DOSTOYEVSKY'S POETIC ANTHROPOLOGY
Dostoyevsky proposed a new conception of Man in the world literature. Critics have described such psychological discoveries of the writer as irrationalism, dualism, and underground. Many aspects of his Christian anthropology remained beyond the attention of the researchers. In his conception of Man...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | Russian |
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Petrozavodsk State University
2013-11-01
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| Series: | Problemy Istoričeskoj Poètiki |
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| Online Access: | http://poetica.pro/files/redaktor_pdf/1431455945.pdf |
| Summary: | Dostoyevsky proposed a new conception of Man in the world literature. Critics have described such psychological discoveries of the writer as irrationalism, dualism, and underground. Many aspects of his Christian anthropology remained beyond the attention of the researchers. In his conception of Man there are such essential concepts as the common pseudo-human (obshchechelovek) and the panhuman (vsechelovek). The common pseudo-human is a special type of a Russian man that appeared after the reforms of Peter the Great. Unlike the British, the Germans, the French, who maintain their nationality, the Russian “common pseudo-human” strives to be anyone but Russian. Being a common pseudo-human is to be an abstract European without roots and soil. Vsechelovek is a rare word in the Russian language. Nikolai Danilevsky used this word with a capital letter to call Christ (1869). Dostoyevsky used the word pan-human without capitalization to denote a perfect Christian. It expressed the inner sense of his Pushkin Memorial speech. It was Dostoyevsky who introduced the word panhuman in Russian literature and philosophy. Konstantin Leontiev did not understand the meaning of this word. He represented “the terrible, in his opinion, pan-human” as a common pseudo-human, European, liberal, and cosmopolitan. This mistaken substitution (obshchechelovek instead of vsechelovek) is typical for Russian literary and philosophical criticism of the 20th century. For Dostoevsky, each person carries the image of God. The verbs obrazit' (to restore the image) and obozhit' (to divinize) imply the restoration of the image of God and thereby the humanization of a person. To be Russian is to become pan-human (vsechelovek), Christian. Dostoyevsky’s hero carries all possible completeness of the Creator and the Creation. |
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| ISSN: | 1026-9479 1026-9479 |