A spiritualist perspective on the novel "The Evening Sacrifice" by Pyotr Boborykin

Abstract

The  relevance  of  the  work  is  related  to  the  promising  direction  of  studying  the  influence  of  non-classical  theologies  on  the  poetics  of  literary  texts  of  the  post-Romantic  period.  The  article  examines the spiritual poetics of P.D. Boborykin's novel "The Evening Sacrifice". The cultural-historical method allows us to determine the place of spiritual views and practices in the culture and literature of the 19th century, in the consciousness of society and the authors of literary texts. The article analyses the  peculiarities  of  the  representation  of  members  of  the  spiritualist  movement  in  P.D.  Boborykin's novel  "The  Evening  Sacrifice".  The  comparative  method  is  used  to  compare  the  representation  of  spiritualists  in  Boborykin’s  novel  with  that  of  his  contemporaries  –  I.S.  Turgenev,  L.N.  Tolstoy,  F.M.  Dostoevsky.  If  for  Turgenev  and  Tolstoy,  the  fascination  with  spiritualism  is  another  sign  of  the idleness and meaninglessness of the aristocracy's life (and in Tolstoy's case, it is also an occasion to show  the  superiority  of  peasants  over  it),  then  for  Dostoevsky,  spiritualism  reveals  the  peculiarities  of  the  relationship  between  faith  and  fact  for  a  person,  which  allowed  him  to  deduce  the  concept  of  "true  realist" Alyosha in “The Brothers Karamazov”, and for Boborykin it is an alternative value system that  allows  one  to  reconsider  their  moral  and  intellectual  views  by  comparing  them  with  it.  The  revealed  differences allow us to establish the individual characteristics of the views of each of the selected authors. The semiotic method allows us to trace the features of the construction of the poetics of literary texts and the role that spiritualism plays in it. Allan Kardec's religious and philosophical views, which include faith in the evolution of the soul through a series of reincarnations, which can be achieved under the guidance of helping souls of a higher level of development, turn out to be a way of organising the structure of P.D. Boborykin's novel "The Evening Sacrifice", the basis for the dynamics of its plot and the connection of characters. Spiritualism also plays a role in the specifics of the novel's gender issues, which is confirmed by the author's out-of-text testimonies. The results of the research can be applied in the study of the history of Russian literature and the sociology of religion.