Aesthetics of verbal creativity by M.M. Bakhtin in the light of dogmatic theology

M.M. Bakhtin’s early works “The Philosophy of the Deed”, “The Author and the Hero in the Aesthetic Event”, and “The Problem of Content, Material, and Form” are devoted to the aesthetic problems of literary studies. In their totality they give an idea of aesthetic activity as a process of creation, embodiment and creation of a work of verbal creativity. This article focuses on the central category of the embodiment of fiction form, which is the subject of M.M. Bakhtin’s work “The Problem of Content, Material and Form”. M.M. Bakhtin uses the Chalcedonian formula of the Christian dogma of incarnation to explain the principle of the union of form and content in a work. The two natures of the work, form and content, are connected, according to M.M. Bakhtin, dissimilarly and inseparably. This law of the interaction of the two natures in the work refers to the law of the interaction of the two natures in the person of Jesus Christ. Divinity and humanity in the person of Christ are united according to the Chalcedonian oros dissimilarly, invariably, indivisibly, inseparably. Overcoming the material, mortal flesh of the text, form is united with content. This dissimilar / indivisible unity of the work is called by Bakhtin the form of content or the content of form. The law of the interaction of the two natures in the person of Christ, properly understood, opens the possibility of entering the reality of God-communion, as a consequence of which the deification of man takes place. Similarly, the law of the interaction between form and content, properly understood, allows us to enter inside the aesthetic object, making it possible to communicate with the author. The reader himself becomes a co-creator of the fiction world not by nature, but “by grace” (Eph. 4: 1). Disclosure of the theological content of the terms of Christian dogmatics used by M.M. Bakhtin allows us to look at the aesthetic object as an analog of the plan of the house-building of human salvation.