THE RUSSIAN LITERATURE OF THE 18th CENTURY: BETWEEN THE RATIO OF ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE ORTHODOX TRADITION

The article reviews the relationship between the rationalism, inherent in the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century, and the Russian Orthodox traditon. The author raises the question whether it is true that in the Russian literature of the 18th century the Old Testament’s God (and, therefore, the Law) prevails, as it was postulated by Y. Lotman and other researchers, or whether the Old Testament texts were seen by Russian writers through the perspective of New Testament’s Grace due to such dominant concepts of the Russian culture as sobornost, paskhalnost, and Christocentrism. Thus, in the Russian Orthodox tradition the Psalter does not represent the God of the Old Testament, rather it shows the Christianized understanding of the God in the New Testament. In the cultural unconscious mind of a Russian person, which had a strong influence on the individual creative work of our poets, the Psalter is an integral part of the very Orthodox Сhurch, the Orthodox divine service. When analyzing the versification of psalms by Russian poets of the 18th century, one should not ignore this situation. This article demonstrates the influence of the Orthodox tradition on the poetics of a fable as one of the most ancient genres. The author reconstructs the cultural context of the last decade of the 20th century and outlines new perspectives in the study of a transition period between the Russian Middle Ages and the early modern period.