CRITICAL DISCOURSE ABOUT GOGOL IN THE “BOGOSLOVSKIY VESTNIK” OF THE BEGINNING OF THE XX CENTURY

Introduction. The Orthodox periodicals of the era of the turn of the 19th – 20th centuries, being an integral part of domestic journalism, contain a large corpus of publications dedicated to domestic and foreign writers, incl. N. V. Gogol.Turning to the critical discourse about Gogol, presented on the pages of pre-revolutionary church journals, will clarify the issue of the perception of the personality and work of the writer in scientific and theological circles, and will also help build a holistic picture of Gogol’s reception in criticism of the frontier era.The purpose of the article is to study the critical reception of the personality and creativity of N. V. Gogol in church academic periodicals of the early 20th century.Material and methods. The material of the study was the articles of the “Bogoslovskiy vestnik” of the late 19th – early 20th century, dedicated to Gogol, as well as publications of various genres containing reflections or background references to Gogol and his works. Journal materials are analyzed in the historical and literary aspect, and are also considered from the standpoint of receptive aesthetics and the sociology of literature.Results and discussion. Based on the results of the study, a conclusion was made about the specifics of Gogol’s critical reception in the journal of the Moscow Theological Academy, the chronology of which covers about 17 years. The most active phase of the perception of Gogol’s personality and work in the “Bogoslovskiy vestnik” falls on the period of his anniversaries in 1902 and 1909, when literary critical studies of teachers and professors of the Academy dedicated to him were published, as well as materials from a literary evening dedicated to the centenary of the birth of the writer. Outside of Gogol’s anniversaries, critical discourse about the writer includes articles on scientific and theological issues, but containing reflections on the writer’s religious outlook and his artistic work, as well as materials (letters, memoirs etc.) in which there are only brief mentions of the writer. The mechanisms of Gogol’s critical reception in “Bogoslovskiy vestnik” are determined by the desire to comprehend the “mysterious personality” of the writer, his “complex inner world”, as well as to evaluate his contribution to the formation of Russian religious culture.Conclusion. The image of Gogol, presented on the pages of the “Bogoslovskiy vestnik”, reflects the contradictions in the perception of his personality and work, which are generally characteristic of literary criticism at the turn of the century, when the writer either continued to be accused, calling him an “apostle of ignorance” and a reactionary, or defended, seeing in him an ascetic artist and a serious thinker.

N. V. Gogol, critical reception, “Bogoslovskiy vestnik”, church periodicals, writer’s anniversary, literary reputation, spiritual prose, the concept of “two Gogols”