Eschatology of the comedy “The government inspector” by N. V. Gogol

The article is devoted to the study of the eschatological context of Gogol's comedy “The Inspector General”. The famous play is put in touch with the prevailing mysticism of the previous Alexandrian epoch, which maintained its influence during the following reign. The role of the works of Western mysticism in shaping an “apocalyptic” perception by contemporaries of the current events of Russian and world history is emphasized. The influence of the religious-fiction works of the German cultist and mystic I. G. Jung-Stilling, popular at that time in Russia, is studied. The significance of Stilling's “prophecies” about the end of the world in 1836 for the creation of the “Inspector General” (completed in the same year) is appraised, as well as the role of Stilling's “Loging for the Fatherland” in formation of the apocalyptic overtones of the comedy and the author's interpretation of its plot in Gogol's later work “The Endgame of the Inspector General”. The problem of understanding the spiritual content of the eschatological aspirations of the first half of the 19th century is posed. Gogol's ambivalent attitude to the theosophical heritage of the German writer (whose works were banned in Russia in 1825) is compared with a positive assessment of Stilling's “prophetic” writings by Gogol's contemporary St. righteous Theodosius of Balti (canonized as a local saint of the Odessa diocese in 2009).