Kamennoostrovsky cycle of Alexander Pushkin as Easter text: mimesis, paraphrasis, catharsis. Article 2

The article is the second part of a dilogy devoted to the interpretation of Pushkin’s Kamennoostrovsky cycle. Pushkin's last cycle is a kind of testament of the poet. Essentially, as already noted in scientific literature, this “testament” has not yet been adequately read or understood. The first part of the work presented my reading of this “testament,” while the second article proposes the completion of the work based on a new understanding of “I have erected a monument not made by hands,” the last ode in the Kamennoostrovsky cycle. The catharsis that the lyrical hero of Pushkin already experienced in the very first work of the cycle, “trembling joyfully in the raptures of emotion,” can also be experienced by the reader as he goes through the trials of the Passion Week before Easter. This can happen if the reader, enriched with spiritual experience, consistently overcomes his own temptations on the path to liberation from the old (sinful) part of himself, together with the author of the Kamennoostrovsky cycle. This would be a true catharsis for the reader, following the author of the cycle, a kind of poetic mimesis of Easter Sunday, conveyed in this case as a paraphrastic “overcoming” of the Horatian (classical) attitude by Pushkin’s rootedness in the Russian spiritual tradition. This kind of pilgrimage becomes possible for the reader if Pushkin's cycle is considered in the larger context of Russian Christian culture. In cases when the dominant values of this culture are improper for the reader and the researcher, or their significance for understanding Pushkin’s poetics is ignored or underestimated, one can hardly count on an adequate understanding of the poet’s artistic world.