The Image of a Vicious Circle in Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin’s Art World

Abstract

The article examines the image-symbol of a vicious circle in the work of the social satirist M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. This image, plays an important role in creating a picture of the Russian national world. The circle embodies integrity, continuity, initial perfection and – hopelessness, fate, dead end. In the works of the satirist, the image-symbol of a vicious circle carries the meaning of stagnation, lifelessness, denial of the future, mysterious predestination. With regard to the social sphere, this image-symbol was used in the 19th century. French socialist-utopian Charles Fourier in his work “The New Economic and Societal World, or the Invention of a Method of Attractive and Naturally Appropriate Labor Distributed in Series of Passions”, a representative of the radical democratic wing in Russian journalism D. I. Pisarev (article “Realists”). In the works of Saltykov-Shchedrin, the idea of avicious circle appears repeatedly. The satire “The History of a City” testifies that the despotic forms of government, replacing one another, the power of the reactionary dark forces are a kind of fate for the country and the people. The existence of representatives of the local nobility, the popular masses, moves in a vicious circle, marked by stagnation, hopelessness, emptiness, and lack of hope for the future. The same can be said about the situation in the Russian outback: there only meaningless repetitions of events, the renewal of identical phenomena are possible. The conservative-protective desire to mythologize history, an apology for absolutism, is fraught with the danger of distorting the meaning of history, its driving forces, denying the centuries-old trials that have befallen the country and the people. For Saltykov-Shchedrin, the image of a vicious circle is associated with the riddle of Russian national destiny, which he has been trying to comprehend over the years. Striving for the ideal of social harmony, overcoming the vicious circle of predetermination for the enlightener, moralist was associated with both social transformations and moral renewal of the individual, with the awakening of Shame, Conscience and Truth in an individual and in the whole society, with their spiritual transformation, which gives an opportunity to make a breakthrough, initiate a purposeful life-giving movement forward.