The name “Luke” in Russian literature: poetics of contrast

Poetics of the name “Luke” in Russian literature is determined by a contrast combination of meanings: “bearing light”, and first of all this is the light of divine truth, and “sly”, “lying”, “truth-distorting”. The first meaning originates from Luke the Evangelist, onto whom the main character of the Bunun’s story “The Fowls of the Air” is focused. Luke in terms of “distorting the truth” is represented by characters from A. Kantemir’s and M. Gorky’s works (a poetic satire “On those who blame the learnings. To my mind” and a play “The lower depth”, respectively). The purpose of this research is to reveal identify the methods of artistic realization of the contrasting meanings of the name “Luke” in the works of these authors (the method of appealing to the higher truths, the method of substitution, the method of falsification and discrediting the higher truths, the motif of healing, etc.). Novelty of the research consists in elucidating the artistic potential of the name “Luke”, in which spiritual and moral priorities of national literature are expressed in a concentrated form. In this research, the relationship between the literature works of different epochs has been established for the first time on the bases of common approaches to formation of the name “Luke” meaning. The main content of the article is represented by analysis of literature works, in which the name “Luke” functions as a center of their ideas’ substance, problematics, and genre-stylistic features. The main issue considered in the present study is the way to form the meaning of the name “Luke” that determined the artistic potential of this name. The results of the study showed that the name “Luke” has provided Russian writers with an opportunity to artistically comprehend a man via his ability / inability to conform to high spiritual and moral truths, which they appealed to, to pay own life for them in order to have the right to heal body and soul, as did Luke the Evangelist.