Archpriest Avvakum’s Paradise Lost: the treatise “Sniskanie i Sobranie o Bozhestve i o Tvari” as Interpretation of Biblical History

Abstract

The paper focuses on interpretation of Biblical history in a lesser-known treatise written by Archpriest Avvakum entitled Sniskanie i sobranie o Bozhestve i o tvari. The main issues addressed in the paper are the sources and aims of the treatise, methods and functions of citing, structure and style of the text, the perception of God, the imagery of the world and paradise, the notion of mankind and fall of man, the progress and sense of history, the flow of time, the role of the author and the reader in the text. Central to this polemical treatise is the thesis of the immensity of God, which manifests itself both in spatial and in temporal aspects. The simplicity of Avvakum’s notion of the physical world is considered in the context of the author’s holistic worldview. An emphasis is put on the perception of the creation of Adam as a key moment that predetermined the eschatological plan of history. The paper traces the spatial and temporal imagery of Avvakum and its manifestation inside the text, specifically in the alteration of the past, present, future and infinite planes of reality, which reveals Avvakum’s attitude to the process and meaning of history. Sniskanie i sobranie is a text whose structure is a reverse reflection of the major work of Avvakum, i.e. his Life, where the events of the present are referred to the the sacred history, while in Sniskanie Biblical events are compared to the present. The versatility of Sniskanie i sobranie is demonstrated through its multiple functions, since the text is built as a polemical treatise, narrative and a dialogue. In conclusion, the interpretation of the events of the Book of Genesis by Avvakum is compared to John Milton’s poem Paradise Lost. The works reflected both similar and entirely different problems in connection with the fall of man and the loss of paradise.