“The Way to the Temple...”: How the Author and Characters See It (Оn the Material of V. Rasputin's Prose)

Abstract

The article deals with the most important problems of V. Rasputin's prose, namely the problems of faith, righteousness, and motherland. It is shown that the Old Believer exile serves as the most important reference point for the writer. The prose of the artist is given through the prism of the original interpretation of the symbols of Orthodox Christianity, first of all, the image of the temple. In early art, Russia was understood and viewed as a single Church; in later works, the idea of the temple is associated with Russia of the future, that it retreated, "as partisans into the forests, into its millennium". In Rasputin's works, images of an island, a tree, a boat, a light, a house/casket, a grave serve as the temple's counterparts, around which a new existence is gradually being built up, unified, faithful to Orthodox Christianity not according to the rite, but according to the spirit and courage of non-reconciliation, the path of which resonates with the laws of the living universe (nature as a temple).