The 50th psalm in I. S. Shmelev’s short story “Why did it happened

The article examines the story of I. S. Shmelev “Why it happened,” in which the writer reveals the deep causes of the Russian revolution, which was an extraordinary disaster for Russia, and indicates possible ways out of the crisis. Artistically, it is a multifaceted and rich text with literary allusions, quotations and reminiscences. The article shows that already in the choice of books for reading, Shmelev’s “rootedness” in the “Christian tradition” is manifested (I. A. Yesaulov). It is important that it was the Psalter that was included in the author’s reading circle at that difficult time. Starting from the poem A. S. Pushkin’s “Memory,” which is read by the hero of the story, as well as from the evaluation of this poem by V. V. Rozanov (in particular, from his indication of the connection of Pushkin’s poem with the 50th psalm), the author of the article revealed new meaningful parallels. The coincidence of the interpretation of the 50th psalm with the main idea of the text of Shmelev in the article is considered for the first time. Plot and ideologically, the story also goes back to the novel by F. M. Dostoevsky “The Brothers Karamazov.” The article focuses on the work of M. M. Bakhtin on Dostoevsky’s poetics (exploring genre and plot-compositional features of the writer’s works, Bakhtin emphasized the dialogic genre of “menippov satire,” or “menippea”) and it is shown that genre features inherent in menippea are present in Shmelev’s story. Russian Russian concepts such as conscience, transgression, and repentance are considered, reflecting the uniqueness of Russian culture and included in the cultural code of the Russian language and literature, which corresponds to the ideas of ethnopoetics. It is concluded that the biblical interpretations of the psalm mentioned in the story correlate with the penitential content of the story.