Slavonic (due to the scarce knowledge of Greek) had a decisive influence on formation of the philosophical worldview of Rus’ intellectual elite. The Bible thus became the main reference framework for the first Rus’ thinkers-philosophers: Ilarion of Kiev († 1055), Kirill of Turov († 1183) and Kliment Smolatič († 1164). Ilarion of Kiev, the first metropolitan of the Kievan Rus’ in his rhetoric work (which postulated the superiority of the New Testament to the Old) expressed a philosophical thesis of the equality of all Christian nations before God. Kliment Smolatič, the second metropolitan of Rus’, in his Letter to Presbyter Foma, defended the allegorical method of interpretating the Bible. Kirill of Turov, in his turn, in his Parable of the human soul and body allegorically tried to answer the question about the relationship of the body and the soul. For the Rus’ thinkers the content of the Bible served as a pretext for philosophical reflection, e.g. on the role of man in the universe, on the nature of reality, on the relation between matter and spirit. In their works we find the beginnings of the theory of knowledge, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics