“Cosmopolitan with all my soul”: about one source of the image of the devil in T. Mann's “Doctor Faustus”

The article compares the dialogues with the devil of Ivan Karamazov and Adrian Leverkun, heroes of the “age of the crisis of religious consciousness”. The article attempts to analyze the concepts of the Russian and German writers, their interpretation of common sources - the folk book and the tragedy of I.V Goethe, and the specifics of the hero’s dialogue with the devil. The novelty of the work lies in the study of the specifics of the dialogue, which acts as part of the narrative and intertextual discourse. As the author shows, the attitude of the two authors to traditional texts was complex and ambiguous. T. Mann adheres to a greater extent to the traditional scheme of concluding a contract set out in the medieval book, F.M. Dostoevsky for the most part departs from it. T. Mann and F.M. Dostoevsky turn to the tradition of Hoffmann’s “doubles”: after all, both dialogues can also be considered as a monologue of the characters with themselves. Both heroes suffer from a contradictory feeling - the presence of an “alien” demonic power within themselves, in two cases the image of the Devil turns out to be formed not according to traditional canons. The article shows that the image of the Devil in Dostoevsky, as well as T. Mann, can hardly be spoken of as timeless figures, both of them are historical and connected with their time. The author of the article analyzes the common motive of the exorcism attempt for the two texts, showing the differences between T. Mann and F.M. Dostoevsky. Unlike the tragedy of I.V. Goethe, the devil of F.M. Dostoevsky and T. Mann demonstrates almost absolute power over them.