“Good and Evil are Like Grave Dust…”: the Image of Artistic Reality in the Poem by A. A. Fet

Abstract

The article is devoted to one of the “eternal” themes and problems of Russian literature and philosophy ‒ the problem of good and evil. The relevance of the study of the problem of good and evil is determined by some simplified consideration of this topic at school and university. Hence, the purpose of the undertaken research is to reveal the ethical and spiritual aspects of the designated problem through the prism of the work by A. A. Fet, to show the commonality of the artistic and philosophical searches of Russian thinkers of the 19th–20th centuries in this area. On the basis of the research undertaken in the article, which was carried out using the historical-philosophical, comparative, hermeneutic and descriptive methods of studying, the available sources on this issue, as well as the method of reconstruction and the method of literary analysis of the main poetic images and ideas of the poem in question, the author showed the peculiarity of recreating the poet of artistic reality in the analyzed poem, which served as the basis for the poetic solution of the “eternal” theme. The article notes that the readers are presented with the Christian picture of the world and the Christian understanding of the problem of good and evil, with its highlighting of the moral and spiritual aspects. The author of the article, referring to the poem by A. A. Fet as an illustration, shows, on the one hand, the unequal moral and spiritual aspects of the problem of good and evil, and on the other hand, their relationship. The article concludes that the ability to distinguish between the moral and spiritual aspects of this problem allows one to comprehend the issue of good and evil more deeply, to get away from its stereotypical dialectical consideration in the context of the idea of free choice. An example of such a deep disclosure of the ethical and philosophical problem in an artistic context can serve, according to the author, a poem by A. A. Fet, consonant with the spiritual quest of Russian religious philosophers of the 19th–20th centuries.