Traditions of franciscanism and pilgrimage in the life and work of A. Dobrolyubov

Abstract

The fate and personality of Alexander Dobrolyubov gave rise to a kind of Dobrolyubov myth about the eternal wanderer in the culture of the Russian Silver Age and in many ways unfairly obscured his literary work. The article traces the influence of Francis of Assisi on Dobrolyubov's own life-creating strategy and his contemporaries' perception of him as a «Russian Francis. The author considers the peculiarities of artistic interpretation of the whole complex of motifs associated with the fate and personality of the Italian saint in the last collection of Dobrolyubov's works, From the Book Invisible (1905). The author analyzes the image of the pilgrim, glorification (preaching) of the poor, hermit’s life and the unity of man and wildlife, plants and the elements of nature in the context of teachings of St. Francis and the Russian franciscanism of the modernist era; the features of their modernist reception are traced in Dobrolyubov’s works written after his «departure». On the other hand, the author reveals evidence that the poet implements the individual author's interpretation of the characteristic Russian cultural and historical phenomenon of pilgrimage (real, metaphysical and spiritual), which was reflected, for example, in N. S. Leskov’s works, and philosophically interpreted in science and criticism of the early 20th century (V. Rozanov, N. Berdyaev, etc.). The author suggests that the poet was influenced by an anonymous work of Russian religious literature «A Pilgrim's Confessional Stories to his Spiritual Father». As a result, the author concludes that the poet creates a modern variation of the Franciscan image of the «simple man» and the divine man, possessing the gift of communication with nature, who combines the features of an Italian ascetic preacher with the type of a Russian pilgrim-god-seeker.