The Heavenly City and the Earthly City in the Writings of Hryhorij Skovoroda

Abstract

The article deals with the embodiment of images of the Heavenly City (the City of God) and the earthly city in poetry, philosophical treatises and dialogues of Hryhorij Skovoroda. The writer is said to be one of the last great authors of the Baroque epoch; consequently, he combined the ideas of the precursors and simultaneously influenced on the next generations in Ukrainian literature. The dualistic model of the city in the writings of Skovoroda is analyzed through the ancient and patristic pretexts. The baroque transformation of urban images and metaphors of biblical origin is taken into account. The author of the paper revises the purpose and artistic techniques used by Skovoroda for depicting a number of real and ideal cities. The research proves that the baroque poet treats the city both as a geographical object and as a metaphor, embraced for illustrating his ethical and theological ideas. Special attention is devoted to the contaminated images of the city and the garden, which was a common feature for the baroque literature. The concept of the Heavenly City is worth analyzing through the comparison with other writers, especially Antonjy Radyvylovskyj and Dymytrij Tuptalo. The analyzes of the principles of spatial representation and the usage of words with the semantics of space in the old Ukrainian dictionaries contributes to better understanding of the concept of city at that time. Moreover, a change in the views by researchers of Skovoroda in 19th – 21th century, which are considered in the paper, sheds light on the different sides of interpretation: from the lack of consistency and distancing from his contemporaries to the explanation of the Skovoroda’s philosophy by the socio-historical situation. The results of the study provide clues to the representation of the Heavenly and the earthly cities: on one hand, it is closely related with the baroque tendency to combine the unconnected concepts and depict the world as a coexistence of visible and invisible. At the same time, the urban images of Skovoroda should be considered in conjunction with his philosophical ideas about the macrocosm, the microcosm and the symbolic world of the Bible, which explains his dissimilarity to the other versions of baroque «urban text».