The Motif of the "Pact with the Devil" In the Artistic Works of T.A. Hoffmann, N.V. Gogol, M.A. Bulgakov

Abstract

The idea of a pact with the devil, originating in medieval theological papers, became new impulses in the literature. The pact with Satan in the works of E. T. A. Hoffman, N. V. Gogol, M. A. Bulgakov received a new reading. These writers, combining theological ideas about magic and witchcraft, ancient superstitions, elements of hagiographic and ascetic literature, folklore tradition create original works in which the conclusion of an agreement with the forces of evil occupies a key place, because with its help the connection between ontological planes „unreal” and “real” is established. The splitting of the monolithic picture of the world and the creation of an ontological binary system is due to the artistic concept of the writers, which has its origins in their worldview. Despite the differences in the historical and national context within which the poetics of the authors under study were formed, they are united by the duality of the picture of the world, in which, reinforced by the tragicomic register, the rejection of socio-political structures, as well as the cultural and aesthetic values of their time was expressed. It is this two-world-structure that forms the originality of the poetics of Hoffman, Gogol, and Bulgakov.