Ещё раз о пророческой миссии русского писателя (на материале романа Ю.В. Бондарева «Берег»)

Abstract

We conduct continuous poetical and philosophical research on the work of Y.V. Bondarev (1924–2020), the greatest Russian Soviet prose writer and a participant in the Great Patriotic War. Based on the study of the novel “The Shore” (1975) and the writer’s journalistic statements of the mid-1970s of the 20th century, within the framework of cultural-axiological paradigm, we attempt to comprehend one of the central dialogues between representatives of the creative intellectuals of Russia and West. The conversation between Russian Soviet writer Nikitin, a former front-line soldier who visited the German city of Hamburg 26 years after the war, and the German journalist and publisher Dietzman is read as a kind of philosophical quintessence of both this novel and, possibly, the writer’s work as a whole. The conflict between Russia and West is seen by Y.V. Bondarev in the most complex metaphysical paradigm of the struggle of largely opposite cultural foundations, despite the common Christian basis. We state the complexity, multidimensionality, polyphonism of the Bondarev type of artistic expression, its ascent to the traditions of Russian literary classics and, above all, in this case to the work of F.M. Dostoevsky. We note the key, culminating significance of this dialogue-reflection undertaken in the chapter of the second chapter of the third part “Nostalgia” by Dietzman and Nikitin, which has some obvious similarities with the author both for the further development of latter’s character in the poetical and philosophical space of novel, and for its artistic “completion” in work finale. We comprehend the relevance of Bondarev’s metaphysical constants in the first quarter of the 21st century, prophetically written out about half a century ago.