Apophatic of sleep in A. Grin’s story “Struggle with Death”: ontological and cultural aspects

Subject of the article: apophatic of sleep. The article examines how the apophatic of culture is implemented through a literary work, namely, it considers the apophatic side of the phenomenon of sleep. Object of the article: A. Grin’s early story “Struggle with Death”. If researchers refer to this text, they consider it only immanently, in the context of all the works by the writer. However, this story is of particular value in the cultural-philosophical understanding of the phenomenon of sleep and death in the Russian version of logocentrism, since in this story sleep is a condition for the character’s recovery, the way out of the morbial state. Research methodology: a holistic analysis of a literary text in the ontohermeneutic way with the use of a semantic research method. Research results: the identification of the apophatic nature of sleep in Grin’s story. Sleep is endowed with ontological properties and meaning-generating functions. The appeal to philosophical reflections on the axiological status of sleep by the German philosopher Rudolf Steiner, whose ideas were shared by the representatives of the Silver Age, especially Maximilian Voloshin, is also productive, since the anthroposophist highlights the apophatic side of sleep associated with day and night human consciousness.