Time to rehabilitate. A new reading of Nikolai Gogol

Abstract

The article raises the problem of adequate understanding of the heritage of Nikolai Gogol. With regard to Nikolai Gogol’s works, the main problems of interpretation of the artistic image are analysed. The principles of text interpretation developed during the theological interpretation of the gospel parables in patristic practice, and certain provisions of the modern theory of the symbol of Aleksei Losev are formulated as basic ones. It is emphasised that the understanding of the ambiguity of the image does not contradict the idea of the presence in the work of art of the target “vector of meaning”, which expresses the author’s creative volitional intentions. In the scientific comprehension of the author’s intention, an important heuristic potential of a preliminary comprehensive study of the writer’s spiritual biography is noted. Almost a century-long dominance of radical atheistic ideology in Nikolai Gogol’s interpretations was reflected in the methodological helplessness and incompetence of science in understanding the legacy of that Christian artist. The process of scientific understanding of the artistic world of Nikolai Gogol, the development of objective criteria and methods of research is considered in the related context of important social processes of recent decades which are – wehope – the restoration of justice in the religious and legal spheres, the rehabilitation of numerous victims of previous political repression, the ongoing canonisation of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.