Lavr Evgenija Vodolazkina kao roman o vječnoj ljubavi

Abstract

EUGENE VODOLAZKIN’S LAURUS AS A NOVELA ABOUT ETERNAL LOVE Even though in Eugene Vodolazkin’s hybrid novel Laurus, the hagiographic and love storylines are inseparable, this paper focuses mainly on the topic of love, or more precisely, on the concept of eternal love. The paper seeks to demonstrate that in his understanding of love, Vodolazkin is inspired, on the one hand, by Vladimir Solovyov and Nikolai Berdyaev’s Christian-Platonist rendering of Eros, and, on the other, by the Orthodox-theological interpretation of passion as sin. In any case, the semantic field of “love”, as seen by Vodolazkin in his novel, includes passion and compassion and unquestionable permanence. The meaning of the adjective “eternal” in “eternal love” first points to the meaning of the Christian concept of eternity. The meaning of the adjective is further discussed and clarified in the framework of Vodolazkin’s metaphysical assumptions about the irrelevance or absence of time.