The Forgiving Heart: The Images of Righteous People in F. M. Dostoyevsky’s Creative Work and St Francis of Assisi

• Main Author: Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Medvedev
• Format: Article
• Language: Russian
• Published: Ural Federal University Press 2015-07-01
• Series: Известия Уральского федерального университета. Серия 2: Гуманитарные науки
• Subjects: Достоевский; образ праведника; образы творения и животных; «большое время»; христианская традиция; «милующее сердце»; св. Франциск Ассизский; христианские концепты; экфрасис.
• Online Access: https://journals.urfu.ru/index.php/Izvestia2/article/view/1520

The images of righteous people in their love for creation in F. M. Dostoyevsky’s work (Prince Myshkin, Makar Ivanovich, Markel, Zosima) are considered in the minor time (the writer’s epoch) and the major time (M. M. Bakhtin) through the perspective of the early Christian tradition of the forgiving heart of all the living(St Isaac Sirin) represented both in its Orthodox Christian (St Sergius of Radonezh) and Catholic (St Francis of Assisi) versions. It is substantiated that this old Christian tradition is explicitly present in Dostoyevsky’s works in the form of quotations and allusions to biblical and hagiographic sources and indirectly – in the form of key Christian concepts (compassion, burning heart, observation, mystery, apophatics, hesychia, splendour, sightliness, joy, tenderness, paradise, etc.). In Dostoyevsky’s images of righteous people there are some images, motifs and ekphrasis making the Christ-like characters kindred to St Francis.