The paradox of “escape from paradise” in Russian literature

The subject of the study is the motif of unauthorized “escape from Paradise”, as the one opposing to the motif of “exile from Paradise”, common in Western literature. Considering two asynchronical samples - of the manifestations of this motif (in A. N. Ostrovsky's play “The Forest” and in the fairy-tale by K. N. Batyushkov “A Wanderer and a Stay-at-home”), the author comes to the observation that it appeared as a romantic opposition to sentimental separation between “sustainable” and “moving” life: the poetry of sentimentalism favored the value of the “sustainable” position, whereas the supporters of romanticism saw the “movement” as the key sign, which later took paradoxical forms, giving new opportunities for developing national psychology of the Russian person and opposing the ideology of former Russian literature. This paradox was adopted by A. S. Pushkin and conceptualized by F. M. Dostoevsky in the “Pushkin Speech”. Further development of this motif led to the appearance of the ideal of a “restless” wanderer, consistently embodied in comedies by A. N. Ostrovsky.