N.V. Gogol and Russian spiritual culture: an experience of comprehension

The paper examines the actual aspects of the problem “Gogol and Russian spiritual culture”, presented in the reports of the participants of the scientific conference “19th International Gogol Readings” in Moscow and Jerusalem. The conference discussed the traditions of ancient Russian and patristic literature in the poetics of the writer, creative ties with outstanding spiritual writers and contemporaries, attitude to the ideological doctrines of the Slavophiles and Westerners. The speakers’ attention was paid to the specifics of Gogol’s Christian worldview, its evolution, and the forms of reflection in the ideological and figurative structure of the writer’s artistic and journalistic works. “Selected places from the correspondence with friends” were discussed, such as Gogol’s artistic preaching and spiritual testament, the writer’s connection with the Russian homiletical tradition, Gogol’s problem of man through the prism of Christian anthropology in a broad historical, literary and philosophical context (Skovoroda, Radishchev, Karamzin, Venevitinov, I. Kireyevsky, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Mandelstam, etc.), comparing the works of Gogol and the world spiritual culture (Confucius, Kierkegaard), comprehending the spiritual discourse of Gogol’s works in the Russian religion and philosophical thought of the 20th century (V. Zenkovsky, Yu Govorukha-Otrok, V. Rozanov, N. Roerich, S. Averintsev and others). The important topics of the conference were Gogol’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land and its role in the writer’s creative biography, a phased reconstruction of Gogol’s route through the Holy Land in 1848, its comparison with travelogues in Russian pilgrimage literature, the writer’s circle of contacts during his journey, his assessment of the moral outcome of his trip. The conference demonstrated a diversity of modern approaches to the problem “Gogol and Russian spiritual culture”, as well as the prospects for further academic research.