Abstract
The paper analyzes the short story “Obsession” written by Maxim Gorky in the Nizhny Novgorod period of his work, which has been given little attention in philological works. On the one hand, the author himself defined its genre as a Christmas tale; on the other hand, this work cannot be brought into line with Christmas tales and short novels by Gogol and Dostoyevsky, since in Gorky’s story, no miracle occurs. However, this small text still deserves literary scholars’ attention. The short story introduces an interesting paradox of artistic space and time: in outward appearance, the action takes place within one room, on the couch, but the hero’s internal experiences, his conflict with the alter ego carry the reader into the distant past, the Christmas days of the main character’s family, and then the imagination, vision that visited Foma Mironovich come to the fore and become a plot-forming feature. The form in which the story content is presented (obsession, dream, delusion) is typologically similar to the structure of Russian folklore tales telling about encountering the phenomena of the “other world”. The results of the study may be of interest to both literary and cultural scholars.
Highlights
Philosopher and historian, shows in his famous work “Man in the Face of Death” (1977) how human attitude towards death was changing in different periods of history
Death is a priori incomprehensible; a number of works on apophaticism of death can be found in modern Russian humanitaristics – by Varava (2013), Dudareva (2019)
Apophaticism is an ancient notion originally derived from theological discourse; it is associated with the concept of comprehending God through denial of any predicates as knowingly false
Summary
Philosophers and culturologists point out that the issues relating to illness and death should be interwoven with the concept of life. In this regard, a new book by a German historian Buller (2019), as well as the articles in the magazine “Man” covering coronavirus infection (Asmolov, 2020), are of specific interest. A new book by a German historian Buller (2019), as well as the articles in the magazine “Man” covering coronavirus infection (Asmolov, 2020), are of specific interest At this point, we must immediately give a definition of the concept of apophaticism. The apophaticism of the work is rooted in the incomprehensible nature of the art cosmos of culture
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