The element of madness and decadence in Russian culture

The article explores Sergey Kurekhin’s hypothesis that an element of madness serves as a characteristic feature of Russian culture. The value of this work is determined by two factors. The conceptualization of madness will lead to a better understanding of Kurekhin and his work, forming a new definition of this concept. The analysis of this concept will open a new perspective on Russian culture and reveal its characteristic features. The aim of the work is to discover the element of madness which, according to Kurekhin’s hypothesis, is implicitly contained in outstanding works of Russian culture. In the course of research, the concept of madness is extrapolated to Russian culture as a whole. The research strategy is based on finding anomalies in the works of Mikhail Glinka and Pyotr Tchaikovsky, explaining the causes and conditions of their emergence.

The research has shown that anomalies in Russian cultural works are caused by the dissonance of form and content due to the combination of two opposing epistemes. The source of these anomalies lies in the difference between constitutive attitudes of Russian and Western cultures. Comparative analysis of worldview foundations has revealed: the way of constituting reality, characteristic of Russian culture, relies on the operation of combination, while Western rationalism relies on distinction. The paradigm of Russian music combines formal application of music theory techniques with meaningful inclusion of melodies from traditional music. This way of structuring musical material is perceived as meaningless in the rational tradition of academic music, therefore the rational paradigm culturally defines Russian works of art as decadent.