Christian values in Vilhelm Kyukhelbekker's early prose

This article examines Vilhelm Kyukhelbekker's narrative prose of the first half of the 1820s. For the analysis we have chosen the most significant works of this period — his book of travel notes The Journey and the novel Ado. The study reveals the writer's attitude to Christianity and Christian values in his early period of work. In this research the axiological approach is used, as well as the methods of historical, typological, structural and semiotic study of literary texts. Studying The Journey, we performed a detailed analysis of the author's letters which describe the paintings by the artists of Flemish and Dutch schools, as well as German and Italian painters of the 17th and 18th centuries exhibited in the Dresden gallery. The writer prefers the paintings of biblical subjects to those of naturalistic everyday scenes. He pays special attention to the evangelical themes. He is attracted by Christ the child's divine nature and the heavenly purity, high humility of the Mother of God's image, and the fact that St. Sebastian is portrayed as joyfully suffering for Christ. Historical events of the novel Ado date back to the time of the Baltic peoples' forced Christianization by the Order of the Brothers of the Sword. Baltic peoples are trying to keep the faith of their ancestors and rebel against the cruel governor of the Order. The novel focuses particularly on one knight, Michael, who stood up for the oppressed and like Archangel Michael found himself on the cutting edge of Good and Evil. This character of the novel is connected with the idea of Christian sacrificial love and eternal spiritual life, which was very important for Kyukhelbekker. We concluded that even in his early prose Kyukhelbekker expressed the main spiritual and moral values of Christianity.