Nikolay Gogol and Konstantin Kinchev: the community of spiritual and moral attitudes in the context of verbal culture

Using the example of the work of the great writer Nikolay Gogol and the modern popular rock musician and rock poet Konstantin Kinchev, the article reveals invariant spiritual attitudes characteristic of the Russian verbal culture. The figure of Gogol is in many ways key for people of art, since ethical and aesthetic ideals collide in his work, which makes him incredibly tense in moral terms. It is Gogol who sets the tradition of treating art as a mission, striving for the idea of religious creativity. Analysis of artistic and journalistic texts by Gogol made it possible to determine five spiritual maxims of creativity: 1) the appointment of an artist; 2) about a responsible attitude to the word; 3) about the primacy of religion in relation to literature; 4) about the futility of secular life; 5) about the biblical basis of Russian poetry. Comparing the spiritual path of Gogol and Kinchev, the commonality of creative evolution is revealed: from the aestheticization of the infernal principle to a breakthrough to high religious ideals. An important result of this work is the idea that the spiritual model of creativity of Gogol and Kinchev is based on the general principle of an irresistible striving for the unattainable. The unattainable is understood as a powerful spiritual motivator, in the pursuit of which a person grows both personally and in creativity. It is important that both for Kinchev and for Gogol the impulses of this spiritual movement are: a) burning pain that cleans the human soul; b) an irresistible feeling of shame before God; c) memory of the mistakes (sins) committed earlier. It is concluded that the ethical and philosophical principle cannot be removed from the integral context of the life and work of Russian writers, musicians and poets.