Motifs of Christian ethics in Zacharias Topelius poetry

The article analyzes the motifs of Christian ethics in the poetry of a Finnish poet, writer, historian, and journalist Zacharias Topelius, whose artistic world view was shaped under the influence of the ideological and aesthetic Christian tradition. The relevance of the topic is determined by the growing interest in studying the representation of the motives of Christian morality in the works of European writers, as well as by the fact that the topic has not been sufficiently studied in Russia. References to the biblical texts enable us to trace the spiritual development of Topelius’s lyrical hero into the conscious cognition of his purpose. The author identifies the dominant set of Christian motifs represented by the motifs of purification and humility of soul through suffering. It is proved that Topelius’s works form a consistently built individual author’s model of the artistic embodiment of the main provisions of Christianity.